Game News Video Games Reviews & News
Related Articles
.
Vanilla Sky (2001)
(opens in new tab)
The “plot”: A cocky millionaire playboy, David, who is obsessed with a Spanish beauty and stalked by his ex, has his world turned upside when he’s in a car crash that ruins his good looks. But that’s nothing compared to the fact that his life seems all jumbled up and he’s having very odd dreams that seem to be crossing over with reality.
The plot device: It’s an alien zoo! Oh, erm, no, it’s that other SF standby that only seems cool to people who’ve never read any science fiction: David is in cryogenic sleep with a lucid dreaming option that’s gone on the fritz. See also Life On Mars , US flavour.
Cheese before bed? A completely deserted New York’s Times Square; sudden inexplicable girlfriend swapping; a dog that comes back to life; a dive from a skyscraper… yep, there’s dream logic at work here.
Any hints it’s more than just a flight of fancy? Possibly, if you can be arsed to pay attention enough to pick out what’s real and what’s not. Most of the audience has slipped into cryogenic sleep themselves by about a third of the way in.
.
.
Total Recall (1990)
(opens in new tab)
The “plot”: A man who fantasises about being a spy uses the facilities at Rekall to have false memories implanted in his head of being a secret agent on Mars.
The plot device: This one’s complicated (and intriguingly so). Rekall clearly creates false memories, but it’s near impossible to know which bits of the film are “real” memories and which bits are “false” memories. There’s the possibility the entire film is false memory; certainly it was director Paul Verhoeven’s intention that even the early scenes – before Douglas Quaid appears to go to Rekall for the first time – could be left open to interpretation. You kinda hope the ending is a false memory, because it’s very, very silly.
Cheese before bed? Three-breasted prostitutes; a mutant oracle embedded like a half-formed foetus in the stomach of his brother; Mars being terraformed in less time than it takes to mow the lawn in the garden of a small terraced house in Cleethorpes.
Any hints it’s more than just a flight of fancy? Your guess is as good as ours.
Here we go again: The 2012 Len Wiseman-directed remake similarly refuses to tell the audience explicitly what’s real and what’s not, though on the DVD commentary Wiseman said he had to know in his own head which version of Quaid’s reality was “real” to make the film.
.
.
Robot Monster (1953)
(opens in new tab)
The “plot”: A deep sea diver in a gorilla suit is sent to Earth to kill off the last six surviving humans after an alien invasion that involves a lot of stock footage.
The plot device: One of the survivors, a boy, has actually dreamt the whole thing after being hit by lightning. Anybody who’s seen this will wish they’d dreamt the whole thing as well.
Cheese before bed? Lots of lizards with fins stuck on them romping around the kind of fake landscapes that would get you laughed out of the Hornby Double O Gauge Train Set Society. Oh, and a deep sea diving primate that can pick up Freeview.
Any hints it’s more than just a flight of fancy? After the boy has woken up in a cave mouth and wandered off into the sunset, the camera tracks into the cave and the Robot Monster looms up out of the shadows. Good grief, did they think there was a chance of a sequel?
.
The Wizard Of Oz (1939)
(opens in new tab)
The “plot”: A girl, Dorothy Gale, is taken somewhere over the rainbow via Hurricane Express to a land where battling witches daren’t leave the house when it’s raining.
The plot device: It’s another one of those “it was all a dream” affairs with the added bonus of characters from Dorothy’s real life turning up in transmogrified form in her Technicolor dream. Notably this device was invented for the film and was not in L Frank Baum’s original Oz books.
Cheese before bed? Flying monkeys, heartless tin woodsmen, cowardly lions, brainless scarecrows and magic ruby slippers (but no suicidal dwarves dangling from trees, despite the urban myths). Yep, we’d say Dorothy had tucked into the cheese platter just before being knocked unconscious during the hurricane.
Any hints it’s more than just a flight of fancy? Not in the cut we’ve seen, but early storyboards show the ruby slippers appear under Dorothy’s bed.
.
.
The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen (1988)
(opens in new tab)
The “plot”: In 18th century Europe, a fanciful aristocratic showman is trapped in a walled city under siege from the Turks. He starts to tell talls tales of his life and adventures that seem far too bizarre to be real.
The plot device: Karl Friedrich Hieronymus Freiherr von Münchhausen was a real, historical character, a German noble of the 18th century reknowned for telling outrageous stories about his life. He has even given his name to a medical condition – Munchausen’s Syndrome – sufferers of which exaggerate or make up illnesses. In the film it appears he is just telling us a lot of absolute rot.
Cheese before bed? Being swallowed by a giant sea-monster, a trip to the moon, a dance with Venus, an escape from the Grim Reaper, asparagus spears that are really spears, all climaxing in his defeat of the Turks.
Any hints it’s more than just a flight of fancy? There shouldn’t be, but this is a Terry Gilliam film, not a biopic, so at the end of the movie, as Munchausen rides off into the sunset, the town is shown to be free from attack. Then again, it could just be coincidence .
.
