The ending of Commando would have been quite a bit different, if not for Sylvester Stallone. While Stallone had nothing to do with the hit action movie, its ending is said to have changed due to the Rocky star's rivalry at the time with Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Back in the 1980s, both Schwarzenegger and Stallone had been on the rise in the action genre, each determined to be the very best. This meant frequently paying attention to what the other one was doing and then trying to top that.
In a new interview with Radio Times, screenwriter Steven E. de Souza recalled working on Commando in commemoration of the film having a special screening on June 25 at the London Action Festival. De Souza remembers Schwarzenegger sharing with him his belief that Commando would be more successful than Rambo, as the former took itself less seriously than the latter.
"I concurred with Arnold [that the film would be a success]," de Souza says. "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."
De Souza then remembers how director Mark L. Lester was concerned that the body count for Commando was too low compared to Rambo II. That led to the demand to write in more bad guys getting killed in an attempt to keep up with John Rambo's on-screen violence. More deaths were written in, but that also resulted in the budget growing, and that posed a big problem when the project wound up going overbudget. Ultimately, that led to de Souza's original ending getting scrapped.
"I blame Sylvester Stallone for screwing up the ending," the writer says. "Mark L Lester (the director of Commando) had seen a sneak peek of Rambo II and he said Stallone kills a million guys so we have to kill more guys."
He continued, "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."
Commando ends with Schwarzenegger's John Matrix infiltrating the villain's compound and ultimately killing the antagonist Bennett (Vernon Wells) in a basement. Originally, the fight was to take place on a private island off the coast of California with fewer security men getting killed. Shooting on location would have been too expensive, resulting in the change to the climactic scene taking place in a basement, which was shot in an actual basement at Fox. That led to writing in the use of a steam pipe to kill Bennett, which resulted in the famous one-liner with Schwarzenegger telling him to "let off some steam, Bennett."
"We sent one of [producer] Joel Silver’s assistants down there and they were reporting back what was down there, and I was drawing a picture of it on the back of an envelope and dictating what could work and what lines to put in," de Souza explained.
Arnold Schwarzenegger Was Great to Work With for Steven E. de Souza
De Souza would write movies for other legendary action stars, including Stallone, Bruce Willis, and Jean-Claude Van Damme. Even so, he feels that he got along best with Schwarzenegger, never getting the impression that the Terminator star had gotten a big head at any point during his ongoing success in Hollywood.
"Arnold was the most willing to engage and tear things up," the writer explained. "He said later in an interview that I was the guy that really got him. I got along well with Bruce but as his career went on, he became more convinced about what he wanted to be. I got along great with Eddie Murphy but he decided he didn’t want to be funny but Arnold stayed consistently on target."
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