Jump to content

Minority Report (film)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Colin Kimbrell (talk | contribs) at 13:31, 5 February 2006 (Rv "test" by anon user.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Minority Report
File:Minority Report movie.jpg
Directed bySteven Spielberg
Written byPhilip K. Dick (novel)
Scott Frank
Jon Cohen
Produced byJan de Bont
StarringTom Cruise
Colin Farrell
Music byJohn Williams
Distributed byDreamWorks SKG
Twentieth Century Fox
Release dates
June 19, 2002 (premiere)
Running time
145 min.
LanguageEnglish
Budget$102,000,000

Minority Report is a 2002 film by Steven Spielberg starring Tom Cruise, Max von Sydow, Samantha Morton, Kathryn Morris, and Colin Farrell. It is loosely based on the Philip K. Dick short story of the same name.

Minority Report is one of several movies based on stories by Philip K. Dick. The film renders a much more detailed view of a near-term future world than that present in the original short story, with depictions of a number of technologies related to the movie's themes. The film also omits certain story details (no punch cards for example).

Style

From the stylistic standpoint, Minority Report resembles A.I. more than E.T.. This is probably not coincidental since Spielberg began the project after finishing A.I. The film has a distinct blue sheen which gives the picture a bleaker look. Like A.I, Minority Report is among Spielberg's darker films.

Minority Report is first and foremost a science fiction film. However, like Blade Runner and Dark City it mixes in elements of a number of different genres, particularly film noir, mystery, thriller and action / adventure. People have also noted resemblances to Brian De Palma's The Fury.

Plot

Template:Spoiler Minority Report is set in Washington, DC during the year 2054. Thanks to three "precogs" and technology built around their ability to see murders before they happen, the city has gone six years without a homicide. The group making use of the precogs is called the "Department of Pre-Crime"; the police officers and detectives within the department are empowered to act on their foreknowledge, arresting people who are about to commit a murder, and imprisoning them without a trial in a "Hall of Containment" using technology even crueler than that used to make use of the precogs. The department chief John Anderton is played by Cruise, with von Sydow playing his boss Lamar Burgess. Morton plays the senior precog, nicknamed Agatha (after Agatha Christie; the nicknames of the other two, Dashiell and Arthur, are also references to the themes of the film).

The country is about to vote on expanding the Pre-Crime program nationally, which brings in the Department of Justice. Farrell plays an observer from that department, Danny Witwer, whose concerns about Pre-Crime could be motivated as much by a desire to advance his own career as from doubt about the constitutionality and absolute certainty of the Pre-Crime process and the people who run it.

The title of the movie refers to a discovery Anderton makes about the precogs: they don't always agree about the future. Since there are three precogs, the "Minority Report" refers to the dissenting opinion, which the process filters out in order to preserve the sense of certainty that Burgess in particular believes is required for the program's success.

Anderton's discovery of the existence of minority reports is one of several clues to the mystery which drives most of the film. It also contributes to the desperation felt by the chief when in the flash of an eye (more literally, the drop of a wooden ball), he goes from being a pre-crime cop to a pre-crime perpetrator, the action which drives the plot. He learns that he is supposed to kill someone he's never met, and eventually discovers a conspiracy involving the pre-cogs, an old friend, and the death (six years before) of his little boy.

Themes

Template:Spoiler

Fate vs. Choice

The first and most obvious theme is whether individuals are dominated by fate or whether they have free will. In the opening sequence, the Pre-Crime division led by Anderton receive a pre-vision that tells them that a man would murder his wife and adulterous lover upon discovery. While the crime is averted, the man claims that he wouldn't have killed them, but he is arrested and imprisoned nevertheless. It is never revealed whether or not he would have commited the murders or not. Similarly John Anderton sees a pre-vision that states he would kill a man named Leo Crow, a person he had never met. A situation he finds absurd. Yet, as the movie progresses, his decision to escape justice, his belief in his own innocence and his search for the Minority Report (essentially a MacGuffin) generates the incident in the first place.

