Last night I went to see the remake of the 1990 Arnie classic Total Recall. That film was an adaptation of a PKD short story "we can remember it for you wholesale". I've read a lot of PKD stuff but not this one .. and I can't find it on Kindle (anyone with a link to a copy please I'd appreciate it)I have, however, seen the 1990 version ... oooooh .... about 20 times. I don't know why I'm so hooked on this film, it's not all that really but it's just such a joyous romp and Schwarzenegger is just so perfectly cast in the role, his ability to switch from confused grunt to True Lies spy type adding depth that is rare in an arnie flick (ahem...
)so, to the new one.The major (some might say only ... but more of that later) difference is the setting. where the 1990 movie was set between Earth and Mars, the 2012 iteration is set between The UK and ... Australia, with the rest of the world having been rendered uninhabitable in some sort of chemical war. In this case Oz is the Ghetto that is being abused to serve the needs of the elite. Colonials (as they're known ... I liked that bit) travel to work each day in the UK, filling factory jobs and whotnot and return in the evening.
Blimey, that's a long way to go to work. Yes, yes it is .. BUT NO never fear, we have future technology and stuff .... to link the two! HOORAHHH!! They have built the channel tunnel on steroids (or at least some sort of illicit drugs) a system called The Fall, like a tube train through the center of the planet, which links Oz to the UK .... in only 17 minutes, apparantly (judging by the frottage of them traveling on it) exerting around 1g on its passengers during the first half of the journey that gets reversed for the second half.
Here's the first problem. Stylistically I like it (like an introverted space elevator) and it does effectively isolate the communities, it's also rather well rendered especially the terminii, but it travels roughly 8,000 miles in 17 minutes ... that requires roughly 28,000 mph *average* speed. pretty quick, even by TGV standards. Next we get into which way up gravity goes or how much of it there would need to be to achieve a 17 minute transit time. Clearly gravity alone won't cut it; 1g in vacuum, even if sustained, which it wouldn't be falling through the planet, would only achieve something like 11,000 mph after 8.5 minutes. I guesstimated something like 7gs would be required to achieve anything near the velocities required. Colin certainly would not be reading his book on the way to work. Finally, look at a cut away rendering of our planet to see what it would be going through once below the crust and into the mantle. It's all nonsense, almost as bad as having FTL to get to a planet but needing to revert to quad bikes for surface travel (yes, Prometheus, I am looking at you
)Then there's the acting.
I wouldn't say I'm a Colin Farrel fan, per se, but I think he's OK ... mostly. well ... not in this he isn't. You don't believe in him for one minute, there's no humour in his character (unlike in Arnie's) so he seems to take himself far too seriously and he's not a good action type. The confusion of identity that is (should be) the foundation of this film is simply not there. Then the stone/ironside pairing from TR1 has been rolled into one character (blekinsale or whatever-her-name-is). At least she (like Farrel) has a british accent, everyone else seems to speak american. They say you don't realise the worth of something till you lose it, well the tension between Ironside and Stone in TR1 really did add to the relationship between Stone and Arnie. Here that is lost. I could go on but honestly, none of the characters have any depth ... and remember that I'm comparing this to a Schwarzenegger move when I say that. 
Finally, and most unforgivably, the plot. the original tale is one of identity confusion, as with most PKD (I'm extrapolating here a bit as I've not read the short story base, but as just about all PKD is based around identity crises of one sort or another I feel pretty confident that I'm on the mark here. feel free to correct me if not). The questions include; are you who you are in the present, regardless of what your body has done in the past and what personality inhabited it? Do you owe that previous personality any fealty or are you answerable only to your present state? if this other personality did things your current self finds abhorrent, do you bear any responsibility for that? If you are a constructed personality, do you have any validity in the real world? All fascinating questions, examined in passing by TR1, almost completely ignored by TR2. That's not really the worst bit though. the worst bit is, aside from the location, this is, scene by scene, almost exactly the same film as TR1 .. it just manages to be humourless and dafter at the same time, distilling the worst of both worlds. There is one major plot divergence
Spoiler:
On the plus side the 3 breasted woman gets them out
I wanted to be more positive about this film but I find that I can't. If you have never seen the original, I'd be really interested to hear what you think of TR2 but honestly, just go watch TR1, it's a far superior film and that's a pretty amazing thing to say.
4 stars; one for each breast and an extra because some stuff does blow up
This is exactly what I was thinking of when I read that description. As I understand it, it would totally work if you could ever actually build the thing, but building it would be absurdly complex/costly.
