Total Recall (2012)

This was supposed to have gone up yesterday but we hadn't gotten the internet set up at the new place yet.  Don't ever move.  I'm just sayin'.    I started out kind of hopeful when I heard they were remaking Total Recall.  Especially after I finally got around to seeing the original.  Holy shit, was that misplaced optimism.  Yikes. 

They kept the exact same plot but took everything smart about the first movie and threw it out of the window.  Sure, they updated the effects (which was much-needed) but everything else kind of sucked.  I'm just going to go ahead and declare this whole post **SPOILERY** because I plan on getting into the details of where it went wrong.

1)  They completely tossed out the whole Mars angle in favor of setting the two warring factions on different sides of the Earth.  You have UFB (which is kind of United Kingdom plus a bunch of Europe) and the Colony (Australia).  All the rest of the Earth has been rendered uninhabitable because of chemical weapons.  But people have still got to get from one set-piece to another.  Solution:  a tunnel throgh the Earth's core.  I shit you not.  The minute I heard that, I knew it was all downhill from there. 

2)  Jessica Biel.  Call me crazy, but that bitch can't act.  She has zero chemistry with Colin Farrell and can not for the life of her pull off the love interest role.  She couldn't do it in The A-Team and she can't do it here.  Plus, in the original, Rachel Ticotin's Milena is a badass chick who is more than capable of taking care of herself.  Biel's Milena gets hit in the head a lot and has to be rescued by Farrell constantly.  Waste. Of. Space.

3)  The villain's plan is completely retarded.  Since they threw out the Mars terraforming angle, Bryan Cranston's Cohaagan has a plan to frame Colin Farrell's old identity as a terrorist responsible for a number of bombings so he can invade the Colony and ...replace their workforce with Synthetics (robot soldiers).  What?  How does that solve your overpopulation issue in any way?  All you've done is make all your people unemployed. 

There are so many other little stupid things that just make it an unenjoyable experience but there was one other point I wanted to make.  In the 1990 version, when Arnold finally confronts his evil fake-wife and shoots her in the face, his big line is "Considah dis a divorce!"  Which would be a snappy comeback if his accent weren't adorably incomprehensible.  In the new one, however, whenever evil-wife Lori is about to kill Hauser/Quaid, she says "Til death do us part, baby."  Maybe I'm reading too much into it but I found that to be a much more politically charged line, especially in the context of the "good girl" being all helpless and breathy.  No me gusta.

Kate Beckinsale totally rocked that shit as the evil wife, though.  It actually made up for two of the Underworld movies.  Not all of them, but at least two.