TOTAL RECALL Trailer Gives You Deja Vu

At one point the "people" behind the remake of Total Recall claimed that they were actually being more faithful to the Philip K Dick original and not redoing Paul Verhoeven's camp-action masterpiece. A simple reread of the very short story will tell you how unlikely that is (Mars is a  big player in the short story, for instance). A viewing of this new trailer hammers it home.

There are entire scenes in this trailer that are lifted - possibly word for word - from Verhoeven's movie. And here's the thing - the original Total Recall is still great. It hasn't aged much. It's more fun, more exciting, bloodier and crazier than just about any of the generic action movies released now. It's one of the mythologically great Schwarzenegger films. Of all the movies that could stand a redo, Total Recall is not one of them. 

But if you're going to redo it, do something unique with it. This is simple deja vu, a plasticization of something special. This movie looks to be the epitome of everything wrong with modern studio thinking.