In the 1990 film "Total Recall," much of the story is set on Mars. The planet is a colonized world in the film’s imagined future, where political control, mining, and implanted memories drive the plot.
Arnold Schwarzenegger plays Douglas Quaid, an Earth-based construction worker haunted by dreams of Mars. He visits Rekall, a company that implants artificial vacation memories, and chooses a Mars adventure in which he is supposedly a secret agent. The procedure unleashes memories and events that make it unclear whether his experience is manufactured or real.
Mars is governed by the authoritarian Vilos Cohaagen, who controls the planet’s valuable turbinium mines. Quaid eventually becomes involved with resistance fighters and discovers a hidden alien technology capable of transforming Mars’s atmosphere.
The film was directed by Paul Verhoeven and adapted from Philip K. Dick’s 1966 story "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale." A common mix-up comes from the 2012 remake, which removes Mars and relocates the action largely to Earth.