In October 1998, Soldier, a science fiction film starring Kurt Russell as a veteran soldier declared obsolete and abandoned by his superiors, hit theaters. Critics were harsh and it bombed at the box office, losing millions. However, Soldier carries an intriguing detail: from a relaxed perspective, it works as a hybrid between a spin-off and a sequel to the classic Blade Runner...
The Blade Runner Connection
Blade Runner celebrated its 42nd anniversary last June. Every alternative version you can imagine is available on the market and the web, while some regions explored bringing it back to the big screen (a popular strategy these days to stimulate ticket sales). Its official sequel is Blade Runner 2049, the best film of 2017 that nobody went to see, and the franchise's future seems to continue as a series, possibly titled Blade Runner 2099.
But the internet believes someone already did that job... more or less. To find out, we travel back to 1998, when Paul W. S. Anderson (yes, the same one from Mortal Kombat and the Resident Evil saga), Jerry Weintraub, and David Peoples served as director, producer, and writer of Soldier, with Kurt Russell in the lead, who besides preparing physically for the futuristic soldier role, filmed several scenes injured (he broke his left ankle in the first week, and the top of his right foot four days later).
Soldier, in the Same Universe as Blade Runner?
The plot begins with the introduction of the Project Adam, which aims to turn a group of orphan children into ruthless soldiers — absolute killing machines who know only discipline and fear of their superiors. Failure equals death, and the film makes that clear through several scenes. Sergeant Todd 3465(Russell) is one of the survivors of that extreme conditioning, and probably the best soldier of the entire project.
At 40 years old and with decades of "service", Todd 3465's combat record is impressive, both on Earth and in outer space. But if we look closely at the second video, we'll spot two entries that stand out: Tannhauser Gate and Orion's Shoulder — two battles that a certain Replicant couldn't forget even in his final moments...
Indeed: Soldier suggests that Todd 3465 participated in the same military conflicts as Roy Batty. On the other hand, a trained eye won't take long to spot a discarded Spinner among the junk on the planet Todd arrives at, Arcadia 234.
At this point, anyone might ask "why", and the answer is simple: David Peoples was one of the writers of Blade Runner alongside Hampton Fancher, who also developed the story for Blade Runner 2049 and its associated shorts. Since then, some fans consider Soldier to be a mix of spin-off and parallel sequel to Blade Runner, sharing the same universe.
However, this particular headcanon doesn't fly that far. Peoples himself said during a 2023 interview that there is no real link between the two films, and that he wrote Soldier in 1984"alone and very quickly", inspired by nothing less than The Terminator. He had always wanted to write a story with an unsympathetic subject in the lead role, and The Terminator came close to that.
To conclude, Soldier's references are not limited to Blade Runner. Can you name them all? Leave a comment!
(From our archives, published in September 2021, updated with additional details.)
Soldier on IMDB:Click here
