Cool News
SOLDIER review
Just saw SOLDIER.
Ya know, I don’t really care for Paul Anderson’s
films. MORTAL KOMBAT was just loud and noisy
without any characters or motivations that I got into.
EVENT HORIZON was a real cluster of completely
blown opportunities.
However, the one commonality is that Paul likes
to mix his genres. Mortal Kombat was
fantasy-kung-fu film. Event Horizon was scifi-horror.
And now with SOLDIER he has western-scifi.
What really astounds me is here is a filmmaker
that seems to want to make films that combine
elements of multiple genres, but he doesn’t seem to
understand any of the genres that are being used.
This is tragic.
When I first started telling you guys and gals
about this film, it was based on a script. A script that
really did understand all the right things about
combining science fiction and the western genre.
That script took equal parts from SHANE, THE
OUTLAW JOSEY WALES, UNFORGIVEN,
ALIENS and BLADE RUNNER. This was a part
created for Kurt Russell. I was DYING to see it done
justly.
You see my favorite action dude is Kurt Russell.
Why? Because I just like his voice, the look in his
eyes, and the fact that he’s an underdog actor that is
constantly looked at as subpar Stallone or
Schwarzeneggar, though to me... he’s better than
both.
Unfortunately this film wasn’t directed by
someone like James Cameron or John Woo. Instead
we were stuck with Paul Anderson.
But is it really his fault? See this is where I begin
to question things. The first draft that I have was
written about the exact same day that my site was
created. February 12, 1996. That script was by
David Webb Peoples with a rewrite by Tony Gilroy.
And my god it was glorius.
The next draft, which I received about 3 months
ago was David Webb Peoples with someone named
Chains doing work on it, and is dated October 2nd
1997. This draft is shit.
So right around the time of the Titanic test
screenings last year, right before filming, the world of
Soldier lost it’s foundation.
Gone was the amazing battle at Tannhauser
Gates.
“Two hundred feet high. Parapets, turrets and
pillboxes all armed with rotary cannons and
heat-seekers and pulse-blasters and God knows what
else, and the overall impression is that anyone trying
to get inside here is on a suicide mission and --”
The mission was suicidal. Todd (Kurt Russell’s
character) was on a mission with his unit. Almost
everyone died in a battle that epic just barely begins
to cover.
Instead we get lame teeny tiny battles, no sense of
SCOPE. That’s a big thing here. NO SENSE OF
SCOPE! Imagine MAD MAX BEYOND
THUNDERDOME but more fakey looking. Now I
happened to have liked this film more than Mad Max
III, but that ain’t exactly a good thing.
Paul Anderson.... ewwwww, God I’m getting
angry. This could’ve, should’ve been Kurt Russell’s
best film. Instead these idiots surround him with bad
actors. I mean imagine in SHANE or OUTLAW
JOSEY WALES if you surrounded Alan Ladd or
Eastwood with defenseless people that you could give
a rat’s ass for.
There’s this one kid that... I wanted to just
microwave the lil bastard. Imagine a clone of the
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND kid
that didn’t really come out that good so you banished
the memorex midget to the garbage world.
All these characters were ruined. His character
was exactly the way he was supposed to be. Stoic,
quiet, unfeeling, fearful and haunted by the past. But
he was surrounded by a bunch of damn bunny rabbits
that should be hung upside down and skinned alive.
Horrible damn actors.
The lead female had nothing. The townspeople
reminded me of the episodic idiot people that live on
every planet that the crew from Star Trek beams
down to. Character-less faces, bland voices. Joel
McNeely’s score abandoned Russell. My god, this
film needed a Morricone-ish feel. Not an overblown
score, which I’m sure will be fine to listen to
separately, but not with this film.
Then the bad guys... well shucks, let’s make them
evil. Dammit. This just goes to show that a buncha
damn idiots were running the show. Why on earth do
you make them EVIL. They are just doing their
damn job. Everyone involved should go back to the
February 1996 draft and read it. They should see the
total lack of “Ewwwwww, I’m Sooooooo
Eeeeevillll”.
Paul Anderson should be banished to low budget
filmmaking from here on out, till he can prove he can
tell a damn story, not shooting a damn picture. I’m
sure he does real nice music videos, but how about
telling a story. Can Paul Anderson get a group of
Cub Scouts to sit around a fire then scare the living
shit of the farts with a ghost story?
Because from this, it looks like a phoned in job.
Whoever visually conceived this flick should hang
their heads. I can just see this. Oh, well they are on a
garbage planet with high winds and in an arrid area...
so ummmm we’ll just have big ol piles of garbage,
and it’ll all be done in blacks and golden hues.
Dammit. Use some damn imagination. Look at a
MOUNTAIN for a day. Watch the way the sun reacts
to it. How it gleams, how different colors come out.
Now imagine mountains made of man stuff. You
know cars, hefty bags, aircraft carriers, buildings,
steel, aluminum, gold, diamonds, tv dinner trays,
televisions, aircraft, jalopys... everything of our past.
