Rogue Trooper (BFI London Film Festival 2026)

A last-minute free ticket ballot got me into the UK premiere of Duncan Jones’s Rogue Trooper on Friday night. Despite knowing very little about 2000AD, with my knowledge starting and finishing at the basic plot of Judge Dredd, there was something really satisfying about seeing a CG-animated film that is absolutely not for kids in a big London cinema. Plus, I was in the same room as Reece Shearsmith for a couple of hours. Beat that.

Rogue Trooper has been a passion project of Jones’s for years now. In the Q&A panel after the film, Jones mentioned how 2000AD’s influence ran through all his work, especially the cloning ideas in his excellent debut feature Moon. To see it come together as a full animated feature, with a mostly all-British cast, must have been a cathartic experience for him. And even as an outsider looking in, I want this to succeed – after his career petered out a bit with the video-game bomb Warcraft and the poorly-received Mute, it’s cool to see Jones coming back with something this ambitious and something that he clearly had a blast making. I wish I’d loved the film as much as he did, and as much as the 2000AD obsessives in the audience did, but there’s certainly a lot to like about Rogue Trooper. 

The biggest sell is probably the animation, which was made using Unreal Engine 5 and the results can be clearly seen. Rogue Trooper looks like a great science-fiction video game, from the stellar cosmic backdrops to the gritty planetary environments, the well-done facial animations and the weather effects. In some ways the faces are almost too well-done – much like how video games look almost uncannily good nowadays, the realistic design of the characters can be at odds with the environmental sci-fi of what surrounds them. It’s an odd choice to use for a modern animated film, but it strangely worked for the most part. Where it also feels like a video game is in its story. Many of the film’s dialogue-heavy moments, particularly the exposition dumps in the first act, feel like cut-scenes that forget to end and then cut to interactive gameplay. It’s not a bad thing per se, but the film can lack a certain cinematic structure at points. 

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The other big sell is just how many British actors are in this thing. Basically anyone who is someone (apart from Richard Ayoade) is part of the voice cast. From Diane Morgan to Sean Bean, from Reece Shearsmith to Ade Edmondson, from Matt Berry to Alice Lowe, it’s a star-studded cast of British talent. Almost distractingly so. These are all incredibly talented people, and being in a room with so many of them was a real pinch-me moment, but the presence of them distracted me from what their characters were actually doing. It’s all well and good hearing Diane Morgan voice a sardonic military general, but when her voice is so recognisable I was just imagining Philomena Cunk leading a platoon of troopers into battle, it dawned on me that I probably shouldn’t be thinking that when I should be invested in the story. And the bad thing is, this wasn’t just me. There was a knowing laugh when Mr Bland started talking as everyone collectively worked out it was Matt Berry in about half a second. That’s not even Berry’s fault per se, he’s a great actor known for his distinctive Brian Blessed-esque voice, but when he’s not putting any variation on his voice for the character, the charisma of the actor portraying that character overwhelms the character on the page. 

The casting is at its best when its voice actors decide to switch things up. While I knew Reece Shearsmith was in the cast, it took me ages to clock which character he was due to the cool intonations he was doing and the effects placed on it. But when you get Diane Morgan and Sean Bean to basically do their normal voices, I’m not thinking of their characters – I’m thinking of Diane Morgan and Sean Bean.

Rogue Trooper also has a bit of a bloat problem, especially in the back half. The plot itself is fairly thin and stays within a couple of particular settings, so at two hours this does drag a bit. There’s a few comedic side characters that started to grate on me by the time we got to the third act, as a lot of the film’s running jokes started to get tiresome. Still, there are bags of charm to be found in Rogue Trooper. There’s some odd but strangely fitting needle-drops, and the voice cast, as occasionally overwhelming as it is, gives this their all. More importantly, this was made without a hint of cynicism: Duncan Jones’s enthusiasm shone through in both the Q&A and the film itself, and the 2000AD fans in the audience seemed to eat it up. 

Before the film started, producer Stuart Fenegan boasted that this was an entirely British animated film made with zero AI, a statement that naturally drew a massive round of applause for the audience. And I think his declaration sums up my thoughts perfectly. As a passion project and exclamation of British talent, Rogue Trooper is fantastic. As a film, it’s decent. 

ALEX’S ARCHIVE – ROGUE TROOPER