Total Recall: Yet Another Remake...

Jonman wrote:
SpacePPoliceman wrote:

Then why bring it up? It's not exactly a stunning insight, or a particularly credible response. We all know the steps to the money dance.

It's a very credible response to the initial comment that it was responding to, when Q-Stone said "it highlights the creative void in Hollywood", which is a BS complaint. Hollywood is awash in creative scripts and screenplays, and 99.9% of them don't get greenlit and put into production, because of all the aforementioned and apparently common-knowledge steps in the money dance.

So the creative void hovers around movie exec offices, sucking up scripts.

Was there a time when execs greenlit scripts because they recognized quality?

Is this all an artifact of living in a recession?

Hey guys, let's spend less time speculating where the creative void in Hollywood is, and more time speculating who will play this part in the remake:

IMAGE(http://www.i-mockery.com/minimocks/total-recall/16.gif)

Well, I guess I don't see how pointing out movies are about making money invalidates the creative void, or the risk void--either one is pretty cold comfort. Particularly since once upon a time they were able to make a blockbuster out of an adaptation of an obscure cerebral short story written by a mad man helmed by a hyperviolent Dutch satirist.

Scratched wrote:

Also doesn't Philip K. Dick have lots of other books that need making? I'm sure there's probably some rights thing going on, where they only have them for so many years so they might as well.

Feels to me that there's enough in any one of his novels to make 3 or 4 movies that feel only vaguely alike, just depending on where you focus. Few could be made today, alas.

And what's the point of a PG-13 3-boobed hooker? Lacks that je ne sais quoi.

SpacePPoliceman wrote:

Well, I guess I don't see how pointing out movies are about making money invalidates the creative void, or the risk void--either one is pretty cold comfort. Particularly since once upon a time they were able to make a blockbuster out of an adaptation of an obscure cerebral short story written by a mad man helmed by a hyperviolent Dutch satirist.

Scratched wrote:

Also doesn't Philip K. Dick have lots of other books that need making? I'm sure there's probably some rights thing going on, where they only have them for so many years so they might as well.

Feels to me that there's enough in any one of his novels to make 3 or 4 movies that feel only vaguely alike, just depending on where you focus. Few could be made today, alas.

And what's the point of a PG-13 3-boobed hooker? Lacks that je ne sais quoi.

But it has a certain je ne sais tois.

And I'm looking forward to this. It's already got a big plus in my book due to its lack of Arnie.

SpacePPoliceman wrote:

And what's the point of a PG-13 3-boobed hooker?

You are dead to me.

You're telling me after R 3 boobed hookers, you find it acceptable to array the full might of 2012 special effect technology and magic to only produce the PG-13 bikini-clad version? If this is true, you are not the man I thought you, sir.

SpacePPoliceman wrote:

You're telling me after R 3 boobed hookers, you find it acceptable to array the full might of 2012 special effect technology and magic to only produce the PG-13 bikini-clad version? If this is true, you are not the man I thought you, sir.

I misunderstood, apologies. Also, I thought it appropriate to post the Ah-nold censored version on a public forum.

You are once again among the living.

nel e nel wrote:

You are once again among the living.

Well, to someone, at least, so the day is looking up from where it began!

I just keep thinking... If there is no Mars (with messed up environment) and hence no mutants, how does a mutant, 3-boobed hooker fit into picture?

Stele wrote:

Also, Adjustment Bureau

And, excuse me, Bladerunner.

Another awesome thing about Total Recall... anytime one of our beloved TV shows around here takes a week off, and does that "In two weeks..." preview, then I get to post the "two weeks" video from Total Recall in the thread complaining about it.

I seriously doubt this version will have any scenes that I'm still posting from Youtube in 22 years.

Stele wrote:

Another awesome thing about Total Recall... anytime one of our beloved TV shows around here takes a week off, and does that "In two weeks..." preview, then I get to post the "two weeks" video from Total Recall in the thread complaining about it.

