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(2015) The world according to Philip K. Dick, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.
Len Wiseman's $125 million Total Recall (US/Canada 2012) did not fare well with mainstream film critics. It was described as an "unnecessary remake,"1 "a near-total redundancy,"2 'sanitized [and] soulless,"3 "an unsubtle shoot-"em-up… set in a world that makes no sense,"4 "a long succession of repetitive chase scenes, hollow explosions and… speech balloon dialogue"5 and "the most ridiculous sci-fi film since Timecop".6 Not one of the dozens of reviews I have read even notices the film's politics: its setting emphasizes an impoverished migrant labor force and oppressive border controls; its plot hinges on a superpower faking a reason to wage asymmetrical imperialist war; and it concludes with the fall of a mighty tower that to the colonized signified imperial arrogance and force. However, it is not my intention to try to recuperate Total Recall as a misunderstood, countercultural classic; Wiseman's film is no such thing. Rather, I will use it to help sketch out some currents in contemporary adaptation studies before moving on to think about Dickian films not based on Philip K. Dick sources.
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Full citation:
Bould, M. (2015)., Dick without the dick: adaptation studies and slipstream cinema, in A. Dunst & S. Schlensag (eds.), The world according to Philip K. Dick, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 119-136.
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