| Total Recall | |
|---|---|
Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | Paul Verhoeven |
| Produced by | Mario Kassar Andrew G. Vajna |
| Screenplay by | Ronald Shusett Dan O'Bannon Gary Goldman |
| Story by | Ronald Shusett Dan O’Bannon Jon Povill |
| Based on | "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" by Philip K. Dick |
| Starring | Arnold Schwarzenegger Rachel Ticotin Sharon Stone Michael Ironside |
| Music by | Jerry Goldsmith |
| Cinematography | Jost Vacano |
| Editing by | Carlos Puente Frank J. Urioste |
| Studio | Carolco |
| Distributed by | TriStar Pictures |
| Release date(s) | June 1, 1990 |
| Running time | 113 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $65 million |
| Box office | $261,299,840[1] |
Total Recall is a 1990 American science fiction action film. The film stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rachel Ticotin, Sharon Stone and Michael Ironside. It is based on the Philip K. Dick story "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale". Directed by Paul Verhoeven and written by Ronald Shusett, Dan O'Bannon, Jon Povill, and Gary Goldman, it won a Special Achievement Academy Award for its visual effects. The soundtrack composed by Jerry Goldsmith won the BMI Film Music Award.
The plot concerns an apparently unsophisticated construction worker, Doug Quaid (Schwarzenegger), who is either a victim of a failed memory implant procedure or a freedom fighter from Mars relocated to Earth. He attempts to restore order and reverse the corrupt influence of commercial powers, all while faced with the possibility that none of these events are real and pursuing them could damage his brain.
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In 2084, Douglas Quaid (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is a construction worker on Earth, married to his wife Lori (Sharon Stone). Fantasizing of traveling to Mars, he visits "Rekall", a company that can implant memories of a virtual vacation. Quaid opts for a trip to Mars, including the option of being a secret agent and discovering alien technology as part of his virtual experience. When Quaid is sedated and put into the implant machine, the technicians discover he has already undergone a previous memory wipe. Quaid wakes up, frenzied and disoriented, claiming the Rekall technicians have blown his cover. He attacks them in an attempt to escape, but they manage to subdue and sedate him again, wiping the memory of his visit to Rekall and sending him home.
Quaid wakes up in a taxi nearing his residence, unaware of how he got there. On his way home, he is attacked by his former coworkers who tell him he should not have gone to Rekall and during the struggle, he kills his would-be assailants. As he gets home and attempts to explain what's happened to his wife, Lori, she turns on him and tries to kill him, but he manages to ensnare her. She admits she is not his wife, and that his cover is truly blown. Quaid races out of the apartment as men, led by Richter (Michael Ironside), attempt to catch him. While in hiding, Quaid is contacted by a stranger who claimed they were "buddies back at the Agency." He gives Quaid a briefcase and promptly disappears, explaining that Quaid himself had given him instructions to do so. The briefcase contains false identity papers, money, and a device designed to remove the tracker implanted in Quaid's head, which Richter is following. The briefcase also contains a video from Quaid himself, but here, he calls himself Hauser, explaining that he used to work for Mars administrator Vilos Cohaagen (Ronny Cox) hunting rebels, but turned on Cohaagen after a crisis of conscience. Hauser believes Cohaagen must be responsible for Quaid's implantation. Quaid escapes as Richter closes on the discarded tracking device.
Quaid arrives on Mars, and finds clues from Hauser that lead him to Venusville, a red light district of the Mars colony where many mutated humans reside, a result of poor radiation shielding. In a bar, he discovers Melina (Rachel Ticotin), Hauser's former lover, but Melina refuses to have anything to do with him, believing that he had been acting as a double agent all-along. Returning to his hotel, Quaid is met by Lori and Dr. Edgemar (Roy Brocksmith), the developer of Rekall. They attempt to convince Quaid that his virtual vacation has gone wrong, and that all of his experiences since leaving Rekall have been part of a free-form paranoid delusion that his brain has constructed. Upon noticing a bead of sweat on Dr. Edgemar's face, however, Quaid refuses to believe this and kills Edgemar. Quaid also kills Lori, when she attempts to fool him again, as she did on Earth. More of Cohaagen's henchmen arrive in an attempt to capture Quaid; however, Melina arrives and assists Quaid in escaping. They return to Venusville, where Melina's fellow rebels aid in delaying Richter and his men. When Cohaagen hears of this, he orders Venusville sealed and its oxygen supply cut off.
Quaid, Melina, and a taxi driver named Benny (Mel Johnson, Jr.) make their way to the rebel headquarters. Quaid is taken to meet Kuato, a small humanoid form conjoined to another man (Marshall Bell). Kuato probes Quaid's mind and discovers that he knows about an alien reactor that would provide oxygen for the entire planet, but Cohaagen has tried to cover it up, knowing it would destroy his control. Kuato implores Quaid to activate the reactor and free Mars. Before they can proceed, Cohaagen's men assault the rebel base and Benny is revealed to be a double-agent, killing Kuato and capturing Quaid and Melina. They are taken to Cohaagen's offices, where he shows them another video from Hauser, revealing that Quaid's entire experience had been part of an elaborate plot devised by Cohaagen and Hauser to infiltrate the rebel stronghold and kill Kuato. Cohaagen orders Quaid to be restored through a Rekall device back to Hauser, his close friend, and Melina to be reprogrammed as his loyal wife. Before the memory implantation can be completed, Quaid and Melina again manage to escape and make their way to the alien reactor. In the process Benny is killed in the tank he tried to ambush Quaid with, and Richter tries to beat Quaid to the control room, but has his arms detached from him when a dead end on the elevator approaches, as he falls to his death.
