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Total Recall - Recalled...

Re: Total Recall - Recalled... Remake Announced!

Mixed feelings. Arnold was awesome in it. It had good moments, but I was not thrilled with the production design. I have a feeling they will make it darker. That's probably ok, but they need to keep an epic feel about it. I would rather see a new SF franchise than TR remade though.

RAMA
 
Re: Total Recall - Recalled... Remake Announced!

Getting back on track, I don't know what take this will be, a darker one, a more accurate one of the books or a lighter one. I do agree that they could do better production design and I hope special effects are better. The original ending of Total Recall with the bug-eyes was so hilariously bad.

And I can't resist throwing in this one: Scream. True, it's a 90's film but it's how bad remake-fever has struck Hollywood. They even have Courtney Cox and David Arquette in talks to return.
 
I think Highlander is ripe for a reboot. Interesting concept that never went anywhere (I include the first movie), and the TV show had more bad episodes than good.

How about a modern update of The Last Starfighter? But instead of one starfighter recruit, there are 500,000 all under the age of 16 because of the Xbox, PS3, Wii and PC, and after they get bored training, they'll start shooting each other and calling everyone noobs and fags. It'll be a 15 minute long movie!
 
Christopher said:
As I said, Dick's original story was almost completely unlike Total Recall. For one thing, its main character was a small, timid man named Quail. The project was totally revamped when Schwarzenegger came aboard. It is the film it is because it was tailored to the man. So it would be a mistake to try to remake it as the same kind of over-the-top action movie. Better to go back to the beginnings, either the Dick story or the early, very different drafts of the movie, and develop something that's more faithful to those or that branches off from them in a new direction.
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Now if they do this I have no problem with them remaking it. It would seem kind of pointless to try to make it like the Arnie version.
 
Christopher said:
I am wondering what they mean by a "contemporized adaptation," though. Does that mean it'll be set in the present instead of the future? Or do they mean it'll have a more contemporary style but still be set in the future?
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Same story, better CGI would be my guess (although the visuals effects in the original were pretty good for it's time imo).
 
At this rate, the only movie that's not going to have a remake will be The Birth of a Nation. And even that's iffy.
 
Roger Wilco said:
Same story, better CGI would be my guess (although the visuals effects in the original were pretty good for it's time imo).
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Okay, pet peeve: CGI is not synonymous with visual effects. It is only one of many techniques used in visual effects even today. Basically the only CGI in Total Recall was the "x-ray" security screen that showed people's skeletons as they walked past it, and probably things like TV images, animated subway ads, and so forth. The rest of its effects were achieved using classic FX techniques such as miniatures, cable-controlled puppetry, matte paintings, bluescreen and split-screen photography, and prosthetic makeup.
 
Roger Wilco said:
Christopher said:
I am wondering what they mean by a "contemporized adaptation," though. Does that mean it'll be set in the present instead of the future? Or do they mean it'll have a more contemporary style but still be set in the future?
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Same story, better CGI would be my guess (although the visuals effects in the original were pretty good for it's time imo).
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I was going to point this out too.
 
I don't buy it. Updated special effects are a given that doesn't need mentioning, so it can't be what they meant by "contemporized adaptation." That sounds like a reference to the story or stylistic approach, or else to the timeframe.
 
Christopher said:
I don't buy it. Updated special effects are a given that doesn't need mentioning, so it can't be what they meant by "contemporized adaptation." That sounds like a reference to the story or stylistic approach, or else to the timeframe.
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Remember the Total Recall series on Showtime? That was like Blade Runner. It'll look a lot like that I think.

BTW I know you didn't do it, but I like the cover for the Titan novel.

RAMA
 
Aragorn said:
I think Highlander is ripe for a reboot. Interesting concept that never went anywhere (I include the first movie), and the TV show had more bad episodes than good.

How about a modern update of The Last Starfighter? But instead of one starfighter recruit, there are 500,000 all under the age of 16 because of the Xbox, PS3, Wii and PC, and after they get bored training, they'll start shooting each other and calling everyone noobs and fags. It'll be a 15 minute long movie!
Click to expand...
The Last Star Fighter, and Enemy Mine are both in the stages of remakes too. I'm telling you, think of a popular 80's movie, it's in the treatment at some level.

Top Gun is getting a sequel too actually. I think they asked Tom Cruise about reprising his role as an instructor or something (alla Iron Eagle, no idea if it's being remade, yet) but he turned it down.
 
I thought Paramount was looking to have a huge straight-to-DVD division for in-name-only sequels so they could cash in on Clueless, Deep Impact, Top Gun, Collateral, Days of Thunder, Coming to America, Event Horizon, Face/Off, Crocodile Dundee, etc. That's what the article said in 2007.
 
Tharpdevenport said:
Remember the old days when Hollywood remakes were rare, and GOOD? Hard to now, isn't it?
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There has never been a time when Hollywood remakes were rare. There have always been tons of remakes. Many of the first talkies were remakes of popular silent films. A number of classic stories have been remade multiple times over the decades. Heck, the first film adaptation of the play The Front Page, in 1931, was remade as His Girl Friday only 9 years later -- and then again under its original title in 1974, and then again in 1988 as Switching Channels. Even before talkies, there were a ton of remakes. Camille was adapted six times as silent films between 1909 and 1926 and again as a talkie in 1936. If anything, remakes were probably far more common in the early days of motion pictures than they are today, because films might not have gotten as wide a distribution, and they naturally didn't have home video, so a given movie probably didn't get seen by as many people in the first place.

The perception that remakes weren't common in the past is something called the recency illusion. There were just as many remakes, good and bad, as there are now, but we only remember the minority that were good enough to leave a lasting cultural impact. Hence the illusion that they were rarer and better in the past.
 
Christopher said:
I am wondering what they mean by a "contemporized adaptation," though. Does that mean it'll be set in the present instead of the future? Or do they mean it'll have a more contemporary style but still be set in the future?
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I take that to mean there'll be some Muslims, and vague (and by that I mean not at all vague, rather blatant) "analogies" to the war in Iraq. Rather than taking over Mars, it'll be taking over an invaded world or some such.

But I'm cynical.
 
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