A question about Total Recall.

[Mr. Adventure]

After their faces did what they did, there's no going back to normal.

Well, with that ball Arnie pulls out of his nose maybe his face is extra malleable.

 

[Christopher]

Well, as nonsensical as it was, the effect depicted in the film was meant to be swelling due to internal pressure. The human body can withstand a lot of swelling and still return to normal afterward. So what the film showed would never happen, since the normal pressure inside a human body is too low to do that even in vacuum, but the idea that a body could return to normal if it did happen is by far the least ridiculous aspect of the scenario.

 

[EmmanuelZorg]

I'm sure that was the biggest Booger Arnold pulled out of his life in his entire life.

I'm sure they wanted Cox to look like Rodney when he was suffering, and does the air on Mars effect your tounge as well cause his tounge was swollen?

 

[Christopher]

I'm sure they wanted Cox to look like Rodney when he was suffering, and does the air on Mars effect your tounge as well cause his tounge was swollen?

Okay, one more time: it wasn't the air, it was the lack of air. It was an exaggerated depiction of the effect of vacuum or near-vacuum, the idea being that internal fluid pressure within the body would cause a person to swell up once the external pressure balancing it was removed. And yes, in theory, things swell up when exposed to vacuum because of that principle. But the movie exaggerated that principle to a ridiculous degree.

 

[Trekker4747]

Well, it was less "lack of air" and more "low atmospheric pressure" which has nothing to do with "air."

Which, yeah, okay low atmospheric pressure is connected to a lack of air -or thin air, but...-

I wonder if some Enterprising chap ever considered making a Arnold Schwarzenegger-on-Mars stress ball?

So what's everyone's opinion on the end of this movie?

Dream or Real?

My opinion is that it was all his dream/"vacation" he purchased.

 

[MyCylon]

^
Dream.

There's a number of clue that make me lean in this direction (some of which have been mentioned, I think). Here's what I can think of:

- Quaid's trip to Mars is precisely described at the Recall office: Blue Sky, Alien artefacts, the girl, everything happens just like the sales guy promised him.

- The fadeout at the end hits at a dream-like state that Quaid is in at that point and is awakening from or slipping further into.

- Quaid is quite suddenly super deadly, super fast and just super all over, basically. It really comes across as though all of this was implanted. Granted, you can read it in the exact opposite way as well (it was all dormant and is now allowed to re-surface)...

- It's the only just about anything makes any sense . Seriously though, if it's not a dream, it's simply a totally over-the-top Arnie flick. That's quite possible, but I like to think it works far better the other way around: It appears just like your typical Arnie flick, but it really isn't. Quaid's dream or illusion is just as much the audience's illusion when they watch the film.

 

[MIB]

The one sci-fi show I saw to get the "What happens to you in space" thing mostly right was Farscape. The "Princess" trilogy where he expelled all air from his lungs, kept all his major orifices open and managed to get from one ship to another in vacuum. He needed reconstructive surgery afterwards, just to show you can't go through vacuum and be okay even if you follow the "expell all air" rule.

I'm not so sure even that is entirely accurate. From what I've read a person can be exposed to a vacume for up to 60 seconds without suffering permenant injury (provided that person does everything right). So it's possible that even needing reconstructive surgery after the fact might be blowing it out of proportion.

 

[Christopher]

Detailed and accurate discussion of the effects of vacuum on the human body:

http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970603.html

If you don't try to hold your breath, exposure to space for half a minute or so is unlikely to produce permanent injury. Holding your breath is likely to damage your lungs, something scuba divers have to watch out for when ascending, and you'll have eardrum trouble if your Eustachian tubes are badly plugged up, but theory predicts -- and animal experiments confirm -- that otherwise, exposure to vacuum causes no immediate injury. You do not explode. Your blood does not boil. You do not freeze. You do not instantly lose consciousness.

Various minor problems (sunburn, possibly "the bends", certainly some [mild, reversible, painless] swelling of skin and underlying tissue) start after ten seconds or so. At some point you lose consciousness from lack of oxygen. Injuries accumulate. After perhaps one or two minutes, you're dying. The limits are not really known.

You do not explode and your blood does not boil because of the containing effect of your skin and circulatory system. You do not instantly freeze because, although the space environment is typically very cold, heat does not transfer away from a body quickly. Loss of consciousness occurs only after the body has depleted the supply of oxygen in the blood. If your skin is exposed to direct sunlight without any protection from its intense ultraviolet radiation, you can get a very bad sunburn.

So I don't think there'd be any reconstructive surgery needed.

