Warcraft and Moon director Duncan Jones discusses his ambitions for his adaptation of 2000 AD’s sci-fi comic Rogue Trooper

DC and Marvel have become media powerhouses with numerous TV shows, movies, and games based on their series, but British comic maker 2000 AD had much more limited success with its 1995 and 2012 adaptations of Judge Dredd. Moon and Warcraft director Duncan Jones hopes his animated adaptation of Rogue Trooper will give them another shot at fame.

“What I love about 2000 AD is it’s always been this punk comedy political vehicle, whether it’s Judge Dredd or Rogue Trooper,” Jones told Polygon in an interview at Annecy Festival. “I wanted my script to be funny, a little gory, and have a little bit of political subtext without it getting in the way, just being as raw as the comic book itself.”

Jones wrote, directed, and independently produced his adaptation of the 1981 series from Gerry Finley-Day and Dave Gibbons. Set in a world where the Norts and Southers are engaged in an endless war for control of Nu-Earth, the film follows 19 (Aneurin Barnard), a soldier who was genetically modified to survive the planet’s poisonous atmosphere. Genetic Infantrymen are implanted with chips so their consciousness can be uploaded into new cloned bodies, and 19 is accompanied by the minds of his fallen brothers, whose chips he stores in his equipment. While there’s a lot of comics history to draw on, Jones takes a light touch with his exposition and worldbuilding.

“I like the idea of trying to treat the audience as being able to take what they get and fill in the blanks,” he said. “I think it’s OK to leave some of the mystery in there.”

The film uses a mix of animation styles to pull off its sci-fi action on a tight budget and just 10 days of shooting. Jones said he learned how time consuming motion capture was when working on Warcraft, his 2016 adaptation of Blizzard Entertainment’s classic real-time strategy game. For Rogue Trooper, he just captured faces and voices for the actors – who include Sean Bean, Jemaine Clement, and Matt Berry – while handling bodies later with a mix of stuntmen and hand animation. Warcraft was a commercial and critical failure, and it also taught Jones to manage his expectations.

“I got burned so badly on Warcraft I’m not even thinking about sequels,” Jones said. “If I can make this movie work as a standalone, that would be wonderful. What I want to do is be successful enough that 2000 AD has the opportunity to make more movies because they were incredible partners and really supportive of what I wanted to do. They have so many characters and there’s some fantastic directors that we all know who want to make those movies, so I hope that happens because I want to see those films.

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