Total Recall (2012)

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

This is good example of movie that focuses getting good looking shots and forgets that story and world around it. This is remake of Total Recall (1990) which was based on Phil K Dick's short story. I think this is more based on Schwarzenegger movie than on Phil K Dick's short story. This has couple scenes from Schwarzenegger movie which didn't move the story ahead and could have been dropped. If you have seen Schwarzenegger movie this movie is spoiled for you. This follows Schwarzenegger movie that closely. I can't say which is closer to original short story because I haven't read it.

After great war only Great Brittain, some parts of France and Australia are inhabitable. That map at the beginning shows that there is something close to Great Britain. Workers come to Great Britain from Australia through the Earth. I liked Earth vs Mars setting of 1990 movie better. In this Britain has nothing to threaten and it's quite strange that Great Britain would be inhabitable is rest of the Europe or world is not. This time evil plan is to replace all Australian workers with robots, occupy Australia and send Australians to inhabitable areas. 1990 evil plan of controlling air supply in Mars made much more sense. I think I am saying that Schwarzenegger movie made more sense than this serious 2012.

I would like to hear how they justify the design of the world. In Australia everything was more or less like slum. There were small apartments almost hanging in the air. It was like they were meant to be obstacle course. I didn't see any practical reason for them to be build like that. Probably in real world they would collapse under their own weight. In Great Britain everything was build on levels. There were elevators moving cars between levels. Elevators for humans moved in vertical and horizontal directions. When movie went to elevator shafts, it looked like there is no other way to move anywhere but elevators, Web of elevator shafts was so dense that there hardly could be anything else. Car elevators didn't make any more sense. They could take only one car at the time and moved so slowly that there would be pretty long lines for them during rush hour. I don't know how that kind of system would work even on lighter traffic.

The wife. In this movie Katie Beckingsale plays the role of Michael Ironside and Sharon Stone of original movie. In original movie Michael Ironside had reason to kill Arnold. In this there is no reason why Beckinsale would want to kill Colin Farrell. She wants to kill him as soon as she learns who Colin Farrell is. She didn't know who he was when she played the wife. She tells later that he was well known person. Everyone act in the end like both Farrell and Beckinsale were high-ranking people. The why she didn't know who Farrell was before it was told to her and why she was so eager to kill him? It wasn't like he had killed her wife.

I won't point all plot holes here. It would make this post too long. I go straight to ending. In the end tunnel between Australia and Britain is destroyed. I don't know how unrepairable it became and how long it would take to prepare it. That made Australia independent and everyone was happy. If they wanted independence, why they didn't do anything for it? Why they played Britain's game. It was like Britain needed them more than They needed Britain. If reason was Britain's police forces in Australia, I think they could hold their own until tunnel is prepared. It is also hard to believe that there was only one tunnel. It was never explained why Britain and Australia stayed inhabitable. Britain wanted to invade Australia because of over population. Why not clean more room for people? They had plans to replace workers with robots. Cleaning should not be too hard for robots.

Why Hollywood puts lot of money into these movies and leave tons of mistakes that could be found on planning stage? This looked good and had potential to be much better. Without all the stupidity and references to original movie this could have been really good scifi movie. I really wanted the ending to show that all this was all just implanted memory. That would have made all stupidity of the story less stupid.

One more thing. Because Hollywood is lacking original ideas, I give one here. Please make movie which happens in this world thousands of years in future. Britain and Australia have evolved differently because tunnel was destroyed and there were no way to contact each other because pollution and lack of resources. Movie where they meet again could be interesting.