Colin Farrell talks remaking Total Recall

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Total Recall comes under scrutiny in Total Film ’s brand new issue (out now, and available in print and super-snazzy interactive iPad edition ), and we chat to lead badass Colin Farrell about the sci-fi remake.

Speaking to the charisma-oozing Irishman, we had the opportunity to grill him on everything from taking the mantle from Arnold Schwarzenegger, getting into action man shape, and snogging your director’s wife.

Check out Farrell’s thoughts below:

"The whole film then is a journey from this man awakening to the ideas of identity and past and being robbed of everything you were and everything you believed, without even knowing what these things are. So, there were plenty of existential questions for me to think about during the making of the film."

You’re pretty ripped in the film – did you have to follow a regime or diet?

"I’ve spent enough time in the last ten or twelve years messing around with diets for films, I know a little bit about nutrition. I watched what I ate and made sure I got 150 grams of protein every day, and worked out fairly hard.

“I couldn’t quite reach the Olympian levels of a certain predecessor of mine, but there was sufficient backstory for the character that he had some military training in his life so I knew I had to be bigger than I was when I agreed to do it.”

"Then I’d go off and do something small. I don’t want to limit myself to any one particular genre, or any one particular time of film that’s merit is judged on the size of its budget."

Do you think the future will be more like Total Recall or Minority Report ?

"I don’t want to say that they’re the same thing, because they’re not, but they are very similar versions of the future. They’ve obviously both been inspired by Philip K. Dick’s pen.

"While his stories in literature form are open to interpretation and expansion based on a director’s individual tastes, obviously he inspired kind of world format that aren’t dissimilar in each film. So what’s the future going to look like? I’ve no idea. I don’t know what tomorrow’s going to look like."

Were you involved in the decision not to release this film in 3D?

"If I heard this film was going to be 3D I don’t know whether I would have done it. I’ve seen some things that were great in 3D but personally, I just don’t need it - if the story’s good enough. Maybe my kids will need it, but I just don’t need the picture to come out

"Some people say it’s a better representation of how you see things in the world but I don’t really buy it. It worked for me personally in the Werner Herzog documentary, I really liked it in that."

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