Film and television critic Matt Zoller Seitz stated that the Universal Soldier franchise "is a rare series that takes more creative risks as it goes along".

[3] Directed by Roland Emmerich and written by Richard Rothstein, Christopher Leitch, and Dean Devlin, it stars Jean-Claude Van Damme, Dolph Lundgren, and Ally Walker.

In the first installment of the franchise, American soldier Luc Deveraux (Van Damme) finds that his superior officer, Andrew Scott (Lundgren), has turned violently deranged, and the two fight to the death during the Vietnam War.

Meanwhile, CIA Deputy Director Mentor (Burt Reynolds) and Dr. Walker are in the process of creating a powerful UniSol clone of Luc's brother, Eric (Jeff Wincott), to assassinate him and Veronica.

Directed by Mic Rodgers and written by William Malone and John Fasano, starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, Michael Jai White, and Bill Goldberg.

Directed by John Hyams and written by Victor Ostrovsky, starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, Dolph Lundgren, and Andrei "The Pit Bull" Arlovski.

In this revival of the franchise, Regeneration disregards the events of The Return as well as its made-for-cable predecessors[1][2] by beginning the film with Former UniSol Luc Deveraux (Van Damme) undergoing rehabilitation therapy in Switzerland under Dr. Sandra Fleming with the goal of rejoining society.

However, when a terrorist sect uses an experimental Next Generation UniSol (NGU) to seize the atomic reactor at Chernobyl, Deveraux is reactivated to save the country from a nuclear catastrophe.

[5] In October 2011, writer Damien Kindler was set to write a Universal Soldier TV series for FremantleMedia North America with producers from the original film Allen Shapiro and Craig Baumgarten attached to the project.

After Universal Soldier was released, Carolco, the production company that backed the film, went bankrupt and sold the rights of the series to Skyvision Entertainment, located in Toronto, in 1995.

An overwhelming critical and financial failure, The Return contradicted several elements of the previous film's plot by making Luc Deveraux no longer a Universal Soldier, giving him a daughter, and removing female protagonist Veronica Roberts.