Everything we once were. And here amongst our past
lived a tribe of forgotten people. People that lived
desperate lives, carving a niche out of this world of
the discarded.
Oh, well let’s just fuck that vision all up. I mean
shit, what we needed were a buncha damn stereotyped
simple folk that couldn’t last in that enviroment. That
couldn’t take those winds, that weren’t hardened by
the desolation that surrounded them. OH GOD NO,
we have to have a pansy ass group that had
mongoloid children and petty idiots running the show.
That’ll get Russell’s Soldier character to change.
Once he realizes the people he’s been killing his
whole life were a bunch of vacuous lip-twiddlers he’ll
mend them murderous ways. “I’ll never kill another
group of herded cattle again.” The reason I eat
hamburgers is because I have no respect for cattle.
They ain’t smart, they ain’t cute, I don’t want a
relationship with em.
Now dogs, I don’t eat them. A dog will do tricks,
a dog has soulful eyes and a dog has personality. I
mean goddamn CUJO was more likable than these
idjuts.
Jason Scott Lee and Kurt Russell should have
teamed up and started carving up the producers and
the director. Maiming and killing them. I bet Paul
Anderson and the producers didn’t think they
(themselves) were evil. But they sure as hell were.
THIS FILM FUCKING SUCKS!!!!!!
Goddammit there ain’t no excuse for this shit.
I’m angry. You bastards stole part of my life. I came
out of the theater thinking... “hmmm not as bad as I
thought” Then as I began eating a really really good
meal at Threadgills I began getting pissed. I had
started digesting that shit blossum and it wasn’t going
down too well.
Then as I got to the parking lot of the restaurant
and drove the final 6 blocks home, I started raging.
Then when I got to my computer I just started
frothing at the mouth.
How did this project get into a numbnutted idiot
like Paul Anderson’s hands? Who is responsible? I
want their heads!
When given that script, Kurt Russell and an
additional $60 million dollars and all you can do is
come up with that...... ARGH!!! Did he realize the
opportunity he had? I mean here... here was the
fucking deal man. This was his chance to make a
great fucking movie. He didn’t need to spend it
lighting farts. But that’s what he did, ignited
methane. A total waste. Too bad the fire didn’t back
up into the internal organs and cook the bastard.
Sizzle.
George Cosmatos, John McTiernan, Tsui Hark (I
mean what the fuck man, this guy gets shouldered
with that idiot savant Van Damme!), John Woo, John
Carpenter. Can anybody fucking imagine what
Carpenter could do with a WESTERN - SCI FI FILM
WITH A GREAT SCRIPT, KURT RUSSELL AND
$60 MILLION DOLLARS!!!!!! You fucking
assholes stop fucking around! There are people out
there that damn well could have made this film
something beautiful. And the idiots over at Warners
just continue to shovel shit like snow in Wisconson!
STOP MAKING BAD MOVIES WITH GREAT
POTENTIAL.
I mean, I can take cinematic douches like
URBAN LEGEND, but dammit this was just
mediocrity. There is nothing worse than mediocrity.
Because it ain’t exactly the worst thing in the world,
and it ain’t exactly great... instead it’s
FORGETTABLE! I mean by next week I’m gonna
fucking just forget it. But right now, my adrenal
gland is crying for the fucking head of PAUL
ANDERSON!!!!
Well, I’m gonna go see a somewhat more
tolerable film THE WARRIORS and drink some
damn Guinness Stout and hopefully I won’t have to
wait till next damn week to forget this shit. I want the
pain to stop.
I need a beautiful woman, a bottle of wine, a case
of rubbers and no phone calls for 2 weeks.
But that ain’t happening any time soon.
It ain’t Kurt Russell’s fault. IT IS
EVERYBODY ELSES!!! KILL EM ALL! (not
actually an invitation to Manson followers, but to the
people that sign these Dan Quayles to future
projects.)
-
+ Expand All
-
Man. For once I agree with Mr. Knowles one hundred percent. This film had potential. This film had a kick-ass trailer. This film had a great action star, and I'll even admit to liking Anderson's previous films. WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED? How can this script have come from the same man who brought us Unforgiven, 12 Monkeys and friggin' Blade Runner? 22 minutes of story stretched out to two hours, mainly using bad post-pro slow motion. When Gary Busey is the best part of your film, you know you have a problem. Should have been a friggin' Sci-Fi Channel Original Movie starring John Wesley Shipp (who would have cost .1% of Kurt's price. Man am I mad.
-
I really would like to know who the people were who obtained this script, read it, knew it could be great, went out, saw mortal kombat, then saw event horizon, and got the putrid notion that this stupid fuck could make the script into a movie that was even remotely watchable. Now I'm not a violent person, but if somehow this person/people were standing in front of me, in front a hundred angry police officers, I don't think I could containt my urge to tear their heads off and replace their bladder with it. These people are probably still in a powerful position in the film industry. God help us.
-
an original good script gutted by rewrites and finally greenlit $60M with the wrong director and supporting cast. Glad Planet of the Apes didnt turn out like this....
