A couple of days ago, my buddy and I tried to dissect the whole Arnie movie legacy. Decide which were out favorites, what made those movies so strong, etc. After we did all of that we went back and looked at the box office numbers that were available, and what we saw was Total Recall made MASSIVE money on the rental market. We thought that very interesting and may be why many people love Total Recall over alot of the others. James Cameron did an awesome job with the movie as far as presentation was concerned, and he really built Quaid's character around Arnie very well. After I saw the movie in the theaters back when it came out, my gf at the time had just read the book, after I saw the movie I then read the book and it was easy to place Arnie into the character I was reading in the book.
I still think Commando is my favorite due to the outline I took from the movie. Ex-military (best of the best), great one-liners and the whole man vs. army (that steals his little girl) gives its the depth it needs to really take it over the top. Out of all the movies that he's been in, I feel strongly saying that Commando is the one I could NEVER see remade with someone else playing John Matrix. Geez, I'm going to go watch it right now on Laserdisc.
and rememeber, these are only opinions of the panda and to be used as entertainment only