Corrected entry: When Douglas Quaid explains to Melina that the reactor discovered on Mars was built by "aliens," shouldn't he have said "natives"?
Corrected entry: Quaid and Melina both use the hologram device to trick Rickter and his men at the reactor. If the holograms are mimicking Quaid and Melina's actions then the bad guys should have spotted the real Quaid and Melina walking around just mere feet away.
Correction: They would mimic the moves behind a pillar, unseen by Rickter and his men.
Corrected entry: When Arnold's wife grabs a knife out of the sink and takes the first swing at him, you can see that there's nothing in her hand.
Correction: Completely wrong. The knife is very visible in her hand using slo-mo.
Corrected entry: At first the movie implies that Dr. Lull did erase his memory of Rekall, because when Harry told him he went to Rekall he had no idea that he had been there. But later in the movie he remembers that he chose "demure and sleazy" when Edgemar is talking to him.
Correction: The fact is they didn't succeed in fully erasing his memory. Parts of it came back to him later. If he had absolutely no memory of Rekall there would have been no reason for them to send Edgemar and trick him with the pill.
Corrected entry: After Richter and Helm attack the Last Resort, during which Helm is killed by Thumbelina, Quaid and Melina escape into the mines with Benny to meet Kuato. After Lori and Dr. Edgemar reveal their deception, it doesn't make sense that Quaid would trust Benny, since he showed up the minute Quaid and Melina were trying to escape from Richter and Helm. This was a sign that Benny was working for Cohaagen.
Correction: The main reason he trusted Benny is because he is a mutant.
When Quaid first arrives at the Hilton Hotel, Benny only offers Quaid a ride and no-one else, like he anticipated Quaid's arrival. Benny conveniently shows up when Quaid and Melina are on the run from Richter and Helm, like he already knows they are in trouble. The rebel lieutenant doesn't know Benny, and the rebels presumably know everyone in their group since outsiders can be spies working for Cohaagen. Despite these signs that Benny could be one of Cohaagen's agents, Quaid still trusts him, but he knew not to trust Edgemar, who had lied about the adventure being a dream when it was reality.
Him picking up Quaid is not weird, just a cab driver like all others offering him a ride, stealing him away from someone else even. Him being a mutant totally eliminated any doubt about him. Quaid knows nothing of the politics on Mars so follows the choices of the rebels, who don't know how coincidental him being there is. Edgemar on the other hand was human, trying to convince him it's all a dream.
Corrected entry: Funny how the bad guys (Richter, et al) can pinpoint Quade with their scanner, but they run right past him on the way to his apartment.
Correction: They didn't turn the scanner on yet. They expected that his wife would have killed, or at least restrained, him on their way up. No need to scan when the know exactly where he is.
Corrected entry: The atmosphere of Mars is so cold that anyone who went outside without a spacesuit would freeze instantly.
Correction: In the summer when the sun is up the surface temperature of Mars could be as high as 35° Celsius. So no, you won't always freeze instantly.
Correction: Mars' atmosphere is almost like space, 100 times less dense than Earth's atmosphere. It is a myth that space is "cold", even when the local temperature is well below freezing. When absent most matter, heat loss is much slower. Your principal means of heat loss will be through radiation (which humans have not evolved to do - we principally cool through evaporation and convection). Because it has almost no atmosphere to trap heat with, the feeling of "cold air" that you might expect simply isn't as strong on Mars. (On the other hand, rapid expansion of gas causes rapid cooling. The gigantic fusion reactor probably *would* freeze them, as the released oxygen would be utterly cryonic.) Though the dark side of Mars is quite a bit cooler than the dark side of the moon, it is still not nearly enough to freeze instantly. You would not freeze instantly even on Earth in -60 degree weather either (although it would be incredibly painful).
Corrected entry: In the scene where Arnold is at the front desk of the hotel and retrieves the paper from the safety deposit box, he asks for a pen. The clerk gives him a red pen to write on the back of the paper stated "for a good time, ask for Melina". When the scene cuts to Arnold writing on the paper, the ink is black. When he returns the pen to the clerk, it is red again.
Correction: The body's black - it's just a red cap on a black pen.
Corrected entry: Never mind the absolute ridiculousness of having machine guns in a vacuum environment with many glass windows (and huge glass domes), why for safety's sake didn't the Mars colony have bullet proof glass?
Correction: Simply, money. Cohagen simply doesn't care. Bullet-proof glass is an expense he would rather not have.
Corrected entry: In the scene where Lori is fighting with Douglas Quaid, it shows her wearing a pair of brand new 1990 Ladies Nike Air sneakers, even though the film is supposed to be set quite some time in the future. It is unquestionable that Nike would have updated its product or changed to accommodate a change in fashion.
Correction: There are people today that would spend a few hundred dollars to buy a set of 1900 Levi jeans to wear. Maybe she bought a vintage set of Nike sneakers. Look at Will Smith's character in I, Robot.
Corrected entry: After Quaid and Melina escape from Cohaagen's scientists they retreat to the Pyramid Mines in order to locate the reactor. They come upon a dead end only to find Benny lying in wait inside a tunneling machine in order to kill them. Benny had no way of knowing they would be over there - Cohaagen and Richter didn't even know they had escaped the scientists yet - so there was no logical reason for Benny to have been waiting there for them. (01:32:25 - 01:33:25)
Correction: Benny (and Richter) was in the room when Kuato told Quaid to start the reactor, so he knew exactly what Quaid's plans were. He was probably ordered there to make sure Quaid (or his associates) didn't try to get to the reactor. It just so happened to be Quaid and Melina who went to the reactor, but Benny would be waiting for anyone.
