Wall to wall action with plenty of violence, Total Recall stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as Quaid, a working man looking for something different in a holiday. As per the short story, he agrees to have memories of a vacation implanted in his brain. Total recall is based on the short story, "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale," about a company that specialises in memories of vacations. Rather than going on an expensive vacation, you can simply have the memory implanted, and it amounts to the same thing! Since it's not real, why not have a really fun adventure: be a secret agent.

In the movie, a video that says "Blue Skys on Mars" is inserted into a machine as Quaid is having his operation. The final scene in the movie has Quaid and a girl kissing while behind them are blue skies on Mars- cluing the audience in that the whole thing may have, in fact, been a pre-programmed adventure just as he asked.