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Total Recall: Was Quaid’s experience real or the Recall?
- Thread starter natjjohn
- Start date
You're wrong though.
No One outside of Cohaagen's very close circle had even seen the ruins, let alone analyzed them to determine what they would do.
Next, you have the salesman at Rekall describing -exactly- what hapens to Doug, complete with the technician then casually describing the ending.
Verhoven is right though, the movie works both ways intentionally, because it -has to-, if only for Doug's suspension of disbelief.
Remember that his brain is continually fighting the notion that he is a super secret double agent, with a super hot secret girlfriend (having to make his wife a bad guy in the process to allow for guilt-free side romance) fighting an evil corp, and ending up saving the planet.
Everything is meant to assuage his doubts, including the faked attempt to convince him he is having a stroke, but then showing him the Rekall rep sweating as he is scared.
All suspension.
Now this being said, I also don't believe he is having an actual brain aneurysm, simply waking up at the end after having had the Dream of his life. Re-adapting to his usual life is going to be a bitch.
The movie doesn't tell us how widespread the information is, but they have definitely analyzed the alien machine to determine what it does. As I said, Quaid and Cohaagen are arguing about it when the button is pushed. They discuss it before that, with Cohaagen saying they've determined it won't work, and that's why the aliens never turned it on. Why would Quaid even want to turn it on, if he didn't think that's what it would do? And how many people must know that that's what they determined it was for? Word would get out. Actually, if my memory serves, word HAS gotten out - doesn't Kuato tell Quaid that's what the machine does?
And the general public 100% knows about the existence of alien tech, if not what it does; it's not only on the news, but Quaid has a mine worker flatly tell him "they found alien shit inside" and closed the mine.
And Rekall also says they've incorporated that into their scenario. It's more than enough to plausibly explain away the "blue sky on Mars", if you want the story to be real.
Watch the screens when he is getting prepped for the procedure... Blue sky on Mars, alien architecture, Mileena's face right on the screen! RECALL RECALL RECALL!!!
No. Kuato finds out when exploring Doug's mind.
The word hasn't gotten out at all, as if it had it would have spread like wildfire and incited riots on Mars where oxygen is, as you know, a huge issue and Cohagen's monopoly.
Oh, that's right. But still, if Quaid knows, and Cohaagen knows, then other people know; neither of them made that determination. But it does make discounting the "blue sky on Mars" less plausible than I just said, for sure.
At this point that's your head canon my man.
No one on Mars outside of Cohagen and Quaid, maybe a head science guy, have the slightest clue. As I said, if Kuato and the resistance had the slightest inclination about what the ruins may do, they would have a LOT more support and organize a full uprising/ civil war.
If no one on Mars knows, no one on Earth do either, or it would be all over the media.
The only thing we see is talk of "Alien ruins".
That's not "head canon", it's logic. Someone else has to know. I didn't speculate who the someone else is. You're inexplicably certain that it's just one guy. I have no idea, but it's hard to keep a secret.
Your logic that the rebels don't know isn't sound, because you're basing that on their actions in what you believe is a dream. If what we see on Mars is all fake, then all we know from the real world is that there are riots on Mars over air.
If the Mars scenes are real, then the rebels indeed don't know, which makes it hard to believe Rekall would, which does put a logical inconsistency in the hypothesis that it's all real.
Small scale ones, over wanting more air/ less expensive air.
Again, -in the film-, there is 0 indication that anyone else knows, as shown by Kuato finding out when digging in Quaid's memory.
You missed my point. If Kuato digging in Quaid's memory is a dream, then it has no bearing on reality. You can't use evidence from a dream to prove that people outside the dream do or don't know things.
Coulda sworn he said it was a dream before. I remember him saying it's up to the audience to decide but that there were more clues it was a dream and that's how he reads it.
Calm down, bro. I think you're misinterpreting the post.
The argument is that, if the events are a recall, they're a delusion experienced solely by Quaid. Which would mean that a scene without him doesn't make any sense: he's not there to see it, it's not happening in the real world, so what are we filming? Which makes those scenes meta, irrefutable evidence that the events are real, which in turn undermines the ambiguity that was clearly the filmmakers' intent.
That's where the claim of shitty film making comes into play. Not that any film that shows multiple perspectives is bad, but that by doing so in this particular film ruins the ambiguity (or implies the creators didn't realize how showing different perspectives of something that exists solely in one perspective makes zero sense, which is also a huge flaw on their part).
But you can't infer something that isn't shown is real because it's "logical" in your mind.
