The Rogue Trooper Reviews Are In…!
The Rogue Trooper Reviews Are In…!
The Rogue Trooper movie had its world premiere this week and reviews are in — and full of praise!
The sci-fi action comedy written and directed by Duncan Jones debuted at the Annecy Animation Festival in France on Monday, a screening attended by the world’s movie press alongside Jones, stars Aneurin Barnard and Jemaine Clement, producer Stuart Fenegan, Rebellion CTO Chris Kingsley, and Rebellion’s Head of Film & TV Ben Smith.
And Aneurin Barnard tackling a mugger outside the premiere wasn’t the only highlight of the night — the reviews have been landing for the first major feature film of a 2000 AD character since 2012’s Dredd.
At Deadline, Damon Wise called it a “fast, funny, visually mind-blowing old-school war movie” that “plays out like Starship Troopers as made by René Laloux, the Disney-gone-Dalí director of the 1973 French cult classic Fantastic Planet”. Praising how it becomes “a fantastical Apocalypse Now-style journey upstream through the hell of war”, Wise says that it has less to do with modern-day James Cameron of Avatar and more with “the spirit of the James Cameron who made the first Terminator movie” and speculates whether it will finally kickstart a “real future of futuristic futures”.
“A hellzapoppin’ comic book adaptation,” said Drew Taylor at The Wrap, who praised the fact that the film was made independently and looks far better than that would normally suggest. “It’s an absolute hoot,” he writes. “An otherworldly war movie populated by anthropomorphic weapons, arcane mythology and the kind of go-for-broke 1980s fantasy movie spirit that is (sadly) in short supply these days.” While “gloriously overstuffed” and “packed with characters and bits of lore, technology and philosophizing” he says that “encyclopedic knowledge” of the source material “isn’t necessary to have a good time”.
And over at Screen Daily, Wendy Ide says while Rogue Trooper may look like a Hollywood action adventure, “it is distinctively British both in its sensibility (no Avatar earnestness here, just a bracingly sarcastic and pitch black humour)”. This “ultra-violent near-future slaughter fest” whose “world-building is undeniably spectacular” and “space-ship crunching action and regional British insults” manages to “critique the cynical economic motivations of endless, pointless wars”.
With the film currently looking for distribution, there’ll be more exciting news to come about Rogue Trooper so make sure you’re signed up to the 2000 AD weekly newsletter and never miss a thing!