Here's an even more thorough discussion:

http://www.geoffreylandis.com/vacuum.html

Which actually corrects an error in the quote above, namely the myth that space is cold:

But in a practical sense, space doesn't really have a temperature-- you can't measure a temperature on a vacuum, something that isn't there. The residual molecules that do exist aren't enough to have much of any effect. Space isn't "cold," it isn't "hot", it really isn't anything.

What space is, though, is a very good insulator. (In fact, vacuum is the secret behind thermos bottles.) Astronauts tend to have more problem with overheating than keeping warm.

If you were exposed to space without a spacesuit, your skin would most feel slightly cool, due to water evaporating off you skin, leading to a small amount of evaporative cooling. But you wouldn't freeze solid!

This is another thing Hollywood almost always gets wrong.

 

[Trekker4747]

Likening space to a thermos bottle is very apt. I like that and the idea that space is "neither hot nor cold" never thought of it like that. I've always thought of it in a "direct/indirect sunlight" thing while also knowing your own body heat would keep you pretty warm.

But what about radiant heat (granted it's pretty inefficent). The sun's radiant heat is powerful enough to make the 90-million mile distant planet Earth experience comfortable temperatures and to make Mercury experience temperatures as hgh as 800 degrees.

Sure, atmosphere composition plays a role, but that big ball of reacting gas has to be giving us something other than light and UV rays.

In open space? Sure, it's not likely to be "hot or cold" but I would think in front of the sun, at some point, its "heat" has to have an effect. (granted not to the point of cooking or roasting you instantly as some movies want to suggest.)

Christopher, I'd be very interested to read your opinions/ideas on whether or not Quaids experiences between Rekall and the end of the movie are part of the "impant" he ordered or "really happened."

I think I even remember seeing/hearing it suggested once that it was his implant but at the same time the attempts made by Rekall doctors and his wife in the middle of the movie to get him to "wake out of it" were "real" and thus when he finished the scenario back in "reality" he was lobotomized (an over used term in movies/TV to suggest something much more horrifying that it "really" is.)

I also think the "idea" of these vacation-implants are interesting. Apparently the "idea" is that you get all of the rest and relaxation associated with a real vacation without the time, expense and hassle. But what good is a "vacation" like the one Quaid had (provied it "was all a dream") it seems like a pretty stressful "vacation!" Wouldn't a "vacation" mean a lot more if it was "really you?"

 

[Christopher]

But what about radiant heat (granted it's pretty inefficent). The sun's radiant heat is powerful enough to make the 90-million mile distant planet Earth experience comfortable temperatures and to make Mercury experience temperatures as hgh as 800 degrees.

Sure, atmosphere composition plays a role, but that big ball of reacting gas has to be giving us something other than light and UV rays.

Light is radiant heat. It's the medium by which energy is exchanged between bodies in space. Our bodies radiate light that peaks in the infrared range, which is why we call infrared "heat radiation." It's all heat radiation, and the Sun's radiation is much hotter, which is why it peaks in the visible spectrum. But our terminology is determined by our biases.

Bottom line: if you're in shadow, you emit radiant heat, but a relatively small amount, so it takes you a long time to cool down. Space is a thermos, but even coffee in a thermos eventually stops being hot, because it's radiating infrared through the vacuum. (This is why thermos bottles have mirrored interiors -- to reflect back the IR and slow the rate of radiant heat loss.) If you're in sunlight, you're still emitting radiant heat, but the Sun is generating immensely more of it, so you take in more heat than you give off and you overheat. Which is why spacesuits need cooling systems.

Christopher, I'd be very interested to read your opinions/ideas on whether or not Quaids experiences between Rekall and the end of the movie are part of the "impant" he ordered or "really happened."

My personal take is that it's a dream, because the science is too thoroughly nonsensical to be real, as I explained earlier in this thread or the other one about the movie. I've never quite felt that was the intent of the filmmakers, or that it was a dramatically satisfying interpretation, though.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Detailed and accurate discussion of the effects of vacuum on the human body:

If you were exposed to space without a spacesuit, your skin would most feel slightly cool, due to water evaporating off you skin, leading to a small amount of evaporative cooling. But you wouldn't freeze solid!

This is another thing Hollywood almost always gets wrong.

Trek gets it wrong too, then. In one of the Mirror stories - the Vanguard one, I think - a character is tortured by repeatedly being beamed out into open space (without suit) and immediately back again. With all the freezings that we always thought would happen.

 

[miraclefan]

Any idea where the EXPLODING in space myth originated in Hollyweird? And which movie started that trend?

 

[Trekker4747]

Detailed and accurate discussion of the effects of vacuum on the human body:

If you were exposed to space without a spacesuit, your skin would most feel slightly cool, due to water evaporating off you skin, leading to a small amount of evaporative cooling. But you wouldn't freeze solid!

