This post was originally published on here
Welcome to Nu Earth, recruits: the first teaser trailer for the Rogue Trooper movie has arrived. The film is Duncan Jones’ adaptation of the long-running British comic book series created by Gerry Finley-Day and Dave Gibbons (artist of Watchmen), which has run intermittently in the pages of 2000 AD since 1981.
The new trailer shows the eponymous Rogue Trooper, also known as 19, surviving the inhospitable climate of Nu-Earth, the war-torn world which has been the front of a war between the “Norts” and “Southers” for countless years. You can watch the trailer below.
What Is Rogue Trooper About?
When Finley-Day and Gibbons created Rogue Trooper, they were inspired by such conflicts as World War II, the Vietnam War, and the American Civil War. Being a 2000 AD strip, it filtered themes of the cost of endless warfare through the lens of science fiction.
The eponymous “Rogue Trooper,” 19, is the only surviving member of a brood of GIs, “genetic infantrymen,” created by the Southers. The GIs could withstand the poisonous atmosphere of Nu-Earth without special suits, and should have swung the war in favor of the Southers.
However, they were betrayed by a “Traitor General” within Souther ranks and wiped out. 19 was the only one of his group to survive with his body intact, but he managed to save the consciousness of three of his fellow GIs on backup chips that he then inserted into his rifle, helmet, and backpack.
The items have now been imbued with those soldiers’ personalities. Now called Gunnar, Helm, and Bagman, the three fallen GIs talk to 19 and do what they can to aid him in his mission for revenge against the traitor general and to survive on Nu-Earth.
In the animated Rogue Trooper movie, Aneurin Barnard voices 19. Jack Lowden, Daryl McCormack, and Reece Shearsmith will provide the disembodied voices of Gunnar, Helm, and Bagman, respectively. Rogue Trooper’s cast also includes Hayley Atwell, Matt Berry, Asa Butterfield, Jemaine Clement, and Sean Bean.
Duncan Jones Brings Rogue Trooper to Life
Duncan Jones, director of Moon and Warcraft, is helming the Rogue Trooper movie, his film directing job since 2018’s Mute, one of the weirdest Netflix movies ever. Jone told Deadline he’s been a fan of 2000 AD, which also publishes the iconic Judge Dredd, since he was a child.
“They’ve got an absolute treasure trove of characters, and there’s a lot of them that I would’ve been gagging to do and absolutely would love the chance to do,” Jones explained. “But Rogue was always the one that felt most appealing to me. It’s funny, when I was in school, I was a big fan of Plato’s Republic and the tripartite division of the soul between the head, the stomach, and the heart. And I always read Rogue Trooper thinking of that division of the soul, with the characters of Bagman, Gunnar and Helm. And when we started making the film, I finally had the opportunity to talk to the authors and ask them if that had been in their thinking. Obviously, it wasn’t. [Laughs.] It wasn’t at all! but it meant something to me.”
According to the trailer, the Rogue Trooper movie is “coming soon-ish.”
