The writer of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ‘Commando’ has revealed how the action film was modified due to the actor’s rivalry with Sylvester Stallone. After ‘Conan the Barbarian’ and ‘The Terminator,’ Schwarzenegger had his first opportunity to play a traditional militaristic action hero in the 1985 film ‘Commando.’ In the same year, Stallone, Schwarzenegger’s primary rival in the action film genre at the time, debuted ‘Rambo: First Blood Part II,’ the sequel to his 1982 smash ‘First Blood,’ which featured his own “gung-ho shoot-em-up” style. Fans at the time viewed ‘Commando’ vs ‘Rambo II’ as an epic battle between the two ultimate 1980s action heroes.
Before their eventual friendship, Stallone and Schwarzenegger were bitter rivals. Before they starred opposite each other in The Expendables and Escape Plan, Stallone, 76, and Schwarzenegger, 75, didn’t get along very well. The elderly icons happily admit that they once had a fierce hatred for each other, but it has long passed when they became great friends. According to Insider, in a recent interview, the “Rocky” star said, “We couldn’t be in the same galaxy together for a while. We really, truly hated each other.”
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‘It was Rambo versus Commando’
According to ‘Commando’ writer Steven E de Souza, ‘Commando’ vs ‘Rambo II’ was viewed by fans as an epic clash between the ’80s action heroes. It turns out that people working behind the scenes on ‘Commando’ also perceived things the same way. In an interview with Radio Times, de Souza went into great detail about how changes to the ‘Commando’ script were made to match the body counts in ‘Rambo II,’ and how those modifications ultimately impacted the movie ending. The writer said at the time, “I concurred with Arnold [that the film would be a success]. At the time it was Rambo versus Commando and those two had a rivalry for a long time, but Arnold predicted that people would still be talking about this film because
it did not take itself seriously and was self-aware. And Rambo took himself very seriously. … I blame Sylvester Stallone for ruining the ending of [Commando].”
The author further stated that Commando director Mark L. Lester, who had vision for Rambo II, stated that since Stallone killed a million people, “we’re going to have to kill more guys.” So Lester went over budget by including a huge sequence where a private army is destroyed. “Randomly shooting hundreds of guys was not in the script. So they burned the budget and then said we don’t have the money to film what you wrote,” de Souza added.
‘Commando’ writer had 24 hours to pen the ending
‘Commando’s final scene features Schwarzenegger as John Matrix infiltrating the villa where the villains are imprisoning his daughter Jenny (Alyssa Milano). This leads to an epic basement brawl between Matrix and the primary antagonist Bennett (Vernon Wells), which Matrix ultimately wins by hitting Bennett with a steam pipe. As de Souza says, the writer was given 24 hours to craft a new scene, and this condensed ending was shot at Fox studios due to financial constraints.
The original ending, filmed in a fairly ordinary basement, is simplistic in its own way, successful, but different from what de Souza had in mind. Schwarzenegger fans might have seen a very different, perhaps more thrilling, climax to Commando if Stallone hadn’t set the bar so high for the carnage in Rambo: First Blood. Part 2,” and Schwarzenegger’s team didn’t feel the need to go beyond that threshold.