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Comment by afroisalreadyin | Hacker News Reader

Total Recall has it all: The rather bloody action and shooting, the gimmicks (digital nail polish! Live X-ray scanners!), abstruse ideas and images (Kuato lives!), Arnie delivering zingers with an Austrian accent. And then, once you grow up and read Philip K. Dick, you actually understand how much of his ambiguous mind games made it into the movie, and watch it a couple of times with that additional perspective. There are very few films which deliver similar amounts of cinematic joy, unfortunately. The last two that I watched were Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men, and surprisingly a Tom Cruise film, Edge of Tomorrow. Both highly recommended if you like Total Recall.

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+1 for Edge of Tomorrow!

As a Cruise film, it may fall off many people's radars, but it's got some really well worked out trippy stuff in there.

But I'm a sucker for non-completely-dumb time travel stuff. If you are too, be sure to check out Tenet and Predestination, if you haven't watched them already.

Both are well done, evoke consistent atmospheres, and didn't get the attention they deserve. Predestination is more physical in a Cronenbergian sense, while Tenet is pure Nolan administered intravenously.

Fun fact: Edge of Tomorrow is also known as 'Live, Die, Repeat: Edge of Tomorrow' and the original Japanese Novel was called 'All You Need Is Kill'.

I only wish that Hollywood had had the balls to keep the original's ending. Much sadder, much more poignant.

Here is the original ending (movie spoilers):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_You_Need_Is_Kill

Tenet would fall solidly into the "completely dumb" time travel category for me.

Watch it backwards.

The special effects of reverse polarity were well executed.

I generally like Tom Cruise movies, they're good more often than not. Edge Of Tomorrow was one of his best.

I've even shown it to my 9 years old kid, he was flabbergasted. Might have not understood everything (he doesn't have the context) but overall he said it was the best movie he ever saw (so far).

It's such an underrated movie. I watch it at least once a year. Watching it with your kids must bea lot of fun.

> Predestination

Based on the short story All You Zombies (which I've read, but haven't seen the adaptation)

Edge of Tomorrow was such a sleeper hit for me, I watched it on a plane while browsing for something mindless, and I was riveted. I must have watched it another five times since.

Tip: Don't read anything about it, just watch it.

I similarly loved Children of Men, they really nail the dystopian aesthetic.

I also started watching it without any expectations whatsoever (ran into it browsing free stuff on Prime), and was completely blown away by it.

> once you grow up and read Philip K. Dick, you actually understand how much of his ambiguous mind games made it into the movie

PKD didn't write "mind games"; according to one's own view of reality, he was either among the most sincere intellectuals since Kant, or a deeply paranoid, mentally ill individual - and everything inbetween. He was truly invested in the questions about perception that he poured over all his work.

You're right, they aren't mind games, I wasn't particularly happy about that formulation myself. Better would be maybe psychological conundrums? Or thought experiments on consciousness and the mind?

I love PKD but having read most of the biographical material about him and a large chunk of his exegesis ( a journal that he kept after experiencing a break with reality late in his life) I'd put my money on deeply patanoid, mentally ill individual.

But god bless him, he certainly did leave us with some marvelous tales designed to make us question the world around us and ourselves.

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