Total Escapism:"Total Recall" as Metaphor for Movies

Warning: Spoilers for Total Recall, Shutter Island and Inception

Paul Verhoeven's Total Recall is a movie about movies. It reflects the reason we go to the movies, which is to escape in to a fantasy, where our seemingly lives can become exciting, where we can become heroes. Wouldn't it be great if we were meant for something more? The film takes this archetypal conceit but asks whether the hero is in a dream world, an interactive movie.

Douglas Quaid (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is a construction worker who- despite being married to the beautiful Lori (Sharon Stone) wants something more from life. He has an obsession with Mars- he dreams every night about being there with a mysterious woman (Rachel Ticotin). Mars is now a tourist destination, run by Governor Vilos Cohaagen (Ronny Cox). There's a rebellion uprising by settlers who have become mutated over time and Lori attempts to dissuade Quaid from going. But in the film's universe a company called Rekall can give you the memory of a vacation as real as actual memories; so Quaid opts for that instead. He also decides to go on a "Ego Trip," where he'll be a secret agent. The twist is he actually is a secret agent named Carl Hauser who worked for Cohaagen but switched sides. Quaid's whole life just an implanted memory and Lori is a spy assigned to watch him. Quaid then has to get his ass to Mars" to uncover the secrets of his identity.

We're asked whether Quaid really is a secret agent with implanted memories or experiencing the memory implant he wanted. It being a dream is given credence by the fact Quaid is told what happens in the Ego Trip by the Rekall salesman, which events then occur. Quaid saves Mars and gets the girl,. But it can also be taken as the movie opening acknowledging movie tropes. I'm a James Bond fan and this movie riffs on certain elements of those movies, particularly in the two major female characters. Lori is white, blonde, and a villainess. Melina-a resistance fighter on Mars and the woman Quaid was with in his dream- is brunette, dark-skinned. The Bond films have often had two contrasting women, one sometimes a femme fatale, like Lori. Getting with two beautiful women, even if one ends up trying to kill you, is part of the (male) fantasy of these kind of movies, and yes, Total Recall is more of a male fantasy than a completely universal experience.

Bond always goes to exotic locations and Mars is our foreign destination. But the movie tweaks this element of the Bond formula by making Mars unglamorous- it's seedy and militaristic. Bond would probably go to Saturn- the place Quaid is told twice would be preferable.

I want to talk a little about Schwarzenegger and his casting in this film. The fact he's so not the every-man makes the cover identity of supposed normal guy Quaid very impractical and funny. He was never a conventional movie star in that he was so exaggerated physically and vocally as to be ridiculous. He comes across as what a little boy would imagine himself as in his own action fantasy. And we wouldn't want to be ourselves in a movie, we would want to be something different. As McClane tells Quaid, you're always the same on a vacation. Rekall gives the option of being someone new. That's what's appealing about movies- we can see idealized versions of ourselves on screen.

Moreover, movies are often about people growing and becoming better people. Total Recall makes this proverbial character arc more cerberal by having Hauser and Quaid be different men in the same body. Total Recall is based on the short story We Can Remember It For You Wholesale  by Philip K. Dick, who also wrote Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the basis for Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, another film about implanted memories and question of identity. On that note, Who is Quaid? A dream, an implanted memory, an suppressed part of Hauser's identity. Actors take on roles and we're not always certain which ones are most reflective of that person's identity. Is the whole movie is a dream then Hauser is a role Quaid is taking on.

Total Recall was Verhoeven's follow-up to RoboCop. Both films are ultra-violent and pulpy but with real smarts and expertly crafted. Getting away from the metaphor-for-movies topic, Verhoeven satirizes and critiques corporate greed and apathy. Cohaagen would rather Mars' inhabitants die from lack of oxygen than lose control of the planet. While he comes across as a Bond-villain he's just a petty tyrant. And another appealing thing about movies is that we get to see the villains punished. And Coohagen gets one of the most disturbing deaths in film history.

In 2010 two films about movie-making and being lost in the reality of a film were released, both starring Leonardo DiCaprio- Christopher Nolan's Inception and Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island. I won't say they were directly inspired by Total Recall but there are similarities Shutter Island's main character does decide to have a lobotomy rather then face reality, just as Total Recall's ending implies Quaid is being lobotomized as denying reality. I view Shutter Island as a film about Andrew Laeddis creating his own movie in his head where he is the hero. And Inception ends with Cobb questioning if he's awake before embracing his kids, similar to how Quaid questions if the ending in a dream before kissing Melina.

The film's ending is so archetypal that even Quaid doubts it, and it's hard not to question it. We want to believe it's real even if all's fiction. If the fantasy is questioned in the context of the film, we begin to question it. We want to cling on to the happy ending because we want happy endings for ourselves. And Quaid does get a happy ending, even if he lobotomized, as morbid as that sounds. And maybe we can be as happy for him as well.