“One of the reasons I loved 2000 AD so much while growing up was that it was always very happy to wear its politics on its sleeve, unlike DC and Marvel”
– The British director delves into the long and experimental process of making his animated film, its political tone, and the improvisational work he carried out with the cast
(© Frédéric Murarotto/Annecy International Film Festival)
On the occasion of the world premiere of his animated film Rogue Trooper in the Annecy International Animated Film Festival, British director Duncan Jones discussed his movie-making process, the film’s visual aspect and his hopes for the future of 2000 AD comic adaptations.
Cineuropa: What was the production process like? It seems to be a film which required a bit of time…
Duncan Jones: I’d been wanting to make this film for twenty-five years. When I was at film school, I found out that the people who now own the comic book had just acquired it, and I was able to organise a meeting with them. I went in there to ask if I could make the film, and their first question was: “Have you ever made a film before?” I said no. So they were clearly thinking, “What is this guy doing here?” Then they asked, “Do you want to star in the film?” I was so embarrassed. I basically walked away from it for 20 years, made some other movies, and then came back to it about seven years ago. From there, it took another four years to actually get the film made.
Given the work’s lengthy runtime, what kind of decisions were involved while making it?
When we decided we were going to try and make it an animated film, there were a few different technologies, such as the Unreal Game Engine, that we were considering, hoping that maybe it was at a point where we could make a film with it. We started doing some research and asking around… It felt like it was close but not quite there. Being the crazy fools that we are, we decided we’d just leap into it and hope that the technology caught up with us while we were making the film. In the end, it didn’t help us to fully complete the film, but we did get a long way down that road. And we used it a lot for our animatic, and then we went back to it later on, in a kind of circuitous path.
The film’s soundtrack is perfect in a wild way. What is Edith Piaf doing in a film like this?
Rogue Trooper is very tongue-in-cheek, and very much in the spirit of old, World War II movies where everything was very gung-ho. I wanted to play with that idea, especially given where the UK is these days and how people think about themselves. It wasn’t long after Brexit that I started to work on the script, with that whole idea of the Brits separating themselves off and being really patriotic, so I wanted to play with that. There are a lot of stereotypes, and lots of playing around with accents and stuff like that: the French villain, the German and Russian baddies, and then all the different ideas of what being British means. In general, the music is very nostalgic; you hear The Ink Spots singing We’ll Meet Again and then references to all these old, World War II movies that I watched growing up.
Comedy aside, there’s also a serious note to the film. At one point, someone says: “This war will not end until it costs more than it makes.” The original comics were already political. How did you want to carry that tone across to the film?
One of the reasons I loved 2000 AD so much while growing up was that, unlike DC and Marvel, it was always very happy to wear its politics on its sleeve. I felt – especially talking to the people who owned the IP – that they really did give me license to do that, because that’s what the comic’s known for. And I think that if you’re going to make a Judge Dredd or Rogue Trooper movie, it needs to be a part of how the story’s presented. It was fun to do as well.
How was it, working with the actors? Was it hard given the lack of an actual set?
We had a 10-day shoot. We were shooting about 16 pages a day. And it’s because we were in this kind of theatrical black space, and we were only filming their faces and their voices. What that meant was that, every couple of days, we would have new pairs of comedians coming in. They were given the bare bones, a base to start from, which was an animatic I’d recorded. So every day it was a whirlwind of getting these people up to speed, then just letting them improvise, have fun, and do what they do best, which is being funny. The film is clearly quite episodic and the way we shot it reflects the structure. I’ve never experienced a shoot like it. It was great”
Would you like to adapt anything else from 2000 AD comics?
I’d love to do other things. I don’t want to be greedy because there are other amazing directors who I know are interested in doing projects with 2000 AD. There are so many great characters, and they’re all very different. It’s not all science-fiction, they have some amazing fantasy and contemporary stories too. I think they’ve had experiences in the past where it hasn’t been what they wanted the film to be – the Stallone Judge Dredd movie, for example. It’s difficult. I really hope we set things up properly so that it becomes easier for them to secure more adaptations. You don’t want to put the cart before the horse, but you do have to try to implement something that’s successful enough for them to make more movies.
