![]() Is Schwarzenegger disarming Michael Ironside with an elevator because he’s an omnicompetent superspy… or because he’s dreaming a cheesy action movie? Is the notorious three-boobed hooker an actual mutation, or just some horny guy’s id asserting itself? Cut out the action elements and you largely have the same story, right down to the trembling uncertainty over what’s genuinely “real.” Verhoeven pitches the story perfectly so you’re never quite sure what’s supposed to be the “real” 2048 and what’s just a bored man-child’s fever dream. The hell of it is, it works, partially because it sticks far closer to the theme of the original story than you might expect. On paper, it sounds like a bloated celebrity vanity project. He personally recruited Paul Verhoeven to direct, asked Rob Bottin to do the practical effects, and brought in screenwriters to give it an actual ending. ![]() After Dune tanked, and eight years of knocking around Hollywood and a year under the supervision of David Cronenberg, the whole thing was dropped… and promptly picked up by Schwarzenegger, who had been campaigning to star in the movie for years. Originally, the story was optioned by Dino De Laurentiis, who imagined a thriller starring Richard Dreyfus. Oddly, Arnold Schwarzenegger was the glue that pulled all this together, and it nearly didn’t happen. ![]() So it’s strange that it took an Austrian bodybuilder, a Dutch smartass, and a decade of development hell to put out what is, if not in text, then certainly in spirit, the best adaptation of a Philip K. He’s popular as source material, but the adaptations are, at best, loose. Dick has had a rough time of it at the movies. ![]()
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