Earlier this year, Arnold Schwarzenegger teased that he’d been sent a script for Commando 2, mentioning that the studio was keen on him revisiting the legendary John Matrix. But a sequel could have happened much earlier. In fact, just two years after the 1985 original exploded into theaters, screenwriter Steven E. De Souza was already hard at work on a follow-up.
Commando is a glorious, pure-action masterpiece filled with iconic one-liners, jacked-up muscles, and Arnold acting as a one-man army who literally kills hundreds of baddies. And you’re telling me we could have had more of that?!
De Souza’s Commando 2 script (which featured revisions by none other than Frank Darabont) has been making the rounds online for years, and it will make you deeply wish it had actually gotten greenlit. Essentially, the sequel would have found Matrix working as a security consultant as he investigated the death of Major General Franklin Kirby. Long story short: double-crosses, massive corporate revelations, and Matrix once again suiting up to take down armies of bad guys. Give the script a read for yourself; it’s a lot of fun.
While chatting with the Bristol Bad Film Club, De Souza confirmed the script was the real deal and broke down how the plot would have played out:
“I did write a sequel for that which is floating around on the Internet,” he said. “Frank Darabont even did some revisions on it. In that movie, I would look at how experiences change people, such as how in Die Hard 2, people reference how famous John McClane is after the events of the first film.“
He continued, “So for Commando 2, we figured that Arnold, after blowing up half of Los Angeles, achieves some notoriety, retires from the army and, by the time the sequel occurs, is running a security firm. The plot would have seen him hired by a big corporation to oversee their security to protect their executives from being kidnapped, to stop people breaking into their building and to make sure their computers are secure.“
“So he sets it up and hires the most dangerous people to be guards in the building, and then lo and behold – he discovers the people he’s working for are in the illegal arms business and the big corporation is simply a front,” De Souza explained. “The end of the movie would see Jenny [Alyssa Milano – Arnie’s daughter from the first film] and Cindy [Rae Dawn Chong’s stewardess], who is now a lawyer, trapped in the building and Arnold now has to defeat all the people he hired – all the meanest, toughest guards – as well as the security systems, the guard dogs, everything!“
Because the plot features a hero trapped in a high-tech corporate building, rumours have long circulated that the unmade script was simply repurposed to become Die Hard, which De Souza co-wrote. However, the writer firmly shut that down while chatting with Den of Geek. “That’s all bullshit,” he said. “I don’t know where that rumour comes from. It was never going to be anything else.”
When the script was being developed in 1987, Schwarzenegger had done Predator and The Running Man and was looking to try his hand at different types of films, like the comedy Twins, which was released the following year. So perhaps another gun-totin’ action flick wasn’t something he wanted to do.
Have you read the script for Commando 2? Should Schwarzenegger have made the sequel back in ’87?