Total Recall
Schwarzenegger as a construction worker who may be a secret agent who may be dreaming the whole thing. Paul Verhoeven's Mars mind-bender gave sleepovers 'Get your ass to Mars,' the three-breasted mutant, and an ending arguments were built on.
Released June 1, 1990, Total Recall capped a sixteen-year development odyssey. Paul Verhoeven directed the adaptation of Philip K. Dick's 1966 short story 'We Can Remember It for You Wholesale,' and it only got made because Arnold Schwarzenegger personally convinced Carolco Pictures to buy the rights for $3 million after Dino De Laurentiis's studio went bankrupt in 1988 — so the film could finally be made his way.
The budget was reported at anywhere from $48 million to $80 million, making it one of the most expensive films ever made at the time, and it earned the spend: $261.4 million worldwide, the fifth-highest-grossing film of 1990. Rob Bottin's prosthetics and the effects team (Eric Brevig, Bottin, Tim McGovern, and Alex Funke) received a Special Achievement Academy Award for visual effects — there was no competitive VFX category at the ceremony that year. Schwarzenegger starred as construction worker Douglas Quaid — or is he secret agent Hauser? — alongside a pre-Basic Instinct Sharon Stone as his not-really-wife, plus Rachel Ticotin, Ronny Cox, and Michael Ironside.
The furniture of a million sleepovers followed: the Rekall implanted-vacation premise, 'Get your ass to Mars,' the three-breasted mutant, the bulging-eyes decompression on the Martian surface, and the deliberately unresolved ending — is Quaid free on Mars, or still strapped into the chair at Rekall? The movie never says, and three decades of arguments later, that ambiguity remains its calling card.
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