Tropes from movie/film Total Recall (1990) (Part 1)

Tropes from movie/film Total Recall (1990)

"Get your ass to Mars."

Total Recall is a 1990 sci-fi action film loosely based on Philip K. Dick's short story "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale", starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rachel Ticotin, Sharon Stone, Ronny Cox, and Michael Ironside, written by Dan O'Bannon, Ronald Shusett (the same guys behind Alien!) and Gary Goldman, and directed by Paul Verhoeven.

On its surface level, the film is a sci-fi take on a spy thriller, set in memories implanted into a bored construction worker of the future... or is it? Because of all the Alternate Character Interpretation, the film is often called "the thinking man's action movie."

Douglas Quaid (Schwarzenegger) is tired of life in the year 2084. His literal life's dream is to get his ass to Mars as a way of escaping his humdrum existence. A commercial for the Rekall brand "Ego Trip" induces Quaid to try one of the trips, which are just implanted memories of a vacation that he'd never be able to take in person. Quaid elects for an enhanced set of fake memories that cast him in the role of a super spy—sort of a memory novella that he will remember living through. When something goes wrong with the procedure, he discovers that his entire life is a lie, and that in reality, he is a super spy working under deep cover. Or is he?

The viewer is constantly challenged to decide if Quaid's experiences are real or all just a result of his "ego trip." (Or are they?) The film is also well known for its special effects and over-the-top gore, like some other notable Verhoeven films. Highlights include tons of cool guns, three-breasted mutants, and a bizarre NES tie-in game.

A remake starring Colin Farrell was released in 2012. It's also a loose inspiration for the Total Recall 2070 series.

Tropes are not tropes— they're tropes^note :

