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Hi, I'm Dana Steven, Slate's movie critic, and I'm here with the Slate Spoiler Special podcast on Total Recall, the new Len Wiseman movie based on a Philip K. Dick short story.

Here with me in the Slate Studios is Chris Wade. Hey, Chris.

Am I really Chris Wade or am I actually Houser, the secret agent inside of me?

It's great to be here, Dana.

Chris, you are a Slate v producer, and you're also the producer of the Slate Spoiler Specials,

and you also specifically ask to come along and spoil this movie with me because you're a big

sci-fi fan and a big Total Recall fan.

Yeah, I'm a fan of all of Verhoeven's sci-fi works a few months ago when they announced

the Starship Troopers remake,

I wrote a little piece for Browbeat about why all of Verhoeven's sci-fi movies are

particularly relevant these days.

And why is that?

Because of their sort of relevance to virtual reality?

Yeah, I think that all three of them are kind of weirdly prescient and forward-looking to a lot of ways that people interact with technology and memory.

The three that are being remade, you mean this one, Robocop and Starship Troopers.

Yeah, and it's also just interesting that Verhoeven kind of, I thought it was interesting that Verhoven's like aesthetic weirdly hit a cultural moment

where 2012, the Total Recall remake is coming out, 2013, the Robocop remake is coming out,

and if all goes according to plan 2014, the Super Troopers remake, or Starship Troopers remake,

comes out. So I just think that it's kind of, he has a kind of interesting, prescient, snarky take.

All the stuff in Starship Troopers about where it's like framed by that YouTube video concept

...