I don't get why people tend to rate Total Recall as "another Arnie film" instead of a Verhoeven film (it also pissed me off when the Nostalgia Critic concluded "well, it's an Arnie film"). If you generally appreciate Verhoeven's films you will find that Total Recall is much much more than just an "Arnie action-fest". It may not be as brilliant and ambitious as some other Verhoeven films but it's still far from being your average action flick.

I guess that depends on how you see Arnie films. You seem to dislike them, i think they're great, just like many of Verhoevens films.

For example I much prefer the Arnie version of Conan, did you see the weedy little kid they got to play Conan in the reboot? I kept thinking he was part of a five minute growing up montage. Little wonder they're making a new Arnie Conan. I also much prefer the Arnie version of Total Recall to the remake, i didn't mind the remake but there were lots of Arnie moments in the Verhoeven version that I really enjoyed.


Oh, speaking of reboots, I just read this article: http://www.blastr.com/2013-9-5/finally-stargate-coming-back-live-rebooted-film-trilogy-0

Conan is a fun, joyously fascist and shameless epic. It's barbarians being barbarian with huge in-your-face milius cinematography and poledouris music. Not my cup of tea (I'm more cloak-and-dagger than hulk-smash-fantasy), but in its genre it's perfectly well done and efficient.

Commando is just schwarzie cheese. To watch ironically. I don't see any point in that movie except being a big joke at its own expense. That said, it would have been awesome if the hero and the baddie's roles or character designs had been swapped around. But it's very skippable. Even moreso than highlander.

Total Recall is fun, because it's a PK Dick-ian story, with lots of PK Dick-ian themes. More Inception than Blade Runner, I'd say (but haven't seen Inception), still adorably paranoid, with a deliciously twisted plot. Much more intellectual film than the two (or three, if you include Highlander) others.

I'd say : watch Conan, as a genuine classic, and Total Recall, as a fun film. Watch commando and highlander just to know what the others are talking about, but in my opinion they're not worth it by themselves...

Adrian Paul is awesome as Duncan MacLeod. Unfortunately he was in 'Highlander: the Source'.

Poor Verhoeven, I recall a fan asked him how he feels about the remakes of his movies and he responded with "Very depressed".

I would be too.

...and yes, Total Recall is far more than "Just an Arnie film."

Momoa was a better fit for Conan than Arnold was. Too bad the rest of the movie EXCEPT for Perlman is hideously boring and unmemorable.
Arnold DID have much more charisma and screen presence than Momoa could ever have though.
The thing that made the original Conan GREAT is that everything besides Arnold was just incredibly well done, from the Poledouris soundtrack (which is one of the greatest movie scores ever made) to the environments used to GODDAMN JAMES EARL JONES.
Holy shit Arnold Conan is just a delightful and astounding film. Momoa Conan is sadly extremely forgettable. I can remember A LOT of lines from the older one. I can remember most of the soundtrack. The riddle of steel and the answer of flesh.
I remember nothing about the new one.

I'd buy that for a dollar!

Not more.

Let the original actor speak about Robocop:
Peter Weller talks RoboCop at Hero Complex Film Festival

It's strange how so many recent remakes feel simply soul-less. As if they had been done by machine. I remember a blurred succession of flat images, flat characters, flat scene. All in the same tint. None with the original's enthousiasm or vivid texture.

They all feel like work having been done for work.

Never mind the fact that the Scotsman was playing a Spaniard alongside a Frenchman's Scotsman.

Also : question.


Long ago, I had read a Verhoeven quote about (i'm quite sure) Robocop being the story of a caterpillar who remembers having been a butterfly. Then I've seen this quote again, but reverted to the more classic butterfly remembering having been a caterpillar. The first version would make more sense to me for robocop (it pinpoints exactly the "frankenstein monster" aspect of it, and why the remake, and its superheroical spidermanish jumps and mobility, completely fail to convey this aspect of tragedy), but I cannot find an original source to check which journalist actually got it wrong.

Does anyone here have the origin of that quote ?

As pointed by Telika, after the first Spiderman 2000´s movie, the cinema industry went in a frenzy super-hero action movie wave. I used to like Spiderman for his own dilemmas about being annonimous, relationships and family (these themes are approched in a bit dull way, but they were the strong point of the character, not the action). The thing just turned in a pure action plot, replacing the typical action movies from 90´s, the action-cop based ones. For me, what is fantastic about Robocop, again, is his dilemmas, the inherent conflict (or lack) of "human personality", in the end, the drama of human identity. Which this one shows to lack, established, for example, by the foldable helmet (in the first movie, the Robocop fights against not only criminals, but mostly his condition of a pure "product" from a corporation and the loss of human identity.

I'd have loved to have seen Darren Aronofsky's take on it. The script was done, but he (and I think it was better for him as a director) walked away when the chance to make Black Swan came along - not that surprising given that MGM wasn't doing well financially at the time, either.

The new director scrapped Aronofsky's script without reading it which is fair enough - it is his project. Still - I would guess that Aronofsky's version would be a bit less of the typical Hollywood formula as this trailer suggests. [Though - I DO think Aronofsky needs to find a new theme aside 'obsession' eventually, himself.]

The Scotsman was playing an Egyptian that was playing a Spaniard. Highlander. Great movie.

Probably the most least multicultural film ever.

That sentence makes as much sense as the casting.