Every Arnold Schwarzenegger Movie Ranked Worst To Best

9. Commando

Commando Arnold Schwarzenegger
20th Century Studios

One need only listen to the ridiculous genius that is James Horner's score for Commando to get a sense of just how brilliantly fun the movie is. A bouncy hodgepodge of steel drums, synth, and then out of nowhere a saxophone (because why not?), Horner's theme is the perfect embodiment of Schwarzenegger's most brand-reflective action film, which remains to this day one of the actor's most enduring.

Directed by Mark L. Lester and written by eighties and nineties genre fixture Steven E. de Souza, Commando was in many ways the film that cemented Schwarzenegger's action bonafides. Conan the Barbarian and The Terminator had arrived earlier, yes, but this was the film that established Brand Arnold; boisterous, endlessly quotable, and completely and utterly devoted to centering Schwarzenegger's whirlwind physicality.

Commando isn't as technically accomplished as many of the films Schwarzenegger would star in afterwards, but it rightly remains a touchstone of eighties' action cinema.

Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.