As far as I’m concerned, the only thing that could possibly be better than the original Commando is watching small African children explain the plot of the original Commando.  But there’s a small, vocal minority of people out there, mostly made up of the producers of the Commando remake, who think a Commando remake is a super-good idea. Producer John Davis recently provided an update on the project (which we first heard of last April), and Davis is a good guy to have in charge because he’s one of the minds behind Mr. Popper’s Penguins.

What’s up with Commando?
Davis:  We have a really great script.  You know, I don’t know if it really makes sense to call it Commando.  Maybe it does or maybe doesn’t [HOLD ON, I'M TRYING TO WRITE ALL THIS DOWN. -Ed.].  It is the reboot of it and all of that stuff.  It is David Ayer, who did Training Day.  He wrote it and wants to direct it.  It is there and it is a brilliant script.  It is just waiting for the right moment for the studio to want to make it and finding the right actor.

Do you envision that as a hard R?
Davis:  Yes.  Definitely. Right now the script that is written is a hard R
[source = Collider]

I know I can trust John Davis when he says it’s a “really great script,” because just before this exchange, he told the interviewer that Allan Loeb was a “really great writer.” And Allan Loeb wrote both Wall Street 2 and that movie where Kevin James becomes an MMA fighter to save the rec center (Paul Blart’s Mixed Martial Farts, I like to call it).  Suffice it to say, John Davis is a great pitch man. I thought it was a bad idea at first, but now I’m sold. I’ve even created this promotional poster.

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"Remember when I said I'd kill you last, AIDS? I lied."

Alex is a 9-year old Tanzania kid with a clean bill of health and a hunger for good, old American movie violence. He’s the face of a new campaign from Mama Hope to show ignorant Westerners like me that Africa isn’t just starvation and AIDS and genocide. It’s a place of greater hope and treasures like smart children, unique cultures and Charlize Theron. When Alex learned that the Mama Hope people were from California he busted into a 15-minute retelling of the movie Commando, which is my second favorite movie about kidnapping and revenge behind Hotel For Dogs.

While Alex is incredibly cool and definitely way better than Lights Camera Jackson, I think we should send movies like Commando to evil dictators and genocidal leaders in Africa with notes that read: “He’s coming for you.” And then we send Arnold Schwarzenegger over as a diplomat, oblivious to the fact that we sent his movie over, and watch them all freak out. Boom, world peace, son.

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Every few months or so, someone puts together a rap or a musical dedicated to Arnold or one of his movies, and they’re almost always awesome because it’s Arnold. The man illustrated the idea of budget cuts with a giant knife.  Anyway, someone made a three-minute musical using clips from Commando, and it’s shocking that it’s taken this long, because Commando is the most perfect 80s action movie ever made.  There exists no more stunning combination of scenes so nauseatingly wholesome they’d be rejected from a Quaker Oats commercial (Arnold eats ice cream! Arnold feeds a deer!) juxtaposed with AWESOMELY BRUTAL DECAPITATION AND MURDER.  It’s like their target audience was John Wayne Gacy. Oh, and I finally made a gif of Arnold chopping that guy’s arm off with a machete, so you probably want to see that.

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Released in 1985, Commando is indisputably the high-water mark of 80s action movies.  Arnold Schwarzenegger fed deer with his daughter, jumped out of moving jets, used rose bushes for cover against sub machine gun fire*, chopped people’s arms off, and said things like, “You’ll have to excuse my friend; he’s dead tired.” (see for yourself below)

You can’t remake a movie like that.  I mean, you can, and there have been at least 30 movies with the same basic plot since then, but what makes Commando Commando is that it’s so 80s.  So Arnold.  Uh oh, you guys, here comes Fox.  Nobody acknowledge him.  Aw crap, he sees us.

20th Century Fox is going Commando again, setting David Ayer to write and direct a reboot of the 1985 film.  Ayer is the former Navy soldier [sic] who wrote Training Day and moved into directing with the dark dramas Harsh Times and Street Kings. He will put his own real-world spin on this original premise: a retired elite special forces operative sees his daughter kidnapped and is told she’ll die unless he gets on a plane and kills the rival of a nasty exiled dictator. In the original, Schwarzenegger jumped off the plane before takeoff, and killed everyone involved in the kidnap plot, in a real beefcake turn that followed Terminator. Ayer’s protagonist will be less brawny, but more skilled in covert tactics and weaponry. [Deadline]

Well sure, who could forget Street Kings?  The main problem is that Commando is all Arnold, and there are no Arnolds anymore.  Who’d play the lead?  Channing Tatum?  “Eh yo, y’all gah give shorty back, nah mean?  I ain’t even playin’.”   I’m serious about this.  I will take a baby deer down to Fox headquarters and light us both on fire in protest like a Buddhist monk.  Then Arnold Schwartzenegger could walk by and say, “Eet looks like dees moovie vass… very deer to hees heart.”

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As a wise man named Tupac once said, “California knows how to party.”  That’s why we keep electing actors to the highest state office!  Heck, I stayed an extra year of college just so I could have Arnold Schwarzenegger’s signature on my diploma.  Anyway, the governator recently took to Twitter to make a video.  I don’t really know what the hell it’s about, but the best part is that it begins with him admiring an enormous knife.  And the knife doesn’t have anything to do with the rest of the video, he just holds it up at the beginning as if to say, “Oh, we’re making a video now?  My bad, I was just admiring my comically large knife.  As I do.”

More than anything it reminds me of the intro to Commando (after the jump) where Arnold’s just hanging out in the forest, carrying entire trees on his shoulder.  “Oh, I’m supposed to kill bad guys now?  My bad, I was just feeding a baby deer with my daughter, Alyssa Milano.”  What the hell kind of knife is that, anyway?  No way it’s a Bowie or an Army knife, it’s bigger than my forearm.  “Grrr, you can tell I’m qualified to govern because I carry a pocket knife as big as a broad sword!”  I think George W. once pulled this same stunt with a foam cowboy hat.

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