Total Recall

You know that kind of sci fi that people are always parodying and you wonder what they're actually drawing that parody from? I don't think its Total Recall... but damn, this movie was strange.

Let me bring you back to a time well before Sabotage. When Arnold Schwarzenegger was not a governor, not quite a running joke yet, and America's number one action star...

There was this strange and yet incredibly awesome movie called Total Recall.

Total Recall takes place years into our future. We've colonized a lot of our galaxy and its almost the most science fictiony world you could ever imagine. (Apparently its 2084 but I don't remember them actually telling me that)

On Earth, you have Doug Quaid (played by Schwarzenegger), your average run of the mill construction worker, his really hot wife (played by Sharon Stone) and a recurring dream that he is, oddly enough, on Mars.

Quaid has never been on Mars but has an instinctual desire to go there for some reason. His wife discourages him, his work friends discourage him, saying there's nothing on Mars except for the scum and low life the galaxy has to offer. But Quaid persists.

His wife won't let him go so he decides to pay a visit to the local Recall offices. Recall implants memories into people's minds and has them relive the experience of someone who had been to Mars, or some place else.

But Quaid has a horrible reaction to the implantation and starts spouting off that he is a secret agent and he's been to Mars.

The technicians at Recall quickly incapacitate him, send him home on sedatives and make him forget that he ever visited Recall. However, when he returns home, he is attacked by the people closest to him, his friend, his wife even.

Suddenly, people are trying to kill Quaid and he doesn't know why. But he soon figures out that his life is an implant and his memories are fake.

He runs for his life, looking to find out who he really is, all while a shady organization, headed up by Michael Ironside searches for him to bring him back and use him for their shady purposes.

For a more up to date reference, think Paycheck, meets Inception, meets Star Wars.

You may be thinking, that's a strange combination... and you would be correct. Because as interesting as a lot of the science fiction of this film is, dealing with memory implants, mutants, psychic links, etc, there is a lot about this movie that falls into the category of the down right weird.

Like this...

I know that if Gravity has shown us anything, its not a good thing to be out in open space without oxygen, but this is just ridiculous. But its not just that. This movie just has a laundry list of just down right weird occurrences. 

Three boobed women, small prostitutes, Arnold in a dress, mutants just in general. Instead of mutants being very similar to humans like other movie franchises (especially those of today) Total Recall kind of does the opposite and makes mutants physically deformed. 

Like that kind of deformed...

On top of that, we have Arnold. 

Now if you read my Sabotage review, I kind of touched on the fact that I don't quite understand the phenomena with Arnold Schwarzenegger. I understand him as a gag, or a running joke, but movies like this are very serious. Schwarzenegger is the leading man and he's suppose to have some kind of appeal. An appeal, I just don't really get. 

Schwarzenegger is of course entertaining. When he's doing action sequences, spouting off one liners, and not really talking, I suppose I can see the appeal of him. But my god the guy is a horrible actor. 

And again, the Austrian accent. I've never really been able to look past it. It just feels out of place. Is it hilarious and I guess become a signature for him as an actor, yeah that is true. Its kind of like Stallone and his thing of mumbling. Neither are award winning actors, but when you go into a Schwarzenegger film, you get what you paid for. A lot of violence, a lot of blood spurts (which I think they should go back to), and a lot of probably unintentional funny moments. 

The other name worth mentioning is Sharon Stone.

I get it. 

For the longest time I could never understand the appeal with Sharon Stone. I had seen parts of Basic Instinct and I guess the part where you see in between her legs is a seductive and sexy scene, but outside of the fact that I saw in between her legs, I never really understood the appeal of Sharon Stone... until this movie. 

Damn, is Sharon Stone just a bombshell in this film. I would say her career didn't exactly go very well past this film. But she's not a horrible actress and she's entertaining in this film. She's not exactly well written but hey, its the 90s, women roles were never written that well. Outside of just how entertaining Schwarzenegger is just in general and how wacky the story is in general, Stone was probably the next best part of the film.

The other actor worth mentioning is Michael Ironside. Now I know Ironside mostly from his voice work as Sam Fisher in the Splinter Cell games in which he's awesome. But I also really like him as the villain in films... or just in film in general... I like Michael Ironside. I kind of wish the guy got more mainstream attention. He's been in some good films here and there but he's just kind of one of those obscure actors. 

There are a lot of other people in this film but those three are really the ones worth mentioning. The rest of the cast didn't really go anywhere outside of this movie and if they did, I didn't hear about them. 

The skinny of this is that Total Recall is a very strange film. You're going to get a lot of things in this movie that at the time were cutting edge technology and effects. Now they just look strange and kind of disturbing. 

However, there is a lot in this film that makes science fiction science fiction. Its this weird universe where you think of the campiest science fiction you can think of, and its probably in Total Recall. For that, I have to give the movie props. Its so obscure and so strange that its kind of an icon. Aside from being an Arnold action flick, its actually calling back to the out of this world science fiction that the book the movie is actually based on brought to the United States. 

To me, this is the kind of movie that makes me wonder what kind of science fiction would have happened if Star Wars wasn't a thing. This is kind of that obscure science fiction that nobody wants to talk about and instead of it being bad and cheesy, its actually kind of entertaining... and cheesy. 

If you like Schwarzenegger, you'll probably love this film. If you like the cheesy over the top Science Fiction, you'll love this movie. If you like Science fiction, you may find this interesting but its definitely not your mainstream science fiction... if you're just looking for a movie to watch... you might find Total Recall a little disturbing. If you're going to watch it, just go into it warned and ready for anything. 

But those are my thoughts on Total Recall. Maybe I'll watch the remake... maybe I won't. But until then, comment and discuss below. Hell, let me know if I should or not, do a comparison. You can also shoot me a tweet @cmhaugen24 and follow me on Twitter to get news updates and movie reviews. 

I'll leave you with this. Apparently Sylvester Stallone used to hate Arnold Schwarzenegger, makes sense. Here's a video from Fallon of him saying that. Enjoy!