The new version of "Total Memories" creates a standard commercial film with amazing visual spectacles. At this time, let's look back at the originator of this movie, the classic original "Total Memories". What makes it a classic? The rigorous and serious design of science fiction elements is indispensable.
The architecture.uwaterloo.ca website often asks some pre-defined questions about the design and concept of various videos, soliciting personal opinions of each 400 words from all visitors, and then selecting them. Naturally, they will not let go of the original 1990 classic "Total Memories" (also known as "Cosmic Dragon", "Devil's Story"). The following content is selected from the question and answer of the original "Total Recall".
One of the reasons why Paul Van Hoeven chose Mexico City as his location was that he was attracted to the city’s “neo brutalism” architectural style, which can intuitively express the vision of the future (without modification, that is, Said, it can save the cost of setting up the scenery). Do you think this approach is successful? Whether yes or no, please give reasons.
BJ Smith: Most science fiction films with a future background will choose one of two forms of expression when describing the future. The first is to express a highly complex and weather-beaten city-years of experience have given these buildings and industrial systems a style of interlacing the past and the future. Even from the most futuristic advanced technology, the audience can experience it. Get the accumulation of its long development process. Such a picture is usually used to support a future that is closer to reality and more unfeeling-a dystopia. This setting can be seen in "Blade Runner", "Fifth Element" and "Terminator". The other interpretation, that is, the technique used in the original "Total Memories", is more inclined to show a utopian ideal picture. Compared with the times we are in today, the cities in these films are more standardized and cleaner. Orderly. It not only tries to show the future vision and the great progress that technology can bring, but also often ignores the past history. Therefore, the cities displayed in this way have few traces of the past. We can experience this concept in some other films, such as "2001: A Space Odyssey" and some "Star Trek" movies.
Mexico City’s neo-brutalist architecture is the ideal backdrop for this utopian future city. Its well-organized traffic order, concise layout, and lack of historical accumulation create a sense of the future-allowing viewers to be in an unfamiliar urban environment, and it is sufficient to dispel all their preconceived notions of the future scenery. The material of the building has also become a benign boost for this sense of future-a large amount of concrete, steel and glass-these building materials tell the significance of the progress of building technology, especially emphasizing the monotonous and uniform paradigm of concrete buildings. . This neat and orderly style has helped the crew create a modern high-tech style from inside and out. It not only helps outline the future picture, but also determines the law of operation of all affairs in the world in the film—— It is orderly, clear and tidy. All these pictures are dedicated to depicting a vibrant future and preaching the idea that everything is possible, which also brings the fantasy of the whole story to a higher level. Science fiction films often use set design to reflect future technology, but the existing buildings in Mexico City can easily introduce such styles. To sum up, I think the selection of the original "Total Memories" has successfully brewed a picture of the future.
Please talk about your views on the applications of sound-producing puppet devices in the film. Do they help to create a sense of the future?
Andrea. Wong: In this film, vocal activity puppets are used not only as costume props, but also to support character creation and add comedy to them. Both have contributed a lot to the future color of the film. The active puppet imitates the living person through the sophisticated device technology, which makes the overall aesthetic taste of the film more authentic and credible.
Among the vocal activity puppets of costumes and props, the most impressive thing is the rebellious leader of the rebel army, who is parasitic in the abdomen of a big man. The robot driver of the taxi, which looks like a human but is not human, obviously belongs to the category of non-realism, and the audience will have a funny feeling when they see it. These characters are closer to a machine covered in colored plastic skins, and they embody boring and insensitive technical characteristics. The future is full of these kinds of automation devices with no personality.
Please comment on the effectiveness of the model in the film on the creation of the Martian landscape.
Derek. McCallum: The application of Mars landscape models is an important step in the film, because we can only use these models to see the panorama of Mars colonization and the architectural form of human life support facilities.
The model of the Martian colony also shows the symbiotic relationship between architectural forms and landforms. In the film, we can see two long flying bridges buried at both ends of the canyon, and we can also see that those buildings are actually half-buried in the rock. They are not actually built on the surface, but buried in the ground. The contrast between the heavy red of the rock and the color of the dim and rusty building model left the audience with a clear impression of the real situation on Mars. Through these models, the primitive, harsh and unsurvivable environmental characteristics of Mars are vividly presented to the audience.
In this future background film, diet is not the key element. However, many food scenes appeared on Earth and Mars in the film. Please comment on the description of the diet on Earth and Mars in the film.
Helen. Pallot: Through the diet, the audience can learn about the daily routines and habits of the characters in the film. On the earth, all food materials are natural crops. Schwarzenegger had a scene of making breakfast fruit juice. He poured liquid and powder from the bottle and combined them into a meal that was enough to feed the strong man. In this scene, the white bottles and transparent glass containers used by the characters convey a message of "healthy environment".
