Arnold Schwarzenegger wears a Seiko H558-5000

Steven E. de Souza wrote the Commando screenplay before moving on to Die Hard three years later. Both are 80s action at its most concentrated. Mark L. Lester directed this one, a 90-minute film where Arnold Schwarzenegger's retired Special Forces colonel, John Matrix, tears through an island compound to rescue his kidnapped daughter. Rae Dawn Chong plays the civilian who gets dragged along. Vernon Wells plays Bennett, one of the great unhinged villains of the decade. Alyssa Milano, eleven years old, plays the daughter.

The Seiko H558-5000 on Schwarzenegger's wrist is a quartz hybrid with analog hands and a digital readout. It had an alarm, chronograph, and depth gauge packed into one chunky case. Seiko's 1980s hybrid line was built for the kind of person who wanted everything on one wrist, which describes Matrix and Schwarzenegger equally. The watch got its collector nickname from these films: "the Arnie." Schwarzenegger wore the same reference again in Raw Deal the following year, and followed it with another Seiko, the Hybrid Diver, in Predator. Seiko released a re-edition, the SNJ025, in 2019, proving the association stuck.