Soldier (1998 American film)

Soldier
Soldier theatrical poster
Directed by	Paul W. S. Anderson
Written by	David Peoples
Produced by	Jeremy Bolt Susan Ekins Fred Fontana R.J. Louis James G. Robinson Jerry Weintraub
Starring	Kurt Russell Jason Scott Lee Jason Isaacs Connie Nielsen Sean Pertwee
Cinematography	David Tattersall
Music by	Joel McNeely
Distributed by	Warner Brothers
Release dates	October 23, 1998 (USA)
Running time	99 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$75,000,000

Soldier is a 1998 science fiction film directed by Paul W.S. Anderson. The film, classified as a thriller, starred Kurt Russell as Sgt. Todd, a soldier trained from birth. The film also featured Gary Busey, Jason Scott Lee, Jason Isaacs, Connie Nielsen, Sean Pertwee and Michael Chiklis.

It was written by David Peoples, who co-wrote the script for Blade Runner. By his own admission, he considers Soldier to be a "sidequel"/spiritual successor to Blade Runner. It also obliquely references various elements of stories written by Philip K. Dick (who wrote the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, on which Blade Runner is based), or film adaptations thereof.

Synopsis

The film begins in the year 1996 (year zero). A group of infants are chosen by a commander in the American forces, to be raised as soldiers. We watch one of the infants, Todd, as he matures and undergoes extreme mental and physical training to prepare for his career. This includes phrase repetition conditioning, running, weapons training, wrestling, boxing, and desensitization to violence. Todd appears to be one of the best in his group. After completing their training in 2013 (year seventeen), Todd and his group fight in multiple wars, including the War of the Six Cities (year thirty-eight), the Moscow Incident, and the Battle of the Argentine Moons.

The film then jumps to 2036 (year forty). Todd is now forty and a veteran of many battles. A commander named Colonel Mekum announces that he intends to replace Todd and the others with a new group of genetically-engineered soldiers. The commander makes it clear that the new soldiers are superior in strength, ability, and complete genetic lack of emotion, making the "old ones", who were trained from birth, obsolete.

Todd's own commander, Captain Church, insists that his group is far from obsolete, and resists replacing them. The two commanders agree to a contest to see which unit is best, but Todd's group is no match for the genetically-engineered soldiers. Two of his comrades are killed while fighting a single opponent in hand-to-hand combat. Only Todd manages to seriously injure Caine 607 (Lee) before the contest ends, but even he is finally knocked unconscious and believed dead. The surviving members of Todd's group are remanded to menial support roles and stripped of the title 'Soldier'.

Todd and his dead comrades are transported, via P376 disposal ship, to Arcadia 234, a waste disposal planet with dangerously high wind velocities. Todd and his dead comrades are literally thrown out with the trash, dumping him onto the planet along with the debris. Though badly injured, Todd limps his way toward a group of humans who left Earth twelve years earlier, in 2024, on a voyage to the Trinity Moons. The colonists crash-landed on Arcadia 234, and have been stranded there ever since. They now live as a closely-knit community among the planet's trash heaps.

Todd has great difficulty adapting to the community due to his extreme conditioning. Many of the settlers are afraid of him, but still try to welcome him into the group. He is able to make friends with a settler named Mace, and tries to teach Mace's son, Nathan, to protect himself from a poisonous breed of snake that is indigenous to the planet. Unfortunately, Mace and his wife Sandra misinterpret Todd's actions as an irresponsible risk to their son. Mace worries that Todd might hurt Nathan or someone else in their community. He is also jealous of the attention Todd is paying to his wife.

Todd soon begins to experience flashbacks from his time as a soldier and mistakes one of the colonists for an enemy, nearly killing him. The settlers decide that Todd is too dangerous to live among them (even Mace appears to agree with the decision) so they exile Todd after giving him enough supplies to survive on his own. He then settles in an old rocket engine nozzle among the garbage heaps and sheds a single tear. Todd does not appear to understand what it is. (Soldiers are presumably forbidden to cry)

When Nathan saves his parents from a snake due to a single lesson from Todd, Mace realizes that Todd was only trying to help his son and decides to find the soldier so he can invite him back into the community. But the new soldiers arrive on a training exercise and begin a ground battle against the colonists. Mace is killed in the initial attack. Though outmanned and outgunned, Todd's years of battle experience let him outmaneuver the replicant army with guerilla tactics. A final personal combat with Caine 607 ends with a hint of a happy future for Todd. Todd and his comrades take over the ship, tossing Mekum and his aides out onto the planet. They and the colonists escape the planet just as it is destroyed by the new soldiers' planet killer weapon. After setting a course to the Trinity Moons, Todd embraces Nathan and they look upon a galaxy as the film ends.

Cast

Actor/Actress	Role(s)
Kurt Russell	Todd
Jason Scott Lee	Caine 607
Jason Isaacs	Mekum
Connie Nielsen	Sandra
Sean Pertwee	Mace
Jared Thorne	Nathan
Taylor Thorne	Nathan
Mark Bringleson	Rubrick
Gary Busey	Church
K. K. Dodds	Sloan
James Black	Riley
Mark De Alessandro	Goines
Vladimir Orlov	Romero
Carsten Norgaard	Green
Duffy Gaver	Chelsey
Michael Chiklis	Jimmy Pig
Alexander Denk	Military Observer

Reception

Like its sister film Blade Runner, Soldier was a box office flop. Shot with a rather high budget of $75 million, the film only took in $15 million worldwide. [1]

Critical reaction was harsh as well; the film's director, Paul Anderson, was heavily criticized for his work, and some considered writer David Peoples to not be up to his usual standards with the screenplay.