This is another thing Hollywood almost always gets wrong.

Trek gets it wrong too, then. In one of the Mirror stories - the Vanguard one, I think - a character is tortured by repeatedly being beamed out into open space (without suit) and immediately back again. With all the freezings that we always thought would happen.

We could argue that in that mirror universe space works differently.

In TNG's "Disaster" they accurately depict exposure to a vaccum when Beverly and Geordi decompress the shuttlebay (to exstinguish a "plasma fire" in the room) Beverly tells Geordi that he may feel some capalaries on his skin burst and that they'd only have a few moments of useful consciousness but otherwise they'll weather the experience nicely.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

LMAO at this thread.

No, but I do think the effect they used for what Mars does to you was utterly ridiculous. Almost as ridiculous as how breathing air reversed the effect on Quaid and Melina. Of course if it's all a dream then it all makes much more sense.

The "effect" is intended to be the lower air pressure effecting them it "reverses" itself only because normal airpressure eliminated to supposed stresses on the body.

It should have taken quite a bit longer for the introduction of more air into the atmosphere to have any kind of effect. Quaid and Melina would have been dead before it would have worked.

Yeah, but its sci-fi. Did you read the article posted in the Trek XI that talks about the physics of of destroying a planet? Same kind of fudging.

 

[Anwar]

At least Total Recall had the built-in excuse that maybe the whole experience was just a screwed up Rekall implant in Quaid's mind, which DOES easily handle all the science flaws. It's what made the movie so enjoyable for me.

 

[Christopher]

Any idea where the EXPLODING in space myth originated in Hollyweird? And which movie started that trend?

As with all things in science fiction, it most likely originated in prose at least a decade or two before film and television caught up with it. It probably goes back to early pulp sci-fi stories, from back when people had no direct experience with the vacuum of space and could only speculate about its effects.

Also, it probably comes from a misinterpretation of the term "explosive decompression." We've been conditioned to make certain assumptions about what "explosive" means. It literally means that the gases inside your body or your spaceship will decompress in a single forceful burst through whatever opening is available, but we hear "explosive" and we assume it refers to something blowing up.

Here's a list of films and shows that have used the trope, and those that have averted it:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ExplosiveDecompression

In TNG's "Disaster" they accurately depict exposure to a vaccum when Beverly and Geordi decompress the shuttlebay (to exstinguish a "plasma fire" in the room) Beverly tells Geordi that he may feel some capalaries on his skin burst and that they'd only have a few moments of useful consciousness but otherwise they'll weather the experience nicely.

Except they make a critical mistake: Geordi tells Beverly to hold her breath, which is absolutely the wrong thing to do in that circumstance because you'd rupture your lungs. As a doctor, she should've known better and corrected his mistake before it killed him.

 

[Darth_Pinche]

Kohagen : "Hey I get no respect here. A thread starts about me then becomes a discussion about celluloid physics..what am I chopped liver?!?!"

 

[miraclefan]

Kohagen : "Hey I get no respect here. A thread starts about me then becomes a discussion about celluloid physics..what am I chopped liver?!?!"

Apparently you are.

 

[Trekker4747]

Any idea where the EXPLODING in space myth originated in Hollyweird? And which movie started that trend?

As with all things in science fiction, it most likely originated in prose at least a decade or two before film and television caught up with it. It probably goes back to early pulp sci-fi stories, from back when people had no direct experience with the vacuum of space and could only speculate about its effects.

Also, it probably comes from a misinterpretation of the term "explosive decompression." We've been conditioned to make certain assumptions about what "explosive" means. It literally means that the gases inside your body or your spaceship will decompress in a single forceful burst through whatever opening is available, but we hear "explosive" and we assume it refers to something blowing up.

Here's a list of films and shows that have used the trope, and those that have averted it:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ExplosiveDecompression

In TNG's "Disaster" they accurately depict exposure to a vaccum when Beverly and Geordi decompress the shuttlebay (to exstinguish a "plasma fire" in the room) Beverly tells Geordi that he may feel some capalaries on his skin burst and that they'd only have a few moments of useful consciousness but otherwise they'll weather the experience nicely.

Except they make a critical mistake: Geordi tells Beverly to hold her breath, which is absolutely the wrong thing to do in that circumstance because you'd rupture your lungs. As a doctor, she should've known better and corrected his mistake before it killed him.

IIRC, SHE instructed them both to "resist the temptation to exhale."

 

[Christopher]

^D'oh! My first thought was that Beverly had told Geordi, but I trusted the TV Tome article saying that Geordi had said it to Beverly. I should know better.