Also according to Ridley Scott both Blade Runner and Alien take place in the same universe, apparently Dallas in Alien bio has him working for Tyrell at some point.
If that’s the case, fighting Weyland-Yutani mercenaries seems like it would make sense as canonically in the Alien universe the Tyrell corporation would be based in the US and naturally siding against Weyland-Yutanis faction based in the UK/Japan.
That’s not quite correct - Hauer modified what was in the shooting script, which already mentioned the Tannhauser Gate and C-Beams:
I’ve seen things… seen things you little people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion bright as magnesium… I rode on the back decks of a blinker and watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments… they’ll be gone.
This thread is reminding me of some great music…
Wasn’t that whole speech completely ad libbed? I doubt there is any lore behind it, just a buncha stuff Rutger Hauer thought sounded cool.
No. Hauer changed what was scripted to sound better and less clunky, so e.g he changed “All those moments… they’ll be gone” to “All those moments will be lost in time…”. He also added the “…like tears in rain. Time to die.” which is IMO the most powerful part.
But the lore parts - attack ships, shoulder of Orion, C-beams, Tannhauser Gate - those were all there already.
And my head-canon is that C-Beams are some sort of particle weapon, and Tannhauser Gate was literally a gate - either a working gate at a fortification or a monumental one like Brandenburg. Just the location of a particular nighttime battle.
And the “Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion” doesn’t mean they were literally fighting near Betelgeuse, but rather that that was the part of the night sky in the background behind the flaming ships.
In my head I pictured both as either a specific location in space and/or part of the background in the sky. Like Tannhauser Gate might be part of a route to/from the Tannhauser System that maybe acted as some sort of strategic bottleneck due to some astrological phenomenon. Or maybe the phenomenon (like a nebula or accretion disk) appeared as some sort of giant “gate” in space? And Roy happened to take part in a battle there.
The Shoulder of Orion could similarly be a location or region or it may have simply featured prominently in Roy’s view during the Battle of Tannhauser Gate.
As for the “who” he may have been fighting, I mean who do “people” like Roy Batty always fight in these sort of scifi stories from Starship Troopers to Halo? Rival political entities, off-world separatists, rebels, space pirates, terrorists, private corporate militaries, indigenous alien species sitting on top of valuable natural resources they have no use for, giant bugs, other cyborgs, augmented humans, and “artificials” .
From the point of the story, the specifics don’t really matter. It’s just some expository detail that further paints a picture to the audience that this is a complex, often violent and dangerous interstellar society where Earth is seemingly suffering from both overpopulation and depopulation. Or perhaps more accurately, a sort of combined resource depletion and brain drain as humanities best and brightest head off to seek their fortune in the stars leaving the masses of humanity back on an Earth with rapidly depleting resources. Which I’m sure played no small part whatever went down at Tannhauser Gate.
In the original short story, at least, the US and Soviet still exist, even though the last World War has already happened. So some of the fighting could be Cold War stuff. But each colonist gets an android, so some is likely much more local than that.
Nothing about the original movie made me think the “Off-World Colonies” were outside the solar system. It just doesn’t feel like an FTL-having civilization to me. I know this is contradicted by the various creators saying both Alien and Soldier are in a shared universe with BR, but I think that’s post hoc revisionist crap.
No, but you can’t tell until you click on the thread, which is what I did, thinking “gate, what gate?”. Surely Wartburg castle had a drawbridge. 
Unless it’s from some source outside the movie, there was no battle of Tannhauser Gate. Just C-Beams. The attack ships near Orion was a separate incident. “All those moments…”, not “that one moment.”
Paul W.S. Anderson, the director of Soldier, was saying Soldier and Blade Runner exist in the same universe since before it even came out (or at least during the time of its release), so calling it post hoc revisionist is a tough sell.
Am I the only one who thought when I heard that monologue: “I want to see that movie. Bladerunner is cool and all, but that epic space battle fought by replicants sounds way more awesome”
Wow, what made it into the film was much better than what was in the script. Props to Hauer for adlibbing that.
As alluded to, I always assumed that Tannhauser Gate was a reference to a travelling German poet - the travelling aspect being the 'Gate" reference. The name Tannhäuser comes from German folklore about a knight or bard who had to travel through a fairy gate to get to a fairy kingdom.
“The Tannhäuser legend is preserved in a popular ballad, Danhauser , traceable to 1515; the origins of the legend itself probably lie in the 13th century. Enticed to the court of Venus, Tannhäuser lives a life of earthly pleasure, but soon, torn by remorse, he makes a pilgrimage to Rome to seek remission of his sins.”
~Britannica
C-Beam - Speed of light beams?
…I’m sure a prequel focusing on Batty has been pitched at least a dozen times and if the BR sequel had been a wild hit, I’m sure we would have seen it in theaters.
I always pictured the Tannhauser Gate as something like the jump gates in Babylon 5. And C-beams were being used to build facilities near it. I pictured a space crane moving them into place. They were shiny bright metal and glittered in the starlight. Roy saw them in the approach to the gate.
I picture C-beams as being unmanned heavy freighters, cylindrical in shape like Guild heighliners in Dune.
“It” there is Soldier, not Blade Runner. That’s the hoc it’s post to, and anything it says about the Gate is irrelevant (and contradictory, since Todd is very much human, as are the people he’s fighting.)
Exactly what I’ve always thought.
Regarding Rachael. Since Tyrell Industries manufactures replicants and they might well be made on Earth since components like eyes are made there, then those replicants must surely be allowed. It’s only when Rachael leaves the Tyrell complex that she is targeted for retirement.
Moral: Don’t leave Oxnard.
OTOH, J.F. “makes friends”. The most noticeable one is “The Kaiser”. His character appears to be somewhat sentient in closeups in terms of his reactions. Two others are also played by actors.
Only the people standing in the middle survived.