why would they
Mar. 2nd, 2015 09:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI am watching Total Recall, the more recent one, I'm 40 minutes in, and I'm kind of baffled by the choices thus far.
I mean I haven't watched the other one recently enough to compare, but just within the internal logic of this film, the editing baffles me. Or at least it does if they're even slightly trying to go with the unique selling point of the PKD background.
First off they started out in what they immediately portrayed as dream space. He wakes up, he describes it, it was all a dream, right? Except nobody in the audience is willing to believe it if you do it that way around. Audiences sit down and they know you're going to hook them in the first ten minutes. Ten minutes to tell them why they want to waste their time with your imagination. The orientation data comes thick and fast, and the audience is ready for it. So everyone, already, the first time he wakes up, has invested in the 'dream' sequence as real, and they aren't going to buy it as entirely false, because nobody would waste film time that way.
That means the next... I didn't count, bunches of minutes, the only one who buys this guy is a factory worker is him.
Why?
And then once he gets to Rekall there's the nice little speech about subjectivity. And then the memories get implanted, or possibly don't. The selling point, the disorienting possibility, is that neither viewer nor 'hero' ever actually know for sure. And if you're not going to play with that, why the hell shoot this story?
So after that point, everything must be subjective.
The way to do that in film is to stay tight on the point of view character. Not in terms of framing the shots, necessarily, though that helps, but just, everything that happens must happen to him.
Every scene, every frame they cut away from him, they blow that out of the water. It's not subjective. It's not just him. There is no possibility of this being his memory implant playing up when the camera is following around the 'wife' and she's getting mission briefings that he is in no position to hear. Things are happening, they're not happening to him, and they are consistent only with the objective reality of his secret agent identity.
And sure, you can tell that story, but why the hell would you tell it as Total Recall?
I mean I'm willing to go along for the ride when they say two places on Earth are habitable and Britain is the boss of them, the capsule shooting through the center of the Earth is... fine, whatever.
the only trick left is if the opening scene was real and not a single moment after he woke up was. but then the whole bit with Rekall makes zero sense.
is this film going to make sense? I had very low expectations for it, it's a premiere on channel 5, that doesn't bode well.
but whatever the trick is, running it with two characters being followed by the camera just... screws it over.
Even if she's being reprogrammed too, it still doesn't make any sense. It doesn't leave any possibilities open. You're just stuck with an objective reality to maybe get a rug pull on later.
Honestly the only emotional reaction I'm having to this film thus far is a driving urge to recut it completely, combined with a severe desire to pull interesting parts for rewriting into something vaguely useful.
Also the visuals are kind of super boring. Like, the grey on grey aesthetic I can appreciate, but not enjoy for very long.
... says I who watched equilibrium. I guess I mean I can't buy a world without that deliberate negation that is just so damn boring visually. I mean humans historically put a lot of work into making stuff pretty. even if they've got no color to work with there'd be texture and carving at the barest minimum. And it's not like colors are more difficult or expensive than black and white, when it's all paint anyway.
yes this is what I'm thinking about when there's chase sequences.
but it's just black, white, grey, the occasional flash of red, and some grimy browns when they feel like making things look homey. my eyes are really bored.
also this car chase is just random floating things sort of wibbling about. it lacks the feasibility of actual car chases and doesn't replace it with the excitement of, say, pod races, because everything's just close up bumper to bumper so you can't even get a sense of speed, and there's no damn scenery.
Like I said, I am baffled with each and every part of how they chose to film this.
Visually I can only guess they're reacting hard against the previous Total Recall, which was bright and campy at least in the parts I remember, but still. too boring.
... he just pulled a trick with the flying car that we had no idea up until he pulled it was even possible? and we don't know why the other cars can't do it? ... and they just landed on, like, normal cars. normality. the hell kind of sense does that make?
if they're going to make physics optional, how does crashing worry us? I mean it does do damage, but we don't know why, considering what else they've done so far.
how can it be exciting when we're just trying to make sense of it a beat after it happens?
oh, hey, he has discovered clean white, I bet they're in rich people world now. :eyeroll:
yep, that's the rich stuff.
also, if living space is at that much of a premium, how come it's all left empty? I mean when the drug dealers upstairs opposite got arrested there were break ins and rude graffitti about how important empty housing was.
Probably it's been sealed so he can come back to it.
glowy piano parts? how does that make sense?
eh, visual whatsits, style choices, whatevers.
blah blah, false flag, blah blah. if there's a surplus of people and a lot of bombs available then why would he need to...? Eh, it's a set up. Mr no brain there can't tell if he's lying to himself. Get to Matthias is the thing, the rest is justification.
I'm bored and there's nothing interesting to look at. Just faces being angsty.
The pitch about this being a paranoid break doesn't work because of the aforementioned point of view switches. Stupidity, that's all.
