this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2023
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Not really for an explanation, but I looked up the original short story Total Recall (the 90's version) was based on to see if it concretely says if everything was real or if everything was just in the protagonist's head and it just cemented it for me that the story is way more ambiguous, and the Arnold film was taking the "it's all real" approach.
The Arnold film (subtly) tells you that it isn't real. In the beginning, when they are prepping Quaid for the implant, one of the technicians remarks "That's a new one... Blue sky on Mars." At the end of the movie, bam, blue sky on Mars.
There is zero chance that anyone could predict such an event, and no way for Hauser to have known about the reactor or what it would do. Hauser's mission was to infiltrate the rebels and get to Kuato.
There's a lot of other circumstantial evidence, and you could probably explain away a lot of other stuff. But the fact remains that nothing can't be explained as part of the dream, and there's one thing that can't be explained as real.
The doctor also pretty much tells Hauser the plot of the third act of the movie when trying to convince him to wake up. He also meets the dream girl he exactly described at Rekall in Melina.
The is this real or a dream idea was a major theme in many of Phillip K Dick's works. Considering he wrote many of his novels and short stories while off his face on amphetamines and a cocktail of other drugs i guess it should not be much of a surprise.
I wonder if that is a reason so many of his works have been adapted for the screen. Eg:
A Scanner Darkly
Blade Runner
Total Recall
Minority Report
The Adjustment Bureau
Paycheck
Screamers
Impostor
The Crystal Crypt
Next
A Scanner Darkly, which is about someone losing himself to psychodelic drugs was very much autobiographical.
The time travel thing with Ben Affleck was written by the same guy as Blade Runner and Total Recall? Whoa.
I guess I'll also have to see Imposter and The Crystal Crypt; they're the only two on that list I've not seen or even heard of before now, but everything else was pretty cool.