However, the pre-cog Agatha (Samantha Morton) states at point that since Anderton knows his future, he can change it. This is proven when Anderton refuses to shoot Crow. The film ultimately never answers which has more hold on a person: Fate or Choice, suggesting that it's a little bit of both.

Threat of Dystopian Government

Another recurring theme, though more subtle, is the looming threat of a totalitarian society. Although Pre-crime is extremely successful, effectively ending murder in Washington for six years, throughout the film we see that the people of the city have little privacy. Shops, mass transit, and government buildings are equipped with eye scanning devices, which identify each individual immediately (bearing some resemblance to a similar device in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four). One of the movie's most spectacular and best-known scenes involves artificial robotic spiders scouring an apartment complex, barging into rooms without the permission of its residents or a search warrant. It raises the question of whether people would rather be safe or free.

The loss of individual freedom is further explored when it is explained that the people arrested by Pre-Crime are technically innocent. They have not commited any crime at the time of arrest, yet they are sent to prison without a trial and without anyone having heard their side of the story.

It is also shown that the government and the powers-that-be are not above manipulating or outright lying to the public. Before Anderton enters the Pre-Crime building for the second time, the audience hears a Pre-Crime tour guide telling visitors that the three pre-cogs (Agatha, Dashiell and Arthur) are well taken care of and looked after by the Pre-Crime divison, at one point stating, "It's good to be a pre-cog." In actual fact, the pre-cogs are kept in a sterile tank at all times, and have no fundamental rights. Everyone, including Anderton, treats them as little more than useful tools. Anderton is more bothered about the presence of Agatha's Minority Report (which raises questions on his previously held belief of its absolute nature) than he is about her condition.

Eyes Wide Open

Fans of the movie have noted a recurring motif on 'eyes' and 'seeing'. Examples included are:

  • John purchasing drugs from a blind vendor who ominously states - In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
  • Agatha screaming 'can you see', repeatedly.
  • The spider scene which ends with a spider eye-scanning one of his eyes.

The common intepretation on this re-curring motif is that John is seeing the flaws in a system he otherwise considered perfect, or that he undergoes disillusionment which is commonly interpreted by the phrase : Open your eyes.

The Ending and Its Possible Interpretations

Template:Spoiler There are two schools of thought as to the events portrayed at the end of the movie. One view holds that all events in the plot occurred exactly as they were portrayed in the film, leading up to the largely upbeat resolution depicted immediately before the film's credits. An alternate interpretation advances the view that the events of the film's plot terminate 2:01:50 into the movie, when Anderton has been arrested, convicted of murder, and imprisoned. In this view, the remainder of the film consists of an extended dream sequence, and the ultimately favourable resolution is merely a creation of Anderton's subconscious mind.

This latter view hinges on remarks made by Gideon, the guard portrayed by Tim Blake Nelson, when Anderton is being incarcerated. He says, "You're a part of my flock now, John. Welcome. It's actually kind of a rush. They say you have visions, that your life flashes before your eyes, that all your dreams come true". These lines seem to open the possibility that the remainder of the film is dream and wish fulfillment, similar to that which concludes films such as Brazil and Taxi Driver.

Reinforcing this view, the film's concluding events do seem like a 'dream come true' for Anderton. He is freed and exonerated, the Pre-Crime division is disbanded, his rival's duplicity is exposed, the rival kills himself in disgrace, the precogs are freed under circumstances enabling them to live normal lives, and Anderton re-unites with his wife, who is pregnant with another child to replace the one they had lost. These aims are accomplished with extraordinary ease, as he encounters no resistance during situations where it might be expected, such as his escape or his call to request one last favour from his former colleagues at Pre-Crime headquarters.