... are they going to kill the black man? I think they are. oh the boring.
and now with the stormtrooper shooting. guns don't work like that! one moment he's got the other guy boom through the forehead, the next there's no such thing as snipers in hostage negotiations, and machine guns do no damage.
booooooored.
leaving them alive makes perfectly good sense if they're trying to drive him to the boss dude, but, the pitch about paranoia does not.
oh look, more nonsense technology doing nothing that makes sense.
fine, whatever.
... this film has really lost my buy in.
why would the hatch on a lift even be capable of breaking something's arm?
wait, that wasn't the hatch, that was another tunnel roof?
long chase is long and makes no sense.
fight is boring and unskilled.
ooh, I just remembered I can hit fast forward, that's goign to improve things immensely.
... bombing the transport system to kill a guy she's been ordered not to kill?
so if this is his paranoid delusion it doesn't even have to make sense, but as mentioned, the editing doesn't allow that possibility.
if she's just incompetent that also works.
blah.
why is it all so dark? The contrast is down low, it's just rubbish to look at.
Also, if you've got overpopulation and abandoned spaces, you've got a lot of people living in... oh, hey, they are, with guns.
That's a hundred year old train?
... if that's meant to be poisoned air, how the hell is it supposed to be close enough to the not poisoned air that they can get there on the train like that?
eh.
oh look, the post apocalypse is sort of yellowy, that's a nice change of pace. :eyeroll:
Pretty church looking stonework. See, texture. That's what I'm talking about.
This 'the past is a construct of the mind but the heart wants to live in the present' sounds super bullshit. some dude just up and says that because why?
Yeah, the brainwashed bait/trap part is proper fun. Can't give away you're betraying someone if you don't know it.
I have nothing to say really, it's all action and no ambiguity. There's only so many times you can complain about the same thing.
also what kind of pathetic poison is it that doesn't mess up their skin or sneak into ships when you climb in and there's no room for an airlock???
how are they supposed to get off the thing that travels the whole diameter of the Earth in 17 minutes?
They'll have fun with the gravity shift first. I guess that counts as a gun on the mantelpiece. gravity optional fight sequence? oh, hey, more fun, using a gun as a rocket, that's not something I've seen.
but I'm just wondering how you could possibly exit a vehicle going that fast and with god knows what gravity tech involved.
... also what kind of idiot designer makes such large spaces for this shit to happen in.
wait, they're in teh core, there's all that orange outside, and he's trying to open the doors? wow, he's stupid.
or the film is, you know, that works too.
wait, there's a horrible screaming fall down the middle of the ship? No, I don't believe in that much idiot in design.
also, no, nope, no way, the velocities involved, the hell are they trying to sell???
... the characters are getting shot and maybe dead and I am instead looking up 'the physics of Total Recall' because the hell does any of this make any sense whatsoever.
Look, if the physics doesn't wok, it is clearly not reality. But it also clearly isn't his rekall memory because we're watching his wife and the world boss and so forth, things that are not subjective to him. so there is no level on which this film works. so why should I care? I do not care. it is boring.
also it's all black and grey and boring.
I know I've said that a lot but it's getting even worse as it goes along.
also someone needs to take their lens flare away.
The only one who does anything, at all, is the memory tripping guy. emphasis guy. there's women around but they're epically ineffectual.
also they never talk to each other, so, bechdel fail, which is the least of this film's worries.
you know what no one can win or survive? A hand to hand fight with an decently designed robot. The grip strength alone should be able to kill him a lot.
also you can't see the fights because it's all sodding strobing in close up and you can just see them make ouch face not fight.
also she just ducked out the way of an explosion by being around the corner.
The climax of the movie is winning a knife fight against a politician?
??
?
oh, no, he wakes up... long enough to get blown up... that's... an improvement?
So, the only connection between the two remaining pockets of humanity just got blown up. are we meant to cheer?
Now he wakes up in hospital with echoey voices of memories. are we meant to worry about ambiguous memories again? because epic fail on ambiguity.
recurring ten out of ten on domestic violence though, apparently they think we want to watch a lot of that. beating up and eventually killing his wife. huh, maybe that's meant to be the big win of the movie. that's appalling.
apparently they really are cheering on the destruction of the only form of transport. wow the politics makes no sense. I mean who would have jobs on the other side of the world if there even were jobs at home?
that's it? that's the end?
that was utterly pointless.
Okay, so, I've watched the whole of that film now, and I do not know why the makers wanted to make it. I honestly don't. The unique selling point of the Total Recall conceit was almost entirely discarded. All that was left... oh, all that was left was that balls they always use where an ordinary schlub with a deadend life is secretly the chosen one. Right. That would be why then. Not anything about memory and identity, nothing about the ambiguity of subjectivity, just... you too could be a secret agent. Played straight.
The fuck is the point of that?
