It’s hard to question Sylvester Stallone‘s cinematic credentials. Between Rambo and Rocky, he’s made some of the best movies ever made. That said, his influence hasn’t always been positive, like what happened to one of the best Arnold Schwarzenegger movies.
“I blame Sylvester Stallone for screwing up the ending,” Steven de Souza, writer of Commando, tells Radio Times. “Mark L Lester (director) had seen a sneak peak of Rambo 2 and he said Stallone kills a million guys so we have to kill more guys.”
Lo, Schwarzenegger’s upcoming action movie got a sequence that involves a lot off dudes getting gunned down. And when we say a lot, we mean a lot. Many soldiers die over the course of the thriller movie, all at the hands of the protagonist, John Matrix, running up the film’s cost.
“So what happened was, Mark went overbudget putting in this giant scene where this private army gets wiped out,” de Souza says. “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.”
As much as we love Commando, a ludicrous circus of explosions that’s easily one of the best ’80s movies, having the screenplay altered because of some rivalry must sting. Stallone and Schwarzenegger famously spent the entire decade trying to one up each other, hence this particular volley. The fire within them helped us get the Rocky movies and the Terminator movies, and many other favourites in between.