Blade Runner Has An Unofficial ‘Sequel’ With Kurt Russell
When Kurt Russell’s Todd 3465 holes up in a camp on the waste planet he eventually calls home, a Spinner hovercraft from “Blade Runner” can be seen poking its nose out at the bottom of the screen. There’s also a piece of the Lewis & Clark, the spaceship from Paul W.S. Anderson’s cult classic, “Event Horizon.” The characters don’t really take much notice of either piece of abandoned tech, but anyone who’s a fan of both movies will spot them easily.
According to People’s, though, these nods to sci-fi films gone by weren’t his doing. In fact, he’s changed his story to state that “Soldier” never had any intentional ties to “Blade Runner.” Instead, the writer says that it was inspired by an entirely different science fiction movie.
In the book “Soldier: From Script to Screen” (via JoBlo), Peoples separates himself from his previous statements about the film’s connections to “Blade Runner.” “No, I never had any thoughts about that. I wrote ‘Soldier’ in 1984. Very quickly on my own. I wrote it because I saw the first ‘Terminator’ in the theater, stunned. And it was such a wonderful movie,” he said. “I’d always wanted to write a movie in which there was a tough guy who would be seemingly unsympathetic in the lead, and I felt that The Terminator was almost there.” Peoples acknowledged that eventually changed with “Terminator 2: Judgment Day.” “But the fact is, he [Arnold Schwarzenegger] was so great. I went off, and I decided to write about this soldier.” Consider the theory terminated, then.
Want more fascinating sci-fi trivia? Check out this story on the improvised Rutger Hauer line that changed “Blade Runner” forever.