• 20 Minutes into the Future: 2084; we have seen the future, and it is the public transportation system of Mexico City.
• Action Girl: Lori and Melina. Thumbelina qualifies due to how much ass she kicks during the brothel shootout.
• Activation Sequence: When the alien device is activated there is a prolonged sequence of the long-dormant machinery turning on, interspersed with scenes of the characters being blown out onto the surface of Mars.
• Adaptation Expansion:
  • Philip K. Dick's short story "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" only covers the first bit, set on Earth and dealing with REKAL. Despite being regular staples of Dick's work, the Mars setting, the sectarian conflict, the ancient aliens, and the mutants are all original to the film, as is the ambiguity of whether or not the film is a dream. In fact, it's not hyperbole to say the film is even more Dickesque than the short story.
  • The Piers Anthony novelization of the movie expands on things even further, giving a few glimpses into the alien race that created the reactors and adding a bit of gratuitous sex.
• Adaptation Title Change: The film is loosely based on Philip K. Dick's short story "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale"; presumably that looked a bit too unwieldy on film posters compared to "Total Recall."
• Adaptational Heroism: The novelization by Piers Anthony reveals Hauser did turn into a good guy and was pulling a massive Kansas City Shuffle on Cohaagen in order to get Quaid to activate the alien device.
• Adaptational Modesty: In "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale," the receptionist at Rekall is topless with different color Body Paint every time Quail visits their offices (due to fashion trends evolving into No Nudity Taboo). In the film, the receptionist is more professionally dressed, with the multi-color motif being incorporated by having her instantly change the color on her fingernails.
• Adaptational Name Change: The original story's Douglas Quail becomes Douglas Quaid in the film.
• Adapted Out: "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" ends with Doug volunteering to have a new memory implanted about how he saved a race of tiny mouse-like aliens, and in turn they promised not to destroy earth as long as he lived. It turns out to be a real memory. This never happens in the film.
• Advert-Overloaded Future: Downplayed (if you compare this to cyberpunk movies of recent time).
  • The large ads, mostly noticeable the Fuji Film and Coca Cola signs, seen after Quaid gets off the subway.^note 
  • The audio/video ads on the subway.
• Aerith and Bob: Kuato hides in the belly of his normal-looking twin brother George.
• Affably Evil:
  • Hauser, who in his last video diary continues to act friendly towards Quaid and apologizes that he needs his body back.
  • Benny, who continues to keeps up his Plucky Comic Relief act when he tries to drill Quaid and Melina to death.
• Alien Sky: The opening dream sequence shows that Mars has two moons in its orbit.
• All According to Plan: Played with. When Cohaagen reveals that he arranged everything so that Quaid would lead him to Kuato. Quaid dismisses this as "too perfect." Cohaagen then reveals it didn't go perfectly, thanks to Quaid's trip to Rekall setting things off early and Richter screwing up a year's worth of planning by trying to murder him. Cohaagen then admits amazement that it worked at all.
• All Just a Dream: The ending is intentionally ambiguous about the nature of Quaid's fantasy. If it was a dream, has it Gone Horribly Wrong, or not? Does the film end with him being lobotomized, or is that just the end of his vacation?? It all comes down to whether the scene between when they start the implantation process and when Quaid wakes up in the Johnny Cab is a part of the hallucination or if it really happened. And there's absolutely nothing that says one way or the other.
• All There in the Manual: The aliens' motivations and a good deal of their culture are explored in the novelization.
• All Your Base Are Belong to Us: The Mars Resistance base after Cohaagen's forces attack.
• Ambiguous Ending: The day is saved, Mars is liberated from Cohaagen and terraformed to now be a breathable planet. But we're left unsure if the whole adventure was truly real or if it was all part of Quaid's implanted memory. Needless to say, the film leaves it up to the audience to decide. In the commentary, Verhoeven thinks the movie was all in Quaid's head while Schwarzenegger thinks that it all happened for real.
• Amnesiac Dissonance: Quaid is shocked and disgusted to find out that he was Hauser all along. He goes on to refuse becoming Hauser again, going as far as calling his former self an "asshole."
• An Arm and a Leg: Richter gets both his arms ripped off in his death scene.
• Artificial Outdoors Display: The backside of Quaid's living room has a large display that can show imagery of nature.
• Artistic License – Biology: The movie completely ignores the fact that getting guns or knives shot out of one's hand would not only hurt like hell and probably blow off some fingers, it would also leave said hand paralyzed for quite a while at the very least. Richter briefly shaking his hand after Quaid relieved him of his shotgun this way is the film's only concession to this end, and he goes back to full combat readiness immediately afterwards.
• Artistic License – Physics: As violent as this movie is, perhaps no one is more brutalized than the laws of physics.
  • Mars is roughly under half an AU from Earth at closest approach, meaning it should take at least three minutes each way for the Video Phones to send messages.
  • While being on the surface of Mars unprotected would be fatal as the atmosphere is too thin to breathe, it wouldn't be nearly as gory/dramatic as in the film.
  • The finale involves Mars' frozen water core being unfrozen and turning Mars into a green, Earthy paradise within 30 seconds.
  • In the fight scene in the memory implantation suite on Mars, one of the technicians attacks Quaid with a slender metal rod, but between the more than meter of metal and his own strength, he's not able to even raise a bruise on Quaid when he parries the rod with his bare forearm, but it's still strong enough for Quaid to drive it through his attacker's skull. Being able to drive the thick metal lug that had held one of the restraining cuffs to the chair (before Quaid simply lifts the restraint straight up out of the arm) into another technician's neck and create a rather neat, circular wound is similarly silly (OK, it's an Arnold fight scene so the laws of physics tend to go out the window, but things really should make more sense than that).
  • Richter gets his arms chopped off instantly when they're trapped between a rock wall and a slow-moving elevator. In real life that would be very painful and he almost certainly would lose the arms, but the blunt rock and elevator probably wouldn't slice cleanly through them like wet sausage.
  • The power core that emerges from the side of Quaid's "fat lady head" disguise is large enough that it appears to span the entire width of the head. This, combined with the complex animatronics that would allow it to speak on its own, and the voice box for its spoken lines, and the high explosive for the self-destruct function, means there is absolutely no way someone whose head is as big as Arnold's could possibly fit inside that mask.
  • Mars has 38% of the Earth's surface gravity. While people and objects would clearly still be bound to the planetary surface, people would walk and objects would fall differently.
• Automated Automobiles: Johnny Cab the AI-driven taxis on earth.
• Ax-Crazy: Benny becomes this after being revealed as The Mole, chasing Quaid and Melina with a huge drilling machine while mocking them.
• Badass Bookworm: When Quaid rips through the metal shackles of his Rekall chair, rather than running for their lives as you might expect, the nerdy lab technicians grab the nearest heavy weapons and attack Quaid. The results are preordained, but hey, points for trying at least.
• Bad Boss: Compared to his established friendship with his other right hand man, Hauser, Cohaagen not only lambasts and insults his mercenary Richter at every opportunity, but uses his wife Lori in Hauser's mole operation, and is thoroughly apathetic to her death caused by it. Richter makes sure to give at least a small fuck you to Cohaagen when it's obvious the plan has gone to shit.
• Bad People Abuse Animals: Richter shoots up a mouse that was carrying Quaid's tracking device when he realizes it was carrying the bug instead of Quaid, later Cohaagen after learning about Quaid and Melina's escape furiously destroys his aquarium, letting the goldfishes die which parallels the suffocating mutants in Venusville through a Match Cut.
• Bait-and-Switch Gunshot: Cohaagen has Quaid at gunpoint in the underground mine and is about to shoot him. Shots are fired and Cohaagen is shot... by Melina, Quaid's Action Girl companion.
• Beauty Equals Goodness: Averted. The mutants are the good guys, despite looking quite, well... mutated.
• Benevolent Precursors: Of the accidental type, since it's never explained why they didn't activate it themselves. The atmosphere-creating terraforming device left behind by the martians not only is still fully functional after half a million years of being buried in a mountain, it can also be activated by a human simply placing one hand on the huge, easily discernible power-up button.
• Billed Above the Title: Arnold Schwarzenegger's name is showing prominently at the top of the movie poster.
• Blasting It Out of Their Hands: As Lori is about to stab Melina to death, Quaid shoots the knife out of her hand.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Cohaagen invokes this trope in regards to the puzzling existence of the terraforming reactor left by the aliens.

