TOTAL RECALL trailer: I recall seeing something like this before…

The trailer for Total Recall is out!

And I have to say, in this geek’s opinion, it looks fantastic. Very, very different than the original, for sure. And yet, oddly the same.

Phillip K. Dick’s story was the basis for the Arnold movie back in the day, and Arnold’s movie, despite being an Arnold movie, kept a lot of the elements. The basic idea was: what is reality and what has been implanted? There are twists and turns along the way, as the main character makes discovery after discovery. Arnold’s movie also featured gore (surprisingly good, considering) and mutant prostitutes. It earned its R-rating. It’s basically your run of the mill 90’s action movie, with a little bit of sci-fi mind-bending thrown in.

This one seems to be a little more true to the original story. I am loving the vibe they are sending with this trailer.

After the trailer, some thoughts. And we’d love to hear your thoughts about this movie in the comments below!

Something tells me, after watching the trailer, there’s going to be a lot of twists and double twists. To borrow from Michael Caine’s line in The Prestige, there’s the “pledge”, where the magician shows you something ordinary. Colin Farrell, in this case. Next is the “turn”, where the magician takes the ordinary and makes it do something extraordinary. In this case, he becomes a super spy. But that’s not enough. According to Caine, you can;t just make it disappear, you have to make it appear again. That’s the “prestige.” I have a feeling that the movie is going to reveal that all the super spy stuff was not memory, but rather it is implanted memory. But THEN it will reveal that the memory was implanted because they were trying to get something from him, because he actually IS a spy. Maybe it won’t be that exact plot line, but I expect it to do a lot of flipping back and forth before we get to the “prestige” and it all comes around. I hope that it’s all natural, though, and doesn’t feel forced. I hope that it is the character taking us through these twists and turns, and not twists and turns that are serving the plot.

Some of it feels like Blade Runner (another movie inspired by Phillip K. Dick — I haven’t read the book, though). And Minority Report (another movie inspired by Phillip K. Dick’s work). The man whose face is changing at the end of the trailer seems like it is from another Phillip K. Dick story (can’t remember the name — might be wrong there). And are you wondering, like me, if the robots are going to be called “replicants”?

What do you think of the trailer? For me, it’s gone from “I’m interested” to “it’s got my attention.”

Look at the cover: does that say "this is actually a book based on a movie featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger, which is based on a book by Phillip K. Dick" to you?

Side note: for years, I thought Arnold’s movie was based on a book by Piers Anthony, because I picked up the Piers Anthony adaptation of the MOVIE in a bargain bin at some bookstore. The book did not look like an adaptation at all, and as someone who liked some of Piers Anthony’s fantasy in high school, I bought it. I thought THIS was the original.

I’m curious what Mr. Anthony thought about doing it. Was it just a job? Did he have second thoughts about adapting the re-write of someone else’s book? I’ve looked around a bit, but I cannot find any actual thoughts from him about it.

Somehow, I’m not surprised.

~ Ben


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