Total Recall (1990)

SPOILER WARNING!!! This post spoils movies Total Recall (2012) and Total Recal(1990)

There are two ways to view Total Recall movies. Either everything really happened or most of the movie happens in our hero's brain-damaged head. Both sides have good arguments for them. If I had to choose side it would be the latter. Which side you pick depends if you believe that Rekall treatment started or not. I think it started in both movies. Somehow something went wrong and Quaid started Rekall experiment at Rekall premises thinking something went wrong. After all everything happened almost as Quaid ordered. In original movie he got program named "Blue Sky of Mars", they mentioned aliens while creating the program and we can see something like alien device on Mars on screens of Rekall room. Remake didn't make that point so clear. In it solders came too fast to be in real world. Other side can argue that Quaid was primed to go to Rekall and order the program that reminded him who he was.

Then we get to another major scene in this. The scene where someone tries to talk Quaid out of dream. In original it is Rekall employee or fail safe program. In remake it is Quaid's colleague. This scene doesn't make any sense if these things are real. These persons are on villains side and villains plans are working as planned at that point. There is no point to talk Quaid out of what he is doing, because he is doing what villains want him to do. In original movie Rekall employee tells Quaid exactly what will happen if Quaid kills him. Quaid shoots him, because Quaid sees sweat on employees  face. After that everything happens as employee described. Other side can argue about sweat, but I like to know reasons why villains want to talk Quaid out of what he was doing at that points.

In remake scene is not that clear. There colleague tries to make Quaid shood Jessica Biel. Biel acts like program that doesn't know what to do in this situation. When Quaid sees tear on Biel's face he shoots the colleague. In both movies Quaid is told that something went wrong and he is in danger to be locked inside his mind if he doesn't come back. I would be unethical to sell memories, where customers family and colleagues are his enemies. That tells that something went wrong. In original movie there are two shots that hint Quaid's wife and colleague are spying on him before he went to Rekall. I don't remember remake making so sure that wife and colleague were spying on Quaid before he went to Rekall. I might have missed that because I didn't watch the movie from that point of view.

If it was just a dream, you don't have to find reasons why Michael Ironside can walk freely. He is clearly danger to everyone. Endings would be more meaningful. In both movies Quaid pauses for a moment thinking was this real or just a dream. Then he continues to live in dream. He could still come back to real world, but chooses to stay in dream.

Only good argument I can think for this to be real is that in both movies it was told, that procedure wasn't even started when Quaid became agent. Counter argument to that is that Quaid just thinks that way and what we see after he was put to machine is Rekall dream. I didn't have opinion which was the case until now. In remake it felt more like it was dream on first time. Now that I watched this from point of view it was dream,  I saw all small hints pointing it was just a dream.