Incase you haven't been paying close enough attention, or in case the films odd marketing strategy hasn't reached you (more on that in a bit), Hollywood is remaking the classic sci-fi film Total Recall, this time starring Colin Farrell in the lead role. This is getting a lot of people very excited, but it fails to impress me for a number of reasons.
1. It doesn't seem to exist for any other reason than to cash in on the original
Now, let's be honest. A film-mkaing is a business and at the end of the day the film-makers want to make money. Fair enough. But a film should deserve to make money, and Hollywood has been getting lazy. There are many articles out there on the internet about how Hollywood is using remakes, reboots, sequels, and adaptations to make money rather than actually take a risk and do something original, so I'm not going to harp on about it here (even though it pisses me off).
Remakes are interesting if they bring a new interpretation of the original to the screen. Does this new version of Total Recall do that? Well, it's certainly making plot changes - I've heard that Mars doesn't feature in this version at all, when it was a key point in the original. But they haven't been pushing this as a key selling point. The trailers just show of scene after scene of action which makes the film look like a mindless action film. It doesn't look like an interesting new interpretation of the original material. Hell, even the freaking machine they use to implant memories looks exactly the same as in the first film.
2. The marketing strategy is a bit weird
Usually when a film is advertised we start of with some promo posters, stills, and whatnot, then we get a teaser trailer followed a month or so later by a full length trailer. We got the promo stills, but when the teaser trailer came out it wasn't for the film. No, the teaser trailer was a trailer advertising the fact that the full length trailer was going to be released a week later.
Seriously.
What on Earth does that achieve? I was just boggled by the idiocy. Don't sell a damn trailer. Sell the damn film.
3. It doesn't look like it has anything original in it
I've already mentioned the memory implantation machine, but the rest of the film just looks like a mish-mash of elements from other films. The premise of the plot sort of looks like a re-hash of The Bourne Identity, which would be an interesting concept if, you know, The Bourne Identity hadn't already done it. The dialogue seems hokey and more suited to an 80's action flick rather than the sophisticated thriller this thing is trying to sell itself as. The only clever thing it's done is that is visually reminds you of Minority Report, which has many ties to Total Recall and the original Philip K. Dick source material. But then again, at the same time it just doesn't seem to gel.
4. The action in the trailer didn't impress me
So even if the plot falls down and turns out to be a huge disappointment, it's all okay if the film can still resurrect itself as a bit of harmless action-film fun, like the original. The only problem is that the action just doesn't look exciting. It tries to blend in the big stunts of Hollywood blockbusters with the realistic style of the "gritty reboot genre". So we get some slow-motion shooting with some gritty hand to hand combat, and some chase sequency stuff thrown in for good measure
5. Summary
Basically, the film looks like a mess that doesn't know what it should be. It was made for the wrong reasons, tries to impress too many people, and basically just ends up being confusing.
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