Total Recall

Total Recall, the 1990 science-fiction film directed by Paul Verhoeven, is a landmark of action cinema and one of the most memorable depictions of Mars in popular film. Set partly on a colonized, corporate-controlled Mars, it follows a man drawn into a conspiracy involving memory, identity, and a mysterious alien machine buried on the planet.

The film's Mars is a gritty, oxygen-rationed colony where a powerful corporation controls the air supply — a vivid dramatization of the real fact that any Martian settlement would depend entirely on produced or imported oxygen. Its depiction of domed habitats, corporate power, and the deadly consequences of exposure to the thin Martian atmosphere captures genuine truths about the planet, even as its plot ventures into pure fantasy with an alien reactor that terraforms Mars in minutes.

While its science is exaggerated for spectacle, Total Recall grasped something real about what Mars colonization would mean: resource dependency, political control, and the fragility of human life on a hostile world. For a closer look at which elements hold up and which are Hollywood invention, see our breakdown of the science behind Total Recall.