  Scientist: The chain reaction could spread to all the Turbinium in the planet, that means a meltdown, a meltdown on a planetary scale.
  Richter: Don't you think whoever built this thing thought of that?
  Cohaagen: Who knows what the hell they thought? They weren't human...

• Body Horror: Mutants, especially Kuato, who is basically a deformed baby sticking out of the abdomen of a grown man.
  • Quaid removing the bug from his nose. "Take this thing out of the case, and stick it up your nose."
• Bond One-Liner: Expected, for a Ahnold film.
  • "Consider that a divorce."
  • "See you at the party, Richter!"
  • Melina gets one of her own after Quaid's one against Lori.

    Melina: That was your wife?! What a bitch.

• Bond Villain Stupidity: Cohaagen leaves Quaid and Melina unguarded with scientists for their forcible memory overwrites, and both Quaid and Melina are kept awake and cognizant during the procedure; Rekall at least had the good sense to knock Quaid out before implanting.
• Bookends: Quaid's opening dream and the final scene are close matches.
• Boom, Headshot!: Quaid kills both Dr. Edgemar and Lori this way. Kuato goes out this way as well.
• Bottomless Magazines: Played straight to the hilt. Almost all of the many, many guns in this movie are fully automatic, yet you won't see someone reloading even once, except for Lori when she first attacks Quaid.
• Brainwash Residue:
  • After Quaid breaks Melina out of the constraints one of the Recall machines, it seems just a bit of the Housewife programming made it through, but not by much.

    Quaid: Are you all right? Are you still you?
    Melina: I'm not sure, dear.

