Editing Total Recall (1990 film) (section)

===Writing===
Goldman had little knowledge of Dick's work but tried to respect the source material and work of previous screenwriters.{{sfn|Hughes|2012|pp=70–71}} He considered the second half of the film a concession to traditional Hollywood narratives and so retained most of the structure from Beresford's shooting script. Because the creative team wanted to commence soon, Goldman believed he did not have the freedom to make substantial changes to the script and focused on refining the existing content and making the scientific aspects more realistic. Verhoeven and Schwarzenegger agreed that everything after Dr. Edgemar's visit to Quaid on Mars was not working.{{sfn|Hughes|2012|pp=67–68}}{{sfn|Hughes|2012|p=71}} Verhoeven wanted a significant change, to indicate that Edgemar could be telling the truth and Quaid is actually having a mental breakdown on Earth. Goldman rewrote the script to make it possible for the film to be viewed as both reality and fantasy.{{sfn|Hughes|2012|p=68}} He also made Hauser an ally to Cohaagen, clearly defining Quaid and Hauser as separate identities.{{sfn|Hughes|2012|p=69}} Goldman believed that making Hauser evil would better justify Quaid not returning to his original personality. It would also explain why Hauser becomes Quaid: to conceal his intentions from the psychic mutants. Goldman made the Benny character a villain, because he believed African Americans were typically typecast as good characters and the reveal would be surprising.{{sfn|Hughes|2012|p=70}}

The script also had to be revised to match Schwarzenegger's action-hero public image, although Goldman tried to make it less comical than some of the actor's previous films.{{sfn|Hughes|2012|p=71}} The meek clerk Quail was renamed Quaid, to avoid referencing then-vice president [[Dan Quayle]], and became a muscle-bound construction worker, while fight scenes were rewritten to include more feats of strength and less martial arts or running.{{sfn|Hughes|2012|p=61}}<ref name="WiredPKD"/>{{sfn|Murray|1990|p=53}} Second unit director and stunt coordinator [[Vic Armstrong]], among other stunt people who had worked with Schwarzenegger on ''[[Conan the Barbarian (1982 film)|Conan the Barbarian]]'' (1982) and ''[[Red Sonja (1985 film)|Red Sonja]]'' (1985), said that they knew what he could physically do without looking silly.{{sfn|Murray|1990|pp=53–54}} Schwarzenegger also wanted more creative methods to dispatch Quaid's foes because he had been criticized for an over-reliance on guns to kill people in films like ''Commando''.{{sfn|Murray|1990|p=54}} After Goldman's first rewrite, he discussed it with Verhoeven, Schwarzenegger, Shusett, Vajna, and Kassar. Schwarzenegger and Shusett believed the climax lacked emotion, which was an intentional choice by Verhoeven, who did not take the Martian rebel plot very seriously and prioritized the intellectual aspects of the narrative. To appease Schwarzenegger, Goldman conceived of Cohaagen shutting off the oxygen to the mutants in Venusville.{{sfn|Hughes|2012|p=71}} After nearly sixteen years in development, seven directors, four co-writers, and forty script drafts, ''Total Recall'' went into production.{{sfn|Murray|1990|p=52}}{{sfn|Hughes|2012|pp=66,71,88}}{{sfn|Murray|1990b|pp=30,72}}