The best sci-fi thriller on HBO Max reveals the brutal truth about life on Mars
Mars is a hellish sight. Step onto this planet without a protective spacesuit and your eyes will pop out of their sockets as your veins burst and your whole body convulses. At least, that’s the premise of one of the most successful sci-fi films to ever set foot on the red planet. Fortunately, the colony of Mars in Remember Total ‘s imagined future don’t go out too much, stay in a big dome filled with breathable air. But this dome is a different kind of hell. For many people, the conditions are terrible. People are being charged for essential resources and poor radiation shielding has caused genetic mutations. There’s a lot of sci-fi wild and escapism in Remember Total. A talking taxi, a three-breasted woman, a flashing memory implantation machine, a is-it-all-dream? ends, and a psychic rebel leader joins the underbelly of his brother George. But director Paul Verhoven’s Arnold Schwarzennager vehicle also forces us to consider the harsh realities of life on Mars — and how those