I seriously doubt this version will have any scenes that I'm still posting from Youtube in 22 years. ;)

Get ready for a surprise!

Two week! TWO WEEKS!!

See you at the party, Richter!

Time to watch this again. Damn it.

Stele wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:
Thin_J wrote:

His schtick is that he doesn't know how to shoot action scenes well and he always puts his wife in his movies.

I did like the scene in the trailer where the protagonist takes down the room full of soldiers. I thought that was nicely done. Otherwise, the movie looks largely forgettable.

Yeah that particular scene was fantastic.

Still against the idea in general, and probably will not check it out at the theater unless a lot of people here or at RT convince me otherwise...

This is from a couple pages back now, but...

Len Wiseman's other schtick is lifting scenes or the details therein from The Matrix. The fight with the room full of soldiers opens with a shot that is essentially identical to the shot that starts Trinity's fight with the Agents at the beginning of that movie. Then there's multiple points during the fight where the choreography is the same.

Len Wiseman. Meh.

Thin_J wrote:

This is from a couple pages back now, but...

Len Wiseman's other schtick is lifting scenes or the details therein from The Matrix. The fight with the room full of soldiers opens with a shot that is essentially identical to the shot that starts Trinity's fight with the Agents at the beginning of that movie. Then there's multiple points during the fight where the choreography is the same.

Len Wiseman. Meh.

Hmm, didn't think of that. It felt to me like a straight lift from The Bourne Identity, Wiseman just thought, with the usual Hollywood remake level of thinking, "It'll be way better if instead of two guys, there are, like twenty!" I guess The Matrix has been so thoroughly strip-mined, it doesn't even register anymore.

Well, that's a bummer.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Was there a time when execs greenlit scripts because they recognized quality?

Is this all an artifact of living in a recession?

Isn't it the consequence of living in the age of the blockbuster? I'm not a film history buff so maybe someone else can explain it better, but wasn't the last golden age of American film, when quality was recognized and the real creative risks were being taken by new young directors, the 70s: Scorsese, De Palma, Coppola, Spielberg, Lucas? Things probably looked pretty good at that point, and they were only going to get better.

But then Spielberg and Lucas hit it big with Jaws and another one we might have heard of, Star Wars. Relatively stupid movies—to the direction Scorsese et. al were going in—but movies that made ten metric tonnes of cash. The blockbuster was born, and that's the age we've been in ever since: less risk and lowest common denominator appeal to make as much money as possible.

So in summary: blame the success of Star Wars. I do, for lots of things.

SpacePPoliceman wrote:

I guess The Matrix has been so thoroughly strip-mined, it doesn't even register anymore.

He doesn't even try to hide it.

IMAGE(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v282/Thin_J/trinity-the-matrix.jpg)

IMAGE(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v282/Thin_J/total-recall.jpg)

I've been biting my tongue up to now, but I just can't any more.

You're really stretching it there, Thin_J. I don't know when this director peed in your cereal but you're really going above and beyond in your criticism.

BadKen wrote:

You're really stretching it there, Thin_J. I don't know when this director peed in your cereal but you're really going above and beyond in your criticism.

He's been stealing shots and scenes from the same few movies since his directorial career started. It would be different if he hadn't done it so often, but he does it over and over again from the same small subset of movies. He's one of the biggest most unoriginal hacks working in film right now.

I'll say it again. Meh. The guy is terrible. That he has a career at all is just another embarrassing note in a long list of them for Hollywood.

He's Paul WS Anderson: Part Two.

*As for going "above and beyond" in my criticism, I'm just pointing out what's there. He's been doing it for 9 years, since his directorial career started. There's big samples of it in both the Underworld movies that he directed, and even in the Underworld movie that he produced, which is a special kind of lame.

If you doubt that it's the same scene, by all means do so, but you're quite simply wrong. He starts it off with the same shot, uses multiple identical shots throughout, some identical choreography, and ends it the same way. He's done this in three movies now.