Compared with private breakfasts on Earth, food on Mars is more reflected in public spaces-such as those scenes in public cafeterias and snack bars. This may be repeating a message to the audience that life on Mars is more tightly controlled. Due to the living environment, everything here is under stricter control and monitoring. There won't be a market there, and there are very few kinds of snacks in the canteen. Under such barren and isolated environmental conditions, dietary problems can only be solved by sharing large pots of food among the people.
Throughout the film, there are more opportunities for glasses and drinks to appear than food. At the end of the movie, in the scene of the dramatic changes in the Martian environment, a lot of milkshake-like things burst out of the broken glassware on the table. This is the characteristic of Martian food-less solid food and mostly liquid food. Perhaps with the progress of the times, we will no longer need to chew when we eat.
This is the only "image" on earth that shows a natural landscape in the film. The urban landscape on the earth deliberately avoids the vegetation landscape. Please comment on this.
Allison. Janes: The protagonist of the original "Total Memories" has an inexplicable impulse: He always wants to leave the earth and go to Mars. The invisible green urban environment reflects the disgust of the characters played by Arnold towards the boring life on earth. Most of the buildings on the earth appearing in the film are made of concrete. These rigid buildings that are uniform and lack color reflect a kind of monotony that is difficult to break-just like the protagonist's life on the earth, and let us see him. What a mechanical and boring life is. Everything in the film is artificial, so they are completely orderly and calm. In human life, nature has been marginalized-this is because people cannot manipulate nature as they wish.
Therefore, this picture fits the plot very well, and Arnold’s character can only rely on the virtual picture projected on the TV to experience the false nature. And this false nature itself is a kind of stale and old routine-you sit at the table with breakfast in front of you, and the beautiful natural scenery outside the window. What a self-deception.
This film avoids the existence of natural landscapes, because the main purpose of this film is to explore: what is real and what is virtual reality? The natural landscape reflects the reality that cannot be manipulated to a certain extent—that is, the chaos and disorder of the natural world.
Video communications appeared in the film. Do you think the filming is convincing enough? Does it conform to the epoch setting in the film?
Matt. Storus: In order to highlight the epoch setting of the original "Total Memories", the move to include video communication in the film is obviously outdated. Even in the real world in the early 1990s, this was not an advanced technology. But then again, those call screens are very good at brewing the theme of the film-the uncertainty of reality.
The video communication in the film is very helpful to outline the plot and theme. In the process of watching the movie, the audience will always have strong questions about the characters played by Arnold: Are these experiences of him real? Or is this just his own delusion? In this sense, the call screens appearing in the film just highlight this uncertainty—because the original purpose of those terminals is to spread a certain hint, and this hint is actually a carefully constructed virtual reality (with The opposite is the reality that the characters will perceive personally).
Most of the earth scenes in the film are taken from Mexico City, where concrete buildings dominate, while the main materials of Martian buildings are metal and rough primitive rocks. What do you think is the purpose of this design? How's the effect?
Nathan. Rehorick: I think this is the same as the setting in Outland (1981). If you want to build a sufficiently credible space mining colony, then you must design the quality of the living space there. It is completely different from the earth, and the difference between Mars and the earth in this film reflects this consideration. The lack of air on Mars also forces people to build mining facilities on the underground rock bed. Most of the shots on Mars are focused on creating an atmosphere of air shortage: all living spaces are in a sealed enclosure. So instead of struggling to build buildings on the ground, it is obviously more reasonable to excavate living space underground-after all, it is on Mars, which is full of rocks.
The living area on Mars is divided into several levels. The outermost public space is covered with a glass dome, where people can look at the outside world; while the resistance organization hides in the most secret bunker, you must drill You can only reach here by going into the very deep rock bed and passing through thicker and thicker metal gates. Therefore, the material characteristics of each place in the film also reflect the nature of its public or private space. When Quaid and Melina broke into the reaction chamber through the maze of passages, this difference was sublimated dramatically.
This forms a vivid contrast with life on earth: on earth, most people wear ordinary clothes, and workers wear uniform uniforms when they go to work. But after all, this is just the environment where Quaid was deliberately placed after his memory was washed away. These monotonous concrete buildings on the earth point to the theme of "loss of memory". Overall, I think the contrast between the concrete buildings on Earth and the metal/rock buildings on Mars also brings out another foreshadowing: they are building a house on a planet without an atmosphere. This is a dramatic technique that not only emphasizes the technical features, but also deepens the theme of the work: the loss and reconstruction of memory.
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