Rogue Trooper

Blue-skinned and bred to fight, die, and repeat in an interstellar forever-war, 19 (Aneurin Barnard, Radioactive, TIFF ’19) is the sole survivor of a genetically engineered platoon tasked with liberating the toxic planet Nu-Earth. Accompanied by the consciousnesses of his fallen squadmates — stored inside military biochips embedded in his gun (Jack Lowden, Benediction, TIFF ’21), helmet (Daryl McCormack, Wake Up Dead Man, TIFF ’25), and backpack (Reece Shearsmith, A Field in England, TIFF ’13) — 19 searches for a way to restore them while uncovering a traitor within military command.

If any aspect of this premise sounds familiar, you’ve either pored over the panels of Gerry Finley-Day and Dave Gibbons’ iconic issues (a.k.a. “progs”) of the legendary 2000 AD comics anthology, or enjoyed the plethora of movies and games indebted to them. From Warhammer 40K to Star Wars: The Clone Wars and James Cameron’s Avatar, Rogue Trooper’s aesthetic and thematic tendrils have long infiltrated the military science-fiction subgenre.

Their exploits are now authentically rendered through an innovative synthesis of live-actor performance-capture and computer-generated animation. Writer-director Duncan Jones’ shrewdest creative decision, though, is embracing the comics’ unabashed Britishness.

Drawing from Gibbons’ gritty “The War Machine” reboot and the original 1980s run, and featuring nigh every accent from the British Isles and beyond across a stellar ensemble that further includes Matt Berry, Jemaine Clement, Diane Morgan, Sean Bean, and Hayley Atwell — plus a pixel-chewing Peter Serafinowicz as a snooty francophone sniper — Jones preserves the playful, satirical, and surreal personality that distinguished the original comics with an infectious zeal and attention to psychotronic spectacle.

PETER KUPLOWSKY

Content advisory: explicit violence, accident trauma, coarse language, crude content, scenes of surgery