Corrected entry: Listen to the technician at the recall center when Arnie first gets put in the chain to begin his "vacation", right before he is introduced to his choices for women. You will hear the male lab guy say, "This is a new one, blue skies over Mars", exactly what happens at the end of the movie! So, is it all just a dream?
Correction: Yeah, that's kinda the point - there are many references during the Recall centre section of the film to what subsequently happens, raising the possibility that the whole thing is, in fact, a dream. The references are pretty obvious (and there are more than you mentioned), which invalidates them as worthy trivia. As has been said many times, something that can be readily seen or heard simply by watching the film is not valid trivia.
Corrected entry: The alien machine apparently simply heats the glacier ice to produce oxygen. However, heating ice merely creates water vapour (steam). To produce oxygen from water requires a more complicated process involving electrolysis, and could not be done in mere seconds to produce enough oxygen to cover an entire planet. If that much oxygen (and hydrogen, don't forget) was pumped out that quickly, it would produce massive storms and lethal high winds which, when combined with all the dust on Mars would sandblast everyone to death, and the resultant storms and high winds would last for decades.
Correction: Several things: The glacier could be made up of frozen oxygen so there would be no need for electrolysis. Keep in mind that this is a fictional machine built by a fictional alien species set in a fictional movie in the future. So there is no saying what physical properties govern this device. Also, seeing as how no one has actually ever instantly mass-produced that much oxygen to cover an entire planet, there is no saying what the actual consequences would be.
Corrected entry: The psychiatrist that Arnold meets in his room did in fact work closely with Mr. Cohaagen. In Arnold's memory, we see Mr. C., Richter, and some other guys walking through the room Arnold will use his 3-D holo-image in. With them is the "psychiatrist" but with some glasses on.
Correction: No, this man is not the psychiatrist. It is just someone with glasses.
Corrected entry: When Arnold is in the hotel being talked down by the psychiatrist, the villains are waiting to get an elevator. When they get to the floor with Arnold's room they arrive on a different bank of elevators. They come up the main elevators only to arrive on the service elevators.
Correction: They don't arrive at the service elevator. It looks similar but if you look its different than the elevator Melina got out of.
Corrected entry: The film establishes that the core of Mars is made of ice. When planets are coalescing from gas clouds, cumulative gravity draws the heavier materials into the center of the planet. This is why Earth has a nickel-iron core and even gas giants have some solid material in the center. Ice is much too light to occupy this niche in Mars and would have been crushed and replaced by heavier metals in the shell around it, even if the ice was inserted after planetary formation by aliens.
Correction: Quaid (Arnold) says this, but I wouldn't say that means that "the film establishes it". Quaid is not a scientist and has no idea how this thing works. He sees a big patch of ice in a cave and decides the whole core of Mars is ice, it's probably just one ancient ocean that drained into an underground cave system and froze.
Corrected entry: When Arnie first activates the hologram in the old factory hall and faces it, it can be seen that the holo image holds the left hand (with the hologram projector) up; the real Arnie lets his left arm dangle.
Correction: As we see later in the movie, the hologram is a mirror image of the original person.
Corrected entry: The main plot is similar to a futuristic Japanese anime called "Space Adventure Cobra" (1982). In the first episode of the series, Cobra believes that he is a normal guy, but discovers accidentally that he was a secret agent who deleted his memory and changed his appearance to run away from his enemies. This happens when he goes to a place where customers pay to experience their fantasies using a kind of brain-PC connection (just like in Recall). He dreams he is a special agent hunting criminals in space but eventually realizes he is just recalling who he used to be. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0163494/.
Correction: In fact the plot of "Space Adventure Cobra" is ripped off the source material of "Total Recall", which was based on a 1966 short story by Philip K. Dick. The resemblence of the plotlines and characters is no coincidence and is hardly trivia - the anime film swiped their plot from the source for which the producers of this film paid and therefore used legitimately.
Agreed on the main plot. But please also clarify about the gadgets and scenes in the film. For example, the lady mask that the main character wears when he lands on Mar. And when he is caught, he just throws the mask. The mask then speaks a few sentence and turns into the explosive. That is exactly the same as manga. Do the scene and gadget also exist in 1966 story?
I can't speak to the similarity of the movies, not having seen the animated film, but the law almost always sides with the person who controls the licence, granting them permission to seize unlicensed works and appropriate or destroy them as they desire. Under existing laws, whether one agrees with them or not (I don't), unlicensed works survive only if they enrich the original work, don't attract attention, or are simply not pursued.
Corrected entry: The Martian moons portrayed in this movie are shown to be spherical. The two moons are very small, however, and are in the shape of a potato.
Correction: The moons are not potato shaped. Both satellites have topographic variations as large as 20 percent of local mean radii, and Deimos has a few large flat areas, but they appear round to the eye.
Corrected entry: Near the end of the film, where Quaid is about to get shot by the man with the bomb, (Cohagen), Melina arrives just in time to shoot him 5 or 6 times in the shoulder, then 6 or 7 more times in the chest. You can see that he is barely strong enough to pick up the remote detonation device. But, somehow, he is strong enough to keep himself from being sucked into the wind tunnel.
Correction: Adrenaline rush could account for that, people often find to posses strength they otherwise wouldn't have in life and death situations. Additionally, if the movie is just playing in Quaids' mind, it's not necessarily completely realistic and this part adds quite a bit to the drama, making the virtual holiday seem even more heroic.
Correction: Strictly speaking, 'natives' would have been more accurate, yes, but if you take 'aliens' to mean non-humans, which is a common interpretation, his statement is quite reasonable.
Tailkinker ★