The Top 10 Best Movie Super Soldiers
Super Soldiers! For When Regular Ones Just Won’t Cut It
There are countless action movies featuring protagonists who “just so happen to be” former elite Special Forces soldiers, but what about when those professional badasses aren’t badass enough? Well, that’s where cinematic super soldiers come into play. This week, I’m rounding up the best enhanced commandos to grace the silver screen. Now, I mean it when I say “enhanced” because in order to qualify for this list, characters have to be current or former members of the military, who underwent a program to grant them superhuman combat abilities or genetically engineered to become the ultimate warriors capable of decimating enemy forces. Overly muscled, baby oil coated 80s action icons, gun-fu masters, or boring old one-man-armies need not apply. So, get ready for the future of warfare, at least cinematically, because these movie super soldiers are locked and loaded!
10. Todd 3465- Soldier
One sure-fire way to create cinematic super soldiers is to use the good old Spartan approach. Kurt Russell is Sgt. Todd 3465, an orphan raised from birth for the sole purpose of becoming an elite identityless cog in the perfect fighting force. Like all tools of war, Todd is inevitably replaced by a newer model, who is genetically engineered to be better than human (Jason Scott Lee). Rather than give Todd VA benefits, his superiors toss him out with the trash on a planet of, well, trash. With no war to fight or orders to follow, Todd struggles to find a reason to live and stumbles upon peaceful trash people who teach him to love, laugh, and… The point is when Jason Scott Lee shows up for round 2, he’s put down hard by the new Todd, who values life. Despite having the least intimidating name of all time, “Todd” proves that even regular guys can become super soldiers, as long as they’re trained 24 hours a day from birth.
9. Luc Deveraux GR44- Universal Soldier
Okay, so one overly muscled, baby oil drenched 80s action icon earned a spot on this list of super soldiers. Jean-Claude Van Damme plays Luc Deveraux, a wonderful by-product of that golden era from the mid-80s to the mid-90s when movies about brain washed, genetically augmented, cyborg, zombie soldiers were green-lit without a second thought. Then again, it was also a time when action stardom correlated with how difficult it was for audiences to understand you (see Stallone and Schwarzenegger). Deveraux died during the Vietnam war, but the defense department wasn’t ready to give him a discharge quite yet. Instead, they extended his tour of duty by making him into a super soldier to be kept on ice and thawed out as needed. As you can guess, Deveraux didn’t take too kindly to that and a terrible film franchise was born.
8. Jackson Brogan- Gemini Man
Not everyone liked Gemini Man as much as I did, but when it comes to cinematic super soldiers, Jackson Brogan proved a force to be reckoned with. In order to understand how, we need to talk about Henry Brogan (Will Smith) first. Considered one of the greatest snipers of all time and bordering on being a super soldier in his own right, Henry Brogan had racked up decades of experience as an elite operator and assassin. However, nothing could have prepared him to face off with a younger version of himself. Jackson is actually a clone of Henry, taking all the inherent potential of the original and nurturing it to the extreme. It’s like cloning the greatest warrior of all time and raising him with the latest training and tech. He’s just the prototype for a deadlier version 2.0, and he has to join forces with his “father” to prevent them from being mass produced.
7. Hanna Heller- Hanna
Despite getting an impressive reboot as a mini-series recently, the Hanna Heller on this list of super soldiers is the one played by Saoirse Ronan in the 2011 film. Hanna resulted from a top secret CIA program to recruit pregnant women in order to alter the DNA of their unborn children. The result made the children capable of feats pushing the boundaries of human physiology. It also made them evidence of crimes against humanity and were disposed of quietly. At least that’s what they thought, but one of their agents smuggled a girl out and began training her in secret. Trained in the harsh wilderness and sculpted into an apex predator in her own right, Hanna set her sights on destroying the person behind the program that created her. While a teenage girl might not spring to mind when most people think of super soldiers, I can assure that teenage girls are brutal, efficient killing machines even without super genetics.
6. Grace- Terminator: Dark Fate
One of the more popular versions of the apocalypse involves the rise of terrifying killer machines programmed to overthrow humanity. The indomitable spirit of human nature is well and good, but if you want to defeat the murderbots, you’re going to need some super soldiers. Grace (Mackenzie Davis) volunteers for a radical procedure to turn her into a cyborg capable of evening the playing field with Terminators. An endoskeleton grants her superhuman strength, speed, and durability, while other augmentations give her enhanced senses and reflexes. The only downside is that she’s only capable of utilizing her abilities for short periods of time before they overheat, and she needs medication to prevent seizures induced by her cybernetics. Still, Grace melds indomitable human spirit with the power to back it up to give the future a legitimate fighting chance against impossible odds.