Everything about Total Recall totally explained
Total Recall is a
1990 Academy Award-winning
American science fiction film. The film features
Arnold Schwarzenegger and
Sharon Stone, based on the
Phillip K Dick story "
We Can Remember It For You Wholesale". The film was directed by
Paul Verhoeven and written by
Ronald Shusett,
Dan O’Bannon,
Jon Povill, and
Gary Goldman. It won a
Academy Special Achievement Award for its
visual effects.
At the time of its production,
Total Recall had the largest authorized budget for a film produced by a Hollywood studio. The film’s success confirmed Schwarzenegger as a major box office draw and relaunched
Sharon Stone’s career scoring her a role in the hugely successful
Basic Instinct, in 1992, also directed by Verhoeven.
Plot
The story is set in the year
2084. Douglas Quaid is a
construction worker who has been experiencing dreams about exploring the planet
Mars with a sexy
brunette. After seeing an ad from Rekall, a company that sells imaginary adventures by implanting
false memories, he decides to buy a “vacation” on Mars from them, one in which he'll take a vacation from himself by becoming a spy. Rekall calls it an “ego trip.” Before buying the vacation, Quaid is cautioned by a co-worker that Rekall is “
lobotomizing people,” in reference to failed memory implants which caused the recipients to suffer permanent
brain damage. Quaid hesitates, but disregards this warning.
After the procedure starts, Quaid has a violent outburst and tries to break free, yelling incoherently about people who are coming to kill him. At first, it seems as though he was merely acting out the “spy” portion of the memory implant; however, when it’s confirmed that they hadn’t implanted that memory yet, the doctors at Rekall realize that someone else had previously erased his memory. After narrowly subduing him, Quaid is returned home with no memories of ever going to Rekall, but then he's attacked by his friends and even his
wife, Lori. She tells him that everything he remembers, including their
marriage, is false—memories implanted less than two months before. While evading his assailants, he receives a phone call from someone claiming to be a former friend of his who had been asked to deliver a briefcase if he ever disappeared. The briefcase contains false IDs, money, weapons, devices, and a video case. Thanks to a
video case he left to himself beforehand, Quaid starts piecing together his past on Mars as a
secret agent. Pursued by Richter, a man working for Mars’ administrator, Vilos Cohaagen, Quaid travels to Mars to discover the truth.
On Mars, Quaid finds out that Cohaagen rules an
airtight city via his
monopoly of air production, and that the poor workers in the city’s slums have been turned into
mutants from living within cheaply-produced domes that don't adequately shield against
cosmic rays (which Mars’s thin atmopshere doesn't shield against). He soon makes several allies, such as a
cabbie named Benny and the woman from his
dreams, Melina, who reveals that his name is actually Hauser, and that he used to be one of Cohaagen’s men but then switched sides and tried to join the underground resistance.
Quaid is later confronted by Lori and Dr. Edgemar, the man from the Rekall commercials, who try to convince him that the adventure he’s been having, his experiences to this point and his future as the leader of mutant resistance have been part of the “vacation” he bought at Rekall. Quaid is now trapped in the ego trip and needs to let them help him recuperate from the paranoia episode he's having. He offers Quaid a pill to wake up to the truth, the alternative being lobotomization, since he’s still
hallucinating in the Rekall facilities. Quaid is almost convinced until he notices the doctor is sweating out of
anxiety. Quaid shoots the doctor in the head and a group of hitmen then storm the room and capture Quaid. Melina arrives shortly after to rescue him. Melina shoots the hitmen, killing them all, but is then disarmed by Lori. The two proceed to have a vicious fight. However, Melina is completely outmatched by Lori, who gives Melina a vicious beating. Quaid, however, recovers, gets ahold of a
gun, and shoots Lori, killing her. He tells her to "consider that a
divorce."
