Early on, Ironside is said to go harder than anyone for this award, with seven or eight dialed-up moments.
Every Ironside scene gets it, dialed up to anywhere from 13 to 17.
His few scenes reveal a man driven crazy by jealousy that his wife is undercover sleeping with Quaid, shown when he tells a helper to get away from her.

Most Rewatchable Scene

The Rekall doctor's visit with Lori on Mars

In the discussion (27)

Approx. transcript time · 00:26:34Read transcript

The scene list opens with Quaid going to Rekall on a whim for a secret-agent vacation and choosing the woman who will accompany him (athletic, sleazy, demure).
The chair freak-out ('schizoid embolism', 'You blew my cover!') is combined with the Johnny Cab ride and the airport fight as one giant scene.
The middle act recalls The Fugitive: once he is on the run after Rekall it is escape after escape and fight after fight.
Asked for other thoughts, Shea says the Rekall sequence sets everything in motion, then the movie goes in the opposite direction from what you expect and it still makes perfect sense. — Shea Serrano
Rewatching after 10 or 15 years, the reveal that Arnold was actually the bad guy felt new again; his smirking arrogant Hauser is likened to Eddie Murphy playing several characters in The Nutty Professor.
Next nominee: Lori realizing Quaid knows and their fight; Sharon Stone had bounced around Hollywood for eight or nine years (Irreconcilable Differences, the Allan Quatermain movie, Action Jackson) and knew this would be her movie.
The hosts say she got in amazing shape and learned jiu-jitsu, so she looks like she could beat Arnold, who can only use brute strength.
80s action was about being huge, unlike today's Bourne and John Wick style; Arnold breaks steel restraints, and the Lori fight, with her technical stance, is the movie's best fight, like a king cobra against a grizzly bear.
Arnold and Stallone made 19 action movies between them in the 80s and defined the action hero, compared with Tupac defining the gangster rapper.
Patrick Swayze in Road House may have advanced non-brute-force fighting a year earlier; Arnold and Sly are compared to low-post centers like Shaq, and the John Wick era to spreading the floor.
Sharon Stone has Sandra-Bullock-in-Speed star gravity; she is in only three scenes yet feels like she is in the whole movie.
Venusville nominee: the Sleaze Bar, Marsburger, the mutant hotel, and random Sharper Image, Jack in the Box and Pepsi branding.
Asked why Pepsi advertises in Venusville, Shea says one fast-food brand always survives through time, as Taco Bell did in Demolition Man. — Shea Serrano
Venusville was filmed in a refashioned Mexico City subway station; the mutant bar has everything and deserves a 20-minute freeze-frame video, a Disneyland for mutants with a brothel and drugs that the film never explains.
Next nominee: the bald Rekall man visiting Quaid on Mars with Lori to convince him it is all a dream; the dream question is saved for later, and the sweat drop is iconic.
Stone beats Arnold a second time, then fights Rachel Ticotin in what the hosts say Verhoeven's DVD commentary calls the first real two-woman fight in a feature film; it is called the Jackie Robinson of female fight scenes, with Rachel walking so Michelle Rodriguez could run.
The sequence ends with 'Consider that a divorce,' which brought the house down in theaters; the whole run is called a phenomenal seven minutes.
Kuato is nominated because it was unbelievable in 1990 and still looks real; a host first wondered what the man turning around was doing, with Silence of the Lambs fresh in mind.
At the Kuato reveal you stop guessing what will happen; 'A man is defined by his actions, not his memory,' and Marshall Bell is said to play George and voice Kuato.
A host who let his young twins watch John Wick would not let them see the Kuato scene because it is too disturbing.
The practical puppetry works because of the slimy texture and how light plays on it, which CGI would lose; one theory says the look was influenced by Garbage Pail Kids.
The hosts puzzle over what Kuato does when not needed and settle on a coma theory in which George passes out whenever Kuato emerges.
The final sequence is nominated: the cab driver turning on them with a tank, the hologram from the suitcase (likened to the Tupac hologram), 'See you at the party, Richter,' and Ronny Cox's bulging-eyes death.
Not a pick but a must-include: Arnold disguised as the woman at customs, with the head that comes off, talks back ('Get ready for a surprise') and explodes, while 20 guards point guns and nobody fires.
The pick is the Rekall man's visit with Sharon Stone, called a favorite seven minutes; a second voice picks the same scene because it has the line everybody remembers, 'Consider that a divorce.'
A third voice agrees it is where you begin to question whether he is still in the Rekall chair, ending on an iconic line.
The hosts say the original line was 'Consider it a divorce' and that Arnold workshopped it into 'Consider that a divorce.'

Sequel, Prequel, Limited Series, or All-Black Remake

Yes: a Venusville spinoff series

In the discussion (3)

Approx. transcript time · 00:36:02Read transcript

Pitch: a ten-episode, half-hour Venusville series, Cheers meets Total Recall, following the bar, the neighborhood, the mutants and humans living under cheap domes and buying air.
That is called the remake that should have happened, like Cobra Kai spinning off The Karate Kid, and a Netflix Venusville premiere is greeted eagerly.
When the question is formally reached, it is said to have been already cracked.

