Critics Hated This Jean-Claude Van Damme Sci-Fi Movie, But It Spawned A Long-Running Franchise

Jean-Claude Van Damme was one of the kings of B-grade action movies during the '90s. Behind Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger's blockbusters, there was a slew of tough guys ready to rock and roll in low-to mid-budget action flicks to carve a name out for themselves. "The Muscles from Brussels" was one of the most prolific (and prominent), so it comes as no surprise that he dabbled in numerous genre-mixes as long as they involved some kind of fighting and shootouts.

Roland Emmerich's 1992 "Universal Soldier" happened to be one of those that flirted with sci-fi. In essence, it was another brawler that involved a bunch of high-tech mumbo-jumbo turning regular soldiers into superhuman warriors.

The plot follows Luc Deveraux (Van Damme), a U.S. Army soldier in 1969 fighting against the Vietnamese, who discovers that his sergeant Andrew Scott (played by Swede muscle-mountain Dolph Lundgren) went crazy and started killing innocent villagers during the mission. When Deveraux confronts him, things escalate fast, and they both end up dead. But when a second squad is sent in to recover the casualties, Deveraux's and Scott's bodies are found and get cryogenically frozen, only to be revived decades later under the counter-terrorist UniSol initiative, where deceased soldiers are resurrected by a neural serum to be used as genetically enhanced human androids. With their memories suppressed, they're the perfect killing machines — until Deveraux starts remembering what happened all those years ago and goes rogue.

Critics weren't kind to the likes of Van Damme, Lundgren, Chuck Norris, or Steven Seagal, since most of their movies were different iterations of the same thing to appeal to a specific target audience. These stars didn't care about such things as screenplay, cinematography, or VFX, but rather that they had as much explosions and scenes showing off their muscles as possible. "Universal Soldier" was no exception. Most critics hated it for being just another typical brawler with a vague sci-fi angle that was somehow meant to be refreshing. But watching Van Damme and Lundgren chase and try to kill each other had some raw appeal that clicked with boys and men of a certain age (I was among them as a teen). "Universal Soldier" became a modest box office success, making $36 million worldwide against its $23 million budget.

Although that didn't earn a sequel instantly, audiences received two of them six years later in 1998. They were both cheap and cheesy TV films without any of the original stars reprising their roles, but they gave Van Damme the idea to revive his hero. In 1999, he brought back Deveraux for another spin in "Universal Soldier: The Return."

The sequel was a spectacular failure, garnering $10 million at the box office against its production cost of $45 million. So JCVD put the franchise on ice for a decade. In 2009, he returned again, bringing Lundgren with him this time for a proper reunion in "Universal Soldier: Regeneration." The movie grossed less than a million dollars. Still, Van Damme and Lundgren doubled down with 2012's "Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning," which fared a little better at the box office, bringing in $1.4 million. I guess you never know when these UniSol soldiers are really dead for good.