Melina and Quaid then flee and eventually meet resistance leader Kuato, who is revealed to be a
mutant growing out of his own brother’s
stomach. With Kuato’s
psychic help, Quaid sees a mysterious
alien machine in the Martian mines, but then Cohaagen’s forces storm the resistance hideout. Kuato is killed and Quaid and Melina are captured, with the help of Benny, who is a traitor. Cohaagen then reveals that Hauser willingly had his mind wiped in order to gain Kuato’s trust; the whole incident, with the exception of Richter’s maniacal pursuit of Quaid and Quaid’s activation at Rekall, was planned. To convince Quaid that this is true, Cohaagen provides another video that Quaid’s alter ego, Hauser, left for himself. Cohaagen also reveals that he’s decided to eliminate the rebels by cutting off the air supply to their section of the city. He orders Quaid’s mind to be restored to Hauser’s and Melina’s mind be altered to be subservient. Quaid refuses to go back to being Hauser, and manages to escape with Melina. They hurry to reach the alien machine and activate it. As Melina and Quaid rush to the alien machine, Quaid kills both Richter and Benny on the way. Quaid activates the machine over Cohaagen’s protests that it'll destroy the
planet. In the struggle to activate the machine, Cohaagen is blown out of the compound onto the airless surface of Mars where he dies of
asphyxiation and
decompression. Quaid and Melina almost die from exposure to the atmosphere as well, but the alien machine activates,
creates a breathable atmosphere that saves them and the mutants just in time to see blue sky on Mars.
As Melina says that it's like a
dream, Quaid wonders if the whole thing has been real or if he's still in an implanted fantasy. Melina replies “Then kiss me quick before you wake up.” Just as they kiss each other, a bright flash of white light illuminates the screen, and the credits roll.
Cast
Production and distribution
Dino De Laurentiis was originally listed as the producer, and between 1983 and in 1984
David Cronenberg was attached to direct with studios in Rome and locations in North Africa. According to Cronenberg every major director had looked at the project but fell out with Shusett who wanted a pure action adventure, described as “
Raiders of the Lost Ark on Mars.” Cronenberg quit the production after writing 12 screenplay drafts that were rejected by De Laurentiis. When the adaptation of
Dune flopped at the box office, De Laurentiis similarly lost enthusiasm for the project.
Much of the filming took place in
Mexico City. The futuristic subway station and vehicles are actually part of the Mexican public transportation system, with the subway cars painted gray and television monitors added. In an interview with
Starlog magazine, Schwarzenegger stressed the challenge of acting in the film, “Because you’re not coming in with the same character that you’re going out with. Hauser’s an interesting character, but Quaid’s just this big program...”
The film was initially given an “X” rating. Violence was trimmed and different camera angles were used in the over-the-top scenes for an “R” rating.
“
Total Recall” was translated as “
El Vengador del Futuro” /"
O Vingador do Futuro" (
Spanish/
Portuguese for “
The Avenger of the Future”), in Latin America. In Spain and Portugal it was called “
Desafío Total” and “
Desafio Total” respectively, which means “
Total Challenge”. In Turkey it was called “
Gerçeğe Çağrı,” which means “
The Call for Reality.” In Italy it was called “
Atto di Forza,” which means “
Act of Strength.”. In Poland it was called “
Pamięć Absolutna,” which means “
Absolute Memory.” In Israel it was called “
זיכרון גורלי,” which means “
Fatal Memory.” In French Canada it was called “
Total Recall: Voyage au Centre de la Mémoire,” which means “
Total Recall: Trip to the Center of Memory.” In USSR it was called “
Вспомнить всё,” which means “
To Recall Everything.” In Hungary, it was called “
Emlékmás,” which means “
A Counterpart of Remembrance."
Reception
The film grossed $261,299,840 worldwide, a box office success. Critics, such as
Roger Ebert, gave the film positive reviews. However, despite the reduction from “X” to an “R” rating, critics considered the film excessively
violent.
As of December 2007 the website
Metacritic reported, based on seventeen reviews, a weighted average rating of 57 out of 100.
Due to the success of the movie, a sequel was written with the script title “
Total Recall 2,” and with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character still Douglas Quaid, now working as a reformed law enforcer. The sequel was based on another
Philip K. Dick short story, “
The Minority Report” which postulates about a future where a crime can be solved before it’s committed—in the movie, the
clairvoyants would be Martian mutants. The sequel wasn't filmed, but the script survived and it was changed drastically and contained greater elements from the original short story. The film was eventually directed as a sci-fi noir thriller as
Minority Report by
Steven Spielberg and opened in 2002 to box-office success and critical acclaim.