-
Okay... I saw this movie today... first show and everything. Now, this movie to me had a few things going for it: Kurt Russell as un unfeeling, killer soldier, a script by David Peoples, and it was sci-fi. Watching this movie made my teeth hurt. It started out slightly okay with the kids beginning their training (although I would haveliked to see MUCH more of this), and from that point basically fell apart. Kurt Russell played his part well, I thought, but god dammit, and I can NOT stress this enough... I don't know who did the rewrites for People's latest SOLDIER script, but this thing had every fucking cliche in the book. Now, you may say that it was a western-scifi crossover type thing and a little cliche belonged, but I'm sick of going to see sci-fi movies (or any movies for that matter) with these things in them:
1) Stupid little kid that the main character feels they need to take care of (and why the fuck are all of these movie kids ugly little bastards with fucking mop-tops??)
2) A female lead for the main character to fall in love with (romance is nice, I guess, but come on... this happens in EVERY fucking movie)
3) A character that changes before the movie is done (I think Kurt's character should have still been a withdrawn, thoughtless killing machine at the end... he should have fucking dropped that kid)
I'm so mad right now, I can't even think straight enough to think of more.
And at the end, though against my better judgement, I had hoped and prayed that TODD left the folk back on the planet to blow to smithereens. Nope again. At that point I felt like blowing up the theater.
Well, enough ranting for now. More to come if I think of more movie cliches I hate. -
Alot of
people will not like this movie if they think its more than an action
flick.The Blade Runner hype is a joke. I didn't even notice the Blade Runner
car that was hyped by director Paul Anderson & David Peoples! this movie needed some alien creatures instead of some earth snakes -
Harry, you write even better when you're angry! Soldier was a crapfest. I've always been suspicious of David Peoples after I read about the making of Blade Runner book. Fortunately, I saw Soldier the same night as Todd Solantz's Happiness. At least SOMEONE is making original contributions to movie making. A producer should give Solantz half the budget Soldier had and see what might come out. Boy, I'm getting mad just thinking about the difference between those two films. And Solantz's film got DROPPED by its original distributor!!! I'll think twice before I go to see a movie by THAT distribution company again. Ahhh, the freedom of knowing how to use IMDB.
-
Here's a slight hint for movie directors everywhere - perfect predictability in a movie is NOT a good thing. It turns any project into a paint-by-the-numbers, paste -together-a-bunch-of-old-ideas piece of nonsense. I had an English teacher who once wrote that "Cliches should be avoided like the plague." Get it? In other words, always strive for originality, and don't keep doing what's already been done, and probably been done much better.
Soldier could've been a solid, solid film. Instead what we get is every old cliche about the loner wandering into the remote community. "Standard Tolerant Matriarch/Patriarch Type 2" convenes a meeting of the "Standard Mixed Ensemble of Untrusting Townsfolk Type 1" to describe how "Standard Outcast Type 4" has been taken in by the "Standard Struggling Community Type 2" and is being cared for by "Standard Beautiful Young Earth Mother Type 1", wife of "Standard Affable and Kind-Hearted Dupe Who Will Be Killed Later On Type 5".
You see what I mean? This exact scene takes place in this movie, but it also takes place in a bazillion other low-concept, medium-budget movies out there. This movie is a rip-off at every level, from the amount you (should NOT) pay to go see it to the annoying bad-guy-with-a-mustache who pees himself when his life is being threatened ("Hello? James Cameron? Remember True Lies? Well have I got a copyright infringement lawsuit for you!).
This movie should be flushed, forgotten, and everyone involved save Kurt Russell (and Gary Busey, who I normally like but did nothing to distinguish himself in this film - but I can hold out hope for the future) should take a quick swig of that cyanide-laced Koolaid and spare the rest of us further torment. -
Soldier is a huge mess because the characters are flat, there is no story and expectations that come from talent like Actor, Kurt Russell, Writer, David Peoples, and even Director Paul Anderson, are simply not met. The only things I can say was the choreography of the hand to hand fighting in the beginning of the film was well done and the effects were nice, but there was no story.
As a Writer, I have written a better screenplay that combines the Western with Sci-Fi and it is worlds better than this. Considering David Peoples wrote the screenplay, I was expecting somethng thought provoking. Instead I got a lame duck of a movie. I think the film was edited down by the studio too and rushed into release because Warner Brothers knew they had a stinker. I hope there are some better films coming soon.
M. -
Hollywood has enough talent now that we should not have hacks like Anderson and little bitchy children like Nispel(that whole End of Days mess)directing movies. I am dissappointed in the lacking creativity of writers and directors like the ones who put Soldier on the screen. These people need to realize that they're just not working for a paycheck, they're working to bring two hours of what should be pure magical escape to the lives of millions. The film will make money. It will leave thousands impressed. It will leave millions disgusted.
-
What's happening, my friends, is that we are getting exactly what we deserve. Our schools - and I use that word very, very loosely -
are producing a generation of feeble-minded vidiots who have never opened a book in their life.
