Total Recall (2012)

[Talking Backwards]

from the imdb trivia:

"Tom Hardy and Michael Fassbender were considered for the role of Quaid. "

...and they went with colin farrell

I honestly don't see any of the three being better than another for that role. Both Hardy and Fassbender have better acting chops, but Hardy has the physique, but not the right charisma, while Fassbender is all acting and charisma. I guess he could hire Bale's coach to get into shape, but of the three Farrel seems to be Hollywood's best choice for $$$ as he's closer to the "everyman" that was actually in the original story. The screen adaptation for the original used Arnold, who was nothing at all like the character in the story they adapted it from.

yeh, he has me more interested than any other aspect of this. kate seems like an improvement over sharon stone, biel is super hot, but im having trouble picturing her kicking ass like the first melina. and who could be the more menacing pursuer than ironside as rictor?! i guess we'll wait and see.

Ironside was just playing Ironside (again) like he does in almost every single movie though.

 

[derek]

and he's nails in all of them.

 

[neal]

fuck yeh, ill watch ironside do ironside all day

Fassbender is all acting and charisma. I guess he could hire Bale's coach to get into shape

did you see 300? he was the most aggro badass spartan aside from King Leonidas himself!

 

[Archelaos]

Fassbender is brutal. He could have nailed it rull gud.

I'm down with Farrell, though. I think he's underrated. Picks stupid roles. But I think he can deliver. I'm more concerned with Blonde Harold and Jessica Biel.. :Smug:

 

[WhiteBeastofWotan]

I shared an elevator ride with Colin Farrel today.

True story.

 

[Talking Backwards]

fuck yeh, ill watch ironside do ironside all day

did you see 300? he was the most aggro badass spartan aside from King Leonidas himself!

Wow, really? I know it's against the status quo or whatever, but 300 did nothing for me. It just looked like an overly long macho MTV video/game with a horrible CGI wolf (seriously, WTF with how good the rest of the movie looked?). I fell asleep at the theater watching it, and almost fell asleep watching it the second time around at home. So I honestly did not remember him in that movie. Then again, I'm not sure I had even noticed the actor until Eden Lake. I guess I'll have to watch it again to see what he looked like. As I already said, he has everything else over Farrell already. Although I kind of see Farrel in the same way I see Ryan Reynolds. Both are in shitty movies most of the time, yet given the right script and director, they do just fine.

But hey, at least it's not Paul Walker.

 

[neal]

I shared an elevator ride with Colin Farrel today.

True story.

you should have informed him that MY NAME IS NOT QUAAAAAIIID

 

[Enemy242]

complete and utter shit. that trailer gave me even less hope than i had before (but then again why i had ANY hope that they would turn an amazing story/awesome sci fi movie into anything other than a shitty blockbuster action summer wannabe macho cgi fuckandsuck is beyond me). a damn shame that such an awesome story with a great legacy is going to be wasted by this horse shit that won't be worth anything other than getting piss ass drunk and going to the theater going FUCK YEAH GUNS, SLOW MO, TITS, EXPLOSIONS AND CGI WOOOOOOOOOO.

the second i saw them turning the recall scene into some seedy drug den esque cgi area with the dude from harold and kumar spouting out slang i knew that the rest of the trailer would be the typical bullshit aimed at brain dead 18-24 year old guys, i should've turned it off right there.

 

[El Stormo]

you should have informed him that MY NAME IS NOT QUAAAAAIIID

NYAAAAHHHHHH!!

 

[Talking Backwards]

So, everyone in this thread that guessed it would suck was right. Not that you could actually know for sure either way until it was finished, but it royally sucked. The only thing good about it was that the cast was actually a lot better (Farrell was more believable, but Arnold was just more "fun" and Kate was so much more a badass than Sharon Stone) and the special effects were pretty fantastic looking. The problem is, there was no real dialogue, none of the dark comedy or one-liners, no real ultraviolence anywhere (PG-13),no strong language and no soul. The pacing was awful too and was like Sonic The Hedgehog from about the first twenty minutes until the end. It was like watching someone playing a videogame that "borrowed" liberally from Deus Ex HR (yes, the game rather than Blade Runner that inspired Deus Ex) and bits of Mass Effect. Toss in Minority Report and 5th Element for the overall cityscapes as well.

