I'm a fair-weather science-fiction fan. I've read only a handful of science-fiction stories and books, but I'm a big fan of science-fiction movies. Science-fiction, like no other genre, is in an interesting position to comment on our humanity, the condition of the species, and where we could be headed. A number of authors and films side-step these implications in favor of strange worlds, peoples, and wild technology, but the best remain grounded in reality. Somewhat fantastical, yes, but always plausible.
That's where I would place Philip K Dick. A giant of the genre, I'd say he was a somewhat mediocre writer. His biggest weakness was his failure to create convincing, three-dimensional characters... This weakness is overshadowed by his absolutely brilliant concepts and ideas and his break-neck pacing, but it's there nevertheless. Of what I've read, my favorite book of his would be Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, aka the Blade Runner source material. Highly recommended, even if you dislike the movie (like me).
"We'll Remember it for You Wholesale" is the source story of Total Recall. As a story, it's classic Dick. The idea is great, the characters... so-so. In a nutshell: Quail has recurring dreams of Mars, and he decides one day to visit Rekal, a company which specializes in memory manufacture. He is skeptical ("An illusion is an illusion, no matter how convincing"), but decides that this is the best way to rid himself of the dreams... Except something goes wrong. He decides on the secret agent/Mars package, but it turns out he's already been there and done that. Technicians freak and release him, sending him home in a stupor. When certain artifacts are discovered supporting this former life, he believes them and it seems Rekal has done its job effectively... And then something else goes wrong. A transmitter in his brain allows him to be tracked, and when he is attacked by heavily armed agents, Quail finds that he suddenly has extraordinary close-combat abilities. Authorities want to extract his memories, and after a brief negotiation, he says that he will give up the memory of Mars in exchange for his deepest psychological desire - which is that he saved the world from aliens as a boy. Authorities agree, but during the procedure, it turns out that this too has already happened.
I don't usually provide such literal descriptions of media, but it's hard to talk about the story or the movies without describing some of the actual events - if only because the nature of those events is so often called into question. The story obviously deals with memory and whether it can be trusted. If memory can be implanted - actual, realistic memory - then the implication would be that we are not who we think we are, our personalities too are some sort of construct, etc. As the saying goes, it's turtles all the way down! Profound psychological and philosophical implications, and only twenty pages!
(dir. Paul Verhoeven)
Verhoeven's Total Recall is fairly faithful to the source material... at least, as much as a two-hour movie based on a twenty-page story can be. Schwarzenneger is the main character (his name changed to Quaid, though if you watch the lips of the actors, it seems that it was "Quail" during filming but changed to Quaid during post-production), and he turns in some pretty nice work. He's always been known for his physical skills rather than his acting chops, but the film never asks too much of him; and while it can straddle the line of camp, he remains convincing and entertaining nonetheless.
The film's best decision is to expand upon his dream and add some pretty extensive subplots. The story, for instance, hints at a disruptive "revolutionary" force, but never really does much with it; likewise, it's stated that Quail is being followed by authorities because of someone he killed as an agent - this film expands upon that and uses his agent identity as a linchpin for much larger questions about identity, action, and desire. For instance, in the film Quaid finds out about midway through that he was actually the bad guy - his real name is Hauser, and he infiltrated the rebel movement to usurp them and eventually destroy them. Numerous times he's given the chance to abandon the rebel cause and resume his "true" identity, but each time he refuses. What an implication! This is truly an example of "our actions define us." His wife's role is also expanded: in the short story, she is simply a nagging wife, telling him to ignore his dreams and get back to work. In the movie, she is a distraction, revealed eventually to be an agent working for Hauser's original employer, and thus prepared to kill him if he discovers the truth.
There are also some very nice additions to the source material. There is an extensive subplot involving his "true" love - a rebel named Melina, who is not mentioned at all in the story. Think about this, though... If he infiltrated as Hauser and truly intended to squelch the revolution, then his love for her was a lie. And yet, she's the only thing about his former life he "remembers" - she shows up frequently in his Mars dreams as an idyllic companion. So did he really have feelings for her, or was that a cover? And after Rekal, do his new "true" feelings override his original intentions? Another bit of original material involves "mutants" - beings which suffered extensive developmental deformities from radiation exposure (itself part of another subplot dealing with alien technology on Mars that would make the atmosphere breathable). The mutants to me are the least interesting part, and it seems they're there mostly to show off some nice make-up effects. Some are vital to the plot, so it's not like the movie could do without them, but in my view they don't add much thematically - they just look nice.
So all in all, Total Recall may be outdated and verge on silliness frequently, but there are a lot of interesting implications and profound questions buried in the film. And if you'd rather ignore them, it's entertaining and exciting all the same.
Total Recall - 1.5/5
(dir. Len Wiseman)
For months, director Len Wiseman and members of the cast of this new film had been saying that fans of the original shouldn't worry - they were going to follow Dick's story more closely, therefore this new incarnation wasn't really a "remake"... That's a lie. A flat-out lie. Quaid doesn't go to Mars, and there are no mutants, so in that sense this version is more "faithful" to the source material, but virtually everything else is the same. Even most of the dialogue. Melina is still there, his "true" identity is still super-agent Hauser, his wife still works for the former employer, etc... It's like Wiseman took the original screenplay, shuffled around a few of the scenes, removed/combined a lot of the characters, and then decided that this was truer to Dick's vision. The strange thing is, though, that despite all the changes, the original film is actually more faithful to the ideas and concepts of the story than this new, streamlined version is.
How can that be? After all, if the original film added so many elements, it stands to reason that a new version without those additions must be closer, right? Literally yes, thematically no. This new film basically uses Rekal as a jumping-off point. Quaid still asks things like "Who am I?" in response to these revelations, and the film still deals with identity, but only in the most cursory, superficial of ways. (And the new film doesn't take the same chances as the old one. For instance, this time, Hauser is a double-agent - working for Cohagen to infiltrate the rebels, but really he was working with the rebels to get to Cohagen... This is a small change, essentially making Quaid the good guy the whole time, but it also lessens the emotional payoff of the original film - ie, it's more satisfying for Quaid to choose good over bad rather than to simply be good all the time.) Really, the differences between the versions are moot, as the changes of the new film are just an excuse for long, drawn out chase sequences. And that's the problem. The original film may be unintentionally goofy at times, but it's always interesting. This new incarnation, even with all its fancy CG effects and non-stop action sequences, is rarely interesting - in fact, it's rather boring. There's one standout sequence involving horizontal and vertical elevators, but other than that even the action scenes are visually uninteresting. Even if you ignore the first film - of which this is definitely a remake - this is still a disappointment.
No comments:
Post a Comment