Having slept through all their literature classes in high school, they jump out into the real world to become studio hacks who are so repulsively unimaginative, that they are unable to do anything but create screenplays that are retreads of bad retreads. I mean, did you see the trailer for Soldier? Everything the film contained was on the screen in just those thirty seconds. You literally didn't need to see the movie to know what it was about and how it was going to end. Why a fine actor like Kurt Russell wants to expend his considerable talent and presence in crap like this is utterly beyond me. I've seen this movie a hundred times or so in my lifetime and done much better, too. Warner Brothers, can you spell o-r-i-g-i-n-a-l-i-t-y? -
When Warner Bros gonna stop giving us all that crap? Aren't they sick to produce 100 millions dollars movies with scripts worth two bucks: "Batman and Robin", "Sphere" and "The Avengers" just to name a few. Can't believe New Line (The Wedding Singer, Rush Hour, Pleasantville) is own by the same company.
-
Don't get me wrong, i think the movie is shit, but goddammit, mr. russell is one big badass in this movie, the part where he pops out of the water with the chain gun and just destroys those 2 soldiers is just awesome, he's a goddamned amazing action star. Here's what i think, look at kurt in this movie, change his shirt to red, give him metal suspenders with pouches for bullets and things, put a back pack on him, give him a desert eagle, black anarchy shades and spiked hair, and he is DUKE NUKEM!!! I am convinced he should be duke, because DN will be the best of the best popcorn action movies because the plot is ridiculous and it gives the actor a chance to use ludicrously large weapons on mutant pigs and giant lizards and things, and kurt russell looks like duke in this movie... Or (and i think this is a good idea dammit) make a Metal Gear Solid movie (for those of you who have played the game, it is possibly the most amazing script fodder for a spy/action movie ever) and give him the part of Solid Snake (the greatest covert operative that the world has ever known)... Well I've said my part.
-
Ha ha, only kidding. Actually, I haven't seen it and I don't plan to, but a movie that's so universally panned has GOT to have at least one person who liked it :)
-
I gotta agree with Mike Babcock...that was a great rant Harry. Why don't you tell us how you really feel about the film? I feel your pain but I about fell out of my chair laughing. This is why I love this place. It isn't a smarmy Time/Warner biased outlet for their crappy productions.
I like Kurt Russell too--a lot--but can someone explain to me why his paycheck continues to go up when he's only had one moderate box-office hit outta the last four movies he's made? Or, why is it that a 15 million dollar movie that makes 30 million is considered a "hit" and a 65 million dollar movie that makes 70 mil is considered a "flop?" Didn't the second one sell twice as many tickets? Does this mean the studios only care about the bottom line and not the story or the filmgoers? Somebody explain this to me because I guess my algebra sucks.
-
...and that doesn't just go for Harry, either. But yeah, the biggest problem with this movie lies squarely with WB's apparent inability to greenlight and follow through on a project that doesn't stink to high heaven. They're bleeding money arterially; they have no chance of getting anything out in time that even has a snowball's chance in a smelting furnace of competing with STAR WARS NUMERO UNO, which means come next year they're going to be ultra-shafted. And every time they DO get their hands on something moderately interesting, they turned it into this kind of eye-offending watered-down nothing. ... I don't object to Hollywood entertainments per se, but I do get infuriated when the director/producer/screenwriter all decide to take the low road and give us something that's compulsively unwatchable. Every time one of the morons involved with this dog turd opened their mouths, all they could crow about was the stupid BLADE RUNNER spinner in the scrapheap. Big deal! That was the INSTANT tipoff, to me, that the movie was such a colossal dogpile that the only way they could get people to watch it was by playing up the "geek" angle of it. Which isn't to say I don't enjoy being a film geek and savoring a movie for its technical side, but dear God, there wasn't a damn thing else here to savor. At all.
-
I saw it and it was not as bad as all the reviews said. Granted it could have/should have been much more, but it wasn't. Kurt Russell must be thanking his lucky stars that "soldier" came out the same year as "beloved".... At least he can take comfort in not having the absolute worst film of 1998!
Way to go Oprah! -
Just a comment in response to J. Pismire's question about film profits. While I wouldn't call a film with a negative cost of $15 million and a Box Office of $30 milion a hit (more like a modest money maker), it definitely will make more money than a $65 million film that takes in $70 million. You have to realize that film studios only get about half of a films BO going into their own coffers, at least domestically. Thus, in the above scenario, the $15 million film made back its production costs with domestic box office but the $65 million film didn't come close. That's before you even add in the $30 million+ that the $65 million film will spend on P&A costs (Prints and Advertising). The $15 million film will only spend maybe a third of what the other film did on P&A and so they will be left with a profit after foreign sales and ancillary revenues come in. I guess the answer to your question is "Yes, it's the bottom line that counts." You have to remember that with $30 million+ spent on marketing and craploads of special effects that you'll find in a $65 million film (usually), $70 million isn't the return on investment that any studio exec wanted to see. Really good films rise above all the cost machinations anyway! At least one would hope...
