I remain firm in my belief that the events in **Total Recall ** were, in fact, a dream, and as I look at the Wikipedia article, I see that my suspicions were correct.
Also used to memorable effect in Donnie Darko.
I didn’t mind it in Total Recall, because it wasn’t sprung on you at the end – thet pretty clearly suggested it throught the film.
I’m annoyed by it in the work of Philip K. Dick, where confusion over reality and unreality abounds – even more broadly in the movies than in the books. Total Recall is an exception, in that they did it in a non-anoying way, but it bugs me that so many people are convinced that inority Report is completely a dream fromthe time Tom Cruidse’s character goes into the tank. It’s a possibility, I’ll admit, but if that was the filmmmaker’s intent it was neither prepared for nor elaborated on, and doesn’t add a damned thing to the film if it’s true (and isn’t at all in Dick’s original story.)
I liked it in the underappreciated Return to Oz, where you do expect it because of the 1939 Wizard of Oz film. Again, it’s not in the book, but it ties this film to the earlier one.
Actually, I think that that is pretty cool. Why should they change their continuity to match Dallas?
I meant that Dallas was compounded in its stupidity. Knot’s Landing was plenty stupid enough on its own.
Back when I was in secondary school (and this was before Dallas made such a mockery of the idea), my English teacher told us all that it would be an instant zero mark if anyone ever handed in a short story that ended ‘…and I woke up, and it was all just a dream!’ - so it was corny even back then.
Used well: Series finale, Newhart. Sometimes, it works.
How do you know it wasn’t all a dream? Go back and watch it and try and pinpoint where exactly reality ends. Then repeat until your head explodes.
It was actually a case of the KL team being so pissed at the Dallas team for doing it in the first place that this was the point where all association between the shows ended. Knots Landing was a spinoff of Dallas, following the other Ewing brother to the titular California cul-de-sac. KL spun a LOT of plot in the 1985-86 season on Bobby’s death, and the Dallas team never told them what it was doing as far as bringing him back (hell, Victoria Principal didn’t even know what she was opening the shower door on until the ep aired…Patrick Duffy was inserted into the scene through editing). The only thing KL COULD do was ignore the “resurrection” unless they wanted to discount their entire 85-86 season.
After that point, the only continuity the two shows shared was that a couple of people on KL were named Ewing.
Actually, the trance is self-induced by Lowry. They never even get to do anything invasive, IIRC, because he’s already lost in the world of his own making (as a defense mechanism against the torture he knows is coming his way).
I am going to be so pissed if the ending of Lost pulls this! (The wife and I received season 1 on DVD as a gift, and we got hooked. We recently finished season 2, and are waiting for season 3 to come out on DVD so we can get caught up.)
I was just going to say what Astroboy14 said - I think a lot of Lost fans have this disappointing ending in the back of their minds.
I watched the first season and a couple of shows of the second. SWMBO watches it avidly and tries to keep me posted on what is happening. Both of us agree that the show has gone so far out in the weeds that they only way they can salvage it is to have a dream ending. Probably a mass, shared hallucination by everyone on the plane three seconds before impact, or something like that.
I recall reading an interview with the creators of Lost where they said they weren’t going to pull a St. Elsewhere. Of course, one wonders if they already have the solution already plotted out.
Isn’t that the way every season of 24 has ended so far?
An interesting twist on this theme happened in the 1950s alien-invasion-with-a-cold-war-subtext film Invaders From Mars (which is so old & well-known that I’m not going to bother with spoiler tags).
In it, a young boy sees a UFO land in the hills behind his house late one night. Then, neighborhood folks (including his own parents) are replaced by dopplegangers (a la “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”) and commit acts of sabotage against the nearby US space base. The end of the movie has him waking up, and his once-again normal parents assuring him it was all just a dream. But then…the boy looks out his window once again and sees the UFO land in the hills. Fade out. So, it was all just a dream…or was it???
What about the finale of the Newhart show? Was that a brillant use of a dream ending?
One possible interpretation by a friend of mine intrigues me.
He suggested that all of the series The Prisoner actually took place in No. 6’s mind. He theorized that Drake (or whoever he was supposed to be) had been asked by his superiors to do something that he couldn’t do because it condflicted with his code of ethics, and the only way his mind could resolve it was to retreat into itself. Not exactly “a dream”, but at least “All in his head”.
It explains all the weirdness in the show, and especially the last epsodes.
Patrick Duffy was on the Tonight Show and told Johnny Carson that the Dallas theme had lyrics, and he sang:
“I’m back
I’m wet.
It was all just a dream”
which synchs perfectly with the opening 4 bars of the music
There was the episode of Buffy that had, as its premise, the possibility that the Buffyverse was a creation of a possibly insane teenage girl.
I hated it. One of my least favorite episodes ever.