I went to see it with a friend who had actually never seen the original (what the fuck?), yet he had seen practically every single other Arnold movie and all of the big deal sci-fi movies of the 80's and 90's. I tried to get him to watch it before we saw the remake, but he said that he wanted to go in as a blank slate and no opinion and that he would watch the original after.
So after we left the theatre, I said "Ok, so before I say anything...what did you think?". And he says "It was awesome". Not suprising at all, but still a disappointment. So we then watched the original, and I got to listen to him doing spot on Arnold impersonations all the way through it.

The best thing about the entire experience at the theatre was this awesome trailer:

 

[derek]

Not going anywhere near this. Saw The Dark Knight Rises three times in cinema and each time the trailer for this was shown and it looks terrible.

 

[theoden236]

i'm disappointed no one said "start the reactor" or "i got five kids to feed." still, not a bad remake though

 

[DreamNeonBlack]

Biggest problem was...the story. Once you thought through it, it made zero sense.
Spoilers, though it just doesn't matter.


Human workers to build ultra advanced war robots? Why not program the robots to build more?
The overcrowded UFB wanted to invade the overcrowded colony, commit genocide and simply repopulate it? Even though a giant world war polluted and killed almost the entire world.
The UFB had only one way to invade. Why not just block that one route? Invasion over.
The air machine for the Arnold version could have partially saved the story line. Since most of the world was polluted, simply spending time on cleaning it up, instead of war robots could have reclaimed the earth.

Stupid story, good cast and FX.

 

[Talking Backwards]

Biggest problem was...the story. Once you thought through it, it made zero sense.

Yeah. "There wasn't even really a story, and what was there was completely stupid" is how I summed it up to my friend. Mostly because of how illogical most of the supposed plot was (on top of what you've already listed). Much of it also seemed like they were trying to do a wink at the camera with some of the dialogue that was lifted or altered just enough--but you still knew where it came from--so that they could claim that it was still "Total Recall".

The next remake of a Verhoeven film is Robocop...

 

[derek]

The mooted Robocop sequel did seem to have much higher calibre people associated with it.

That said, I am 110% against ANY remake of Verhoeven flicks. Leave them alone.

 

[Enemy242]

Yeah saw it day 1 (5 people in the theater other than me at 4 pm, lawl) even though I knew it was going to be shit, I just love Total Recall. To be fair though I did enjoy myself a bit, as I love sci-fi sets/worlds and the cgi/effects/cities were quite breathtaking and well done. The actual movie itself was garbage though, and sadly collin ferral was the best actor in it (wtf?). Story like you said was complete crap and filled with plot holes, I was hoping for maybe a re-imagining of the original story or something but they did pretty much exactly the 1990 film just with a lot more slow mo, explosions, a couple of nods to the original (which fell pretty flat) etc. It was honestly just so bland and the action was so drawn out I was seriously bored in some action scenes waiting for the next segment.

If you'd never seen Total Recall I could see how it'd be enjoyable since the story is pretty damn good regardless and the cgi and art design was great, but the movie was as shit as I thought it would be and not really worth my money to see some great cgi and set design (could've just played DXHR again).

They really need to stop rebooting movies, or at least do them in a different way as carbon copies like this are simply retarded. I hardly ever go to the movies now and this is a perfect example why, plus I thought that asian crazy action movie looked completely fucking stupid, so over the top that it was just bothersome and didn't even look enjoyable. I'll see the expendables 2 and get stupid drunk, but the dark knight rises is the only movie i've gone to see recently that was good (and other than that i really haven't seen much because they all look like shit).

 

[Talking Backwards]

Story like you said was complete crap and filled with plot holes

If you'd never seen Total Recall I could see how it'd be enjoyable since the story is pretty damn good regardless and the cgi and art design was great

???

 

[neal]

maybe he means the over-all story arc was good (since it was stolen from the original), but the way it was told scene to scene was bad. or maybe he's stoned off protein shakes and not making any sense.

 

[Enemy242]

yeah sorry, the story that the movie told and the way it told it was pretty crappy, but the overall story that it's based on (and certain parts) would be quite good if you hadn't seen it before. My view is just a bit more biased and harsh because i'm really really familiar with it all, whereas someone just coming in could probably forgive a lot of the bullshit in the movie, whereas it really irks me.