-
SOLDIER is great in a way that few films dare to be. Never before in the history of film has a movie dared to be so bold and utterly dramatic in its scope and grandjeur. Kurt Russel delivers a sure fire oscar performance, and I have no doubts whatsoever that Paul Anderson will be awardeed with the best director award at the 1998 oscars. This is truly one of those rare films that gets better and better with each repeat viewing. My prediction is that SOLDIER will spawn an endless series of imitators and will be hailed as the most influential and groundbreaking science fiction film since STAR WARS.
And then the alarm clock goes off...
SOLDIER IS THE SINGLE WORST FUCKING FILM OF 1998!!!!! -
WB + Liquidation = Happiness???? -
Know what I'm waiting for? The greatest movie to ever exist. And y'know how I know it's gonna be made? Cuz nearly every goddamn piece of shit movie being made nowadays has some great people on it, and one friggin' fly in the ointment!!!! Paul Anderson has shown that he can take a great script and make it intestinal waste. So I'm waiting for him to direct a piece of shit script from suck-ass hack Akiva (Batman and Robin, Lost in Space) Goldsman and make it a great film. It only makes sense really. Maybe their combined non-talent will hopefully cancel each other out. Unfortunately I've heard rumors that "Soldier" was basically Kurt Russell's test for taking over as Batman in the next Batman movie. Please WB, don't grade his performance on a load of crap movie ruined my horrible directions and rewrites. Put him in the Bat-suit, fire Akiva Goldsman, and get a good creative team (for once) on a movie. Why not John Woo directing over a Bat-script by Jonathon Hensleigh or David Keopp?
-
Oh yea, the part where Kurt Russell popps out of the water may represent some coolness, but sorry, that has been done way too many times before and the only time it was really amazing, was when it was first done, in Apocalypse Now. Soldier is just crap, craP, crAP, cRAP, CRAP! I personally wouldn't mind the special effects of the movie, but the film is just so cliched. I heard from a source that Paul Anderson was trying to get the Event Horizon flopping out of his mind, by making Soldier more stylish and better. AAHHHHHHH.... BULLSHIT! As if! You call this style?
-
Harry, you are dead on right about John Carpenter. This one hell cool dude should have hold off directing Vampires to make Soldier, from the original David Webb Peoples draft, into one hell of a badass movie! Paul Anderson isn't a bad director necessarily, but he just sucks shit so bad at science-fiction! Why did Warner Bros hire Anderson? Event Horizon was such a flop at the box office that maybe they thought, "awwwee... this guy needs another chance... we'll let him helm Soldier... he'll do better this time" Well, that's just tooooo bad. Anderson, you suck!
-
were as much those Harry identified as those terribly illogical plot events which slap you on the side of the head to remind you you're watching a cheesy movie instead of being absorbed in a compelling story.
But a few examples:
(1) Why set this story so closely in the near future -- there is no realistic chance that faster than light space travel would be invented in the twenty years, and if we do we'd have way cooler weapons than gunpowder-based pistols.
(2) Why would you dump garbage on another planet, much less a habitable one? If for some stupid reason you go the expense of lifting garbage from a planet, why not send it on an orbit spiralling into a local sun? Or at least dump it on a useless planet? And if you are going to dump garbage on a habitable planet, why go all the way down into the atmosphere (with all the bother and cost of going down *and* back up again) instead of dumping it from orbit (like skylab)? Just in case someday you have a soldier in the garbage you think is dead but really isn't and he has to survive the fall or the movie is over a little too soon?
(3) If you're going to test some elite new troops on some mission, why have them do it on a garbage dump with utterly no training value whatsoever;
(4) Why would a massacre of unarmed civilians me any kind of test, unless you are the Serbian Army or the Ohio National Guard?
(5) If you're going to discretely dispose of embarassing bodies, why (a) keep them intact; (b) not check that they are really dead; and (c) simply put them in the garbage? Surely there's some 21st century gasoline around somewhere.
(6) Why is Sgt Todd, who has just wasted a dozen or more bad guys with half a dozen high tech weapons he has pilfered, decide to fight the last bad guy (who, lucky for Todd, happens to be unarmed) with his bare hands?
Now I know the authors of this oevre had this vision of soldiers fighting in a planet-sized grabage dump, but the least they could do is come up with a more plausible reason for the dump being there and the soldiers chosing to fight there. James Cameron could think up answers to these questions in a minute. (E.g., in Abyss -- why don't they get help from above? Cameron writes in a hurricane.) Any science fiction writer who crawls out of the slush pile can think up a dozen ways to implement this vision without insulting the intelligence of the audience.
The reason Harry got so mad, I suspect, is because the message this film sends to the audience is: "You guys are *so* dumb!" -
What really needs to be done is for hollywood to buy up the rights for Hugo and Nebula Award winning *short-stories* from the seventies and late sixties and turn those into movies. I recently read those stories and I must say that I have never been as moved by any kind of literature as in some of those stories. People like Harlan Ellison, Philip Dick, and Robert Silverburg need to be looked at. Okay, Heinlein wrote durring that time period, and Starship Poopers wasn't all that bad, but it wasn't really the same story, now, wasa it. Actually the one novel that has all rights to be faithfully turned into a movie that hasn't been is Stranger In a Strange Land. Of course, you'd have to make it a series, but PLAN on making it a series, cause otherwise you get Starship all over again. Anyway, writers - award winning stories - real plot - emotion - human interest + entertainment. my thesis.
