Writer David Webb Peoples has said that Soldier is a "side-quel" to Blade Runner: O Caçador de Andróides (1982) (which he also wrote) because it takes place in the same universe, and in fact the vehicles used by the Blade Runners - spinners - are also used in Soldier. The premise of Soldier was actually based on an unused opening scene for Blade Runner, where a group of Replicants are dumped and left for dead on an Off-world colony. Both films were released by Warner Brothers, and both were box-office failures that gained a cult following after being released on home video.
According to Paul W.S. Anderson, Kurt Russell worked out three or four hours a day for eighteen months to get himself into the "pumped-up" condition he displays in this film. Anderson says the making of "Soldier" was actually postponed to allow Russell to do this, because Russell thought it was so important to Sergeant Todd's character; Anderson made O Enigma do Horizonte (1997) in the interim, while Russell made no other movies during that time.
Shorter people (four feet tall) were used in the scenes with the large military vehicles to make the machines look larger.