The last time we looked into one of these high production 2000AD fan films, I mentioned a personal holy trinity within its comic book settings. You have Judge Dredd, Strontium Dog, and Rogue Trooper. With the former having benefitted from similar productions in the past, now it's Rogue's time in the spotlight. I don't think a more ambitious subject could have been picked. With Dredd it was more about showing his world through the eyes of the exiled Judge Minty, with Dredd only putting in a cameo. With Strontium Dog, it was a short series of gunfights against a terrorist group. Here? It's set in the middle of one of the series' single largest battlezones.
The Synopsis
The story takes place at the very start of the Rogue Trooper mythos. The Genetic Infantrymen are a superweapon built by the Souther armies to face off against the fascist Nort legions on Nu Earth. With humanity's home now long gone, Nu Earth is all they have left, and it has been ravaged by continual war, poisoned until the air itself is choked with pollutants. The GIs are immune to this, and their opening mission was to be a trial by fire. They were betrayed from within, by a nameless general, and faced a force which outnumbered their kind many times over. By the end, only Rogue will walk away from it alive. Yet he won't be alone, with biological chips recording the personalities of his squadmates Bagman, Gunnar and Helm implanted into his equipment.
The Good
There's a lot of baggage to get out of the way with Rogue Trooper, even more so than the others. While you can put some of it down to simply "he's a super soldier" other parts do need to be explained. As such, the film utilises an opening crawl to quickly bring the audience up to speed on the essential details. What I like about this is that it's brief, sticks to the bare essentials and does more than simply offer an opening crawl - using voice-overs and background footage to impart a greater sense of atmosphere. There's only so much that the film can show, after all, and it helps to convey a much greater sense of scale to the events.
Furthermore, the film opts to get right into the action, quickly cutting to the latest possible opportunity to offer an introduction to this event. Originally in the comic, the entire battle was shown in flashbacks, cutting from one moment to the next as Rogue's squadmates are gunned down, but there's simply not enough time to do that in this short length while allowing each to have an impact. As such, it instead cuts to the last of these, Helm, in his final moments with the others already dead. This initial act is used to get a multitude of essential points across in an extremely short amount of time, through Nort communications chatter, fleeting conversations and visual actions. Mere background things most people will miss, like a dropship which flies past as the Norts inspect Helm's drop pod are small elements but essential ones. Most people won't notice them on the first viewing, but they're enough to give the impression that this is more than just a few actors engaging in gun battles. Again it's the implication of larger events which works so well here.
The film frequently re-uses certain key shots to establish continuity and a better identity of the bio-chips themselves. It's done in the same manner that a film might repeatedly re-use certain shots to capture the faces of actors, and it's again a very nice visual touch. This is most evident with Gunnar's view when Rogue is using him to mow down waves of Norts, and it's so cleanly cut that you likely won't realise that the film is doing it until some way in.
Yet, for all this, the fighting was clearly meant to be the main focus of this work and it stands out extremely well. Above all else, Rogue Trooper was presented as an amalgamation of every historical war given laserguns, from Vietnam to the Second World War. This was effectively a commando raid which has gone horribly wrong, forcing those left to rely on their skills and superior builds to overwhelm greater numbers of opponents and heavy armour. Rogue here is constantly on the move, hunted and pursued by multiple Nort squads, and it's clear that he's only alive thanks to his enhanced reflexes and heightened skills. When he does kill them, it's often in the most direct and easiest way possible, constantly going for the metaphorical jugular and wasting no time with anything flashy.
While the film holds back from having Rogue shrug off bullets or turning him into Neo, it does have him quickly gunning down opponents in controlled bursts. Thus thinning their numbers before drawing them into an area where they can best be defeated. This leads into the film using a faux single shot sequence which shows Rogue dismantling the Norts at close range through precision shots and then hand-to-hand engagements. The lack of perceived cuts makes the kills much more visceral as a result, and the few cuts made flow easily from one moment to the next. A personal favourite was how one blow landed against Rogue quickly transitioned into him drawing a knife.
Still, as with everything, there are a few flaws here. That and some pet peeves.
The Bad
This is going to vary from one person to the next, but certain cinematic choices here seemed at odds with the subject matter. The big one was the use of slow motion, which dominated much of the fights. While they did work at certain key moments, especially with a grenade, in others they seemed oddly gratuitous; detracting from the grittier edge and offering a more stylised take than what was usually seen in the comic. This wasn't helped by a few odd choices, such as Rogue's first appearance by having him leap onto the screen while firing in the air, followed by a dramatic reload. It's not that the sequences were badly done by any means, but they seemed at odds with Rogue Trooper's usual style.
Another definite issue was how the film doesn't quite carry the same visuals typically described of Nu Earth. Some changes can be accepted for the execution of a better film - such as the alterations made to the character designs - but Nu Earth itself is constantly described and seen as a choking wasteland. Coated in the worst kind of smog, filth and acidic rain, it is gaia's lament incarnate. The problem with this is that the setting looks too clean in many ways. The scenes are too well lit and lack the chemical tinge that made the world so visibly poisonous, and short of a few light misting effects there's little indication of the poisonous present in the setting.
Another noted issue is how the film abruptly ends. This was always intended to be an extremely short fan film, and there's nothing wrong with that. It would be wrong for this review to dock points for a lack of quieter or more character driven moments, when that was never the core focus. Yet it does feel as if there should have been more to this. The final shot of Rogue trooper leaping into combat as the war goes on certainly will work for some, but something more definite which reflected the Quartz Massacre's nature would have been more fitting. Perhaps even a brief shot of Rogue walking into the distance, confirming he was the only survivor, or even a brief closing shot to confirm that the GIs were wiped out. Without that, it seems to present the event as a battle that they will fight and likely win.
The Verdict
At best, the problems here are teething ones. Like the other fan productions mentioned in the opening, this is another very strong and excellently produced film showing a character at their best. It's the sort of thing you would offer to someone unfamiliar with the setting to get them interested in further works, or to fans who have been denied a Dredd level adaptation for so long. It's certainly the shortest of those covered, but it has a distinctive style and it's a great example of how a talented crew with the right vision can accomplish brilliant things. Definitely set a few minutes aside to watch this one.
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