Universal Soldiers and Memories

In our current continuity there are three films. Universal Soldier (1992), Universal Soldier: Regeneration (2009) and Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning (2012). These movies as a whole have progressed from being sort of action-comedies to turning into hardcore thought provoking pictures, thoughts on acting or general filmmaking aside. The first movie dealt with things in a very fluffy way, gore within the movie aside, and the more recent two turn things a bit darker. Here, because I have nothing better to do on a Saturday, I’ll be breaking down what a Universal Soldier is, how it relates to humanity as a whole, some interesting things I noticed and what that means about the characters and the continuity as a whole. Spoilers are going to be *beep* everywhere, but this wasn’t Fight Club or A Clockwork Orange, it’s not really a big deal in the first two films.

Universal Soldier was released after Terminator 2 and basically was seen as a capitalization on the subject of cyborgs and what not. For this reason, it was a moderate success in the box office and was generally forgotten about. In this installment we are introduced to both Luc Deveraux and Andrew Scott, two Vietnam soldiers who are implied to have been friends, the former who is just a grunt and the latter who is a Sergeant who goes *beep* insane and begins making necklaces out of ears and killing innocents, accusing them of being traitorous. Scott and Deveraux both kill each other and end up being bagged and frozen. They’re reanimated as Universal Soldiers, their memories are wiped, they’re basically robotic. Every day they get memory clearance injections and are also fed with concentrated calories and nutrients. If their bodies reach a certain temperature, they shut down or they just go full on berserk. Throughout the course of this movie Luc rediscovers his humanity alongside a reporter and learns about eating again and what not. It’s also revealed that the feelings before the UniSols died were amplified- thus all Luc wants to do is go home, where as Andy sees everyone as traitors and wants to kill everyone.

The original end for this series has Luc going home, killing Scott and basically wasting away and two months later. The reporter says in the final voiceover that she gained some sort of deeper understanding of life from Luc, that he appreciated it so much or something like that and choose to live his last days without the fluids and injections that had been keeping him alive previously. There’s some coverfootage of Luc laughing as she tips his hat and what not as he walks with a cane. Screening tests showed that the audience was definitely not into it. Van Damme himself said in the commentary something to the effect of “The audience did not want to see this strong man, this hero, dying like an old man.” Instead a more normal ending was added, with Andy still dying and Luc basically getting the girl and going on his way. One line that always stuck in my mind was when the reporter said “You look pretty good for a 50 year old.”

The Universal Soldiers don’t really know anything about themselves. At one point in the film Luc looks down at his penis and goes “Is that supposed to be there?” as the reporter searches his body for a tracking device. He doesn’t know who he is or why he’s here, even after the memory clearance drug begins to wear off, all he really gets is some flashbacks from ‘Nam and a scene from when he’s a kid, near the farm where he grew up. Another point in the film that shows the lack of lucidity of the UniSols is when the big nameless one is given a hand gernade with the pin taken out right before his eyes and left to blow up. You’d think that something trained specifically for the purpose of war would understand what a hand gernade does, yet the link between cause and effect seems to be entirely broken.

Andy presumably gets the same sort of treatment when it comes to flash backs he remembers Luc was a Private and that he grew up on a farm, but there’s really nothing else holding anything about his character together aside from blistering rage.

The way the UniSols experience memory here is something that reminds me of people with dementia. One minute Andrew Scott is fighting the war again and reliving it all and the next he understands that it’s over and keeps on going. Then after that it almost seems like he’s thinking that he’s back in Vietnam. Luc, who speaks much less, seems to sort of know what the deal is but other times is inept, whether it be for comedic purposes or not.

In the beginning of the movie Andy is kicking the *beep* out of some terrorist where as Luc is much more suave and quick. One of the scientists exclaims “I think homeboy likes this.” upon seeing such a thing on the video monitor. Even without their memories both UniSols have a defintite way of dealing with things that reflect who they were before they died. In this movie the scientists basically think “Without their memories, they’re indecipherable from each other and inhuman.” but that’s shown to not be the case. Their brains have been tampered with but they’re still shown to be more human than any of the scientists give them credit for, at the core of things. Really the only thing that makes a UniSol a tool of the government is the memory-clearance drug. Without that they’re just pumped up zombies. Even with the minute differences in each UniSol, they can’t really think for themselves under the influence of the drug. Even after Luc escapes, he still follows the orders of the reporter somewhat, showing that his more passive personality has lended to his taking orders better where as Andy basically goes all out and *beep* *beep* up.

Both films are said to take place in the present day, so 17 years later we get the opening of Universal Soldier: Regeneration.

Early on it’s revealed that the organization that had been doing the first UniSols was called Black Tower and the one that worked with the Next Generation UniSols (hereafter called NGU’s) was called White Tower. I thought this was sort of interesting, as it implies there’s something intruistically better about the NGU’s morally than the original Universal Soldiers. However, in a twist of fate, it’s shown that the NGU company was probably more *beep* than the original one. Go figure. Anyways, both projects were shut down and the man that was at the helm of White Tower, Doctor Colin, stole a NGU as has been using it as a hired gun.

What’s interesting here is how the givernment seems to have given up on reanimating already dead soldiers and has moved completely to clones.

Something about the NGU is worth mentioning, as the relationship between he and Dr. Colin is an interesting one. Colin has a weird relationship with the NGU, petting his head, asking if he’s alright in a way that seems less than completely clinical, basically treating him like a son. In turn the NGU is responsive in dull ways, blank, but still giving Colin what he asks for- more or less. This really doesn’t show anything other than the fact that the Doctor himself probably feels out of control most of the time, yet having the reigns on this huge beast of a man and then some, well that’s something that he likes and he then turns it into affection. I say that he feels out of control because literally every scene with the doctor includes him trying to wrestle the reigns from the terrorist group leader and give him *beep* I found his affection more endearing than I should have for some reason, as it’s sort of a callback to Terminator 2, how John Conner treats a pretty much unfeeling machine like a Dad. In some way, these inhuman things become perfect because they can fit into exactly what mold we want them to. As something completely undefined- we define it with out own imagination. Maybe I’m looking into this too much; it’s just something I really liked that’ll come into play later on.

Now we get to see Luc again, played by a 49 year old Jean-Claude Van Damme. He’s undergoing therapy in some snowy town with a doctor who’s both giving him physical therapy and psychological therapy. We see Luc say that he feels sad, regretful and trapped, yet he doesn’t remember any of the horrors of his past completely, there’s just sort of a dull ache there and he knows he’s done things that would be branded wrong by society at large. He calls a dog a thing, saying that it’s hungry. The doctor, Sandra, asks if he’d like to feed it and in a scene that made me cringe, we see Luc laborously bend down and put the food on the ground. He then tells Sandra that he feels weak, and she assures him that he’s making progress only because he remembers one day to the next and suggests that he’s feeling the responsibility that comes with old age. At this point in the game Luc Deveraux is 67 years old or so yet with only vague emotional memories, he seems more like a toddler.

I’d like to break away from this film for a little bit and delve into another one that surely you’ve heard of, if not seen. In the end of Donnie Darko, everyone’s waking up to the theme of Gary Jule’s Mad World, Frank is touching his eye where he both was and wasn’t shot, the girl goes and talks to Donnie’s Mom, it’s sort of implied that even though they don’t have any explicit memories, there still was a profound emotional impact. I think that’s how Luc is- he doesn’t really know much but he still feels the brunt of everything he’s done after all those years of functioning as basically a killing machine.