Duncan Jones’ R-rated animated “Rogue Trooper” premiered at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, bringing a long-awaited big-screen adaptation of the 1981 “2000 A.D.” comic to life with anthropomorphic weapons, arcane lore, and a go-for-broke 1980
When “Rogue Trooper” begins, the movie doesn’t ease you in. It throws you straight into a far-future war on a crawling kind of promise—two factions fighting over a planet. with the Norts framed as the bad guys and the Southers tied to the technology that created the genetic infantryman: a blue-skinned. super-strong soldier whose lungs can withstand the toxic conditions of Nu Earth. and whose memories are stored on a chip that can be implanted into cloned versions after the current one gets shot. detonated. or diced into little bits.
It’s a world built for kinetic storytelling. and the stakes land quickly: an R-rated animated film version of “Rogue Trooper. ” written and directed by Duncan Jones. just premiered at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival. For fans who have watched the franchise grow through spin-offs. board games. novelizations. and multiple video game adaptations over the years. the feature-film moment finally arrived.
“Rogue Trooper” has its origins in the British comic anthology “2000 A.D.,” where the character was first published in 1981. The property is second only to “Judge Dredd” in popularity from that publication. But a feature film adaptation had remained out of reach—until now—and Jones’ approach leans hard into why the comics endured in the first place.
The film sets off with a squadron of troopers landing on the planet’s surface. The war feels never-ending, soaked in cruelty and despair. Then the lead trooper, 19 (Aneurin Barnard), realizes someone has betrayed them. Each of his squadmates is killed. and 19 keeps them alive by transferring their memory chips into different objects: a helmet. a gun. and a backpack. Yes, the story includes an anthropomorphic backpack—and yes, one character is essentially a talking hat.
What follows is where the movie’s imagination really starts to turn. Once those chips are untethered from their original bodies, the characters take on more personality. The film also leans into the unnerving implications of how conflict flattens people into identical cogs: the blue soldiers tend to look alike. which can read like a commentary on war stripping individuality away. It’s also simply a practical challenge of computer animation populated by many similar-looking figures—one that isn’t limited to this film.
19’s newly separated companions—now lodged in their objects—set out on a journey to find the traitor and get them into new bodies. Along the way. they encounter unscrupulous scavengers played by Jemaine Clement and Matt Berry. a fellow rebel trooper (Hayley Atwell). and a bloodthirsty assassin who looks like a rejected member of Daft Punk and speaks with a French accent (Peter Serafinowicz).
The movie runs overstuffed with lore. technology. and philosophical questions about what makes you human—especially after war has eroded your personality. Much of the terminology can be treated like collectible debris you can pick up and roll around in your head. but you don’t have to. The runtime—just over two hours—keeps feeding the audience something new: a whirling idea. a new piece of world-building. and a bigger thing to blow up.
The ambition isn’t only story-deep. What makes “Rogue Trooper” more impressive than it has any right to be is the way it was made: entirely independently. Jones isn’t working for a giant studio, or even a smaller studio—this is a pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps kind of effort.
Jones is no stranger to large-scale effects work. having worked closely with Industrial Light & Magic and other effects houses on Universal’s “Warcraft” adaptation. But “Warcraft” came out a decade ago. and the film’s production reflects how much the tools have shifted since then. Jones used the same core technology and philosophy behind “Warcraft,” employing performance-capture techniques to create lifelike creatures. With “Rogue Trooper. ” he expanded that approach by creating every character—human. alien. and robot—using Unreal Engine. a game-development platform capable of rendering imagery in real time. The Volume, the controversial “digital backlot” technology that Disney helped pioneer, is also powered by Unreal Engine.
That choice shows in the final look. Sometimes the film can lean into the uncanny vibe of an expensive video game cutscene—but Jones makes that feel like part of the design. Everything about “Rogue Trooper” is heightened and exaggerated. from the go-for-broke 1980s fantasy movie energy to the emotional beats squeezed out of characters like a talking helmet that can be telepathic.
As the story builds. the third act leans into visuals that feel lifted from the comic—or at least share its sense of composition. dramatic lighting. and bombastic design. The film even adds its own 1980s-style theme song that. if you squint. feels like it could belong on the “Highlander” soundtrack. with the added delight of being a brand-new track.
There are giant robots, blue soldiers, and gargantuan crystals sticking out of the ground just because they look cool. The tables are the kind of thing you can imagine airbrushed on the side of a van or turned into heavy metal album art. That’s not going to match every taste. But the movie’s freewheeling energy. charming characters. and genuinely awe-inspiring visuals—made on a fraction of a typical Hollywood budget while still ornate enough to feel blockbuster-sized—make “Rogue Trooper” feel like something rare: a unique. admirable object.
And for now, it’s not just a long-awaited adaptation finally making its move. It’s an animated sci-fi war story from a director who’s clearly committed to turning comic-book excess into cinematic momentum—and doing it on his own terms.
Duncan Jones Rogue Trooper Annecy International Animation Film Festival 2000 A.D. Judge Dredd Unreal Engine R-rated animated film Aneurin Barnard Hayley Atwell Jemaine Clement Matt Berry Peter Serafinowicz Industrial Light & Magic Warcraft The Volume