Awards
| Academy Award |
Result |
| Best Sound |
Nominated |
| Best Sound Effects Editing |
Nominated |
| Special Achievement in Visual Effects |
Won |
Themes
The film explores the question of
reality versus
delusion, a recurrent theme in Philip K. Dick’s works. The plot calls for the lead character and the audience to question whether the character’s experience is real or being fed directly to his mind. There are several visual and informational clues which point in both directions. Verhoeven and Dick play up the intentional ambiguity to the very end and no definitive answer is ever given. Thus, the viewer is left wondering whether or not the events actually happened, if the entire story is simply the memory purchased at Rekall gone terribly awry, or if in fact Rekall had simply delivered on its original promise of “action” and “adventure.” This theme has been revisited since in similarly-themed films such as
The Matrix,
eXistenZ,
The Thirteenth Floor, and
Vanilla Sky.
Recall or reality?
On the special edition DVD commentary, director Paul Verhoeven explains that he deliberately filmed every scene to present “two realities,” that is, that the entire movie supports either scenario depending upon how the viewer interprets it. However, Verhoeven also points out that the casting of Schwarzenegger (as opposed to other actors who had been considered for the part, including
Richard Dreyfuss and
Patrick Swayze) leans more towards the adventure being real, as audiences wouldn't want Arnold in an action film that turned out to only be a dream. A sequel was also planned for the film, which implies that the events really happened.
Early on in the film it's suggested that if one’s mind can't adjust to the implanted reality, resulting in a
schizoid embolism, a
lobotomy is the only solution. Verhoeven has suggested that if the film is a dream, then the white light that ends the film is in fact the cutting into Quaid’s brain as the lobotomy is administered. Earlier in the movie, shortly before Quaid is about to be implanted with Rekall memories, a technician holds up a memory capsule and comments that a “blue sky on Mars” is a new feature. At the end of the film, viewers do indeed see blue skies on Mars, though whether or not the scene was meant to be foreshadowing or an implication that the entire film was a dream is unclear.
Verhoeven states, on the Special Edition DVD commentary (on which Schwarzenegger also comments), that Quaid may be on the table at Rekall living out a fantasy. He points out that the imagery on the screen at Rekall shows the alien machine (which was a complete secret on Mars), the girl of his dreams that he asked for, and a blue sky over Mars. Verhoeven points this out as Quaid is going to sleep. When Quaid/Hauser is confronted by his wife and the Rekall spokesman, Verhoeven is quick to point out that the spokesman goes on to detail the entire second half of the movie. Of course, Quaid himself notes that he dreamt about Melina before ever going to Rekall, which is true: in the first scene of the movie he's a dream in which he's climbing on the surface of the planet in a protective space suit, the glass helmet of which later breaks, turning his dream into a nightmare. He is climbing with a companion, but it isn't Lori (whom he wakes up next to), but presumably Melina (in fact it's very difficult to identify the companion).
On the commentary both Verhoeven and Schwarzenegger himself share commentary; at every point Schwarzenegger disagrees with Verhoeven on the meaning of the ending. Schwarzenegger takes the view that the film is reality; Verhoeven that it's a dream. Intentional or not, their repartee thus serves to illuminate the two opposing ideas—that of the film being Quaid’s dream, or that Quaid is Hauser and the entire film is reality, not a dream.
Adaptations
The movie was novelized (ISBN 0-380-70874-4) by
Piers Anthony. The novel and movie correspond fairly well, although Anthony was evidently working from an earlier script than the one used for the film, and was criticized for the ending of his book which removed the ambiguity whether the events of
Total Recall are real or a dream. In addition, the novel had a subplot wherein the aliens planted a failsafe device within their Mars technology, so that if it were misused or destroyed, the local star would go
nova and therefore prevent the species from entering the galactic community. It coincided with a comment earlier in the novel that astronomers were noticing an abnormal number of recent supernovae, giving an indication that the aliens seeded their tech as part of a galactic experiment in technological maturity. Instead of mentioning that he dreamt of her earlier in the film, Melina mentions she was once a model, explaining how Quaid could have seen her on the screen at Rekall.
A video game was made based on the movie, featuring 2D
action,
platformer scenes and top-down racing scenes; a version was released for popular 8-bit home computers (
Commodore 64,
ZX Spectrum and
Amstrad CPC), and the popular 16-bit home computers (
Amiga and
Atari ST). The game was developed and released by
Ocean Software. There was also a much-maligned
NES version which was notably different from the others, being developed by a different team (
Interplay).
In 1999, there was a television series named
Total Recall 2070; however, the show had far more similarities with the
Blade Runner movie (also inspired by a Philip K. Dick story) than Verhoeven's film. The two-hour series pilot, released in VHS and DVD for the North American market, borrowed footage from the film, such as the space cruiser arriving on Mars.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Total Recall'.
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