Total Recall (2012)

Jon Starr said:
I hate Colin Farell and he doesn't have any screen presence IMO. Same with Jessica Beil. They just feel like B-movie actors to me.
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Thats funny, but well said. Colin Farrell does seem like a B movie actor most of the time. His expression is always puzzled (angry/puzzled, happy/puzzled, sad/puzzled, puzzled/puzzled).

He must have the hardest working agent in Hollywood, when you consider the directors he has worked with (it reads like every actors wish-list): Joel Schumacher, Steven Spielberg, Oliver Stone, Terrence Malick, Michael Mann, Woody Allen, Neil Jordan, Terry Gilliam, Peter Weir etc. Its an impressive list.

That said I don't hate him. He seems to work best when he's a supporting character (like in Minority Report) or when he's part of a pair or ensemble (like Tigerland, Miami Vice, In Bruges).

I'm interested to see how this turns out; looks like they were aiming for a futuristic 'Bourne Identity' type movie, and frankly the whole mutants/space travel thing probably would have detracted from that.
 
TheDingo said:
I would take PKD over the movie any day. ( even Blade Runner only used about 2 percent of what was in the novel, and invented a completely different world compared to the one that PKD had originally written )
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Frankly, I think it was both a good decision to change the title (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep doesn't exactly leap out at you on a marquee) and the story. I think the story works fine written, but not necessarily so onscreen.

And I'm looking forward to this film. I don't expect to be anything more than entertained by it, but I'll still go see it.

And I love the original one.
 
TheDingo said:
... the rest was just silly.
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And telepathic space mice aren't silly? Come on. You've got helpless alien mice invading Earth, but it must be the magic invisible destroying rods that give them power, I'm guessing, so they only appear helpless? Then from being the greatest humanitarian in the universe at the tender age of 9 the hero goes on to train as a professional killer for five years... umm ok... maybe I'm missing something but there isn’t any ambiguity in the short story as to what is real and what isn’t, it's all real. Yeah the movie was silly but I think it took the core idea of the story and made it into a much better movie than the cheesy episode of the twilight zone that would have resulted from being faithful to the short story.
 
Jon Starr said:
I'm not surprised they'll try to blame it on a planet, I just hate it. If there is a concept that needs finger pointing, perhaps it's more the aliens, and less the planet.

Nonetheless, it's all completely ridiculous. They just like to point fingers.

Personally I feel Mars needs more spotlight. I love the planet and feel we need more exploration, and a manned mission.
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Yeah, specifically blaming Mars is pretty silly. If the upcoming Prometheus isn't a hit, will they blame LV-426 (or whatever made up planet the film takes place on)? Or would the Spielberg/Cruise War of the Worlds remake have been a failure if they had decided to say that the invading aliens were from Mars? I thought it would have been clever for them to tie into the original HG Wells novel by explaining that the aliens had moved underground after the surface of Mars became unlivable, and they then decided to invade Earth whenever it became feasible to do so. It makes sense, cause if you were to bury giant tripod war machines underground thousands or tens of thousands of years ago, then it seems logical to assume you'd have the ability to survive or hibernate underground on Mars. Perhaps the Martians were living large underground, but then became overpopulated over the past century and had to devise a way to find more living space? Or maybe they decided to nip our development in the bud by invading Earth now rather than a century or two later when humanity has a militarized space force or something?

Mars definitely has more storytelling juice left in it. I'd actually like to see some more hard sci-fi Mars stuff instead of fantastical sword swingin' fantasy yarns like John Carter. And like I said before, Mars as a fully terraformed world for a film setting would actually be cheaper to do because you could get away with filming a lot on good old Earth in real locations, cause if Mars were terraformed, its terrain and vegetation would probably look very close to the same stuff we have here. Go out to the Grand Canyon or Utah, and with the exception of there being some vegetation, those landscapes are kinda Mars like. With a little grading and maybe some digital matte paintings here and there, it would be a lot easier and cheaper to create a Mars setting than something as elaborate as Pandora.

ASG said:
And telepathic space mice aren't silly? Come on. You've got helpless alien mice invading Earth, but it must be the magic invisible destroying rods that give them power, I'm guessing, so they only appear helpless?
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Yeah, the alien mice and the rod of death and destruction really lost me. The short story wasn't one of PKD's best IMO.

Now his short story Second Variety could be redone much better than the film they made from it called Screamers.
 
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simonpwood said:
Thats funny, but well said. Colin Farrell does seem like a B movie actor most of the time. His expression is always puzzled (angry/puzzled, happy/puzzled, sad/puzzled, puzzled/puzzled).

He must have the hardest working agent in Hollywood, when you consider the directors he has worked with (it reads like every actors wish-list): Joel Schumacher, Steven Spielberg, Oliver Stone, Terrence Malick, Michael Mann, Woody Allen, Neil Jordan, Terry Gilliam, Peter Weir etc. Its an impressive list.

That said I don't hate him. He seems to work best when he's a supporting character (like in Minority Report) or when he's part of a pair or ensemble (like Tigerland, Miami Vice, In Bruges).
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I think I'll retract my original comment. I guess I don't hate him. He did do a good job in Minority Report, and he is a good supporting. I just feel like as a lead he lacks a certain flair that's needed. As you said, he always looks puzzled... which works for the scene when he takes out the guards I suppose.

Need more to have any hopes for this film though.
 
I completely agree. He definitely seems best in supporting roles or part of an ensemble. The aforementioned Minority Report. He was also decent in Miami Vice, though I think he could have flexed his skills a bit more there. Decent in The New World, though arguably the segments with Bale are more moving.