References to Blade Runner

Soldier is set within the same fictional universe as the 1982 cult science fiction film Blade Runner. Writer David Webb Peoples specifically wrote these references in his script for Soldier.

• Tannhauser Gate, a location mentioned by Roy Batty in Blade Runner ("I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tanhauser Gate"), is referenced three times in Soldier. Near the beginning of the film, Todd's accomplishments can be seen on a computer screen. The screen reads that he was involved in the Battle of Tannhauser Gate. After Todd arrives at the settlement on Arcadia, a woman looks at Todd's arm, which reads, among other things, "Tannhauser Gate." When the woman reveals this to her husband, he replies "Tannhauser Gate was a battle."
• Reportedly, the original plan was to actually show the Battle of Tannhauser Gate in the film, but this idea was scrapped during production.
• The Shoulder of Orion, another location mentioned by Roy Batty in Blade Runner, is also listed on the computer screen at the beginning of the film as a battle Todd had participated in.
• A vehicle from Blade Runner (known as a "spinner") can be viewed in one scene in the village on Arcadia, while the villagers are celebrating what is apparently Christmas.([2])
• David Peoples has also stated that the soldiers of this film are examples of the engineered life forms (known as "replicants") seen in Blade Runner.
• The film also obliquely references various elements of works by Philip K. Dick, who had written the novel on which Blade Runner is based. However, Dick was not involved in Soldier's creation, having died in 1982.
• Director Paul W. S. Anderson states in the DVD commentary for the film that, in addition to the film being set in the same fictional universe as Blade Runner, Blade Runner was one of his primary influences when making the film and the themes and overall tone were meant to be similar.

Trivia

• Todd's service record, as displayed on a computer screen, includes the following references, almost all of which were movies Russell starred in and named for the character he played in each film:
  • The battles of Tannhauser Gate and Shoulder of Orion — Blade Runner (1982)
  • Receipt of the "Plissken Medal" — Escape from New York (1981), Escape from L.A. (1997)
  • Receipt of the "O'Neil Ring Award" — Stargate (1994)
  • Receipt of the "Cash Medal of Honor" — Tango and Cash (1989)
  • Receipt of the "Maccready Cross" — The Thing (1982)
  • Receipt of the "Capt Ron Trophy" — Captain Ron (1992)
  • Receipt of the "McCaffrey Fire Award" — Backdraft (1991)
  • Receipt of the "Dexter Riley Award" — The Strongest Man in the World (1975), Now You See Him, Now You Don't (1972), The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969)
  • Citations for the Nibian Moons Campaign, the Antares Maelstrom War and the War Of Perdition's Flames, locations referred to in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982).
  • A list of Todd's weapon training history. It indicates that he has been trained on the M41A Pulse Rifle and "USMC Smartgun," which were weapons seen in the film Aliens. The list also indicates that Todd is capable of using the "Illudium PU36 ESM," otherwise known as the "Illudium PU36 Explosive Space Modulator." This is the same weapon Marvin the Martian is always threatening to use on Earth in the Bugs Bunny cartoons. The list also indicates that Todd is capable of using the "DOOM MKIV BFG," a reference to the computer game Doom and its signature weapon, the BFG 9000.
• Among the garbage on the planet:
  • The USS Franklin D. Roosevelt
  • The F-117X Remora from Executive Decision (1996)
  • A spinner from Blade Runner (1982)
  • A piece of the Lewis & Clark from Event Horizon (1997)
  • The Liberty Bell is among the garbage in the ship that slides towards Todd when he gets dumped on the planet.
• In the film The Fox and the Hound, Kurt Russell provided the voice of a character named Tod.
• The film's original title was "The Base."
• A false press statement was released, saying that Kurt Russell broke his ankle during a stunt, when in fact he tripped over an ornamental cabbage during a break. However, as Todd tries to outrun a billboard letter collapsing towards him, a close-up of the large object "chasing" his feet shows that his right ankle was crushed (although this may have been a stuntman).
• Shorter people (4 feet tall) were used in the scenes with the large military vehicles to make the machines look larger.
• Todd, the main character of this film, is on screen over 85% of the time, but only speaks a total of 104 words. Russell was reportedly paid 20 million dollars for his work in this film. This works out to $192,307 per word.
• The trailer featured a spectacular space battle involving 20-30 ships around a planet (possibly a glimpse of the Battle of Tannhauser Gate). The film contained no such scene, nor could it plausibly have done so except perhaps as a flashback.
• During the sequences where Caine 607 is driving the crawler, the control he uses to fire the weapons is a Saitek X36 PC joystick.
• During the War Of Six Cities scene, the map hanging on the wall is the plan of the Moscow Metro.
• One of the sound bites when Caine is pounding the residence is music from Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song."
• David L. Snyder, who was the Production Designer for the film, was the Art Director for Blade Runner.
• The spacesuits worn in the film are later featured as Mal and Zoe's spacesuits in the TV series Firefly and its sequel Serenity.

DVD release

Soldier was released on DVD on March 2, 1999. It was released as a double-sided disc, which included the widescreen version on one side, with fullscreen on the other. The film's audio was mixed in Dolby 5.1 surround sound for the DVD, and included on the disc was a film commentary.

Features:

• Available Subtitles: English, French
• Available Audio Tracks: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), French (Dolby Digital 5.1)
• Commentary by: director Paul Anderson, co-producer Jeremy Bold and actor Jason Isaacs (Dolby Digital 2.0)

External links

• Soldier at IMDb
• Soldier at Rotten Tomatoes
• WB-Soldier.com - The film's official site
• BRmovie.com - A fan website of the Blade Runner universe
• October 2, 1997 draft of the screenplay
• A transcript of the film by a fan
• Special effects sequences for the film