Here he's doing it yet again and they're showing it to us in the trailer before we've even seen the movie.

I betcha whole dollars there's at least two other scenes in the rest of Total Recall that are as close to straight lifts as you can get, again from The Matrix. He hasn't made it through a movie as director yet without doing it at least three times.

Thin_J wrote:
BadKen wrote:

You're really stretching it there, Thin_J. I don't know when this director peed in your cereal but you're really going above and beyond in your criticism.

He's been stealing shots and scenes from the same few movies since his directorial career started. It would be different if he hadn't done it so often, but he does it over and over again from the same small subset of movies. He's one of the biggest most unoriginal hacks working in film right now.

I'll say it again. Meh. The guy is terrible. That he has a career at all is just another embarrassing note in a long list of them for Hollywood.

Meh. Subjective. He makes popcorn movies, and I have enjoyed all of his movies so far.

mudbunny wrote:

Meh. Subjective. He makes popcorn movies, and I have enjoyed all of his movies so far.

This is perfectly valid. I enjoyed the first two Underworld movies the first time I saw them too as overly angsty dumb vampire/werewolf fueled popcorn movies. It was only seeing them again later shortly after a rewatch of The Matrix (and then some digging online to see if I was the only one noticing... I wasn't) that I developed my dislike for Wiseman.

And then there was Die Hard. A piece of crap for which he will never earn forgiveness.

I dunno. In my eyes there's silly popcorn movies that manage to avoid all this stuff and be totally good and fun anyway.

Wiseman hasn't made one of those movies yet.

Thin_J wrote:

He's Paul WS Anderson: Part Two.

How, how, how do you justify making a movie called "Death Race", and not start the death racing until 45 f*cking minutes in? Death Race 2000 starts the death racing before minute 10, and know what it gives you before that? A nazi racer named Matilda the Hun, Sylvester Stallone doing his most hilarious Sly face while he fires a tommy gun into a crowd, and the line "America love you, Frankenstein!"

I guess the point is, popcorn movies still need to not suck.

SpacePPoliceman wrote:

I guess the point is, popcorn movies still need to not suck.

<3

Having similar shots in movies he's done doesn't count as "stealing from his past" to me. It counts as having a fairly consistent approach.

For the sake of comparison, just so that we're all on the same page, this is Trinity's arrest in The Matrix and this is the scene from the new Total Recall.

I can see a similarity, but I wouldn't call the latter scene a ripoff of the former. Beyond the opening shot of a police officer framed within the character's arm and a general feeling of a scene moving in a circle around a central piece of combat, there's not a whole lot in common between them.

For the sake of originality, I hope the movie doesn't feature any Mexican stand-offs, shooting-while-tumbling-sideways, jumps from moving vehicles, and any other ripped-off staples of the action genre!

What about a Mexican shooting while tumbling sideways from a moving vehicle?

wordsmythe wrote:

Having similar shots in movies he's done doesn't count as "stealing from his past" to me. It counts as having a fairly consistent approach.

Except that all those shots he keeps repeating are trademarks shots from one single other movie. Hiis "consistent approach" as you call it is "do what the Wachowski's do as often as possible". Whether it bothers you or not is, well that's up to you, but the man doesn't have his own style and never has. He just keeps right on cribbing someone else's.

Gorilla.800.lbs wrote:

For the sake of originality, I hope the movie doesn't feature any Mexican stand-offs, shooting-while-tumbling-sideways, jumps from moving vehicles, and any other ripped-off staples of the action genre!

These are not remotely the same thing. These are actions taken by characters, not shots and camera moves. They happen or not depending on the writer, not the director.

I merely posit that certain camera moves and exposition techniques have become as much of a genre staple as the Mexican stand-offs, chase scenes, and "I am too old for this sh*t" lines.

Nevermmind.

At this point this isn't even on topic anymore. I'll bow out. Back to the actual Total Recall remake discussion.