I think by the end of that film I actually actively hate it.
I should read more spoilers and not bother watching more films.
I mean I haven't watched the other one recently enough to compare, but just within the internal logic of this film, the editing baffles me. Or at least it does if they're even slightly trying to go with the unique selling point of the PKD background.
First off they started out in what they immediately portrayed as dream space. He wakes up, he describes it, it was all a dream, right? Except nobody in the audience is willing to believe it if you do it that way around. Audiences sit down and they know you're going to hook them in the first ten minutes. Ten minutes to tell them why they want to waste their time with your imagination. The orientation data comes thick and fast, and the audience is ready for it. So everyone, already, the first time he wakes up, has invested in the 'dream' sequence as real, and they aren't going to buy it as entirely false, because nobody would waste film time that way.
That means the next... I didn't count, bunches of minutes, the only one who buys this guy is a factory worker is him.
Why?
And then once he gets to Rekall there's the nice little speech about subjectivity. And then the memories get implanted, or possibly don't. The selling point, the disorienting possibility, is that neither viewer nor 'hero' ever actually know for sure. And if you're not going to play with that, why the hell shoot this story?
So after that point, everything must be subjective.
The way to do that in film is to stay tight on the point of view character. Not in terms of framing the shots, necessarily, though that helps, but just, everything that happens must happen to him.
Every scene, every frame they cut away from him, they blow that out of the water. It's not subjective. It's not just him. There is no possibility of this being his memory implant playing up when the camera is following around the 'wife' and she's getting mission briefings that he is in no position to hear. Things are happening, they're not happening to him, and they are consistent only with the objective reality of his secret agent identity.
And sure, you can tell that story, but why the hell would you tell it as Total Recall?
I mean I'm willing to go along for the ride when they say two places on Earth are habitable and Britain is the boss of them, the capsule shooting through the center of the Earth is... fine, whatever.
the only trick left is if the opening scene was real and not a single moment after he woke up was. but then the whole bit with Rekall makes zero sense.
is this film going to make sense? I had very low expectations for it, it's a premiere on channel 5, that doesn't bode well.
but whatever the trick is, running it with two characters being followed by the camera just... screws it over.
Even if she's being reprogrammed too, it still doesn't make any sense. It doesn't leave any possibilities open. You're just stuck with an objective reality to maybe get a rug pull on later.
Honestly the only emotional reaction I'm having to this film thus far is a driving urge to recut it completely, combined with a severe desire to pull interesting parts for rewriting into something vaguely useful.
Also the visuals are kind of super boring. Like, the grey on grey aesthetic I can appreciate, but not enjoy for very long.
... says I who watched equilibrium. I guess I mean I can't buy a world without that deliberate negation that is just so damn boring visually. I mean humans historically put a lot of work into making stuff pretty. even if they've got no color to work with there'd be texture and carving at the barest minimum. And it's not like colors are more difficult or expensive than black and white, when it's all paint anyway.
yes this is what I'm thinking about when there's chase sequences.
but it's just black, white, grey, the occasional flash of red, and some grimy browns when they feel like making things look homey. my eyes are really bored.
also this car chase is just random floating things sort of wibbling about. it lacks the feasibility of actual car chases and doesn't replace it with the excitement of, say, pod races, because everything's just close up bumper to bumper so you can't even get a sense of speed, and there's no damn scenery.
Like I said, I am baffled with each and every part of how they chose to film this.
Visually I can only guess they're reacting hard against the previous Total Recall, which was bright and campy at least in the parts I remember, but still. too boring.
... he just pulled a trick with the flying car that we had no idea up until he pulled it was even possible? and we don't know why the other cars can't do it? ... and they just landed on, like, normal cars. normality. the hell kind of sense does that make?
if they're going to make physics optional, how does crashing worry us? I mean it does do damage, but we don't know why, considering what else they've done so far.
how can it be exciting when we're just trying to make sense of it a beat after it happens?
oh, hey, he has discovered clean white, I bet they're in rich people world now. :eyeroll:
yep, that's the rich stuff.
also, if living space is at that much of a premium, how come it's all left empty? I mean when the drug dealers upstairs opposite got arrested there were break ins and rude graffitti about how important empty housing was.
Probably it's been sealed so he can come back to it.
glowy piano parts? how does that make sense?
eh, visual whatsits, style choices, whatevers.
blah blah, false flag, blah blah. if there's a surplus of people and a lot of bombs available then why would he need to...? Eh, it's a set up. Mr no brain there can't tell if he's lying to himself. Get to Matthias is the thing, the rest is justification.
I'm bored and there's nothing interesting to look at. Just faces being angsty.
The pitch about this being a paranoid break doesn't work because of the aforementioned point of view switches. Stupidity, that's all.