Opening credits; human-shield gore; plasma wall TVs and video calls; virtual-reality tennis; ESPN World Series from Tokyo; Cohaagen raising the price of air; "Give these people air"; fingernail-polish tech; the humor; Sharon Stone; the safety-deposit-box message

In the discussion (10)

Approx. transcript time · 00:48:23Read transcript

The terrible but beloved opening credits say 'Mario Kassar and Andrew Vajna present'; the hosts wonder whether those producers were real or pseudonyms.
In the airport escalator scene Quaid uses a bystander as a human shield who is shot many times, and Richter stomps on the bullet-ridden chest with a squishing sound; the hosts cannot recall that much splatter in earlier action movies.
The hosts say it first got an X rating for gore and had to be scaled back, but Verhoeven would not cut the human-shield stomp.
Futuristic predictions: plasma wall TVs, video calls like FaceTime, possibly Johnny Cabs as Uber or Tesla autopilot, and Lori's virtual-reality tennis, her best moment in the film.
An ESPN promo for game five of the World Series live from Tokyo is enjoyed even if the prediction missed.
Cohaagen raising the price of air is a classic subtle evil move; the hosts work out how air billing might work through dome taxes and compare it to Trump in a pandemic.
It leads to Arnold turning 'air' into three syllables in 'Give these people air.'
The fingernail-polish tech is singled out.
The humor carries and is funnier now; the line 'If you want to live, don't hang up' is believed to have been lifted for Terminator 2; Sharon Stone has aged best.
A late addition: the cryptic message in the safety deposit box, a trick that works every time.

What’s Aged the Worst?

Opening credits

In the discussion (4)

Approx. transcript time · 00:55:33Read transcript

The opening credits are truly awful: three minutes of bad music, poor computer graphics and melted red vertical bars, jokingly explained as an allusion to the classism of Mars.
Otherwise little has aged badly; it jokingly aged worst for producer Craig's girlfriend, who could not finish it, and a second host agrees nothing needed to be done better.
Quaid is open-minded and friendly, joking with the Breaking Bad actor's character ('Look who's talking').
A hedged maybe: the Rekall staff hitting Quaid with eight sedative shots at once, which probably should have killed him.

The Joey Pants “That Guy” Award

Michael Champion as Helm

In the discussion (2)

Approx. transcript time · 01:01:44Read transcript

There are many that guys, starting with Michael Ironside as Richter.
The award goes to Richter's bleach-blonde henchman Helm, played by Michael Champion, who was in Beverly Hills Cop and played bad guys in about 50 movies over ten years.

The Dion Waiters Award for Best Heat Check Performance

Sharon Stone

In the discussion (3)

Approx. transcript time · 01:03:07Read transcript

Nominees include the three-breasted woman and Kuato in his two scenes.
Sharon Stone is the quintessential winner: three scenes, beats Arnold twice, super sexy, and you leave thinking she will be a massive star.
The woman at customs whom Arnold disguises himself as ('Two weeks') is also included for going so hard.

Apex Mountain

Marshall Bell; Mars; three-breasted women

In the discussion (10)

Approx. transcript time · 01:10:05Read transcript

From the Action Hero Championship Belt piece: this was an 'A-Fucking-Pex' stretch for Arnold with Kindergarten Cop and T2 within about 14 months, but asked to choose, the others pick T2 as his Apex.
Terminator 2 or 1 is the movie tied to Arnold forever; Total Recall is the deep cut, and the stretch culminates in T2.
His pay, veto power and 15% of profits may have earned him $100 million, though this was not his most successful movie.
Rachel Ticotin is contested: this might be her Apex for her action work, while another host picks Man on Fire as his personal Apex and a better performance.
Marshall Bell (George and Kuato) is picked over Ironside because he plays two characters in one scene; both are briefly allowed, and it is called the Apex of both careers.
Ironside is then placed at Starship Troopers instead, since a host assigns Apex by the first role that comes to mind; the others accept.
For Ronny Cox, one answer is RoboCop while two voices pick this role.
Mars: the case is made that this, not The Martian, is Mars's Apex, since it is about an idealized Mars rather than a Matt Damon vehicle that could have been set on the moon.
A host leans to The Martian but concedes; the argument cites that living on Mars still seemed conceivable in 1990 and that the way characters say 'Mars' is more fun.
Venusville is mentioned, and three-breasted and four-breasted women are named an Apex because they have never been seen since.

Who Won the Movie?

Eye bulges; body horror; Arnold Schwarzenegger

In the discussion (3)

Approx. transcript time · 01:26:24Read transcript

One pick is not Arnold, Rachel or Sharon but the eye bulges, the best in movie history, since the pain is understood even in an alien setting; the only comparison is Hostel.
A second voice takes that pick in a different direction: body horror, as the most mainstream version of David Cronenberg-style body horror with the mutants, Kuato and the eye bulges.
A third voice is torn between Arnold and Verhoeven, noting how hard the film was to make before CGI, but leans to Arnold for buying and shaping the script and for the three-movie Apex that made him one of the five biggest stars of his lifetime.

Podcast choices

Speaker not identified: Eye bulges
Speaker not identified: Body horror
Speaker not identified: Arnold Schwarzenegger