BEFORE: The great part about working the chain out a few weeks in advance is that I rarely have to stop and ask "What movie should I watch tonight?", I just pick the next film in the chain, unless I see another connection that needs to be made. But I found two possible paths away from "The X-Files", one filled with monsters, and the other dealing with psychic visions. Fortunately both are sci-fi paths and will lead me to the same place in about a week's time. I'm going to face a much more difficult decision in about a month's time when I get to the next break in the chain, and there will be less than 100 slots available to close out the year. I could link to the Hitchcock films, but there are 50 of them, and that's half of the available slots gone - when I get back from San Diego, I've got to overlay the chain over a calendar to see if it will end in a organizationally pleasing way. If not, I'll delay Hitchcock until next year and follow another track to fill the 2013 slots.
I'm going to follow up "X-Files" with the psychic powers/mental delusion track, because that fits more closely with the plot of the 2nd film. And because Billy Connolly links so easily through "Still Crazy" to Bill Nighy (last seen in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1").
THE PLOT: Douglas Quaid begins to suspect that he is a spy after a visit to Rekall - a company that provides its clients with implanted fake memories of a life they would like to have led - goes wrong and he finds himself on the run.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Total Recall" (1990) (Movie #1,207)
AFTER: At one time, I had this film next to "John Carter" because the original "Total Recall" took place on Mars (or, did it?) and something made me move it away - which was a good call, because the remake totally removed Mars from the plot. There was a brief mention that Rekall can make you false-remember being King of Mars, but that was just a line of dialogue, nobody GOES to Mars here, or is made to think that they do. Instead they travel back and forth between the British Isles and the "Colony" (Australia) which in the future are the only two inhabitable places left on Earth.
Here's the kicker, they travel THROUGH the planet. (Is that even possible? I thought the Earth's core was all magma and stuff, which is why we have volcanoes. Wouldn't the enormous pressure close to the Earth's surface make it impossible to travel through?) See NITPICK POINT below.
Anyway, we're dealing with memory implants, and memory wipes, and I bet the filmmakers wished they could wipe the Schwarzenegger version from the audience's minds, because then they'd be more likely to pay admission to see the story again. But honestly there's not too much in common with the old version, except that they're based on the same short story, there's a company that offers to give people their ultimate fantasy vacation through memory implants, and the main character, Quaid, who speaks the line "If I'm not me, then who the hell am I?" The rest then riffs off in a slightly different direction, which is the thing to do these days, whether you run the Superman, Spider-Man or Wizard of Oz franchise.
After visiting Rekall, Quaid comes to learn that his memories are not real, nor his marriage, and his name might not even be Quaid. He might be a secret agent who underwent a memory wipe and got new implants, and once you get those, kiss that sweet fake vacation goodbye. He then has to follow clues, some of which he might have left for himself - it's kind of like when you set your e-mail password and you know you're gonna forget it, so you try and pick something near the computer that will spark your memory every time you want to check your mail.
He's got to decide whether to trust his instincts, or follow the clues he left for himself, in order to determine which side he's going to fight for, the government or the rebels. And there always seem to be rebels in the future, don't there? I guess their perfect society isn't so perfect, because somebody's always rebelling against something. (As James Dean's character once said, "What have you got?")
Unless...unless the whole thing is a dream or a false memory, starting with the moment Quaid sits down in the chair at Rekall. I thought this about the original movie too, and I sort of hoped that the sequel might follow up on this possibility (and, who's to say it didn't?). Once you start messing around inside the brain, who's to say what's reality for that person?
It feels like they took the plot from "Total Recall" and mixed in elements of "Minority Report", "I, Robot", "Brazil", and even "Inception" and "Cube". Yes, in the future there will be elevators that move horizontally, so that's something to look forward to. Plus there will be robot cops. And way too many plot reversals. Oh, and Barack Obama will be depicted on money - British money, so try and figure that one out.
NITPICK POINT: If there really could be a transport that went through Earth, from the U.K. to Australia, from what I know about gravity, it couldn't work like this. The film depicts an underground spaceship-like transport, with passengers sitting on two sides, like you'd see people sitting on a subway car, and with the front of the ship heading down toward the core. The key word here is "down", which gravitationally represents all vectors from the Earth's surface to the core - there is no one fixed "down". And what is depicted here is some kind of gravity reversal, as if the ship has to turn around so its top becomes its bottom as it heads back to the surface - but the top and bottom of the ship as shown are really just left and right, so the switch wouldn't happen this way.
Instead of the bus-like device depicted here, imagine a building elevator that goes below the ground, and keeps on going to the Earth's core (I know, it's impossible, but work with me here...) You wouldn't sit on a bench on the SIDE of the elevator as you descend, you'd probably stand on the floor, just like you normally do in an elevator, because gravity's pull would be at your feet. When your elevator car hits the Earth's core (assuming it doesn't burn up, or collapse under the pressure), you'd have a moment of weightlessness as you pass through Earth's chewy caramel center, and then you'd fall to what was the ceiling of the car, which has now become the new floor. Spinning the car so the left side becomes the right side, as seen here, would be an illogical reaction to the change in gravity's direction.
Jeez, they spend $125 million making a film, and they can't make a call to a science expert, to figure out how something might theoretically work?
Also starring Colin Farrell (last seen in "The Recruit"), Kate Beckinsale (last seen in "The Aviator"), Jessica Biel (last seen in "The A-Team"), Bokeem Woodbine, Bryan Cranston (last seen in "John Carter"), John Cho (last seen in "Star Trek: Into Darkness").
RATING: 4 out of 10 flying cars
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