Total Recall Panel; Colin Farrell, Jessica Biel & Co discuss the remake / re-adaptation re-whatever.

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I’ll admit I was confused by this film for a while. When it was first announced the impression was definitely that we were getting a ne adaptation of Phillip K Dicks awesome story ‘We Can Remember It For You Wholesale’ and NOT a remake of classic, over the top 90s Arnie fest Total Recall. I was fired up for that movie, as an avid Phillip K Dick fan (Yes  I almost wrote as an avid Dick fan, ha-ha-ha) I knew that as much fun as Total Recall is, there’s a deeper, darker movie waiting to be made from that story.

Then all of sudden it was a remake of the 90s film and suddenly it’s like “well nobody needs that do they?”. To clarify that’s not because I’m some anti-remake luddite, quite the contrary; if the film as being remade in a different language sure; I know that back in the day The Maltase Falcon was made 3 9yes THREE) times in 10 years, the third time is the classic Humphrey Bogart version we all know and love. But things were very different then, no DVDs or Blu-Rays, no streaming downloads and no Movies on TV. Now another English Language version, another American English language version, seemed kind of redundant. Of course if you think about  it carefully then the  themes of the film, government / corporate control of essential resources, corporations in charge of building, re-building and managing those resources, troops occupying foreign lands, financial woes, terrorism (is it ever justified?) the blurs between reality  and fantasy,  those things are perhaps even more pertinent now than they were then. So maybe we’re in for more of a Cameron Blockbuster where we get a good dose of social commentary along with our kick ass explosions?

But then it seemed to change yet again and it seemed more like John Carpenter’s The Thing. That film was almost 100% an adaptation of the Novella ‘Who goes there’, but the title, its imagery, and a few other moor details were taken from the 1950s, cold War, classic version ‘The Thing From Another World’. So the title and a few beats were to be used, giving the film instant recognition value to the over 30s, but the film was still likely to be based more on the book than on the Paul Verhoeven directed movie.

Right now who can be 100% sure what to expect, although Farrell does try to explain a little here. Will we get to hear the immortal line “Consider that a divorce”? (Oh so prescient Arnold) Will the Tokyo Samurais win the World Series? (will the world series ever actually be the WORLD series?) Will Martian Prostitutes still have 3 breasts? Or being the 21^st century will we now have to Martian male prostitutes with 2 penises! Most importantly why haven’t they invented that digital nail polish yet?

Get ready for a surprise...