Oh, 20th Century Fox! Just when I’m positive I can’t think any less of you, you once again get a rise out of me by once again metaphorically kicking me in the kneecap and call me a sissy. You’d think that your terrible decisions regarding the handling of the “X-Men,” “Fantastic Four,” “Predator Vs. Alien” and “X-Files” franchises, not to mention theoretically promising projects like “The Day the Earth Stood Still” or “Max Payne,” would have set the bar so painfully low that it’d be impossible to inspire any outrage. I was willing to forgive and forget that skull-chiseling “Marmaduke” trailer, but I refuse to allow this news to squeak by unpunished.
In a recent piece on Deadline, it was revealed that the notoriously movie lover-unfriendly studio is moving ahead with a pointless remake of the1985 Arnold Schwarzenegger cheeseball classic “Commando.” Is nothing sacred anymore?
Writer/director David Ayer, who penned the popular “Training Day” and “The Fast and the Furious,” and pulled double-duty, scripting and helming the not-so-popular “Harsh Times” and “Street Kings,” will be steering the project, which will rehash the same plot but with a gritty “real-world spin” put on it. Yes, more realism. That’s exactly what one wants in a film depicting a covert special-forces operative single-handedly demolishing an evil dictator’s small personal army while in search of his kidnapped daughter. It’s almost as if someone watched the original and thought to themselves: “How can we make this less fun?”
I’m not exactly even sure why Fox would even keep the title for any other reason than cash-in value. Remove Schwarzenegger, his trademark quips and the over-the-top cartoonish violence from the equation and what are you left with? A thoroughly generic actioner that, even at the time of its release, was pretty much conceived as a calculated attempt to out-Rambo the “Rambo” series. Since the storyline is pretty much boiler-plate (if not downright laughable), and the tone will be drastically changed, how is this in any true way a “Commando” movie? Heck, even the title sounds a little too campy – in a cool way, of course – to be taken seriously.
While I have nothing against Ayer, asides from feeling pretty indifferent towards his past work, it’s at least interesting that he’s a former Navy soldier, as I suppose that will help give his take on the material some authenticity. But again, who wants authenticity when you can have oily muscled dudes getting impaled on pipes and a hero taking out a dozen heavily-armed soldiers with yard equipment? Sign me up for the latter, please, and plenty of it!
I now turn the case over to you, my dear IJMers. How do you feel about a “Commando” remake? Am I insane for considering this a borderline blasphemous act? Who would you cast as the modern-day Schwarzenegger equivalent? Let off some steam in our comments section or over in our forums!
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Follow Cam Smith on Twitter at http://twitter.com/camspcepisodes.