12 Movies That Tricked You Into Thinking They Had Happy Endings
3. Total Recall - Dream Or Real, Quaid's F**ked
The Allegedly Happy Ending: Total Recall is what would be made if you back engineered Inception with Arnold instead of Leo and blood replacing exposition. In a condensed manner its the story of a quarry worker who, following an implanted memory gone wrong, travels to Mars, where he gets the girl, kills the bad guys and saves the entire planet.
The ending is ambiguous as to whether what you're seeing is actually real or a crazed hallucination (which would result in Schwarzenegger's Quaid being lobotomised). Either way, Quaid (like Cobb) happily chooses it as his reality.
The Depressing Truth: Obviously if it's a dream things can't go well, but the reality option isn't all that cheery either. The background conflict in the film is between a greedy air tycoon and rebels fighting to survive. In the end Quaid kills the tycoon and makes Mars hospitable, but all this does is open up a new power struggle; who will rule Mars.
The previous powers are all dead, so the militant rebels are going to assume control, no doubt clashing with Earth forces sent up to assess the situation. It's substituting one problem for another.