I remember watching Phone Booth and loving the set-up, the concept, but feeling empty. Partly because of plot issues, but really because of his performance. He's both straining and flat in it, and when Forrest Whittaker arrives on screen he just turns Ferrell to cardboard.

Not interested in Total Recall. Really tired of remakes, sequels, prequels, films from comics, etc.
 
snowleopard said:
Not interested in Total Recall. Really tired of remakes, sequels, prequels, films from comics, etc.
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Same here. I'm feeling prequel/reboot/remake overload these days. The other day I rented The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Hollywood remake. I was about to watch it and this feeling of not giving a poo came over me. I'd already seen this movie, the original adaptation with Noomi Rapace. I just had no desire to watch the remake, even though I like Daniel Craig's acting and am a pretty big David Fincher fan.

It isn't that I am against the notion of prequels or remakes/reboots, but nowadays too many *new* movies are remakes, reboots, and prequels. I've just gotten tired of all this.
 
So this movie was pretty disappointing. I guess you couldn't really expect much, but still. The potential for a movie like this to play with your head and inject some really interesting plot twists was completely wasted. Replacing / injecting new / fake memories is an awesome sci fi idea that could have been used to explore some deep questions about us, science, the future and so much more. 2 words to describe this movie: wasted potential.
 
was hoping Arnold would make a cameo..In away I wanted to know more about total recall and the science behind it.
But overall I enjoyed it...nothing special about the story but the art design was what I loved the most the world felt very real to me.....would love a sequel ?
 
Disappointing story, but beautiful looking.
Shot on Epic by the way. Loved the look.
Great FX and cool sci fi gadgets like the hand phone, the seeing eye cameras, and so forth.


However, they missed so many beats the original story had. The ending for example. Just not the same impact as the original which left you thinking. Is it all just a dream?

This was an action film, and it did have great action, but they butchered the story.

Why no Mars? The Fall is cool, but a colony on Australia can't compete with the Red Planet.

Why didn't Colin Ferrel get mad as hell and go for balls out revenge like Arnold in the original? He just looks confused through the whole movie. I blame that on the director.

Colin never really decided to embrace his new identity like Arnold. He just kind of, is.

Why didn't girlfriend and wife fight? Missed opportunity.

Mutants were missing, a key ingredient to making the resistance so important. In this movie, it's just guys that dont' like the government. What are they fighting? Because they dont' like their jobs? On Mars it was the right to have air to breathe, kind of important.

The robots? What is this, I Robot 2? Why do we need Robots for this story?

Basically, you could have just made this a stand alone story, and gotten rid of the "Total Recall" altogether.

He could have just hit his head and had amnesia or something it would have worked just as well.
 
Yeah, I pretty much wanted my money back after seeing this movie, which doesn't happen all that often. It was technically impressive from a visual effects point of view, but everything else from the story to the acting / direction was abysmal.
 
well i do not know about the financial side of it, but John Carter of Mars is a great action movie (in 3D).
It is a long time i haven't seen a movie (that do not pretend to be a blockbuster from the start just based on the names playing in it ) with this quality.
 
John Carter bombed because it was awful. Just a bunch of running and jumping, CGI, and no story, no characters you give a crap about.

Total Recall is not a bad movie on it's own. It just doesnt' stand up to the original even with it's huge budget and upgraded FX. The problem is simple. The original was a great story, and they didn't stick to it. That's fine if you make a better story, but they didn't. They just created plot holes, cliches, and removed character motivation.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/total_recall_2010/
 
I don't think this movie deserved the guff it took. Of course, I also don't think Arnold's version deserves the reverence it gets.

It unraveled a bit in the second hour, but the first hour was gold.
 
It was actually not as bad as I thought it would be. However it felt sooo different from what the original was about. Seems like they kept the core, but threw away the rest. Plus the one small reference to Mars was a bit of a slap in the face of the fans. Implying that they could have brought Mars into the story, but didn't.

It had some cool concepts and ideas, and some beautiful action and visuals. It was fun, and I was expecting far worse.

Not great, but not bad.

Also when they went through the core, the science behind how the gravity shifts doesn't sit well with me. It's implying that the core itself is what sustains most of the gravity (I would think it holds a lot of it due to it's mass, but still). However I would think that gravity would slowly go away as it approches the middle, they would lose gravity (due to it being equal all around), then they would slowly gain it again as they approach the other side. Not the sudden jumping from 0g to 1g by the time they reach a certain threshold. Sure it's cool, but I'm tired with Hollywood throwing out common sense in science-fiction just for what's cool. It's like taking advantage of people's ignorance.

It creates all kinds of missconceptions, like what REALLY happens when someone is exposed to the vacuum of space.
 
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I finally got around to renting this, and to be honest it was much better than I was expecting. The cyberpunk style future created for this film was pretty cool. If only they had written a new original story instead of doing yet another remake, this could have been something cool.

Overall though I actually kind of liked this film. I'm a big fan of the original Total Recall with all the crazy antics of Arnold Schwartzenegger and Paul Verhoeven, and wasn't expecting this remake to offer much. The action was fun, and kind of inventive in scenes like the elevator chase and fight. Kate Beckinsale was a good villainess. She was truly relentless. I liked the gag with the 'key' and thought Hauser's apartment was cool in a James Bond sort of style. This film felt a bit more like a futuristic Bond flick, moreso than the Arnold Total Recall.

The weakest aspect for me was Bryan Cranston didn't get enough screen time to develop his Cohagen. The original film's Cohagen was a more menacing master villain. This was doubly annoying due to Bryan Cranston being such a fantastic actor who in this case wasn't given much to work with.
 
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