Total Recall - Reviews, Grading, and duiscussions, SPOILERS

Discussion in 'Science Fiction & Fantasy' started by Flying Spaghetti Monster, Aug 2, 2012.

  1. Trekker4747

    Trekker4747 Boldly going... Premium Member

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    As I said above, it's not uncommon for movies that take place as a dream or a story being told to go outside the story teller's experiences and show us things they wouldn't know about. In which cases the audience knows what's going on "behind the scenes" in story but the "dreamer" does not.
     
  2. Agent Richard07

    Agent Richard07 Admiral Admiral

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    ^ Or that part of the dream can be a dissociated dream, where the dreamer is observing something instead of experiencing it.
     
  3. Set Harth

    Set Harth Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Well, let me put it this way.

    You know that dream you had, where every time a movie came out, people insisted that the ending wasn't ambiguous enough?

    That wasn't a dream.

    That really happened!
     
  4. Trekker4747

    Trekker4747 Boldly going... Premium Member

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    Yeah, but in the Total Recall case it'd technically give Quaid useful information he'd need to complete the task. Assuming the dream is "lucid" and he's aware of what is happening and capable of affecting events based on choices he makes.

    Correct this mistake and watch the movie. Rent it, Netflix it, borrow it from a friend, something. Watch it.
     
  5. JarodRussell

    JarodRussell Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Yeah but that would not be a proper memory then. It's "The memory of a lifetime, Rekall, Rekall, Rekall." ;) You're not supposed to dream your vacation, you're supposed to remember it like you've been there for real.
     
  6. Trekker4747

    Trekker4747 Boldly going... Premium Member

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    If you can remember a dream it's a memory.

    Memories don't have to be real events, I wouldn't let the marketing strategies of Rekall to mislead one to think they're giving you actual memories of things you've never done. Because at the very least the logic side of your mind would know you bought the memory in the first place.
     
  7. Level 2 Diagnostic

    Level 2 Diagnostic Captain Captain

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    I think the image of Melina on Rekall's monitors was put there by the filmmakers just to introduce enough uncertainty to make the audience wonder if the events of the movie are "real" or not. But that explanation works fine for me!

    Exactly. If Quaid had memories of things that he couldn't possibly have witnessed, then he would immediately know it was a false memory, and they'd have to give him a full refund. :)
     
  8. Level 2 Diagnostic

    Level 2 Diagnostic Captain Captain

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    Actually, I think part of the "procedure" is that it erases the person's memory so that they don't remember going to Rekall in the first place. So, no, you wouldn't know you bought the memory.
     
  9. Base_Delta_Zero

    Base_Delta_Zero Commodore Commodore

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    I thought this was a great sci-fi actioner. The set design, SFX and costumes were all top notch. There was good world-building, tech advancement predictions, etc., and I appreciated the post-apocalyptic world that was more Bladerunner than Fallout.

    The actors all did good work. Kate Beckinsale was a great villain and so insanely hot it got distracting at times. The panty shot was movie gold.

    I didn't notice a problem with Colin's accent and I'm an American. If for some reason his accent wasn't as pure stereotypical American as the usual movie accent, I would say you could chalk that up to the Federation being a melting pot of survivors of WWWIII. There's no reason for everyone to have the same flawless accent. But again, I didn't even notice the difference.

    The action scenes were epic, with vertical running gunfights to cool maglev car chases, an elevator chase reminiscent of something from The Cube, a zero-g shootout and plenty of knock-down, drag-out close-quarters battles.

    Other than the questionable decision of the Chancellor to accompany the initial wave of invasion and a bit of monologuing/gloating by certain villains being their undoing, characters behaved logically and the plot was decent.

    I had no problem with The Fall. It bent around the core and went mostly through the mantle, was built presumably before WWIII using super future tech and linked the only two territories to erect what must have been atmosphere shields of some sort to avoid the clouds of chemical poisons sweeping the globe. It was actually nice to see some different powers survive in a post-apocalypse. I figured from the previews that it would be jumping between China and the US, not a Northern Europe dominated by Britain and Australia.

    Comparing this to the original Total Recall and choosing a winner is difficult for me. Arnold's was a product of the 80s (coming at the end of that decade), and revelled in dark humor and grim ultraviolence. This latest version is very 21st century sci-fi, all slick and frenetic and very pretty, with some nice homages to the original. I love them both.

    Final Grade: A (Arnold's TR: A)
     
  10. Trekker4747

    Trekker4747 Boldly going... Premium Member

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    Except it is specifically said that it goes through the core and the mantle itself is still a non-solid, very hot, area that'd have an object experience tremendous pressures.
     
