HOP - Total Recall and The Bourne Legacy

This was an unexpected hop.  Not unexpected in that I didn't know I was going to do it, but unexpected in the results - I thought I wouldn't totally like Total Recall but would love Bourne Legacy, and it ended up being vice versa.  I had also planned to re-watch the original 1990 Total Recall before seeing this new one, but the movie has been "very long wait" in my Netflix queue for a very long time... boo to everyone having the same thought as me!

TOTAL RECALL - As I inferred, I cannot comment on how this 2012 version compares to the 1990 one since I haven't seen the original in at least a decade, but as a stand alone I thoroughly enjoyed this movie.  Visually it is a beautiful depiction of an ugly world, with an incredible chase scene along the rooftops and through the streets.  Other than the brief moment when a couple characters are climbing a ladder on the outside of a vessel that goes through the core of the Earth in seventeen minutes, from one side of the planet to the other, and don't get pancaked by whatever crazy g-force must be occurring, I had a lot of fun suspending my brain for this film.

THE BOURNE LEGACY - Where are my meds.  I need my chems.  Do you have the chems?  That is the entire first half of this movie.  Jeremy Renner as Aaron Cross, the drug addict.  Or so he seems until finally someone thought it would be nice to explain why he is so desperate for the drugs.  I also found other small things to be annoying - like the out-of-focus and jittery camera work and editing during a super long chase scene, and the strangely extreme close-up shots on people, and how this really complicated big-deal serum seems to be suddenly ready-to-use, and the fact that... well nevermind.  You get the idea.

But I did appreciate how they worked really hard to incorporate Jason Bourne into this film, to tie the previous film in the series (The Bourne Ultimatum) and this new one together.  Not flawless (would have been great to have a Bourne cameo!) but they did well with what they had so points to them.

But they totally wasted Edward Norton's talent on some stupid minor role!  So for that they lose all their bonus points.