Definitely. I saw it in the theater when I was 13, and still think of it as a relatively recent movie. I guess that means Spaceballs is pretty old too.Originally Posted by JunkMonkey
Ugh!
Definitely. I saw it in the theater when I was 13, and still think of it as a relatively recent movie. I guess that means Spaceballs is pretty old too.
Ugh!
Total Recall made a lot of money because it's where you could see Arnold kill large masses of people in ridiculous ways, video game style. But Arnold is better remembered for Terminator and Predator, and then he stopped acting for awhile to do that other thing. Total Recall does get remembered for its multi-breasted mutant woman. Arnold made several SF films that are a lot like Total Recall and consequently, even though it was a success, it gets a bit lost. And there's a bit of a backlash against Verhoeven, the director. But it's still considered an iconic (awful) movie, enough that the remake kept the title and talks about how they love the first movie but they're "different" from and "more faithful to the original story" than Arnold's movie. Having seen the trailer, though, it doesn't look particularly different except for them not going to Mars.
But the real mangling will probably be from the Bladerunner sequel, part of Scott's campaign to revisit his past successes and destroy them. There have been a lot of SF novels optioned lately, some classics, some newer, and a lot of films in the works. So I think in a few years Dick will be less prominent, but at this point, he's reliable, so they'll keep doing him. Like, say, Walt Disney planning to come out with the 3-D animated "King of the Elves" based on Dick's short story of the same name, due out next year. That ought to freak out some Dick fans. And an adaptation of Ubik is in the works, I gather. I haven't read that one. I'm not a big fan of religious, trippy Dick.
Yes. I remember seeing there was a remake coming out and my first thought was "already?"
Hehe, me tooTotal Recall is not bad but as with most Arnie films, it has a comedy factor that lessens the impact of the SF element. Besides, everyone really remembers it for the bodily disfigurements (mutants, three-breasted woman, popping eyes when exposed to the Martian elements
) and I don't remember that being the major theme in the short story.
BTW, We Can Remember it for You, Wholesale is a brilliant collection, and one of the best story titles I can think of.
Don't recall Ubik being particularly 'religious'. Trippy yes, but not in a druggy-druggy way, more in a WTF is going on? van Vogtian way.
Just for the record, I don't think I got to the end of Total Recall. I seem to remember abandoning it at the moment I realised our hero had an entry-phone camera that allowed the audience to see the bad guys coming up the stairs about four levels down and the other side of a public concourse.
I may be misremembering details but I do remember thinking, 'this is sh**!'.
Man, all the hate for Totall Recall! I for one, enjoyed it a lot. The pacing was perfect, the psychological part of the plot actually made you think, the action scenes were first rate by the best in the business in his prime, and Sharon Stone never looked hotter.
It's unwatchable now due to the heavy 80s influence and deserves to be remade, but I am not optmistic it will do as well as the original.
I actually have great fondness for Total Recall, as it was the only time I have ever been in danger of landing on the floor, falling out of my chair laughing in the movie theater. Also, in terms of helping women in action films, it played a pivotal role in having Sharon Stone beat up Arnold. That was a big game changer. I also think the actors, including Arnold, did a really good job. If you look at the film as a broadly satiric guns and martial arts fest, it's a lot of fun. It's not even the worst SF film in the science department. (That would be The Core -- voted worst ever by scientists. Prometheus looks to run a close second.)
I think Dick played wonderfully, satirically and cleverly with a lot of high concept ideas, which seemed to have been him working things out about his own mind. He also mentored a number of major SFFH writers. But he didn't write most of his stories to be film-like. He wrote them the way that most SF stories were written for magazines, with written story structures involving word play, symbolism, internal dialogue, etc. So Hollywood tends to lift the what-if premise and then try to fit it into something more straight suspense or action. They do it to other authors too, but Dick's popularity has made it more high profile. However, A Scanner Darkly stuck pretty close to Dick's novel apparently.
But that's the best part! You have to watch the end, see if it's on You Tube.
Does anyone know who holds the rights to this story? As my friend and I are hoping to make a film based on it. Thanks in advance.
Good point there, I grew up with the same five channels and played baseball rather than watched it (not very well but I still had fun!). When I was a kid the only TV I ever watched was Saturday moring cartoons, I spent much of the rest of my spare time outdoors with friends mostly playing sports or riding our bikes. Nowadays most kids are glued to their sets watching myriads of TV offerings on 130 channels or getting stuff online from Hulu or like websites or playing an endless arrays of video games. I rarely see kids outdoors playing anymore. Maybe it's just me but that doesn't seem very healthy.
Big Dickhead here. That's what we Philip K. Dick fans have taken to calling ourselves. Just wanted to mention that popular online technology magazine The Verge recently did a big article on PKD attempting to explain his ongoing popularity. I think it's worth a read.
http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/1/34...ange-your-life
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