-
I waited until today (to avoid the crowds) to see this masterpiece, and it surpassed my highest expectations. I specially liked the EVIL school (very scary), the SONG part (why didn't Kurt Russel sing?), and the part where the old soldiers compete with the new ones in such exciting challenges like long distance running, working out in a gym and EVIL staring matches.
Frankly i can't imagine how the first script version could have been any better. Just think of those great plot points like the BAD people have to get rid of some bodies, so instead of simply burning them, they ship them to another planet(wich also happens to be a perfect training ground for the new, very hard to kill supersoldiers)! On a interesting side note, earth's population has been drasticly reduced to a handfull of military employees, which is probably another reason why they had to go to the garbage planet for training purposes. This film also tought me a few valuable lessons like beware of the english accent, EVIL lurks behind it, and whenever you hear irish music, those are the poor and opressed people(you know, the ones with the ginger curly hair). So anyways, finally somebody made a science fiction movie which emphasizes strong story over explosions and special effects! Hopefully we will see more movies of this class from this talented creative team, i certanly can't wait! -
As Peter B. Ash points out above, Soldier is a horrible rip-off at every level. Ash notes the True Lies graft, but J. Cameron is singled out for more plagiarism than this example. The obvious one is the future soldier concept being a composite of Reese and T-800 from The Terminator. Another point of similarity is the hardware. Gary Busey and The Thin-Moustached Moron arrive in an attack ship that enters the frame with a muzzle stuffed with sharp objects sticking forward, exactly as did the Sulaco in ALIENS. The rest of the ship looks like the drop-ship from ALIENS. And to make things worse, when it lands, the vehicles that pop out are eerily similar to the passenger- jet-taxi-looking vehicle from ALIENS. Unfortunately, the film only imitates Cameron's characters and hardware, but not his amazing story-telling ability. For that, the makers copied Costner's painful The Postman.
The others comments above regarding the generic pathetic Star Trek group of refugee-pacifists and the revelation of the finale in the trailer of the film (like Mission: Impossible) are right on the money.
Had I known that Soldier was made by the same guy who directed Event Horizon (arguably last year's worst film) rather than knowing that Soldier was written by the writer of BladeRunner, I probably would not have wasted the money. -
Well, after I went to Soldier I got exactly what I expected out of it -- a high budget dumb-ass action flick. I even enjoyed it. But after reading this review and seeing that it actually could have had potential to be a good movie, well, now I just feel bad.
I am amazed to hear that this movie was supposed to have had a western element to it. There was no western feel in this movie at all. At best, it was vaguely Mad Max-ish.
Kurt Russel was still great in this. Despite his shortage of lines, he conveys the hard guy anti-emotions with great skill. -
Carpenter to direct a better version of "Soldier?" You've got to be kidding. Don't get me wrong, the man does hit the nail on the head sometimes (Halloween, The Thing, They Live) but lately, he has sucked. And "Vampires" was no exception. Possibly one of the biggest dissapointments of the year. You see, I have a theory about Carpenter in which I feel that many of his fans feel loyal to him as that ragtag, I don't give a fuck I'm gonna not use CGI type of directors. But the truth is, is that he is extremely hit or miss. And it's usally a miss. Vampires had all the ingeredients and he somehow blew it. It's almost like they said to him, "Ok, John, we need extreme gore, good gun fights and action and a decent story." Yet he somehow failed to include any of those elements. And what was up with that 30 second montage of scared Vampires running from the sunlight and cackling in the wind as they burst into flames? It's almost like they ran out of ideas for the finale and so they decided to sum it all up in 30 seconds. God, what crap moviemaking. SO damn amateaur. You could teach a course on this film called, Horror 101: Missed Opportunities.
-
Producer Jerry "Jilly from Philly" Weintraub must be on thin ice with the studio. First he rapes WB with his $60 mil loser "Avengers" and now we have another money bleeder. I saw both flicks in a 'can't be *that* bad' sort of way, and while "Soldier" wasn't 'look-over-to-your-friend-and-ask-what-the-fuck?!' bad, like "Avengers" was, I kept thinking that it would've played better if it got the treatment a script of this caliber deserved: produced by Roger Corman for under $1 mil and starring Don "The Dragon" Wilson.
This is what I'm talking about-- you've got scripts that should be destined as late-night cable fodder, but wind up being greenlighted w/50-100 mil budgets, sold as A-pics.
I haven't read the original draft, but it definitely must've been gutted from what I've seen here,'cause I don't see a trace of DWP's influence in this non-event of a movie. -
Honestly, you may be taking yourself a bit too seriously. I found out about you in an article in "Southwest Airlines Spirit" November 1998 issue. "Soldier" is not the best movie ever made, that's true. But, here is why I really enjoyed the movie.
