Total Recall (1990)
Based on a 1966 short story by Philip K. Dick, Total Recall’s Douglas Quaid (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is a run of the mill construction worker who, bored of his mundane life, decides to purchase a memory implant from a company called Rekall that will allow him to experience a tailored fantasy of being an elite secret agent. This is apparently a common substitute for a vacation in the year 2084. In the middle of the procedure—or is it???—Quaid realizes that he really is a secret agent. He discovers his best friend and wife are actually operatives of a Martian regime that runs a mining colony with a totalitarian fist before deciding to go to Mars and team up with the rebellion to fight for worker’s rights.
It is only at the end of the movie that Quaid pauses to ponder whether he’s actually just living out his prepaid virtual vacation. He decides he’s better off ignoring the question and just living in the meta-moment. That’s probably for the best because the alternative explanation brings a lot of uncomfortable questions, such as what kind of status updates Rekall scraped to determine his ideal virtual vacation involves violently murdering his simulated wife.
