The Big Picture

• Total Recall's director, Paul Verhoeven, prefers the reality where Quaid is still dreaming, creating a disturbing and ambiguous ending.
• Memories hold more value than experiences in Total Recall, challenging the audience to determine the movie's true ending.
• Despite evidence that Douglas Quaid could be dreaming, Total Recall also suggests his experiences are real.

Few movie endings have provoked as fervent discussion as the last shot of Christopher Nolan’s dream heist thriller Inception. Although initially, it appears that Leonardo DiCaprio’s Cobb has safely returned home to his family and will be able to live out the rest of his life in happiness, a spinning top suggests that he may still be dreaming. Discourse has developed on how much of Inception really happened, and whether Nolan’s refusal to explain how the film should be interpreted is itself a “cop-out.” However, the ending of Paul Verhoeven’s science fiction thriller Total Recall deserves the same level of discussion that Inception received.

Based on an acclaimed short story by the sci-fi author Phillip K. Dick, Total Recall is regarded as one of the greatest films that Arnold Schwarzenegger ever starred in. Schwarzenegger has more than a few action classics on his resume, but Total Recall isn’t just a barrage of intense gunfights and futuristic chase sequences; it’s a deeply psychological examination of escapist fantasy that questions what value memories have. Total Recall’s ambiguous ending leaves it up to the viewer to determine whether Schwarzenegger’s character has been dreaming the whole time.

What Is ‘Total Recall’ About?

Set at the tail end of the 21st century, Total Recall imagines a future in which Mars has become a colonized world stripped of its natural resources by the ruthless Governor Vilos Cohaagen (Ronny Cox). Life on Earth is relatively bleak and dominated by construction projects, but citizens are allotted the opportunity to escape from the mundanity of their daily regime through a simulated reality program from the company Rekall. Schwarzenegger’s character, Douglas Quaid, chooses to live out a fantasy in the Rekall program where is a secret agent on Mars. Due to the realistic manner in which Rekall inserts his implanted memories, the simulated reality is the closest that Quaid will ever get to the real thing.

Amid the process, Quaid lashes out at the Rekall employees when he comes to believe that he is actually a secret agent. Rekall begins to suspect that the government has erased Quaid’s memories, and chooses to wipe his mind before sending him home. Unfortunately for Quaid, the experience turned the government’s attention to his activities; he is attacked by enemy assassins and his wife Lori (Sharon Stone), who reveals herself to be a secret agent. Quaid begins to slowly unravel the conspiracy by heading to Mars to stop Cohaagen. It’s a unique vulnerable performance from Schwarzenegger; unlike his other 1990s action films, he’s playing a character who is constantly surprised by his own abilities.

Total Recall reaches an epic action climax as Quaid leads a revolution on the Martian surface and overthrows the tyrannical regime that Cohaagen put in place. While it ends with him sharing a kiss with his new love interest Melina (Rachel Ticotin), Total Recall does not indicate whether Quaid has ever emerged from the initial Rekall simulation. It’s possible that he was indeed a secret agent, and that the simulation awakened untapped memories from his subconscious; it’s also possible that he is still in the Rekall program and the entire film is an extended fantasy. Like any of the best ambiguous movie endings, both interpretations hold an equal amount of weight.

Paul Verhoeven Thinks ‘Total Recall’ Was All a Dream

Although Total Recall takes some dramatic liberties with the original short story, the ambiguity of the ending is one element that the film retains. While he intended for the audience to determine which ending they preferred, Verhoeven revealed that he prefers the reality where Quaid is still dreaming. He mentioned that the notion that the entire film was part of a simulation may have been “disturbing to the audience because they don’t want that,” as “they don’t want a fake adventure story.” Nonetheless, Verhoeven would later mention that “there is never a preference to say this is really what he dreams about and this is the truth.”

Verhoeven’s refusal to commit to a definitive interpretation may be frustrating for film fans who want definitive answers, but Total Recall is brilliant because it shows the power that memories have. Even if Quaid is actually a secret agent, his adventures have little value to him if he isn't confident in his identity; in the world of Total Recall, memories are a more valuable commodity than experiences. The film also uses Schwarzenegger’s star power to deconstruct a masculine fantasy, as some viewers found it hard to believe that someone of Schwarzenegger’s intense physique and charisma could simply be an average blue-collar worker and not a secret agent with spy training.

‘Total Recall’ Works Better if It's Interpreted Literally

There is certainly evidence to suggest that Quaid could have been dreaming, as the emergence of his secret agent training right after first visiting Rekall can be seen as a major coincidence. However, Quaid dreams about going to Mars before visiting Rekall, suggesting that he may have latent memories. It would also be strange if his simulated fantasy of being a secret agent involved his wife betraying him, and nearly being killed by other agents. Not to mention, the gruesome sights that Quaid witnesses certainly don’t feel like they belong in a dream scenario.

The notion of Quaid’s experiences being fake is also unrealistic, considering that Total Recall has strong anti-corporate themes. The film reveals that the Cohaagen’s mining operation has eroded Mars’ natural resources and ravaged the planet’s surface; whilst on Mars, Quaid helps to dismantle the totalitarian regime, serving as an inspirational figure to the oppressed Martian workers. Given that Rekall is itself a privatized corporate entity, it seems unlikely that the company would feed Quaid false memories about him single-handedly dismantling the infrastructure of an aligned organization.

Total Recall is streaming on Prime Video in the U.S.

Watch on Prime Video