First, the performance of Kurt Russell. I would agree that this is a fantastic performance, and much of the reason was in the lack of dialogue of his character. Some movies are too dependant on dialogue, music, etc. to get the point across. So many times (including the last scene) you think he will speak, but he does not. I thought the young boy would speak at the last (like you will see done so cheesily in other movies), but he does not. Kurt definitely makes this movie much better than it might have been.
The Nazi-esque evil guy (the one with the moustache) is definitely uncalled-for, but the characters at the "garbage planet" are interesting. The connection that she and Kurt have is real (and realistic), but again is not cheapened by an affair scene.
Because I travel in my work, I see about one movie a week. I saw this particular movie at my favorite place, a 24-screen AMC theatre in Kansas City, MO. I was the only one in the theatre, so I was totally undistracted.
Could it have been better? Obviously! That did not prevent this movie from being entertaining and free from sophomoric morals lessons. -
well, harry, I haven't seen the movie yet (because it's not already released in my country) but after reading all these reviews you convinced me of one thing : the people in power at WB don't take the buyer of a cinema-ticket seriously. By showing us this kind of crap-films they make fun of us, they laugh behind their desks and take us for morons!
So, I decided NOT to spend my money on this kind of shit.
I want to thank all of you for saving me from a bad night at the movies! -
Soldier hasn't opened in the UK yet, but from the screen shots I've seen, it looks pretty uninspiring.Personally, I thought that Event Horizon was a good movie - you should watch the video for those classic freezeframe moments.
Anyway, I'm intruiged to know what people are predicting for Warner Brother's next defilement of Batman. Are they ever going to do the honourable thing and green light a movie of "The Dark Knight Returns", or are they just going to insult us all by churning out another load of shite, that even bores kids? Kurt Russell as Batman is an interesting idea, but he'd have to play it as a patch-less Snake Plissken, and let's not forget that "Escape from LA" was lame. Last I heard, Warner were talking of having John Travolta as the Scarecrow.
What is wrong with these people? I can't understand why the movie factory that is Hollywood compromises potentially great films in order to sanitise them for a family audience. I think that if film makers want to make comic-book adaptations, they should take a look at BLADE. I know it's old news in the states, but it's fairly new here, and it certainly doesn't censor itself to be agreeable to 13-year olds.
I'm ranting a bit, I know, but I would be genuinely interested to find out what others out there think. -
I would really like to read the original draft of the screenplay, because, like some other posters have commented, I can see a glimmer of good film buried in all of this shit, but there are some central ideas that are incredibly stupid. IMHO, the middle third of this film is pretty good (after he is dumped, but before the super soldiers arrive). This part of the movie is a Peoples' script -- the searching for what it means to be human and how to fit into society. However, the entire concept of the "garbage planet" is so absolutely, incredibly, intensely stupid (and overused despite it's stupidity) that it derails the movie from the start.
I have always said that either making a good movie is one of hardest achievements of human artistic endeavor, or 95% of everyone making movies is a complete idiot. I'm still undecided, but Paul Anders on and WB definitely fit the idiot category.
The other terrible thing about Soldier is the number of similar, but infinitely better, films that could have been made from adaptions of existing books. In some cases the books themselves aren't high art, but would be excellent sources for films. I saw elements (or hints of possibility) from these SF books:
1) The Eternity Brigade by Stephen Goldin. A group of modern day soldiers enlist in a program to put themselves in suspending animation between wars to serve as readily available experienced troops. The book leapfrogs through the future with the soldiers skipping centuries of progress and being revived (and eventually replicated) to fight increasingly bizarre wars. Culminates thousands of years in the future on an alien planet with the original soldiers fighting clones of themselves as mercenaries of an alien race.
2) The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. Great counterpoint to Starship Troopers. A post-Vietnam Starship Troopers.
3) The Deathworld Trilogy by Harry Harrison. This series, along with the Stainless Steel Rat, beg to be filmed. Can you imaging Bruce Campbell as Slippery Jim diGriz? I know I can.
4) The Dorsai novels by Gordon Dickson. I never really cared for these, but they did present a much better picture of engineered supersoldiers than this trash.
Sorry I wrote an entire novel, but I had to vent. I just saw the movie last night. -
Kudos to the production team at WB for the funniest movie I've seen in a long time. The flick was so cliche-ridden, I expected cameo appearances from The Terminator, Robocop, Mad Max et al. Kurt Russell plays an elite soldier of the future (complete with terminator-esque battle scars) who becomes obsolete when the a new breed of soldier takes over his job. Discarded on a garbage planet, he remains a loner until the peaceful society which has reluctantly adopted him (and fear him at the same time) become dependent on his skills to defend their community from the same group that outcast him in the first place. Sound familiar?
