Total Recall remake puts stars Colin Farell and Jessica Biel through their paces

By Tony Wong Staff WriterJul 05, 2012

Colin Farrell and Jessica Biel are suspended on wires two storeys high.

The shoot, on the Total Recall set on a gigantic sound stage at Pinewood Studios Toronto, is supposed to simulate zero gravity.

The actors are pretending to float effortlessly. But Biel keeps giggling and blowing the scene. It lasts seconds in the movie, but will take four hours to wrap.

It was just so physically painful the only thing you can do is laugh. I felt like my eyes were popping out, says Biel in an interview, just finished work with fake blood still caked on her perfectly sculpted face. Weve been having a rough day every day.

Co-star Farrell gestures behind her back, pretending to smoke a reefer. She was high all the time, he says.

The two have a laugh.

I just want to point out I was not high, says Biel, who plays resistance fighter Melina, the part originally played by Rachel Ticotin in the 1990 movie based on the Philip K. Dick short story.

The co-stars have spent months in a sound stage on the Toronto waterfront in a movie that has been physically punishing.

In an earlier scene, Farrell was being roughed up by a synthetic police robot. And thats before he was hung upside down for hours.

I can do a hundred takes of dialogue, but this stuff is tedious, says Farrell. Humour is whats getting me through the next few weeks.

Farrell (Fright Night, Miami Vice) stars as Doug Quaid, the role made famous by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Quaid is a blue collar worker who wants to purchase a memory implant of a nice vacation as a way to escape his mundane life.

He is suffering from some mild discontentment with his lot. Its the feeling that youre not living the life youre supposed to be living, says Farrell. Whats interesting for me is the level of frustration hes experiencing. Its the story of a man in this quagmire of an irrelevant existence and is searching for some me! aning in life.

Farrell, who had been taking roles in smaller films such as 2008s In Bruges, says the big-budget shoot was a challenge.

To be honest it scares the s--- out of me being in a really, really big film, he says. I was quite comfortable before doing films on a much smaller scale. I didnt feel the pressure before.

Farrell grew up watching the original Schwarzenegger film and says he understands why some fans dont get the fact theyre even doing a remake.

I get why people get annoyed, because some element of nostalgia is being raped by the system, he says.

Farrell says he was a huge fan of Arnold Schwarzenegger growing up. And there are some obvious differences in the script, starting with a dearth of famous Arnie one-liners.

I grew up watching Commando and Predator and Total Recall and I knew all the lines. But there was a lack of those one-line jokes (in the current Total Recall script), says Farrell. This is certainly a different Quaid. But the hope is that the people who see this will care about the characters and be entertained.

A lot is riding on the movie. The budget, estimated to be anywhere from $130 million to $200 million with marketing costs added in, is the largest production to film in the city of Toronto.

Whether fans will be attracted to a remake is another question.

Director Len Wiseman says he is well aware of the skepticism from fans of the original film who say doing a reboot was unnecessary.

There will be lots of those groans, and one of them will be mine I totally get it, says Wiseman. And if you have a vision and make it too different theyll ask why did you bother doing it, and if you make it too close to the original theyll say why did you bother doing it. Its a fine line.

Wiseman also decided to buck the prevailing trend by not shooting Total Recall in 3D because it wasnt the kind of movie that I was trying to make.

The world of the future had to look total! ly relat able and putting 3D in the mix would have made it look too futuristic, says Wiseman.

I think it would have been more disconcerting watching it in 3D.

Along with designer Patrick Tatopoulos, (who directed Underworld 3) Wiseman constructed a set that was as rooted in reality as possible, using the expansive facilities of Pinewood Toronto and the 46,000-square-foot mega stage. The director shot all over Toronto, including closing Lakeshore Blvd for several days.

The grueling shoot had a toll on the actors. Farrell, who spent four months in Toronto, says he was stuck working at Pinewoods docklands site.

I think it was a club sandwich in the hotel room and maybe I went out a couple times. Ive been working pretty hard.

Biel, who had been spotted with Justin Timberlake biking around the city, says she had been on a major restaurant and food tour.

Meanwhile, Farrell said he may never make another remake, and hes completely ruled his childhood favorite, The Goonies. Some things are best left alone.

If they do a remake of TheGoonies, I will be totally pissed.

Biel Vs. Beckinsale

Jessica Biel has fought plenty of monsters in her cinematic lifetime. Shes tangled with vampires in Blade: Trinity,and fighter pilots in Stealth.

But shes never fought a beautiful woman before. At least not until Total Recall, where she had a climactic fight scene with co-star Kate Beckinsale.

Im always fighting a man or some monster, not a beautiful, sinewy, long-haired woman, says Biel. It was very delicate at first.

Beckinsales hair kept wrapping itself around Biels jacket, which would prompt the two to stop fighting, says the actress.

We kept asking each other if we were OK, it was really funny, says Biel. But we really didnt want to have a girly fight. So we just got back into it.

Says co-star Colin Farrell: It really didnt get delicate for very long.