Is Total Recall real, or a dream?

I just bought the special edition DVD of Total Recall and thought this would be a good discussion.

I think I'm leaning towards that it's all in Quaid's head, a dream. i say this because I think everyone will agree that everything was real up to the point that quaid went to Rekall and was put into the machine.

Before that, he saw a commercial for Rekall on a TV in the subway. They guy on the commercial showed up later to try to make him take that red pill, along with his wife (Sharon Stone).

If it was real, Cohagen would have had to find the guy who did the commercial for Rekall to hire him to convince Quaid that all this was a dream. Even if Cohagen applied some "pressure" on this guy, how would he know to hire this guy specifically and not say, the salesman at Rekall?

What do you think?

P.S. I gotta say, this must be one of the most perfectly written screenplays ever.

[thomas7g]

There is an old japanese comic called Cobra. If you can find the first issue you will see many similiarities to the later Total Recal.

ALOT of similarities.

[The Blue Mule]

I love Space Cobra by Buichi Terasawa its a wonder of "other wordly tongue and cheak" nonscence. There is anumber of Comics (B+W), Computer Colorized Graphic novels, one movie, and a 52 episode tv series. There is also a number of other "hero" type Terasawa creations that sort of live sisde by side with that creation. Cobra to me is a cross of the best of what Lupin the 3rd had to offer, as well as James Bond(Terasawa loved), and Buggs Bunny.(Cobra gets away with anything)

The Comics are fun,however the colorized graphic novels I though were just masterfully done, they made me drool. I have 7 vols. so far but I believe there are more.

The Movie was a tad serious (believe it or not) and the music was by the same composer as the first Galaxy Express999 movie, and Future War 198x and the composer actually used whole pieces in the Cobra movie, which ruined it for me.

The TV series on the other hand was a blast, especially the 4 episode "Baseball" story where Cobra(aka Joe Gideon) goes udercover to find info about the galactic patrol which was in cahoots with the mafia. Cobra-Joe sets himself up as a potential new recruit for a game of futuristic and extremely violent sport based on Baseball, thing is when you try to get to first base and make it, you are safe,if you are tagged out you are basically an invalid,and taken off the field.
This tv series was very popular in Fance and is respected there, many years ago the playboy channel were suppose to dub this series and brodacast them, but it never happned. The French CD of the TV soundtrack is a sampling of the show,( they left out a tremendous amout of high octane stuff) this was a pseudo jazz based score with hints of classical music. The composer Kentaro Haneda(Macoss I think) really did a great job for this show, he eventually went on to compose music along with Hiroshi Miagawa for the epic Final Yamato movie in 83'

During the time I was working in Japan, I got word that there was a possible new tv series. This was told to me by my producer Mr Yamaki. Months later he told me they scrapped it. I was lucky enough to find cells from the TV series.

LOL I always though Mr Benedict, when he was younger and in his prime(still is in my opinion) would have made a great choice for a live action Cobra.

I love revisiting this show its a pelthora of high concepts, comic hijinks, and sensuousness.

And I never did liked total recall, accept for Jerry Goldsmith's score.

Laters!

Rich

[emerita]

Personally?? I think it was real and they tried to convince him that it was fake that was intended to be real......uh...I'll go now...

[Bug-Eyed Earl]

After watching this movie, I can't help but conclude that the movie was not real after Quaid went to Rekall.

HINTS:

1. "That's a new one- blue sky on Mars." In the Rekall office.

2. On the screen an image flashes by of the reactor seen later in the movie.

3. The image of the woman on the screen is exactly the visage of Melina.

4. Later in the movie, when Dr. Edgemar appears, he says that if quaid kills him, that one minute he'll be the hero of the resistance and the next he'll be Cohaagen's bosom buddy.

So if you assume that the events in the movie only happened in Quaid's head, what caused it? I have a theory that nothing went wrong, and the appearance of Dr. Edgemar was written into the program to tie together Arnold's true self and his ego-trip identity. In effect, he could both be someone else (Hauser) while in the story of the program, he is still Quaid.

The second theory for that is that Dr. Edgemar's appearance was exactly what he said it was- an attempt to get Quaid out of the dream that his schizoid embolism had trapped him in, and since Quaid would not come out, he was lobotomized at the end.

What I find interesting is that at the end, instead, of fading to black, the movie faded to white, as if to signify the end of the dream- whether he woke up ir was lobotomized is another matter.

So what do you think?

To sum it up, I think it was all an illusion. Whether or no it was all planned or a mistake is the part I am unsure of.

[emerita]

I believe the company knew that Mars was capable of atmosphere because of the alien technology they had found, but were afraid to access it because if Mars had an atmosphere then everyone would come there and they would lose their control over the mining rights there. At Recall, the salesman somehow illegally retrived the information for the dream sequences and once they were accessed ,it showed the true intentions of the aliens to Quaid. He then put two and two together then Cohagan tried to have him killed because of what he learned from the illegally retrived information at Recall because Quaid worked for Cohagan before, and when he tried to do something about the alien technology, Cohagan erased his memory and put him back on Earth. When he went to Recall, his memories resurfaced, but he at that point, could not decifer what was Recall and what were true memories. So he went back to Mars and started digging and found that most of what was in the recall sequence was actually illegally downloaded files. He figured it out and got to the alien device that was meant to produce the atmosphere. After it was all over he was kidding Melina that maybe it was all a dream.