Last November, Uproxx wasn't sure if they were posting bona fide clips of the Total Recall DVD with a new commentary track by everyone's favorite action hero, Arnold Schwarzenegger. I remembered this news when it came out (I think other sites ran their article), and I stumbled on it again yesterday.
I have a full week's posts coming up, but I wanted to put this vid up, regardless. It's hilarious; I may seriously try to rent the DVD so I can confirm all this.
The brilliant thing about this is that Arnold apparently spends most of his time narrating the action on-screen. There's not a whole lot of "this day we woke up at 4 AM and worked 'til 10 PM," or "I was told my role was a construction worker, so I talked to a few." It's more like "here I'm walking up the stairs and you can see me look backwards because I hear a sound; I wonder what it is."
I don't have a super-high opinion of Total Recall. Since Uproxx's clip is embed-disabled and mature-rated (requiring sign in to Youtube), I'll just show you the clip for his Terminator 3 commentary. It does feature some genuine, appropriate commentary, but his approach to the whole thing is still... unexpected.
Read on to see the rest:
But I'll still link you to this Youtube duplicate upload that I searched for, which doesn't require sign-in (10/1 update: which is now down), as well as to the original video upload (which, as I wrote before, does - but if you're signed in to G's sites, you're good).
And, don't get me wrong, Total Recall was a lot of fun, and I'm sure even a lot of the humor holds up decently. But I had little problems with it, even when I was a kid - and I had bigger problems when I last saw it at 20 or 21. It's just got some real logic problems, and I'm a fan of the story's writer, so it's hard not to think about what Recall didn't but could do.
I still took some cruel pleasure from Scott Tobias' headline for AV Club's article on the Monday after the TR remake's release: Weekend Box Office: Total Recall a big hit. In 1990.
This is priceless.
ReplyDeleteBut, you are wrong about Total Recall.
Thanks, man! I love that no one's doing the crappy thing and saying he's dumb - he's just literally but earnestly misunderstanding the whole commentary track thing...
DeleteI may be wrong, actually. I remember loving it the first time, disliking the ending (and one or two other scenes). I haven't seen it since, and it does deserve another chance...