Cool Concept Art For David Cronenberg's TOTAL RECALL That Never Was
David Cronenberg had written numerous drafts for a version of Total Recall for Dino De Laurentiis before he directed The Fly, and here is some of the concept art, from i09 (via SlashFilm).
The art below is from Ron and Judith Miller, husband and wife artists who worked to develop Cronenberg’s version of the film. Ron apparently produced "scores of drawings and paintings while Judith created models of sets and spacecraft, mostly of paper and balsa wood.”
There are a number of differences between the Cronenberg version, and the one that Paul Verhoeven eventually made with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Here are some of the differences:
What eventually became Pyramid Mountain in the Verhoeven version was originally a prehistoric Martian sphinx excavated from the Martian desert, and a good deal more screen time was have been allotted to Kuato, including an elaborate dream sequence where he morphed first into the sphinx and then into a kind of phosphorescent vagina. Cronenberg had some very Cronenberg touches, such as agents with guns hidden within their bodies, but absolutely my favorite idea of all those we came up with was to have camels imported from earth to haul freight across the Martian deserts. This would, of course, have been after significant terraforming had already been done…but not so much that the camels didn’t have to wear respirators!
Check out the art below, and share your thoughts.
I know for a fact I would have enjoyed seeing Cronenberg's version of the film, especially after enjoying the creature effects in Nightbreed and The Fly.