Their rivalry may have become the stuff of legend, but at least Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone managed to mend fences and become the firmest of friends, which is remarkable in and of itself given the levels of ego in play during their heated rivalry to be designated the biggest action star in the business.
Whether they were firing shots at each other in the media, seeing who could rack up the biggest body count onscreen, or even hoodwinking the other into starring in terrible movies in the ultimate troll move, the war for supremacy was about as heated as it gets. So much so, in fact, that the ending of a Schwarzenegger classic was completely rewritten for the sole purpose of trying to outdo Stallone’s Rambo First Blood: Part II.
In an interview with Radio Times, scribe Steven E. de Souza came clean and confirmed that Commando was supposed to end on a smaller note, before it was decreed that Arnold would instead decimate an entire army single-handedly.
“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 screwing up the ending.
Mark L. Lester had seen a sneak peek of Rambo II and he said Stallone kills a million guys so we have to kill more guys. So what happened was, Mark went over-budget 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.”
To be fair, the third act of Commando is fantastic in an over-the-top and gloriously cheesy kind of way, so everybody won out in the end. Schwarzenegger mowing down goons hot on the heels of The Terminator would have been a guaranteed success anyway, even if the plans for a different finale fell by the wayside in favor of bloodlust.