  11. Agent Richard07

    Agent Richard07 Admiral Admiral

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    Our memories are made up of insights and imaginings as well as actual experiences, so having something he didn't witness wouldn't necessarily be be out of place.

    If he's not lucid enough to know that then he wouldn't wake up. People have dissociated dreams all the time without waking up to the fact that something's amiss.

    I know what you guys are saying, but I also think there's a good workaround to this problem if one is needed.
     
  12. Brikar99

    Brikar99 Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I won't disagree with the heat and pressures, but the diagrams I saw on the screens showed a distinct curve.
     
  13. Trekker4747

    Trekker4747 Boldly going... Premium Member

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    The Nostalgia Critic takes a look at the original movie along with That Sci-Fi Guy -another contributor for That Guy With The Glasses' website.

    Oh, in the new movie I did get a chuckle out of the "Obama Money" that was in the case Quaid recovered at the bank.
     
  14. Aldo

    Aldo Admiral Admiral

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    That's true, I do recall that kind of discussion happening in the DKR thread. But here it's very relevant, since that's the same kind of things the original movie dealt with. So talking about whether it was a dream or not (in this case) has nothing to do with Inception, and all to do with the fact that the original film had that kind of ending.
     
  15. Locutus of Bored

    Locutus of Bored Yo, Dawg! I Heard You Like Avatars... In Memoriam

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    The curve would be from having to link up wherever The Colony is in Australia with the UFB capital in London. The antipodal point of any city in Australia would be in the North Atlantic to the south and west of Britain.

    So there was a curve in the tunnel, but dialogue, graphical displays, and events within the film made it clear that they went through the core itself as well. In order for them to experience neutral gravity (not a lack of gravity but gravity cancelling itself out by pulling you in all directions at the same time) they would have to be in the core. In reality Earth's surface isn't uniform, and the core is wobbling around a bit, so there's no fixed point where this would happen, but when you're dealing with something as ridiculous as The Fall already that's a minor point. It was cool to see the free floating part included, at least.

    Besides the problems of heat, pressure, and elasticity that would make building such a tunnel impossible (the deepest we've ever gone barely scratched the surface), the characters actually left the building-sized "train car" within the tunnel just after passing the core, which was just taking something stupid and multiplying it by eleventy.

    In order to cover 8,000 miles in 17 minutes, the car would have to travel at 28,235 mph through a tunnel that was somehow pressurized and had breathable atmosphere all the way through. In actuality, because of the curve it would be more than 8,000 miles, and because the car would need to accelerate and slow down, it would have to be significantly faster than that in the middle section of the trip. So, we have people running around on the surface of a train car moving at Mach 37 just after passing through a solid metal core about as hot as the surface of the Sun (roughly 9,800 °F) with roughly 3,600,000 times the mean atmospheric pressure at sea level.

    I appreciate them making an attempt to insert a fairly unique and far out scifi concept into the film, but it was pretty regoddamdiculous. It was a neat visual having a building-sized elevator moving through a tunnel, though.

    As far as the movie itself, I think I would have judged it better had it ditched the name recognition with the PKD short story and the 1990 Arnie film, and just made it a straight futuristic spy movie without the memory implant story. While doing that likely brings in more money, it also invites comparison to the earlier movie, which this film unfortunately falls short of overall despite being better in some respects.

    I actually think the action scenes in this film are more creative, better choreographed, and more visually interesting than the 1990 film, without Verheoven's fun but way over-the-top gore. The first fight between Beckinsale and Ferrel was great and brutal, the futuristic fevela chase was fun with the addition of sudden drops through the floor of the buildings, the hovercar chase was awesome, the 3d elevator chase with cars weaving in an out everywhere was exciting, and the zero grav fight using guns to propel themselves around the room was cool. As I said, I liked The Fall as an idea and setting for a battle, but I wish they had made it move through a vacuum tube in the crust and take a couple hours to reach its destination at least. They could have fought with lightweight environment suits on.

    Apart from The Fall, the technology in this movie was pretty neat. I thought the hand phones, hovercars, genetic engineering, police/combat robots, aircraft, personal holograms, and tech-laced armor and guns were pretty realistic developments for 70 years from now. Even the memory implants are believable. The multi-layered cities of The Colony and London were visually arresting yet believable outgrowths of over-population because everyone is crowded into the two safe zones, presumably because they erected some sort of electromagnetic field or barrier to repel the chemicals which for some reason never dissipate or move and are heavier than air and stay near the ground.

    The call-outs to the original were fun, especially the three-boobed girl and the lady at the security checkpoint who looked like Arnie's disguise.

