In 1985, the reigning king of action movies was Sylvester Stallone. Stallone starred in the second and third highest-grossing movies of the year; Rambo: First Blood Part II and Rocky IV. But there was a challenger who was making a name for himself. Former body builder Arnold Schwarzenegger had made the leap to the big screen with Conan the Barbarian and The Terminator. With Commando, which was released 30 years ago today, Arnold proved he was a legitimate threat to the Italian Stallion’s reign.

To celebrate Commando‘s 30th anniversary, let’s take a look at some totally awesome facts you need to know.

The comic book industry is filled with writers who would rather be writing movies. But Jeph Loeb, co-writer of Commando, did things in reverse. After graduating from film school, Loeb and his writing partner, Matthew Weisman collaborated on their first script which would eventually become Commando. Loeb and Weisman’s original script was a much more realistic take on an aging soldier. According to Loeb:

This was about a guy who’d been an Israeli soldier, who’d actually turned his back on violence. That’s not the movie they made.

Loeb and Weisman wrote their script with Kiss front-man Gene Simmons in mind. When Simmons passed, Nick Nolte was considered for the part. When Schwarzenegger was cast, Steven E de Souza was brought on board to punch up the action. Even though the movie that got made was nothing like the script they had written, Commando landed Loeb and Weisman their next screen-writing gig. The duo’s next assignment was writing the comedy Teen Wolf which was released before Commando despite being written after it.

Early in 1985, Barry Diller had just been hired as the head of 20th Century Fox. After meeting Schwarzenegger at a party, the new studio chief was impressed with Arnold and wanted to make a movie with him. Diller told studio president Lawrence Gordon that he wanted a vehicle for Schwarzenegger that could be ready for a fall release with a $10 million dollar budget. So the studio started pulling any scripts that could possibly be reworked with Schwarzenegger as the lead. Eventually, they settled on Commando.

The first thing De Souza was asked to change was the lead character’s family status. Originally, Schwarzenegger’s character had a wife who was also kidnapped. But there was some doubt about whether or not the former bodybuilder was up to the challenge of romantic scenes. So the wife was cut from the script. Additionally, the kidnapping in the original script didn’t take place until halfway through the movie. De Souza moved it up to the beginning so the movie could get right to the action. He also did away with scenes of Schwarzenegger’s character improvising weapons like Kyle Reese in The Terminator. Because according to de Souza, the character in Commando could just go buy guns.

De Souza described the changes he had in mind to the studio. They liked his ideas and insisted that they meet with Schwarzenegger right away. Diller wanted the movie ready in October and a writer’s strike was looming. De Souza objected, but the studio wanted to meet with Schwarzenegger anyway:

I was like, ‘Wait a minute, I haven’t even thought this through!’ And they told me, ‘Just improvise, you do it all the time in television!’ So we went over to Arnold’s office, and I somehow told him the story of the revised script that hasn’t been written yet.

Schwarzenegger was still struggling with English at the time. So de Souza offered to go over the script with him. If they found a line that Schwarzenegger struggled to pronounce, they replaced it. De Souza later repeated this process with Arnold when he starred in The Running Man. De Souza said he offered to do the same thing for Jean-Claude Van Damme on Street Fighter, but the Muscles from Brussels turned him down.

Commando was directed by Mark Lester who had directed the Stephen King movie, Firestarter, the year before. Lester said he got along very well with his star and recognized immediately that Schwarzenegger had a gift for comedy. One area where Lester over-estimated Schwarzenegger’s abilities was his strength. Because Arnold was a body builder, Lester assumed he would have no problem holding actor David Patrick Kelly as he does in the movie:

He says, ‘I can’t carry him across the road holding him.” I said, ‘But you lift weights and he is like 160 pounds. I purposely cast a really small tiny guy so you can hold him over the ledge.’ He said, ‘This is not real life. A weight is straight up, I can’t hang there for hours and then hold him over a cliff.’ I said ‘Oh my god! I don’t know what we are going to do.’ I quickly called the studio. So the next day there was a giant crane on the set. There were cables on the actor so Arnold is not the one holding him.

Australian actor, Vernon Wells, played the villain Bennett. The actor was best known for his role in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior which he also satirized in Weird Science. Wells wasn’t the first choice for the part, but he came in as a replacement when the movie was about six weeks into production. As a result, he didn’t have time for a proper costume fitting and he ended up wearing clothes that were too tight.

Speaking of Wells’ costume, his character’s fashion sense has contributed to a few questions about his relationship with the hero. The character has been described as looking like Queen front-man Freddy Mercury. His look along with the character’s seeming obsession with Schwarzenegger’s balls, has led to speculation that Bennet may be a jilted ex-lover. Co-star Rae Dawn Chong is an advocate of this theory:

They’re like lovers. The outfit they had on him, I mean, HELLO, he looks like one of the Village People. Arnold is the ideal, and you know, if you can’t be it and can’t love it, you want to kill it. That really confusing sexuality comes through and it manifests in violence.

According to Wells, Schwarzenegger originally complained to producer Joel Silver that he thought Wells was “a bit of a wuss.” Schwarzenegger worried that Wells wasn’t intimidating enough to play the villain. So when the cameras rolled, Wells delivered a maniacal performance. Wells said ,”I was virtually up his butt with this knife.” Don’t let Rae Dawn Chong here you say that! After filming the knife scene, Wells said Schwarzenegger recanted and told Silver never to let Wells have a real knife.

When asked if their characters had a romantic relationship at some point, Wells admitted that he thought Bennett loved his enemy. But he said it “wasn’t a sexual love, it was a bro love.” Wells acknowledges that there is some gay subtext that can be read into the film, but he says that it was completely unintentional.

Commando was released to mixed reviews. Overall critics were kinder to the movie than they were to run-of-the-mill action pictures. Many seemed to recognize that Commando worked as a self-satire. It opened in first place at the box office and ended up grossing around $35 million in the US. That’s not bad on a $10 million dollar budget. According to screenwriter, de Souza, Commando started a trend with 80’s action movies:

They noticed for the first time that a handful of American movies were making more money overseas than in America. This had never happened before.Commando made 60% of its money overseas and 40% in the US. Action speaks louder than words. You don’t need to read the subtitles to know it was a bad idea to kidnap Arnold Schwarzenegger’s little girl.

According to Box Office Mojo, de Souza’s figures are inverted. Commando actually did 60% of its business in the US and 40% overseas. But his point remains valid. Studio heads took notice that there was money to be made in the international markets.

There were plans for a Commando sequel. And no, those plans did not morph into the script to Die Hard. De Souza described his idea for a sequel to Commando:

I had written it so that when the media got wind of everything that Arnold had done in the first movie, he went on to become a security specialist who had been hired to make this building secure. Then he had to break into the building that he had designed… If Commando 2 resembled anything, it was the one that just came out with Sly and Arnold, Escape Plan where you have to break out of a place you designed.

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