I don't agree with the bold at all. It's a creative decision to film it the way it is. You chose to view it through the lens that in order to sell this as real or recall, then it has to be filmed in a particular way. Frankly I think you completely overthought it and have convinced yourself that they've undermined their own creation.
Of course you can. That's what logic is for. You're doing the same thing, drawing conclusions that aren't explicitly shown by the film. What an odd argument. My "logic" actually led me to give more weight to your interpretation that the movie is a dream, but you seem to have failed to notice that. You're starting to seem sadly combative about this.
That's just cinema technique and storytelling. He (the director) is showing you a fictional setting (in Quaid's mind) but recreating events that help you understand what motivates certain aspects of a character or how to push that particular story forward. In a way you are being Recalled too, watching everything the filmmaker has at his disposal.
Of course it was not real. Those friends that keep doubting things? Secret assassins. The wife that keeps blocking his dream of visiting Mars? An evil secret agent in the employ of a corrupt, murderous racketeer, while his real love is someone he sees on TV and fantasisies about . It's every one of his psychoses made real. The film itself is a critique of the 80s male action hero fantasy
This isn't true at all. Assuming the breakfast scene at the beginning of the movie is real (since it's before he goes to Recall), a reporter at the news conference on the vid-screen asks Cohaagen point-blank about whether he closed the mines because of rumored alien artifiacts they found inside.
Bruno Louchouarn in the house
Verhoeven was such a fucking good filmmaker. He should have adapted every single Dick story.
Verhoeven was such a fucking good filmmaker. He should have adapted every single Dick story.
This is also the most valid reply. These kind of stories are designed so the audience are left wondering, so usually both are 'possible', if done properly.
I've probably seen this film fifteen times and I'm going to have to go with team real. People keep forgetting the blue sky on Mars is directly because of the glaciers being released into the atmosphere. A perfectly legitimate explanation. You also can't dismiss Dr Rekall's anxiety sweat. I'd be sweating if the Quaid was in front of me.
Nobody is combative here, but you are being strangely insistant that "everyone knows" about the ruins' purpose when what is shown in the movie actually disproves that. after admitting yourself that Kuato actually found out with Quaid while your (faulty) memory was that he already knew.
Nobody is arguing that people don't know about the existence of ruins though, it's actually a crux to Rekall's "exotic" Mars vacation package, as shown pre Dream.
It's about whether people know their intended purpose.
No the film isn't, the director left it ambiguous on purpose so that either answer can be valid.
That said, team real all the way.
Paul Verhoeven has said you're not meant to be able to tell.
But I'm going with Recall. Everything that took place mirrored his fantasy input near perfectly. And his implant did go bad....he just never woke up form it.
But I'm going with Recall. Everything that took place mirrored his fantasy input near perfectly. And his implant did go bad....he just never woke up form it.
Why would aliens build an entire device to give oxygen to a planet and then not turn it on?
Its all in his head.
Its all in his head.
It's real in his head space, and the film is from the perspective of that head space. So it has to appear real for the film to even work. The film isn't going to make it obvious that things aren't real but I think they intentionally make you doubt what you're seeing. I think the ambiguity and the doubt both serve a specific narrative purpose. You can put things together and get the answer. Verhoeven is just too professional to actually go and spell it out for people.
Uh, that's the point. He had latent memories of being a spy that he mistook for a fantasy and when they try to implant the false memories they find out he already has real memories that have been supressed.
Real.
Recall havent implanted the memories on to Douglas Quaid yet. They just blew his memory cap. The Houser identity actually surfaced and mentioned "your blowing my cover" to the Recall aide he was choking before he was tranq. Recall had to fix-up his memory as best as they can and refunded his money because they are afraid of the "Agency", the only other ones capable of doing memory manipulation. At the end, Cohaagen mentioned to Houser/Quaid that "you blew your memory cap before we could activate you. "
Recall havent implanted the memories on to Douglas Quaid yet. They just blew his memory cap. The Houser identity actually surfaced and mentioned "your blowing my cover" to the Recall aide he was choking before he was tranq. Recall had to fix-up his memory as best as they can and refunded his money because they are afraid of the "Agency", the only other ones capable of doing memory manipulation. At the end, Cohaagen mentioned to Houser/Quaid that "you blew your memory cap before we could activate you. "
Team Recall. I'm sure somebody else has mentioned this on the thread but the film fades to white at the end indicating that he wakes up. Inception has a similar ending where the audience wonders if it all a dream but Verhoeven's film doesn't pay too much attention to it and it kinda works better.