First off, let me stress that I actually have a really good memory. People remark on it. It tends to fizzle a bit if I have to speak publicly, but if you’re talking to me in person, be prepared for a really terrifying barrage of useless facts and movie quotes.

But I have very curious gaps. Everything prior to 1995 is a bit hazy, including the movies I saw. They all sort of blur together into one hallucinogenic memory of Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, Starman, The Flight of the Navigator, and The Neverending Story II. I’m always amazed when friends and colleagues no older (and often younger!) than I rattle off memories of seeing Back to the Future, as I only remember seeing E.T. That’s my clearest childhood movie memory. Otherwise it’s just a barrage of Jeff Bridges, robots, aliens, and luck dragons that adulthood has had to untangle into separate stories.

Now, I mention all of this because my beloved editor, Laremy Legel, asked that I write about the 2012 Colin Farrell remake of Total Recall, and what we could expect from it. It was meant to be another installment in the grand tradition of our “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” features.

Well, the resulting piece was all about how cool it would be to see Farrell as a gamer recruited as a gunner for alien defense, and how applicable that was to our modern gaming systems. I must have spent a paragraph gushing about how dramatic the crash on Mars would be, and how much better the popping eyeballs would be with modern CGI.

Surprise! Guess who mixed Total Recall and The Last Starfighter up. My bad. I’ve seen Total Recall twice, but both viewings were pre-1995. Also, I only ever saw it edited for television, which undoubtedly colors my perception even further.

Laremy was pretty shocked, but he found a way to turn lemons into deadline-meeting lemonade. He tied me down in a desk chair (it was the closest we had to a memory machine) and demanded I recall all I knew about Total Recall. Here’s the transcript ….

1. Arnold Schwarzenegger plays some kind of bookish nerdy guy, who is married to Sharon Stone. He’s feeling tired and overworked, and he decides he wants to go to Mars. Sharon Stone looks at him funny, and says they can’t afford it.

2. Schwarzenegger decides he will fake a trip to Mars. This is a future where you can take mental vacations, and implant sexy memories of Mars. He goes to the memory alteration place, and then everything goes wrong. He freaks out and breaks the equipment.

3. The doctors either tell him they can’t implant the memories, and he goes home to experience acid flashbacks, or he does it right there. I can’t remember. Either way, he begins to remember that he actually has been to Mars and that his entire life with Sharon Stone is a lie. They used this same memory generator to cook him a new life because they needed to prevent him from doing something heroic and Arnold Schwarzeneggery.

4. He goes to Mars to try and uncover his past. He is wearing a cool jacket, and is no longer bookish and nerdy.

5. He meets a mutant girl, and a lady with three breasts. I’ve never actually seen her topless since they always edited that bit for television. Oddly, they didn’t edit out the popping eyeballs or the mutant people. Only breasts are bad things.

6. It turns out that whoever Schwarzenegger was, he was involved with a beautiful brunette hooker/action heroine/secret agent who is really furious he doesn’t remember her.

7. Sharon Stone shows up, fights him, and Schwarzenegger kills her. There is some kind of witty and sarcastic quip here.

8. The evil plot he must uncover has something to do with oxygen supply to Mars. The fans slowly turn off, and the little mutant girl looks so sad.

9. There’s a mutant guy with a twin/clone/good lord what is that living in his belly. This is the part that was referenced on South Park. I remember being as nauseous as I was during Aliens. He has a prophecy for Schwarzenegger, which is really kind of odd, but at this point anything goes.

10. The big fight over the oxygen supply leads Arnold and Brunette Lady to go outside, where their eyes pop out of their heads. I remember this so vividly because it was also in the back of some movie magazine I had, and I finally had to tear the page out because it freaked me out so badly. At the time, I had no idea it was from Total Recall, but my friends did!

11. Whatever the conspiracy is, they’re able to render the fans obsolete, and oxygen floods everywhere through Mars. Their eyes magically go back into their heads at the whisper of a breeze. This is medically impossible.

12. The end.

Yes, I know. I really should see Total Recall again. Especially since I can’t remember how the whole joke about the three seashells fits in … oh wait. That’s 1993′s Demolition Man. Clearly, I need Total Recall, on the double.

Tags: total recall