2000 AD, the long-running weekly British comics magazine, counts filmmaker Duncan Jones among its fans, and he has realized a lifelong dream by bringing one of its signature characters to the big screen with “Rogue Trooper.” Jones isn’t a stranger to action spectacles, having made the video game adaptation “Warcraft,” which wasn’t commercially successful enough to spawn a franchise. One could easily imagine—in fact, probably expect—“Rogue Trooper” to be live-action, but instead it arrives as an independently produced CGI-animated film. “Rogue Trooper” is a serviceable introduction to the character, but it also demonstrates why an adaptation took so long and why another one might not arrive anytime soon.

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The premise is straightforward enough. The Norts and Southers are at war for control of Nu-Earth and locked in a stalemate. Planning an invasion, the Southers send an advance guard of GIs (Genetic Infantrymen): blue soldiers with memory chips installed in their brains who can eventually be cloned into new bodies after death. 19 (Aneurin Barnard), the eventual titular Rogue Trooper, is the sole survivor after the attack is revealed to have been betrayed by a mole among the Southers’ commanders. 19 salvages the chips of three of his buddies and installs them in his helmet (Daryl McCormack’s Helm), gun (Jack Lowden’s Gunnar), and backpack (Reece Shearsmith’s Bagman). The rest of “Rogue Trooper” finds him pursuing two goals: warning the Southers not to send in the rest of the army and “saving” his friends by securing new bodies for them.

Only “Rogue Trooper” focuses much more on the former, factoring the latter into the story surprisingly late. Jones fails to generate much interest or investment in the initial stretch because the war and its two opposing factions remain almost completely anonymous. The setup is tossed off in a “Star Wars”-style expository crawl, but little character work establishes either the protagonists or antagonists. Instead, Jones drops us directly into an extremely tiresome opening action sequence that stretches to nearly 30 minutes.

You might think shaky cam, hyper-quick trailer-style editing, murky visuals, and geographical incoherence are afflictions specific to live-action filmmaking, where there isn’t always the time or money to block and stage action properly. Apparently not. Even with the unconstrained freedoms offered by animation, Jones creates action that often becomes incomprehensible slash-dash gobbledygook. In live action, there is at least the visceral thrill of watching an actor perform physical action, exert themselves, and strain manfully. “Rogue Trooper” denies the audience even that pleasure with its standard-issue, vaguely uncanny-valley, gravity-free animation style. Then there’s the sheer amount of it all: animation allows for virtually unlimited mayhem, and the resulting hyperactivity makes “Rogue Trooper” exhausting at two hours.

The characters are mostly macho archetypes and wafer-thin, especially 19’s three buddies, whose resurrection we’re supposed to care about. To the movie’s credit, they become more entertaining once reduced to objects and start wisecracking like Robin Williams’ Genie in “Aladdin.” Alas, like many other properties, “Rogue Trooper” has already had its lunch eaten by “Avatar.” Its buff blue mofos inevitably feel like limp facsimiles of the Na’vi and Recoms in James Cameron’s billion-dollar franchise. The Hayao Miyazaki-like, oddly drawn, grotesque supporting characters don’t land quite the same way in CGI either, and whatever stylization they possess is undercut by the movie’s otherwise live-action-style verbalizing. If you were told Jones’ script had originally been written for live action and animated after the fact, you’d believe it. Another reminder of that live-action, big-studio mentality is the utter lack of eroticism despite the permissible hard-R rating and the absence of any need for intimacy riders.

“Rogue Trooper” improves as it goes along, particularly once the drive to resurrect 19’s buddies gains some urgency and even poignancy, but it’s too little too late. The movie’s ideas about fascism and totalitarianism also land with a thud, as does its central thesis: as a soldier, you’re literally a number sent out like a lamb to slaughter for the ideological ends of corrupt, conniving warmongers. The scenery becomes moderately pretty once Jones finally decides to shine a light after all the doom and gloom, and the voice performances are entertaining enough on their own.

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“Rogue Trooper” plays so much like a serial that one can easily imagine it being better served by the old Disney model: a hand-drawn animated feature followed by a TV series built around weekly adventures—or perhaps an RPG video game. As a movie, however, “Rogue Trooper” seems unlikely to mint many new enthusiasts for the property. Its greatest value may simply be offering curious moviegoers a glimpse into a comics franchise that would otherwise remain largely hidden from them. [C]

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Ankit is a writer and film critic who has spent more than a decade chasing bold, provocative cinema across festivals from Cannes and Berlin to New York and Toronto. Drawn to films that take risks and break molds, he covers everything from adventurous arthouse discoveries to major releases—and is always looking for a story that does something unexpected.