Total Recall (2012) - Page 5

I rate the two True Grit movies as equivalent and Fincher's film as inferior to the original miniseries, so I don't care much. As for Batman movies, we seem to be iterating towards a better result but there have been three too many iterations, I don't care about them anymore. Daniel Craig may be the best version of James Bond, but I don't want to see any more James Bond movies.

Craftsmanship still matters. The 1990 Total Recall was entertaining and re-watchable. The new version is watch once, never again. Which I expected.

Daniel Craig better than Connery?! Say it ain't so! Actually I do like Craig's version, but it's quite a bit different. Hollywood management does like the tried and true rather than trust the creative people too often. Agreed that at least the latest Batman movies have been higher quality than the first few.

Reading Philip K Dick is much much better than any of the movies so far made based on his writings. The best of the lot has been Blade Runner...by a long shot. That's why I was in line to see one of the first showings of Total Recall 20 some odd years ago. The first Total Recall barely rises above the mediocre, though...but compared to the history of quality sci-fi movies, it may be overall in the upper levels of the genre. As a long time fan of sci-fi literature most film offerings are disappointing...just look at the dreck sci-fi Lucas put out and the success it had....proves Hollywood's point of quality being secondary...

The reason I like Craig better than Connery is that the new scripts are closer to the Ian Fleming novels which were simple stories where Bond was basicly an assasin with a "License To Kill", the original meaning of the "007" designation was basicly MI6's assasin #7. Nowadays even the term "MI6" is obsolete, they are actually called the SIS.

As for PKD, I am also a fan, except that I think the Blade Runner movie was way better than "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?". But there have been more good scripts inspired by PKD source than any other SF author by far.

As for the original Total Recall (1990), it is a guilty pleasure with me. I never bought into the giant "reactor" that restores the Martian atmosphere within 5 minutes, but that was one plot point in an enjoyable two hours.

Guilty of reading far more PKD than IF, altho I think I got the first few IF books for the first few Bond movies way-back-when, but after I saw the movies. With PKD read everything long before Blade Runner came along while I lived in Berkeley of course. What I like about Blade Runner is the gritty future portrayed, a bit more in line with Dick's vision at least IMHO. Total Recall was comic in comparison. PKD visions each year that goes by are less paranoid and more reality. Didn't someone just report on the government running rampant in the new Recall? I may have to reread some IF as well as PKD!

Makes perfect sense if you consider that Quaid is still sitting in the chair at Rekall, dreaming everything about Mars.

The best answer for that theory is that Rekall, Inc. could never sell a fantasy where a real person (like the subject's wife) was killed by the subject. Else the subject would go mad when that person turned up alive after the memory implant.

Nor could even a Rekall fantasy begin with the subject married on Earth and end with him shacked up with a prostitute on Mars. It's an obvious discontinuity that would spoil the whole thing.

I have heard your theory before but it makes way, way less sense than the simpler one that the superficial plot is the real one. The logical principle Occam's Razor says the same.

You're forgetting that the Rekall doctor tells Quaid that he's suffered a schizoid embolism. His fantasy has gone "off book" from the package they tried to load into him.

We know from explicit statements that schizoid embolisms drive the subject mad, requiring that he be lobotomized. There is never a happy ending as in the movie. Your theory just does not fit the facts.

We don't know how much of what the doctor tells Quaid is true or not true. Perhaps he's still dreaming at Rekall or perhaps he isn't. Perhaps he's suffered a schizoid embolism or perhaps he hasn't. Perhaps his fantasy can only end in madness and lobotomy, or perhaps Quaid can dream himself a happy ending.

This is all left intentionally ambigous so that the ending of the movie can be read either way.

I watched the OG one this weekend and thought the effects held up nicely. It was a blast to rewatch and the gore was welcome.

Colin Farrell has pushed into the Marlon Wayans category for me. Meaning I skip movies with them in it no questions asked and catch them on Spike TV during holidays.

Some see this as a problem given the rise of gripes on really great flicks like TDKR.

I prefer not expending any more energy figuring out this turd. It was bad enough that I had to sit through it!

I did as well. The only issue I had was the bulging eyeballs.

Other than that, I thought it looked great for a 1990 film. I had forgotten how many funny one liners where in this.

They don't make them like this anymore. Sadly.

That's funny, I was almost going to say exactly that.

Dark Knight Rises wasn't ambiguous. It was just dumb. There's a difference.

OG is original garbage? Olive Garden? Organically Grown?

Have you seen him in the recent Fright Night remake?
He was an excellent scary vamp.

Very good point, but, honestly, deservedly so. If I can get through an "R" action/horro/sci fi flic caring about the characters or, without several face palms, is a major miracle. There just seem to be less good "R"s these days.


I thought he was pretty dark in that and portrayed well that he was a species above the humans...in the setting of that somewhat forgettable remake...

The thing I used to like about "R" rated movies was they could show more intense consequences and rewards. The hero sees his buddy get his head blown off right next to him and you feel that it easily could have been the hero and he is in serious jeapardy. Many flics now have the buddy, or someone, getting their head blown off - but who cares? I have not been compelled to care about the character one way or the other or am too busy face palming by the lack of logic that got me to this point in the flic.

Throughout the late 1990's and early 2000's, it was common to shoot many scenes twice, and to have multiple theatrical versions of the same movie. The European countries typically were squeamish about the gore/violence in the American version of the film, and the Americans frequently objected to the explicit nudity and almost-explicit sex of the Euro version.

Some filmmakers gave us a "Best of Both Worlds" unrated or Director's Cut on the DVD, restoring scenes that the censors had trimmed. This practice is almost unknown today, because it adds time and costs extra money.

Note that I am a fan of the Unrated "Director's Cut" and NOT the "Original Theatrical Version". But it's a matter of preference - I want the original filmmaker vision of the movie, not what they managed to get the MPAA censors to approve.

He sucked, pardon the pun, in that. that movie sucked b***s compared to the original. The ONLY thing good was David Tennant.

The MPAA rating does not Not NOT cause a good movie to be a bad movie, or vice versa.
I can't believe this is becoming the accepted wisdom around here.

I haven't seen the original, so I don't know how they compare.
However, the re-make is a fun movie IMO, so I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

Both Fleming and PKD are available on Amazon Kindle. Most of the PKD stories are available either for free or as part of modestly priced "collections". The best part about PKD is that the worlds he creates are fully realized! I wish some enterprising director would do a more faithful adaptation of one of his stories.

For example, we still haven't seen "We Can Remember it For You Wholesale" on the big screen. Neither of these Total Recall films come anywhere close to the world PKD envisioned.

Or I could go to the library and read as intended, with a book. Haven't gone the kindle route and not likely to. I still have all my PKD books and several Flemings in any case, just have to reread. Makes me think of another favorite set of books that I'd like to see brought to movies, Stephen R Donaldson's various Thomas Covenant novels...could be as epic as LOTR.

PKD's "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" is only 20 pages long, and it actually pretty much comprises the first act of the the 1990 Total Recall, and I think the new one as well. Both movies then add on a new larger story from that point onward, and are different in how they go about it. In the Verhoeven's version, a mere reference to Mars in the PKD story is expanded into a large adventure on Mars itself (whether it was "real" or not it open to interpretation).

You should see it. One of the top horror comedy movies and a pretty strict use of vampire "rules."