Universal Soldier (1992)
Directed by Roland Emmerich
An American soldier who had been killed during the Vietnam War is revived 25 years later by the military as a semi-android, UniSols, a high-tech soldier of the future. After the failure of the initiative to erase all the soldier's memories, he begins to experience flashbacks that are forcing him to recall his past.
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What critics compared Universal Soldier to
The most noticeable influence is “Universal Soldier,” a film that shares so many plot elements that “Bloodshot” can be classified as a blatant rip-off.
Wilson’s Bloodshot is a lame Universal Soldier ripoff starring an aged Vin Diesel as the title superhero.
Such a concept traverses much of the same territory as Universal Soldier and RoboCop , among others.
Bloodshot is based on a Valiant comic, but for less comic book literate viewers, it may remind you more of sci-fi films like Robocop or Universal Soldier .
Van Damme's biggest hit – debatably – was a cheerfully nonsensical load of rubbish called Universal Soldier , in which Van Damme starred alongside Dolph Lundgren as soldiers who had been killed in action, reanimated by some futuristic technology, to carry out nefarious missions under the cover of being, err, dead.
Hey, this critic’s pulse probably never broke 35 during the 109-minute runtime, and say what you want about the schlocky, soldiers-turned-cyborgs “Universal Soldier” (1992), but at least Dolph Lundgren stood opposite Jean-Claude Van Damme throughout the cheesy nonsense.
The rough-and-tumble cyborg mayhem recalls John Hyams’ Universal Soldier pictures, the final fight of hundreds of indistinguishable robot cronies is inevitably similar to a recent Paul W.S. Anderson film, and — even if not capturing their pure energy — there’s song-and-dance number featuring multiple robot clones that can’t help but make one think of a similar sequence from Neveldine/Taylor’s excellent 2009 feature Gamer .
His hordes of robotic super-troopers recall both Star Wars and Universal Soldier.
Veteran alien hunter and government-connected scientist and “psychological tire fire” Dr. Ivo Robotnik (Carrey) shows up in the coolest Freightliner this side of “Universal Soldier.”
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The result plays like a mashup of “Dead Snow” (a comparatively straightforward zombie-Nazi movie), “Universal Soldier,” and the video game series “Wolfenstein.”
Which makes the films resolution a training program that is a cross between Universal Soldier and the al-Qaeda?
Writer, producer, and director Roland Emmerich is no stranger to epic sci-fi, from Universal Soldier and the original Stargate to the global success of Independence Day (aka ID4 ), most often with writer Dean Devlin.
As a disaster master, he’s been responsible for about $4 billion from 14 features he’s directed since 1992’s Universal Soldier .
Emmerich launched his career with science fiction films including Universal Soldier , Stargate , and Independence Day.
The man behind 2012 is German-born Roland Emmerich, a B-movie director who, with producing partner Dean Devlin, fluked consecutive hits with the incoherent sci-fi no-brainers, Universal Soldier (1992) and Stargate (1994).
Celui qui avait eu l’audace de réunir Jean-Claude Van Damme et Dolph Lundgren dans l’ô combien mémorable Universal Soldier de 1992 aura même osé prendre le pari culotté, mais non négligeable, d’inscrire son ambitieuse pétarade dans un contexte sociopolitique tout ce qu’il y a de plus concret.
A towering corned-beef special of a movie, The Expendables - directed by Sylvester Stallone, and starring Stallone with a crew of aging action heroes - harks back to the days of Rambo and Universal Soldier, when men were men and banana republics could be blown up with impunity.