Cohaagen arrives first at the control room, and attempts to dissuade Quaid from using the alien artifact, claiming it will destroy the planet, and threatening to blow up the control room with a nearby bomb. Quaid throws the explosive away, destroying a seal on the room, exposing it to the vacuum of the Mars atmosphere. Cohaagen is dragged out and dies from asphyxiation and decompression on the planet’s surface. Quaid manages to activate the artifact before he and Melina are blown out, and both are saved as waves of air generated by the artifact, which melted the ice below Martian crust, sweep across the surface, shattering the windows of the Mars colony, giving its residents fresh air to breathe. As the population begin to walk into the new blue sky of Mars, Quaid wonders if this is still part of his Rekall fantasy before he turns to kiss Melina.
The original screenplay for Total Recall was written by Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett, the writers of Alien, who had bought the rights to Philip K. Dick’s short story “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” while Dick was still alive. They were unable to find a backer for the project and it drifted into development hell, passing from studio to studio. In the mid-1980s, producer Dino De Laurentiis took on the project with Richard Dreyfuss attached to star.[2] Patrick Swayze, who had recently starred in Dirty Dancing, was also considered for the role.[3] David Cronenberg was attached to direct but wanted to cast William Hurt in the lead role.[2] Cronenberg described his work on the project and eventual falling out with Shusett: “I worked on it for a year and did about 12 drafts. Eventually we got to a point where Ron Shusett said, ‘You know what you’ve done? You’ve done the Philip K. Dick version.’ I said, ‘Isn’t that what we're supposed to be doing?’ He said, ‘No, no, we want to do Raiders of the Lost Ark Go to Mars.’”[2] When the adaptation of Dune flopped at the box office, De Laurentiis similarly lost enthusiasm for the project.[4] Although he went uncredited in the final version of the film, Cronenberg originated the idea of mutants on Mars, including the character of Kuato (spelled Quato in his screenplay).[5]
The collapse of De Laurentiis’s company provided an opening for Schwarzenegger, who had unsuccessfully approached the producer about starring in the film. He persuaded Carolco to buy the rights to the film for a comparatively cheap $3 million and negotiated a salary of $10–11 million (plus 15 percent of the profits)[6][7] to star, with an unusually broad degree of control over the production. He obtained veto power over the producer, director, screenplay, co-stars and promotion. The first thing Schwarzenegger did was personally recruit Paul Verhoeven to direct the film, having been impressed by the Dutch director’s RoboCop (for which Schwarzenegger was considered for the title role). By this time the script had been through forty-two drafts but it still lacked a third act. Gary Goldman was therefore brought in by Paul Verhoeven to work with Ronald Shusett to develop the final draft of the screenplay.[3] The director also brought in many of his collaborators on Robocop, including casting actor Ronny Cox as the main villain, cinematographer Jost Vacano, production designer William Sandell, and special effects designer Rob Bottin.[8]
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. It was one of the last major Hollywood blockbusters to make large-scale use of miniature effects rather than computer generated imagery. Five different companies were brought in to handle Total Recall’s effects. The only CGI sequence in the entire film was a 42-second sequence, produced by MetroLight Studios, showing the X-rayed skeletons of commuters and their concealed weapons. Only a year later, James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day starring Schwarzenegger prompted a revolution in special effects with its extensive use of CGI.[8]
The score was composed and conducted by Jerry Goldsmith, and 40 minutes of it was released by the Varèse Sarabande label in 1990.[9] Ten years later, the same label released a “Deluxe Edition,” in chronological order with additional cues that were left out, totaling 71 minutes.[10] As with several Goldsmith scores, the music was performed by the National Philharmonic Orchestra.