I've decided that Kurt Russell's emotionally-neutral expressions may not have been acting once he realised what a crock of a movie he chose to star in. Every nuance of Kurt's character seems forced. Down to the end scene where he points with hope to a far off destination; child in arm -a complete strong father figure - I could see that Mr Russell was not fully convinced that this scene should be blocked with such contrived mannerisms. At first, I thought that Paul Anderson was attempting a farce of the post-apocalyptic sci-fi genre and was ready for a long session of chuckling, but my realisation that the numerous opportunistic hero shots, tragic dialogue and predictable fighting sequences with all of the typical elemental backgrounds e.g flames, rain, mud and wind - were serious attempts at storytelling, I resolved that I wasn't going to try to change my mood and laughed anyway. And what was with the slow-mo frames at the most ridiculous intervals and and in completely the wrong places. It was like he was trying to get it wrong on purpose! I realise that many of you who read these reviews will probably want to see the movie just to see how bad it is - I utterly recommend it. I remember saying out loud at the director's credits - "he'll never work again"
I don't care what anybody says, it's the most entertaining farce of a movie I've seen in a long time. I'm looking forward to the broadway musical version.
Soldier has just been released here in Australia - interesting to see how long it lasts. -
I didn't even see the movie, but I knew it would totally suck by just looking at the preview. Please, most Kurt Russel movies suck. Backdraft and Tombstone were great though. Escape From L.A. was a joke.
-
Dec 28, 1998 2:26:43 PM CST
What are you talkinh about? Did you actually watch this film?
by bob hatchet
What are you going on about?
Your talking as if this movie was THE SPAWN OF SATAN, saying that Paul Anderson is shit and should be blown up (or whatever.) Did you actually see the film?
O.K, I agree with you that Kurt is a good action hero, and I do agree to some degree that this is not the greatest of movies. However, you have to ask your self this one question: Could you have done better? "Yes," I don't fucking think so.
The production design on the film was fantastic. It was original. In fact, the whole film was fairly original. Name me ONE sci fi movie in the last two years that has blended western with sci fi? Name me one sci fi movie in the last year that wasn't about aliens running about, or Mad scientists turning people into rabid monkeys?
David Wedd Peoples is a great writter. He has written some of the most fantastic sci fi stories ever (balde runner....need I say more.
Paul Anderson is possibly one of the greatest directors of sci - fi (i can't tell yet if he is a good regular director because he hasn't done anything normal yet.) He has an out of this world visionery style that can only be matched possibly by Ridely Scott.
And the acting was FANTASTIC (for a sci fi movie.) The movie had a little kid in it who wasn't a like twat (most little kids in movies are wankers.) Sean Pertwee was at oscar nomination levels (well not that high, but it was really good.)
But hay, If you think you could make a better sci fi movie, with about $75 million dollars of pressuer on you, with one of the most blood thursty studios bresathing down your neck, go ahead, slam the movie.
But if not, sit back and enjoy the work of a great director, and wait for his next movie (....by the way what is it?) -
Harry, you need to get PHPBB up here... it has those little functions we all like. You know, like editing. A decent script that allows for us to post proper sentence structures. And, each and every one of us can use our own little Avatar - just like you guys do with your little cartoons at the bottom of your posts. Oh, and best of all, it is free. I am sure one of your web designers can do something with it, add it to the site and all. It would make the board a little better.
-
Watch the movie again. You will all understand how wrong you were. Especially you Harry.
-
Oct 25, 2009 1:07:37 PM CDT
Fuck you Hammerman Soldier is excrement
by nomoredirtyjokespleaseweareyanks
Paul Andersons most unwatchable drock...
-
May 24, 2010 9:38:16 PM CDT
Its been 12 years and I'm still pissed about this movie
by charlie_allnut
What a fucking wasted opportunity. One of the reasons Hollywood stopped making cool R rated sci fi.
Readers Talkback
User Login
Top Talkbacks
- Whitney Houston 1963 - 2012 -- 439 total posts 159 posts
- WTF HOLLYWOOD: SOLARBABIES -- 144 total posts 142 posts
- Herc’s Seen Tonight’s Return Of THE WALKING DEAD!! Discuss Also DOWNTON ABBEY, FEAR FACTOR, PAN AM, ONCE, SIMPSONS, DYNAMITE, LUCK, SHAMELESS, BAIT CAR, THE GRAMMYS And More!! Sunday Is Sweeps Day 11!! -- 155 total posts 140 posts
- Avid Comic Reader Hercules Does Battle With Tedium During Kevin Smith’s COMIC BOOK MEN! -- 55 total posts 45 posts
- There's a STAR TREK video game that is going to lead into JJ's STAR TREK 2 apparently... -- 196 total posts 45 posts
- I am The Behind the Scenes Pics of the Day! No, I’m the Behind the Scenes Pic of the Day! -- 35 total posts 35 posts
- If the Behind the Scenes Pics of the Day drops her pen, pick it up, but don’t look at her legs or else it will be on your record. -- 60 total posts 34 posts
- New JUDGE DREDD post production footage pops up -- 127 total posts 32 posts
- To Commemorate The 3D Release Of STAR WARS EPISODE I: THE PHANTOM MENACE, George Lucas Wants You To Know...Greedo Shoots First!! -- 513 total posts 29 posts
- The Sensorties Revisit The Friday Docback (And Still Smell)!! DOCTOR WHO Story #7 Again, The Coming Of Season/Series 7, And More!! -- 118 total posts 27 posts