I was surprised to read that they are making a remake of it. Though I never saw the original dutch version, the Arnold version wasn't that bad and was't made that long ago. I just don't get why they felt they had to remake it.

Whoa. From the wikipedia article for Total Recall: "David Cronenberg was attached to direct but wanted to cast William Hurt in the lead role." That is a movie I would watch the heck out of*.

*Fun with syntax!

Also whoa: Though I never saw the original dutch version

Original Dutch version? Tell me more!

"I just don't get why they felt they had to remake it."

Dark City
The Matrix
eXistenZ
Vanilla Sky
Shutter Island
Inception
...

I tried to google any original dutch version and couldn't find it.
According to wikipedia the script was in the hands of David Cronenburg first. Apparently Schwarzenegger swooped in at some point and demanded that Paul Verhoeven would direct.
So that doesn't sound like a Dutch precursor.

The trailer (or the teaser for the trailer) looks more like a remake of Blade Runner than Total Recall. I don't really expect much out of the director of the Underworld movies or Live Free and Die Hard. Verhoeven's stuff all had such a mean sense of humor and satire, I can't imagine that the new one will be anything but a humorless series of action sequence.

I'm mostly hostile to remakes. Because generally the original was Wonderful and can't really be improved upon like Blade Runner or Dreadful But Not Dreadful Enough to Be Redeemingly Funny and hence shouldnn't be remade, like Total Recall.

I really can't think of a remake that I've seen in a long time that was even close to the original.

I try not to take tooooooo hard a line on remakes, if only because The Maltese Falcon was a remake.

Just a few days ago, I was making an argument that Suspicion would be a good candidate for a remake, because that's a great movie until [spoiler] the ending; reportedly the studio didn't want to ding his likeability by making him a murderer.

I really like the original Seance on a Wet Afternoon and the Japanese-language retreading (not quite a remake) Seance.

I'll take Cronenberg's The Fly over the original anytime, and I love 1951's The Thing from Another World and John Carpenter's remake The Thing in completely different ways.

I could do this all day: The Front Page -> His Girl Friday. Waiting for Mr. Jordan -> Heaven Can Wait. Invasion of the Bodysnatchers 1956 -> 1978. I even preferred the English-language The Ring to Ringu, though that might be due in part to gaps in my cultural knowledge or other shortcomings on my part.

If the new Total Recall is more PKD mindfuck than Schwarzenegger swagger, I'll look forward to it.

When the Arnold movie came out, I was dragged to it by a friend who told me about a previous dutch version that he had seen. He is no longer alive, so I can't give you any more info than that. Sorry

Dick's public domain books on Project Gutenberg

Else, all the remakes you mention are great but none of them are from the last decade or so. Some of those are among my favorite movies, the '78 version of Body Snatchers is almost perfect but the most recent remake, The Invasion, was just horrible. They seem to have lost the ability to add anything new or interested to remakes and just re-hash the same stuff.

Elsa, I'm with you on The Maltese Falcon, The Fly and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and the other "remakes" from the golden age of cinema, but definitely would take you on regarding re-making Suspicion.

By and large, best modern remakes are horror or sci fi. But Hollywood, steer away from my film noir!

I'm just trying to take the long view on remakes instead of giving in to my own knee-jerk disdain. What we see as empty or vapid or pointless now might age better than we think.

When they remade The Maltese Falcon, Bogey was just breaking out from a long run of playing B-movie heavies; it was released only two years after his role in Petrified Forest, which tipped him over the edge into acclaim. To plenty of people, The Maltese Falcon must initially have looked like a vehicle for a cheeky up-and-comer, a cheesy remake churned out to make a buck. (The contract player originally tapped for the role refused it because his contract specifically freed him from working in remakes.)

I remember some people who thought there was no reason to remake sci-fi classics like The Fly or Bodysnatchers, but I'm so grateful we have those (in my opinion, much stronger) films now. I scoffed when they remade the much-beloved The Day the Earth Stood Still, but that's because Keanu Reeves seemed like a poor prospect to me, not because the story couldn't stand a retread.

Don't get me wrong: I hate some of these flabby, vapid remakes as much as anyone. Watching Fright Night (at home, I hasten to add), I couldn't keep my damn mouth shut at its idiocy --- though I thought Colin Farrel was tremendous. That performance deserved a better film.

I totally agree with you on the Nicole Kidman Invasion. That was a truly appalling, embarrassing piece of trash. That movie mad me mad in a way I can't really explain. It's one of the worst films I've ever seen. It doesn't even make any damn sense.

But there's a reason to remake old stories. For example: I haven't seen the remake of Arthur (and it looks like it bombed), but I'm kinda looking forward to it. I'm interested in seeing a newer take on that story, given our generation's approach to addiction and sexual mores.

There's room for exploring these stories more than once, is all I'm saying.

Else, all the remakes you mention are great but none of them are from the last decade or so.

octothorpe, you asked about remakes from the last decade. Well, I did mention The Ring (2002) above; I felt like it told a crisper story more effectively. I enjoyed the English-language remake of Dark Water (2005); it adds a layer of ambiguity and ambivalence that I didn't see in the (perfectly good) original, changing it from a straight-up ghost story to a psychological thriller/character study. Soderbergh's Solaris is a little more accessible than the original but still hypnotic and dreamlike. I'm also looking forward to this year's The Woman in Black, especially since the 1989 tv-movie original is so hard to find.

Some critics applauded Michael Haneke's English-language remake of Funny Games (2008). I didn't see it; I loathed the original both for its didactic, rebuking tone and utter failure to understand what impulses attract audiences to suspense and horror films. But some people found it deeply affecting and impressive, and I can understand that response.

A few more off the top of my head: Ocean's 11. The Departed. 13 Assassins. True Grit. Insomnia. 3:10 to Yuma.

And that's without even touching on reboots, which seem right now to garner more respect than remakes. Battlestar Galactica, Doctor Who, Batman, 007. Casino Royale in particular is a movie that benefits from being shot under less stringent guidelines: that testicle-torture scene is original to the book and wouldn't have made it to the screen in, say, 1962.

but definitely would take you on regarding re-making Suspicion.

I can understand a resistance to remaking Hitchcock*, and I have a great fondness for Suspicion, which has some breathtakingly lovely shots in it, but:

A) the ending is just silly.

B) Hitch knew his movies weren't above remakes. He remade The Man Who Knew Too Much himself, taking advantage of a bigger budget, newer technology, big-name stars, and his own increased experience as a director and story-builder. And he had no compunction about substantially changing the plot and overall tone of the film.

*I watched Gus Van Sant's not-quite shot-for-shot remake of Psycho, which I thought fell into the category of "interesting failure" ... and I suspect that's pretty much what Van Sant was going for. Seeing how the remake falls flat highlights the effectiveness of the original and allows me to see if with fresh eyes --- something I thought impossible for a film so deeply woven into pop culture.