    • Though it appears she's simply trolling Quaid.
  • Melina appearing to Quaid in his dreams.
• Breaking the Bonds: Quaid breaks metal shackles twice. (Unless he only imagines it happening the second time and the Rekall process actually succeeded...)
• Broken Record:

  10 GET YOUR ASS TO MARS
  20 GOTO 10

  • "Two weeks. Two weeks...two weeks, twoweekstwotweekstwoweeks..."
• Brutal Brawl: The fistfight between Melina and Lori. Rather than catfighting (as the original plan was) both actresses throw brutal punches and kicks.
• Bulletproof Human Shield: Played painfully, painfully straight, to the point of possibly being Played for Laughs. Quaid uses a dead bystander this way in the subway scene with Richter and his crew shooting at him from both ends of an escalator and by the time Quaid and his meat shield get to the top the corpse is basically Swiss cheese, but still no bullets go through it to strike Quaid.
  • Maybe it's another hint that this is all part of his Rekall memories?
• The Cameo: Kenny Rogers bandmate Mickey Jones appears as a train passenger.
• Catapult Nightmare: At the beginning, Douglas Quaid wakes up with a jolt from a nightmare of dying of suffocation on Mars.
• Category Traitor: Benny betrays the mutants to Cohaagen despite being a mutant himself.
• Cat Fight: Averted. The Designated Girl Fight is rather brutal and unglamorous, with no slapping and no hair-pulling except as a prelude to an attempted throat-slitting.
• Cathartic Scream: Richter, The Dragon, does this at least once after Quaid has gotten away from him.
• Chase Fight: Between Quaid and Richter as Benny drives Quaid to the Last Resort.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • During his fight with his wife, Quaid drops his gun which gets some focus before they move on fighting. The gun comes back later in the scene.
  • Both times Quaid hitches a ride in Benny's taxi, a Drill Tank appears. Guess how Benny later tries to kill Quaid and Melina.
  • The hologram wrist device that Quaid is given early comes in handy when he uses it to fake out Cohaagen's goons protecting the reactor during the climax.

  "You think this is the real Quaid? It is."

