Total Amnesia

Sigh.  


I keep forgetting that I'm getting old.  Well, older - there's life in the old dog yet; but time waits for no man, and so on. While it beats the alternative, it sucks to get older, as I believe the kidz used to say.


I keep forgetting that there's a whole generation (or two, or three) who don't have the same references that I do.  There are kids alive and in the world - with jobs and families and everything - who weren't even alive when Elvis died.  There are kids out here who only know about the 80s from the 80s revival.  There are kids out there who have never known what it's like not to have a mobile phone, 24 hour TV, constant broadband wifi access etc etc.


Now before you write this entry off as an old fart sifting through his memory box, saying that things were better when he was a lad (for the record, they weren't) then let me just say that the world today is a fun place and I generally like it. But getting older has some odd consequences.


For instance, I went to see Total Recall yesterday.  I went out of a sense of curiosity for it is a reboot (that's the phrase we're supposed to use, rather than remake, or copy, or pointless retread of previously explored ideas - but I digress)  and I wanted to see what they'd done with it, what fresh ideas they'd introduced to warrant this reboot.


Well, let's see: the special effects are good - if you like a lot of lens flare.  The future is nicely imagined - although nothing we haven't really seen before in Blade Runner or Minority Report.  Colin Farrell is great - but then, Colin Farrell is pretty much always great.  So far, so meh, but the big idea, the big difference, the thing that makes this reboot worth doing is that it's no longer partly set on Mars.  Oh no, not Mars: presumably that would be too unbelievable.  Instead, they've got a big lift (that's elevator, to our American friends) and the lift goes - wait for it - straight through the middle of the Earth.


Yes, that's right - who knew that my all-time second favourite crap movie The Core was actually just doing the preliminary digging for a big lift from the UK to Australia - or from the United British Federation to the Colony.  See what they did there? Eh? Do you get it?  And, not only is there a big lift going through the centre of the earth but there's a bit in the middle where there's no gravity and everything floats - because they're in the middle of the Earth, right?


And, as if that wasn't enough, at some point you can see lava out the windows (windows!) of this thing and Colin Farrell and Jessica Biel (surprisingly indistinguishable from Kate Beckinsale) actually get out of it and stand on top of it, while it's moving.  The diameter of the Earth is roughly 8,000 miles, give or take.  The films says the lift takes 17 minutes to travel from one side to the other.  So it's doing roughly 32,000 mph, on average.  And they stand on top of it.  And that's leaving aside the whole pressure/atmosphere thing.  


At this point, just to help you when you read this, you have to imagine that my voice has reached a stratospheric pitch of disbelief.  If I was saying this out loud, by now only dogs would be able to register the degree to which I find this ridiculous.


And this is why getting older sucks.  Because a whole bunch of people going to see this movie won't have seen the original.  They may not even know about the original.  Instead of blue skies on Mars, mutants, Johnny Cabs and Arnie as a fat woman they have lots of punching, lens flare and a big lift.  It sucks getting older because sometimes you realise that newer things aren't better - sometimes they're just... newer.  But it must suck even more to be young because sometimes you don't realise that newer things are just crap and you don't know any better.


I hate to be negative about movies: a lot of work goes into them, a lot of talented people put a lot of effort into them.  I hate to be negative about this movie.  I liked the original.  I like Colin Farrell - he's likeable - and Kate Beckinsale... well, need I say more? It even has Bill Nighy in it (although blink and you'd miss him): Bill Bloody Nighy!  I'd watch Bill Nighy in anything!  And it's based on a Philip K Dick story - what could go wrong?  Apart from, you know, a bloody great lift through the centre of the world.


In short, a pointless rehash of ideas that have been handled better elsewhere; strangely forgettable, considering the title and the subject.  Did I see it or do I just remember seeing it?  Actually, I barely remember it at all, ironically.  Save yourself the money: read the short story, get the original movie, stab yourself repeatedly in the thigh with a fork.  Just don't bother going to the cinema to see this.


Sigh.