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After years of false starts and multiple proposed iterations, the risky, bonkers sci-fi action thriller Total Recall was released in 1990 to become one of the highest grossing films of the year, and remains a cult classic to this day.
Directed by Paul Verhoeven, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, and based on Philip K. Dick’s short story We Can Remember It for You Wholesale, the movie is a deliberately ambiguous journey across Earth and Mars, filled with intense action, political intrigue, and themes of identity, memory, and control. At the time, it was noted for its cutting-edge special effects, including iconic miniature and puppetry scenes.
The newly released Total Recall: The Official Story of the Film is the latest in Titan Books’ series covering the making of various famous films, and is another solid entry in the series. Relatively lightweight text wise, and reading more like an extended article than similar offerings from JW Rinzler and others, my main complaint is just that I wish there was more text. It’s a large, heavily padded out book redeemed by a great selection of images.
New interviews of Schwarzenegger and Verhoeven are the highlight of the book, providing an interesting retrospective from Total Recall’s two primary creators, who have both worked on many high-profile projects since, but clearly have fond memories of their time working on the movie. They are complemented by various other new interviews and excerpts from a number of older interviews with various other publications.
It was interesting to learn of the early involvement of David Cronenberg, which would have made for a very different movie, and the plans to adapt what would eventually become Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report (based on another, unrelated Philip K. Dick story) into a sequel to Total Recall. Overall, most of the difficulties with getting the movie made were in the financing and pre-production phases, and while the shoot in Mexico had its difficulties, it was relatively trouble free compared to some of the horror stories of the 70s and 80s.
Being more of an artbook, the images are the focus of the book, and do not disappoint. Author Simon Braund has managed to include some fantastic concept art, previously unseen behind-the-scenes photos, and sequences of storyboards of some of the main action sequences. The special effects were mostly not computer generated, and the book provides good coverage of the prosthetics, puppets and large-scale miniature shots the movie is famous for.
It won’t give you much insight into any specific aspect of making the film, but it’s a worthy overview for fans of the movie and an entertaining read.