The main title theme features a metal percussion pattern that bears similarities to a drum pattern from Anvil of Crom.[9] The score has been hailed as one of Goldsmith’s best, especially the deluxe edition, and commended for its blend of electronic and orchestral elements.[11]
Original soundtrack release:
Deluxe Edition release:
Total Recall debuted at No.1 at the box office.[12] The film grossed $261,299,840 worldwide, a box office success. Critical reaction to Total Recall has been mostly positive. It currently holds an 81% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 42 reviews.[13] Metacritic reported, based on 17 reviews, an average rating of 57 out of 100.[14]
Roger Ebert awarded the film three and a half stars (out of four), calling it “one of the most complex and visually interesting science fiction movies in a long time.”[15] Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly praised the film, giving it a score of “B+” and said that it “starts out as mind-bending futuristic satire and then turns relentless [and] becomes a violent, post-punk version of an Indiana Jones cliff-hanger.”[16] Film scholar William Buckland considers it one of the more “sublime” Dick adaptations, contrasting it with films like Impostor and Paycheck, which he considered “ridiculous.”[17]
Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle said the film is not a classic, “but it’s still solid and entertaining.”[14] James Berardinelli gave the film two and a half stars (out of four), saying that “neither Schwarzenegger nor Verhoeven have stretched their talents here,” but added, “with a script that’s occasionally as smart as it is energetic, Total Recall offers a little more than wholesale carnage.”[18]
Some critics, such as Janet Maslin of The New York Times, considered the film excessively violent.[19] Rita Kempley of The Washington Post gave it a negative review, saying that director Paul Verhoeven “disappoints with this appalling onslaught of blood and boredom.”[20] Feminist cultural critic Susan Faludi called it one of “an endless stream of war and action movies” in which “women are reduced to mute and incidental characters or banished altogether.”[21]
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 hypothesizes about a future where a crime can be solved before it’s committed—in the movie, the clairvoyants would be Martian mutants.[22] The sequel was not filmed, but the script survived and it was changed drastically and contained greater elements from the original short story. The story was eventually adapted as a science fiction thriller as Minority Report by Steven Spielberg and opened in 2002 to box-office success and critical acclaim.[23][24]
| Award | Category | Winner/Nominee | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Academy Awards[25] | |||
| Best Sound | Nelson Stoll, Michael J. Kohut, Carlos Delarios & Aaron Rochin | Nominated | |
| Best Sound Editing | Stephen Hunter Flick | Nominated | |
| Best Visual Effects (Special Achievement Award) | Eric Brevig, Rob Bottin, Tim McGovern & Alex Funke | Won | |
| Saturn Awards | |||
| Best Science Fiction Film | Won | ||
| Best Costume | Erica Edell Phillips | Won | |
| Best Actor | Arnold Schwarzenegger | Nominated | |
| Best Direction | Paul Verhoeven | Nominated | |
| Best Make-up | Rob Bottin, Jeff Dawn, Craig Berkeley & Robin Weiss | Nominated | |
| Best Music | Jerry Goldsmith | Nominated | |
| Best Special Effects | Thomas L. Fisher, Eric Brevig & Rob Bottin | Nominated | |
| Best Supporting Actress | Rachel Ticotin | Nominated | |
| Best Writing | Ronald Shusett, Dan O'Bannon & Gary Goldman | Nominated | |
| Japan Academy Prize | Outstanding Foreign Language Film | Nominated | |
| BAFTA | Best Special Visual Effects | Whole Special Visual Effects Production team | Nominated |
| Hugo Award | Best Dramatic Presentation | Nominated |
In 2008, Total Recall was nominated for AFI's Top 10 Science Fiction Films list.[26]
The film explores the question of reality versus delusion, a recurrent topic 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 plays up the intentional ambiguity to the very end and no definitive answer is ever given. However the beginning title of the movie soundtrack is called “the dream” and the ending title “end of a dream.” However, in sharp contrast, the final chapter title of the film’s DVD is “Not a Dream.”
On the DVD commentary of the Artisan Total Recall: Special Limited Edition (released in 2001) Verhoeven notes that in multiple parts of the film characters reference events they claim will be part of Quaid's Rekall experience prior to their occurrence in the film. In the end, the viewer is left wondering if the events actually happened, 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 Dark City, The Matrix, eXistenZ, The Thirteenth Floor, Vanilla Sky, Shutter Island, and Inception.
A consistent motif throughout the film is the presentation of striking opposites: Earth/Mars; Quaid/Hauser; the mutants Kuato and his brother George; the use of holographic doubles by Quaid and Melina; reflections of Quaid, Lori and Dr. Edgemar in mirrors in Quaid’s hotel room; Melina/Lori.
The film was novelized by Piers Anthony.[27] The novel and film 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). Interplay defended the changes, however, claiming that their alteration stuck closer to the spirit of the original short story, which they said “read more like a platformer.”
A television series called Total Recall 2070 went into production in 1999. The show was meant to be a prequel; however, it 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 on VHS and DVD for the North American market, borrowed footage from the film, such as the space cruiser arriving on Mars.
In 2011, a four-issue comic book adaptation was released by Dynamite Entertainment, continuing the story from the film.[28]
In February 2009, The Hollywood Reporter stated that Neal H. Moritz and Original Film were in negotiations for developing a contemporary version of Total Recall for Columbia.[29] In June, 2009, it was announced that Columbia Pictures have hired Kurt Wimmer to write the script for the remake.[30] On January 9, 2011, it was confirmed that Colin Farrell will be starring in the remake and Bryan Cranston will play the villain, with production starting in Toronto on May 15. According to producer Neal Moritz, this version of the film will be closer to Philip K. Dick’s original story. Moritz also stated that the film will not be shot in 3D, saying: “we decided that it would be too much.”[31] Kate Beckinsale will play the role of double agent Lori,[32] while John Cho is set to play McClane, the smooth-talking rep for the memory company.[33] Ethan Hawke will have a cameo in the film.[34]
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