There are plenty of unforgettable action flicks from the 80s and one of them is undoubtedly Commando. The movie where Arnold Schwarzenegger as the tough John Matrix took on a small army of villains armed to the teeth with all sorts of weapons and lethal one-liners. But this wasn't always the plan and Commando's script looked quite different from the start, especially its final act.
In an interview with Radio Times the film's screenwriter Steven E. de Souza (who also wrote The Running Man, Die Hard and Judge Dredd) said that the rivalry between Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger was one of the reasons why Commando took such an exaggerated turn at the end. It was all about beating Sylvester and Rambo II.
"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."
Souza also went on to talk about how director Mark L. Lester burned a large part of the film's budget on the final scene. As a result, other planned sequences were cut.
"I blame Sylvester Stallone for screwing up the ending...Mark L. Lester had seen a sneak peak of Rambo II and he said Stallone kills a million guys so we have to kill more guys...So what happened was, Mark went overbudget putting in this giant scene where this private army gets wiped out. The random shooting of hundreds of guys was not in the script. So they burned up the budget and then said we don't have the money to film what you wrote."
In the end, it was the second Rambo movie that won the action battle with $300.4 million at the box office while Commando only managed to score $57.5 million.
Which of the two films do you prefer?