Total Recall

You know it's a great year when October comes around and the Toyko Samurais have made the World Series once again. I relish the moment every year. Those damn Samurais remind me of the Yankees, another baseball dynasty relying solely on talent bought by money.

One of the most fascinating things about Total Recall wasn't that the Samurais made the World Series, but that the movie, set in 2084, didn't have flying cars. I don't think you can leap so many decades into the future without seeing some flying cars pop up. Arnold + Flying Car = Oscar Win. I'm still amazed that the movie got two nominations.

There's been a lot of speculation/debate over whether Arnold is dreaming the entire time, or whether his experiences are happening in real time. I maintain my view that what happens to Arnold is not a dream. His botched "trip" to Mars resurfaces actual erased memories of his real experiences on Mars, and sets him off on his whole crazy adventure. If it was really a dream, I don't get the ending. Don't we usually wake up from dreams in the end? Shouldn't the audience be kept a little more in the picture?

The politics of Total Recall are another interesting aspect of the film. I like how they are interwoven throughout the entire movie, popping up here and there, always an underlying, foreboding, aspect of the movie. Mars politics remind me very much of the colonization problems the colonials had when they tried to break free of England. The rebels of Mars really only want freedom from Cohaagen, and Cohaagen only wants to control them, and their air, much like Britain wanted to control and tax the Americas. This might be pushing it, but I see many similarities between each colonization.