... are they going to kill the black man? I think they are. oh the boring.
and now with the stormtrooper shooting. guns don't work like that! one moment he's got the other guy boom through the forehead, the next there's no such thing as snipers in hostage negotiations, and machine guns do no damage.
booooooored.
leaving them alive makes perfectly good sense if they're trying to drive him to the boss dude, but, the pitch about paranoia does not.
oh look, more nonsense technology doing nothing that makes sense.
fine, whatever.
... this film has really lost my buy in.
why would the hatch on a lift even be capable of breaking something's arm?
wait, that wasn't the hatch, that was another tunnel roof?
long chase is long and makes no sense.
fight is boring and unskilled.
ooh, I just remembered I can hit fast forward, that's goign to improve things immensely.
... bombing the transport system to kill a guy she's been ordered not to kill?
so if this is his paranoid delusion it doesn't even have to make sense, but as mentioned, the editing doesn't allow that possibility.
if she's just incompetent that also works.
blah.
why is it all so dark? The contrast is down low, it's just rubbish to look at.
Also, if you've got overpopulation and abandoned spaces, you've got a lot of people living in... oh, hey, they are, with guns.
That's a hundred year old train?
... if that's meant to be poisoned air, how the hell is it supposed to be close enough to the not poisoned air that they can get there on the train like that?
eh.
oh look, the post apocalypse is sort of yellowy, that's a nice change of pace. :eyeroll:
Pretty church looking stonework. See, texture. That's what I'm talking about.
This 'the past is a construct of the mind but the heart wants to live in the present' sounds super bullshit. some dude just up and says that because why?
Yeah, the brainwashed bait/trap part is proper fun. Can't give away you're betraying someone if you don't know it.
I have nothing to say really, it's all action and no ambiguity. There's only so many times you can complain about the same thing.
also what kind of pathetic poison is it that doesn't mess up their skin or sneak into ships when you climb in and there's no room for an airlock???
how are they supposed to get off the thing that travels the whole diameter of the Earth in 17 minutes?
They'll have fun with the gravity shift first. I guess that counts as a gun on the mantelpiece. gravity optional fight sequence? oh, hey, more fun, using a gun as a rocket, that's not something I've seen.
but I'm just wondering how you could possibly exit a vehicle going that fast and with god knows what gravity tech involved.
... also what kind of idiot designer makes such large spaces for this shit to happen in.
wait, they're in teh core, there's all that orange outside, and he's trying to open the doors? wow, he's stupid.
or the film is, you know, that works too.
wait, there's a horrible screaming fall down the middle of the ship? No, I don't believe in that much idiot in design.
also, no, nope, no way, the velocities involved, the hell are they trying to sell???
... the characters are getting shot and maybe dead and I am instead looking up 'the physics of Total Recall' because the hell does any of this make any sense whatsoever.
Look, if the physics doesn't wok, it is clearly not reality. But it also clearly isn't his rekall memory because we're watching his wife and the world boss and so forth, things that are not subjective to him. so there is no level on which this film works. so why should I care? I do not care. it is boring.
also it's all black and grey and boring.
I know I've said that a lot but it's getting even worse as it goes along.
also someone needs to take their lens flare away.
The only one who does anything, at all, is the memory tripping guy. emphasis guy. there's women around but they're epically ineffectual.
also they never talk to each other, so, bechdel fail, which is the least of this film's worries.
you know what no one can win or survive? A hand to hand fight with an decently designed robot. The grip strength alone should be able to kill him a lot.
also you can't see the fights because it's all sodding strobing in close up and you can just see them make ouch face not fight.
also she just ducked out the way of an explosion by being around the corner.
The climax of the movie is winning a knife fight against a politician?
??
?
oh, no, he wakes up... long enough to get blown up... that's... an improvement?
So, the only connection between the two remaining pockets of humanity just got blown up. are we meant to cheer?
Now he wakes up in hospital with echoey voices of memories. are we meant to worry about ambiguous memories again? because epic fail on ambiguity.
recurring ten out of ten on domestic violence though, apparently they think we want to watch a lot of that. beating up and eventually killing his wife. huh, maybe that's meant to be the big win of the movie. that's appalling.
apparently they really are cheering on the destruction of the only form of transport. wow the politics makes no sense. I mean who would have jobs on the other side of the world if there even were jobs at home?
that's it? that's the end?
that was utterly pointless.
Okay, so, I've watched the whole of that film now, and I do not know why the makers wanted to make it. I honestly don't. The unique selling point of the Total Recall conceit was almost entirely discarded. All that was left... oh, all that was left was that balls they always use where an ordinary schlub with a deadend life is secretly the chosen one. Right. That would be why then. Not anything about memory and identity, nothing about the ambiguity of subjectivity, just... you too could be a secret agent. Played straight.
The fuck is the point of that?
I think by the end of that film I actually actively hate it.
I should read more spoilers and not bother watching more films.