NEW TOTAL RECALL REMAKE TRAILER SHOWS THAT IT’S A LOT LIKE THE ORIGINAL - Page 2

There's a difference. "Lockout" doesn't have a character named Snake Plissken in it. "Doomsday" doesn't have a character named Max Rockatansky about it.

Those movies pay homage to other movies without trampling on their memory because they don't have identical stories and the same characters. They just have similar premises and deliberately reminiscent aesthetic qualities like costumes and production design that echoes what came before without straight up copying it.

What's so saddening about this movie is that it's literally taking the exact same characters of a story that formed the foundation for a very special and memorable movie and neither matching, improving, or deviating interestingly from its approach.

Part of what made "Total Recall" so special was how its director's specific quirks took the raw materials of the story and molded them into something incomparably oddball in the best way possible.

The guy directing this isn't in the same league as Verhoven when it comes to inventiveness and creativity. If you know anything of his career, that should be obvious. There's no way his approach to this material can be anything but inferior to that of a unique talent like Verhoven.

The original "Total Recall" is a singularly whacko masterpiece with some the most uniquely loopy production design and special effects ever put on film, and the kind of deliciously hammy performances that are so out there, they don't seem to exist anymore in modern films (at least not in any I've seen lately).

This re-make looks like a pale imitation, sapped of all the wonderfully weird things that made "Total Recall" so endearingly batshit. There's no way this vanilla take on the material will come close to matching the twisted brilliance of its predecessor.

People are going a touch overboard with treating Total Recall as some untouchable sacred cow. It's great as a mad one-off hybrid of PKD, Verhoeven and Arnold's sensibilities. But it's not the only, or even best, way of handling these particular story and themes. How many people have fantasized over how the long lost Cronenberg version might've turned out? This isn't going to be that, and keeping the name and dialogue is shit. But rejigging the concept as more of a futuristic Bourne kind of thing is not an inherently worthless idea.

Yeah, that's why I said if you're going to re-do it, at least try to surpass the original and/or go in a different direction. This one doesn't seem to have the ambition to attempt either and again, even if it did, Wiseman doesn't have the ability to pull that off. But I still don't think another version is necessary, period.

I know the original is campy in some ways and the story wasn't meant to be, so in theory a very neat more serious version could be done, but I love the original, camp and all, so even a truly top quality more mature and thoughtful version doesn't interest me.

Tim Burton tried to make a version of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" that was less schmaltzy than the first film adaptation of that book. In some ways he succeeded, but dammit, we love the schmaltz.

This is why, in that case, even a more restrained remake felt like a waste of time for so many movie fans. The Oompa Loompa songs in the first one were cheesy compared to what's actually in the book. But they became classic cheese to a whole generation.

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Originally Posted by Paul C 

People are going a touch overboard with treating Total Recall as some untouchable sacred cow. It's great as a mad one-off hybrid of PKD, Verhoeven and Arnold's sensibilities. But it's not the only, or even best, way of handling these particular story and themes. How many people have fantasized over how the long lost Cronenberg version might've turned out? This isn't going to be that, and keeping the name and dialogue is shit. But rejigging the concept as more of a futuristic Bourne kind of thing is not an inherently worthless idea.

See I don't have a problem with that, approaching something with a new twist is fine, and it's why the Robocop remake hasn't given me any reason to be angry at it (yet).  It's simply all about how the studio approaches the material.  MGM is hiring some really fucking good filmmakers and actors, and I see that their heart is in the right place.  But Sony seems to be approaching this movie like any number of other seasonal placeholders...the hiring of Wiseman was red flag number one.  Nobody hires that guy with the intent of doing something interesting.  Nobody.  He's about the worst studio hack in the business right now, after Rob Cohen and Doug Liman.  Red flag number two was the trailer, just confirming red flag number one; that they just lifted the major beats from the Verhoeven film, put a rock video vibe to it, took out the gonzo craziness and dream-vibe subtext, and just threw lots of money at visual FX and stunts, but there's nothing significant to distinguish this movie from most every other Hollywood shoot 'em up. 

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Originally Posted by Ambler 
 He's about the worst studio hack in the business right now, after Rob Cohen and Doug Liman.

Oh GOD, is his reputation that bad now? What a sad, sad state of affairs. This mofo directed "Swingers"! What a fall from grace to go from something like that to what he's been doing lately. What the hell happened to him in the last ten years?

"Go" and "The Bourne Identity" were good too. It's a shame he's gone downhill since the latter. Based on some early Liman movies, I'll always believe he has talent. He should just choose his projects more carefully.

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Originally Posted by User_32 

David Cronenberg despised Verhoeven's version of Total Recall. I'd love to hear his thoughts on this one when it's out. 

He did admit that he's still crushed he never got to do his version and that his judgment was clouded on the issue.  I doubt he would even give this version any such excuse.  He'd say it looked like shit.  Funnily enough, Colin Farrell dropped out of doing Cronenberg's Cosmopolis to do this instead.

If I were a director who was in line for certain gigs and didn't do them, I would do nothing but badmouth the end result anyway.

Liman has clearly declined from his early promise, but I'm not sure what he's done to be worthy of being lumped alongside Len Wiseman. Of course, Wiseman's a perfectly competent director with no imagination and nothing to say, which is bad but doesn't strike me as being the worst of the worst either. I would still put him a notch or two above Johnathan Liebesman and Shawn Levy and, hell, Michael Bay. 
 

Now you guys have nurtured within me the thought of a Cronenberg-directed Philip K. Dick adaptation, and damn you for it.

Jumper is the only truly bad film among his work, at least out of what I've seen.  It will be interesting to see how his Tom Cruise sci-fi actioner, All You Need Is Kill, turns out.

It's Groundhog Day or Source Code meets Starship Troopers.

I do believe he did something like that. It was called EXISTENZ.

Also even though it's not a sci-fi, I always thought Cronenberg might've been scratching his Total Recall itch with History Of Violence.

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Originally Posted by The Prankster 

Liman has clearly declined from his early promise, but I'm not sure what he's done to be worthy of being lumped alongside Len Wiseman.

Have you seen Mr. And Mrs. Smith???  It's probably Pitt's worst movie after The Mexican.  It's style, tone and pacing was from the school of Brett Ratner.  Jumper was exceedingly average in almost every respect...the concept and Sam Jackson pretty much saved it. 

Liman's biggest problem is that he seems to be pathologically incapable of developing interesting villains for his movies.