Total Recall

The Book

The inspiration for two films, the original short story, We can remember it for you Wholesale,  is unpreposessing and a mere 20 pages long. It is simple and sweet in its story telling and has a neat payoff twist that is omitted from either adaptation due to the absurdist nature of the tale.
Douglas Quail wants to visit Mars and visits Recal to have memories of a trip implanted, along with mementoes and keepsakes provided as physical proof. He also opts for the Secret Agent module. During the procedure it becomes apparent that these memories already exist as he was a secret agent on Mars.
The whole reason why he was reconfigured and whether his wife is really his wife or an agency plant is briefly hinted at but is not gone into, as this isn't the story Dick wants to tell.
Recal send him home with his memories and half his fee re-imbursed and hope for the best, but Doug smells a rat and returns to Recal almost immediately. In order to write over the programme errors in his brain, Recal find another childhood fantasy about Doug saving the planet from invading aliens. They arrive to destroy the planet, but due to Doug's kindness, they vow to leave the planet alone until Doug is dead. Of course, this turns out not to be a fantasy either and we are left with the looming destruction of the planet..




Film Website


The Film

Total Recall has been filmed twice now - once in 1990 with Arnold Schwarzenegger and now in 2012 with Colin Farrell.
The 2012 version is more faithful to the Philip K Dick short story than the previous version, in that it doesn't go to Mars, but also includes a bit of extra sci-fi baloney regarding The Fall - the tunnel that enables travel through the core of the earth from United Federation of Britain to the Colonies (Australia). The look and design of the new film also follows the Philip K Dick canon that started with Blade Runner (constant rain, hovercars, neon signs and a heavy Chinese influence) and followed on in Minority Report (the police uniforms). I also like the subtle nod to the previous Total Recall where a security checkpost lets through a woman very similar to the one Arnie was pretending to be, when Doug Quaid is the next imposter in the queue.





The short story needs to be fleshed out to provide a feature film, hence you get plenty of chase sequences and I did like the hovercar and lift chases for their fast pace and high risk. Both films have done a great job on building on the short story and filling out the back story to Doug's memory wipe.
My only complaints would be the constant use of the word "Sh*t" when people are in trouble - this was obviously to get a 12A film board rating, but a little variety would have been nice - and the fact that although the only inhabitable landmasses were Britain and Australia, all the characters were played with American accents, even though most of the actors were British!

If you liked the film, try Paycheck (2003) or Minority Report (2002)

If you liked the short story, I recommend others by Philip K Dick such as A Maze of Death or Ubik