    Colin Ferrel is a better actor than Arnold, but he lacks the screen presence and ability to deliver a good quip as he dispatches a bad guy. As much as I like Jessica Biel, personality-wise her character doesn't compare to Rachel Ticotin's Melina. I think Kate Beckinsale was about the equivalent of Sharon Stone, however. Bryan Cranston was criminally underused, however, and not given enough scenery to chew like Ronny Cox in the original. Plus, it made no sense whatsoever to have the Chancellor of the only actual country left on Earth to lead the troops into battle or walk into the terrorist HQ.

    Overall, it wasn't bad, but it pales in comparison to the original, the action sequences, while cool, were nonstop and plot/character development were sacrificed as a result, and the script leaves much to be desired. I'd give it a "B-."
     
  16. Agent Richard07

    Agent Richard07 Admiral Admiral

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    What if that building-sized car got stuck? :eek:
     
  17. Admiral2

    Admiral2 Admiral Admiral

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    I think it had bathrooms...not sure...they'd be screwed food wise, unless somebody started hacking up passengers...
     
  18. Trekker4747

    Trekker4747 Boldly going... Premium Member

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    Most of the other technology displayed in the movie was pretty neat, like the "hand phones" that became smart-phones when pressed against glass. I can actually see something similar to that happening in the not too distant future.

    The maglev cars were neat and probably the most "realistic" depiction of "flying cars" that are still automobile-like and not the slightly smaller planes "real" flying cars are going to be like. These "flying cars" were more like the mostly unrestricted flying ones depicted in most movies (like Back to the Future.)

    But everything LoB said about "The Fall" is spot on. It just does not make sense when you think about it for a moment and especially when you "do the math" and know how the earth is made up. (As Lo said, the Earth isn't very "solid" it's pretty damn rubbery and flexible and changes dimensions depending on it's orientation to the sun.)

    What's dumb is "The Fall" violates the common sense thoughts of "the easiest way is the best way." Or the old KISS method.

    If you can send a building-sized structure through the planet and arrive at the other side inside of 20 minutes you've obviously some mad technology. Why go through the risk of such a system not to mention the over-design of it when it'd be much simpler to, I dunno, build a high-speed rail system across the continents and ocean(s) between Europe and Australia? If you can move a building at Mach 37 through 10,000 degree liquid rock I think sending a pressurized train at that speed across the surface of the planet (or even inside the mantle) shouldn't be that much more complicated.

    Now, sure, your 8,000 mile trip just became a 10,000 mile one but some rough math tells me a 17 minute trip just became about 25 minutes long. Still faster than what it takes most people to get to work just from the suburbs to a city 20 miles away in rush-hour traffic. Obviously trains still work in the "No-Zone" including decades old underground trains that have been pressurized and even aircraft still work. So seems to me a very high-speed rail system would be a touch more practical (and realistic) to have instead of this "elevator through the damn center of the Earth!" thing.
     
  19. Admiral2

    Admiral2 Admiral Admiral

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    I still say just build bigger and faster planes! Why are you laying any kind of tracks at all - along the surface or through the mantle - for an intercontinental, transoceanic commute? It's the worst kind of overthinking!
     
  20. Morpheus 02

    Morpheus 02 Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    i think i'll repeat much of what has been said.

    My onew original thought: i thought John Cho's brief appearance was great. And witht he blond hair & facial hair, made me think of him as his character, rather than John Cho in another movie. A lot of passion that worked for him. (But too brief)

    The special effects were really good. Where the Arnold movie had some bad ones...these were consistently good.

    For the Fall..i'd be willing to suspend disbelief, just because it's "original" . Though of course lots of reasons to diss it (really, a cross world commute is needed all the time???). But itg looked cool and gave a great excuse for Quaid to get the upper hand.

    The movie was just not "fun"...nor made me think. The ad campaign would have worked with Arnold's...but it feels like no attempt was made to make us (or even Quaid) question what is real or not.

    I wouldn't have needed all the one-liner's Arnold's movie had...but a few more lines (or really a comic relief character) would have helped a lot.

    The should have named this Total Rekall (with a "K") and could have had a simpler web site name.

    I didn't want to see Amazing Spiderman becuase it just seemed too close to the originals for a remake, and nothing seems to be added. After seeing Recall, i wish i would have seen Spiderman, or even The Campaign instead.

    The commercials made me think this was not just a ripoff of the Arnold TR but also of the 5th Element (with the hover cars), and perhaps other stuff too. But my wife really wanted to see it.

    I give this movie a B-.

    P.S. We saw this Friday night at 8pm today/yesterday. There were only 4 people in the theater. Not a good sign, i think.