• Climactic Elevator Ride: Quaid takes an elevator ride up to his final showdown with Cohaagen over the fate of Mars.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Technically, the looping "Get your ass to Mars" may count.
• Colonized Solar System: Mars has been settled by human colonists. The mutant descendants of the first colonists are fighting a guerilla war against the colonial administration, which is only interested in mining turbinium ore for Earth.
• Continuous Decompression:
  • Hull breaches on the Mars station causes a storm capable of hurling people through the air, despite the pressure difference being just one atmosphere (14 psi).
  • Also happens in the climax when the reactor is started and Cohaagen, Quaid and Melina are sucked out onto Mars' surface.
• Cool Guns: Look for street sweepers whenever Richter is really pissed off. Also the cool magazine-on-the-back Calico weapons.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Ronny Cox is back in this role again, like a previous Verhoeven film.
• Crapsack World: Mars is definitely this. It's basically a backwater colony whose inhabitants are exploited to mine valuable minerals for Earth, have mutated due to prolonged exposure to radiation and are forced to pay for the very air they breathe.
• Crystal Clear Picture: The visuals on the large TV screen in Quaid's living room are superimposed on the actual film. It's almost unnoticeable though.
• Cuckoo Nest: During the Red Pill, Blue Pill scene where Quaid supposedly is in a dream and Dr. Edgemar wants Quaid to take a pill so he'll wake up.
• Cyberpunk: The dystopia with Mega-Corp elements put the film squarely in this genre.
• Dark Action Girl: Lori, Quaid's wife who routinely beats Quaid up.
• Dark Is Not Evil / Light Is Not Good: Ironically, the script makes lovable blonde girl-next-door Lori a villain, while the dark-skinned, slutty ("sleazy," to use Quaid's term), and rude Melina is the sympathetic one.
  • Additionally, the various mutants are this. Although they look scary, they're some of the friendlier characters save for Benny that Quaid encounters on his adventure. Special mention goes to Kuato, who is an empathetic freedom fighter in spite of his malformed appearance.
• Death by Irony:
  • Cohaagen, who controls all the air on Mars, dies in the thin atmosphere of the Red Planet.
  • Twice Benny is nearly killed by the giant drill machines dashing into the street. When he is exposed as a traitor, Benny tries to kill Quaid with a drill machine. Quaid then kills him by stabbing him with a portable drill.
• Designated Girlfight: Lori and Melina engage in a brutal No-Holds-Barred Beatdown about two thirds into the movie while Quaid takes care of Lori's male backup. Lori eventually gets the upper hand, forcing Quaid to intervene in order to save Melina's life.^note 
• Disappearing Bullets: At one point, Cohaagen's men encircle Quaid and open fire at him with full automatics. This is already a pretty dumb idea, tactically speaking, considering that it practically guarantees someone's going to get shot by his own side by accident, but it becomes even more ludicrous when the Quaid they're shooting turns out to have been a hologram. So... what was stopping the bullets, then? This trope is almost immediately subverted when Melina uses the hologram to get two Mooks to shoot at her, killing each other.
• Disguised in Drag: Quaid in the "fat woman" suit.
• Disney Villain Death: Richter. Although unlike most Disney villain deaths, its purpose was definitely not to avoid gore - it's quite gory, except in the M-rated version.
• Disproportionate Retribution: If you don't pay your Johnny Cab's fare, it will run you down. Though this one also appeared to be malfunctioning at the moment, so that may not be a programmed response.
• Divorce Requires Death: *gunshot* "Consider that a divorce."
• Domed Hometown: Averted with the Mars colony, which is designed as a cluster of separate habitats built on ground level or within canyons. Played Straight in the TV spot for Rekall which shows a happy couple in bed inside an underwater dome.
• Don't Touch It, You Idiot!: Cohaagen telling Quaid not to touch the alien power-up button that would activate the reactor.
• Doppelgänger Spin: Quaid's wrist hologram device gives him a single image version.
• The Dragon: Richter, Cohaagen's main enforcer.
• Dragon with an Agenda: Richter nearly screws up Cohaagen's plans several times, because Cohaagen wants Quaid alive for whatever his plans are, and Richter is constantly trying to kill him, especially after his wife Lori is killed by Quaid (and the fact that Lori was Quaid's 'wife' for a while and was constantly in bed with him can't have helped either). He is naturally quite pleased when Cohaagen finally gives up and gives the order to take him out.
• Dream Deception: A variant of this happens some time after Quaid goes to Mars. His wife (who's seemingly a double agent) shows up and says she loves him. Next, the "doctor" from Rekall says this is all just a hallucination caused by a malfunction in the memory machine. Quaid argues that this is false, but the Doctor comes up with some convincing counterarguments. Quaid almost falls for it, but right as he is about to swallow the pill, he notices the "doctor" is sweating, and shoots him.
• Dream Intro: The opening scene turns out to be one of Quaid's Recurring Dreams.
• Drill Tank: Coincidentally, defeated with a drill.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Benny appears a couple of minutes before his proper introduction as one of two cab drivers offering Quaid his service.
• Eating the Eye Candy: The female receptionist at Rekall takes obvious pleasure in ogling Quaid when he turns around to wait for his appointment.
• Elevator Action Sequence: The final fight between Richter and Quaid.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • Richter is definitely upset at the loss of his lover, Lori.
  • Despite being a contemptuous piece of work, Cohaagen himself is greatly distraught over the loss of his friend, Hauser, whose personality is pretty much gone when Quaid decides to accept his current identity rather than that of the man he once was.
• Every Car Is a Pinto: Quaid uses a "Johnny Cab" taxi to flee from the bad guys. He has to sabotage the robotic driver, though, and drive the car himself. Once he arrives at his destination, he leaves the taxi, but the robotic driver shorts out and the car starts moving forward. It narrowly misses Arnie, then hits a wall at a very moderate speed and blows up.
• Everyone Is Armed: When Cohaagan's men attack the Last Resort.
• Evil All Along: Harry, Lori, Benny and Hauser all turn out to be villains.
• Excessive Steam Syndrome: All over the place.
  • Lots of steam can be seen in the city when Quaid goes to fight Harry and his men.
  • In the Martian colony there are various excesses of steam, though on Mars it's meant to imply the fresh air being pumped through the colony.
  • The cabin of Benny's drill tank is flooded with steam as well.