MovieChat Forums > Total Recall (2012) Discussion > Real or Rekall

Real or Rekall

posted 8 years ago by AnsweringTheCall
6 replies | jump to latest

Just watched the commentary of the directors cut, and Wiseman brings up the question as to whether Quaid is really Hauser or whether it is only the memory provided by Rekall. Wiseman says that he definitely leans one way, but declines to state which way that is, although he said he left enough subtle clues in the film for a discerning viewer to figure it out.

I think it was real for one simple fact; Maerick (sp?) at Rekall said that they cannot incorporate real events into the memory trip and gave the example of wanting a memory of a mistress on the side when you already had one in real life. He said that was how minds get blown. I think the fact that Quaid experience involved his real life wife points to the fact that it was real, as I don't see how you could come off of that and not experience marriage problems as a result of such overwhelming negative memories of your wife. I think Rekall would be crazy to include close associations of the customer in the memory, for this reason, as it would give Rekall a bad rep and would not be good for buainess.

I'm curious if others who have seen the movie think it was real or a memory?

[–] AnsweringTheCall 8 years ago

Correction: It was McClane, not Maerek who made the claim about minds being blown.

[–] vortexrider 8 years ago

I think it was real and a suggestion that it might not have been is just intentional baiting for discussion by the director.
Reason I think it's real is from watching the film three times or more and observing the behavior of the characters before Quaid goes to Rekall. If you watch his wife and his friend I think they act like they are in on it. For example you see that his fake wife does work at ER and you do see her hiding in the ER at the end of the film , so I think it means she said "I am a doctor" to get into the vehicle to begin with.

[–] rk00554 8 years ago

I took the idea of the people at recall saying you can't use real memories as part of the play on whether it was real or not. They shoot him up with the stuff and even though you don't see trip through the rabbit hole, all the sudden he is the super agent. That's what makes the experience even more real for the user. Obviously though it was written to be unknown. very underrated movie. Enjoyed it when it first came out and just rewatched it. Really don't get why it was so poorly rated.

[–] jamvetzal 8 years ago

Massive stigma against remakes and a fundamental misunderstanding that Total Recall was already an adaptation with heavy changes to the original source material (some were insane, others not so much)
The original took place on earth, has aliens, the tattoo on the arm bit and the rekall sign.

I for one think it is a fake, and the movie is about rekall trying to get control of a brain that had an adverse and eventually deadly reaction to a drug used in the process, it's from the point of view of a dying personality against his own mind trying to cope with death whilst slowly losing the ability to function at all, some characters are more or less exactly what Harry describes in the scene where he confronts Doug, either the result of drugs injected to try and stabilise Doug, or chemicals made by the brain which essentially turn death into the most epic dream ever as it tries to figure out what the hell this life thing all is.

I think this feedback was caused by him actually having had been an ancient and had his face replaced immediately before the intro of the movie which proceeded a memory alteration episode we didn't see.

Or that was just a random memory and the whole mistress thing is irrelevant and merely coincidental.

I think that might be why the original story went off the wall at the end with aliens (other than that dick might have been loaded and seeing aliens) because that was the brain at the last few ticks and now things were really falling apart.

[–] HarryPotterIsGarbage 8 years ago

Even though it was made in a way to be left for interpretation by the viewers, there's no sense in showing scenes where Quaid was not a part of the conversation if it was just a dream. There were various scenes where Quaid was not a part of. This logically would have to imply that everything was real, not a dream. But even with this, it's very odd that the movie still tries to leave it up to the viewers to interpret....

[–] MariX2 8 years ago

It has been some time since I watched, but I feel the original did a way better job of presenting the ambiguity of the movies events.

In this one, I thought it was real the entire time and there's only one or two scenes to imply it was a memory.