I bought the Total Recall DVD the other day, and last night watched the movie with the Ahnuld and Paul Verhoeven commentary.
It was mostly pretty mundane, marveling at their special effects, not listening to eachother and repeating the same things.
One thing was interesting (and maybe I was the only one not to know this) however. Verhoeven said that the story “We Can Sell Your Dreams to you Wholesale” which Total Recall was based off of had a sequel called, “Minority Report”, being made now.
Wow I had no idea. Has anyone read this? I had no real desire to see the movie until now.
I knew that “Minority Report” was a Philip K. Dick story like “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale” (NB: Arnold was the WRONG choice for the role), but I don’t know if it’s truly a sequel or not, as I haven’t read it. A lot of Dick’s literature deals with similar concerns – the difference between things that are real and things that are not, and how we know, and how it affects us as humans – so I’m sure they are cut from the same cloth if not formally related.
“Minority Report”, the film, is based on a Philip Dick short story of the same name… but that short story is not, in any real sense, a sequel to “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale”, the Dick story that formed the basis for “Total Recall”.
Still, it should be worth watching. I’ve always found it strange, though, that Dick’s thoughtful, reality-bending SF with its nebbishy Everyman protagonists should translate so effectively into big-budget Hollywood blockbusters (the only real lemon i can think of is “Screamers”).
I’ve read the original short story for Minority Report, and I don’t see any way that it could be a sequel to any story that Total Recall was based on, though I haven’t read “We Can Sell Your Dreams to you Wholesale.”
“Minority Report” was a great little story, though. From what I’ve seen of the trailers, the basic plot of the movie seems to follow the story, with lots of chases and explosions added in to make Cruise look cool. I pray to all the Gods of Celluloid that the movie retains the final twist that happens in the story, but I can’t really imagine that they’ll let Cruise’s character do it. But I could be wrong.
Well, I liked “Total Recall” a lot, even though it drifted rather far from the original Philip Dick story. Arnold Schwarzenegger is no great actor, but he was perfectly okay for what the movie required.
However, IF they’d wanted to be faithful to the story, a nebbish like Richard Dreyfuss would have been MUCH closer to what the role called for.
I’ve read both “Wholesale” and “Minority Report.” They’re not related stories, except that they’re both short stories penned by Philip K. Dick.
I didn’t much like “Wholesale”, but I love The Minority Report. I’ve read that story about five times by now. I’ve been waiting for Minority Report to come out for years; Spielberg put the project off for that three-hour-long bowel movement he calls A.I.
Another PKDick story - Impostor - came out as a movie within the past year. I haven’t read the story it’s based on, but judging by the way that one ended, they might just keep a traditional PKDick ending in Minority Report. After all, audiences nowadays seem to be drawn to twist endings (maybe this is why we’re seeing so many PKDick movies all of a sudden).
And as far as I can tell from the trailers, the movie might just be the short story with a younger lead character (Cruise), and fleshed out with action sequences and special effects (it WAS a short story after all; it wouldn’t have been movie-length in its original form). So I’m excited about it.
But no, no relation to Total Recall, not even in their original short story form.
I’m actually going to use that annoying spoiler tag for this post, but I read an interview with the two screen writers of Minority Report and the answer isThey do the typical Hollywood ending and Cruise’s character survives, instead of committing suicide. Evidently, this decision was made before even Cruise was cast because the screenwriters figured that no one would go see a sci-fi movie with such a “downer” of an ending.One hopes that the movie will be good, Goddess knows we could do with more Dick on the screen (no pun intended, BTW). Personally, I hope they do A Scanner Darkly next.
Sorry to bump this, but I was offline for the weekend.
That’s not the ending that I read at all. In the story I read …
The main character (Cruise, in the movie) must actually commit the murder that the prediction says he commits, in order to keep the bureau open. He is then spirited off the planet by his successor as bureau chief.
This won’t spoil the ending, but it might make you try and guess, so just in case …
This has to do with the fact that the bureau use three psychics to make the predictions about who’s going to commit crimes. Often the psychics get out of sync, and two of them will agree, while the third doesn’t. This third prediction is the “minority report,” and it is on this report that the plot hinges.
I just noticed that neither Witwer, nor Kaplan, nor Anderton’s wife are listed in the cast at imdb.com. I realize that they have to change the story to make it fit the screen but how are they going to do it without three of the most important characters?
The thing that scares me is the fact the Spielberg is affiliated with this. Come on, the man has hamfisted everything he’s touched since Close Encounters. A typical Spielberg flick goes something like:
nifty intro music
pretty characters
rising action
HOLY SHIT special effects
false climax
climax
AND
NOW
LET
ME
BEAT
YOU
OVER
THE
HEAD
WITH
THE
MORAL
I
WANT
YOU
TO
TAKE
AWAY
FROM
THIS
MOVIE
BECAUSE
IT’S
IMPORTANT
YOU
KNOW
THAT
EVIL
IS
BAD
AND
SACCHARIN
PAYS
FOR
MY
HOUSES
nifty music
credits roll
