GENERAL RAMBLINGS

TOTAL Recall is, in my humble opinion, the best Arnold Schwarzenegger film in existence, narrowly beating Predator, Terminator 2 and maybe Hercules Goes Bananas (when he was known as Arnold Strong).

It was an eye-popping (remember the end?) thrill-ride that had everything you could want in a big sci-fi/action blockbuster, including the former Austrian bodybuilder in a dress.

`Twoooo weeeeks ... twoooo weeeeks'. I love that part.

Directed by Paul Verhoeven, the man behind another sci-fi favorite Starship Troopers (1997), the original film was based on the book by Philip K. Dick titled Can Will Remember it for You Wholesale.

Released in 1990, it featured Arnie as a construction worker on a futuristic Earth named Quaid who is haunted by dreams of Mars, not to mention a certain badass brunette babe.

By the end of it, Quaid, who was really Hauser, has single-handedly provided the entire Red Planet with an atmosphere (via an alien technology), and of course killed all the baddies, in some brutal and bloody ways, gotten the girl and been flashed by a three-breasted mutant woman.



It was truly fun stuff and I just loved the concept of evidence of an alien intelligence deep beneath the Martian surface. It might yet become a reality.

And Arnie was great in it, delivering lines like "If I am not me, den who da hell am I?", "Consider dat a divorce" after shooting Sharon Stone in the head, and of course "I'll be baack".

It's why it disappointing to hear news there are plans to remake the movie.

The Hollywood Reporter says Neal H. Moritz and his Original Films banner are in final negotiations to develop and produce for Columbia Pictures a contemporary version of Total Recall.

Calling Dick's story "prescient," Moritz said he hoped the advancements in technology and state-of-the-art visual effects can help tell the "Recall" story in a fresh way, THR said.

According to the Internet Movie Database, Total Recall was one of the last major Hollywood blockbusters to make large-scale use of miniature effects, and at the same time, it was also one of the first to use CGI (mainly for the scenes involving the X-Ray scanner) and have it look "photo-real".


I personally think it still holds up well today, two decades on, deeming a remake unnecessary. But of course that is the route Hollywood seems to be taking more and more.

If they are going to do anything maybe a sequel would be better.

As we look to the future it's interesting to look back at the devlopment of the original film.

Apparently Patrick Swayze was signed to play Quaid when the movie began preproduction in Australia with Bruce Beresford as the director.

However, early in preproduction, Dino De Laurentiis' company went bankrupt. After Schwarzenegger heard about this, he persuaded Carolco to buy the script for him.

David Cronenberg (The fly, The Naked Lunch, Eastern Promises) was set to direct and even wrote a few drafts of the script before Paul Verhoeven took over.



Cronenberg stated that he wanted to cast William Hurt as the lead, and was displeased by the producers' decision to reimagine the lead for an action star such as Schwarzenegger.

In the earlier drafts of the script, Quaid (originally named Quail) was described as an average-looking accountant-type person.

It was only after Schwarzenegger convinced Mario Kassar, of Carolco, that the later drafts were re-written to change Quaid's character into one more suitable for Schwarzenegger to play.

Schwarzenegger said that he felt this helped the story even more, giving a much stronger contrast to it by turning a character who is otherwise powerful physically into a character that becomes vulnerable after having his mind stolen.