Those who adhere to the literal view of the movie question why this supposed "dream world" of Anderton's would contain any flaws at all, such as the revelation of his trusted friend Burgess as his ultimate betrayer or the continued absence of his missing son. These apparent discrepancies could possibly be resolved through the attribution of subconscious psychological motivations to Anderton, such as an Oedipal wish to supplant the "father of Pre-Crime" or a longing for closure in his relationship with his son. n the larger case, the entire question is a reframing of the problem of evil, as originally voiced by the philosopher Epicurus.

Spielberg has not mentioned that the ending should be interpreted in any fashion other than the literal one, and production notes from the film indicate that at one point the writers had intended the film to contain a dream sequence, in which Anderton interacted with his son shortly after the scene in which he was imprisoned. These factors might argue against a non-literal interpretation, but they are not conclusive in and of themselves.

By turning to a potentially unreliable narrator during the conclusion, the film itself mirrors the unreliable visions of the future delivered by the precogs and reinforces several of its own larger themes, regardless of the viewer's interpretation of the film's concluding events.

Score

The score was composed and conducted by John Williams, orchestrated by John Neufeld. The vocals were sung by Deborah Dietrich. The score is largely (though not entirely) athematic, featuring an unusually large amount of atmospheric or highly jarring "questionably-tonal" music, though certain centerpieces, such as the action cue "Anderton's Great Escape" are written in a more familiar idiom. Connections are often drawn between Williams approach and that of one of his strong composerly influence, Bernard Herrmann.

Official Soundtrack Release Track Listing

  1. Minority Report (6:29)
  2. "Can You See?" (2:12)
  3. Pre-Crime to the Rescue (5:48)
  4. Sean and Lara (4:46)
  5. Spyders (4:33)
  6. The Greenhouse Effect (5:09)
  7. Eye-Dentiscan (4:48)
  8. Everybody Runs (3:10)
  9. Sean's Theme (1:57)
  10. Anderton's Great Escape (6:47)
  11. Dr. Eddie and Miss Van Eych (3:08)
  12. Visions of Anne Lively (3:27)
  13. Leo Crow... The Confrontation (5:55)
  14. "Sean" by Agatha (4:59)
  15. Psychic Truth and Finale (7:10)
  16. A New Beginning (3:29)

Similar movies

The film explores several science fiction themes common to films and novels:

Trivia

  • Minority Report originated as a sequel to the 1990s film Total Recall in script form wherein Arnold Schwarzenegger was written to reprise his role as Douglas Quaid who is now a reformed law enforcer. The sequel was not made and when the script was picked up, it was reformed drastically and evolved into the film we now know. Tom Cruise's John Anderton character was derived from Schwarzenegger's Quaid while the Precogs' evolved from Total Recall's martians. The Precogs and the martians shared psychic abilities.
  • In the portrayal of the future world, there were certain aspects of the imagined technology that gained some attention in the popular computer press. One sequence features Cruise's character using a futuristic graphical user interface, where several wall-sized screens were projected into space in front of a standing Cruise. With gloved hands, Cruise uses gestures to zoom, shift and manipulate images on the projected screen.
  • The film is full of chase scenes and expensive special effects created by Industrial Light and Magic and other companies. It cost more than $100 million to make, though it made more than three times that in worldwide box office, and sold at least four million copies in its first few months of release on DVD [1].
  • In 1999, Spielberg invited fifteen experts convened by Global Business Network and its chairman, Peter Schwartz (and the demographer and journalist Joel Garreau [2]) to a hotel in Santa Monica, California to brainstorm and flesh out details of a possible "future reality" for the year 2054. The experts included Stewart Brand, Peter Calthorpe, Douglas Coupland, Neil Gershenfeld, biomedical researcher Shaun Jones, Jaron Lanier, and former MIT architecture dean William J. Mitchell [3]. While the discussions didn't change key elements needed for the film's action sequences, they were influential in introducing some of the more utopian aspects of the film, though John Underkoffler, the science and technology advisor for the film, described the film as "much grayer and more ambiguous" than what we envisioned in 1999 [4].
  • Hawthorne Plaza, a mall in Hawthorne, California where several scenes were filmed, is now being remodeled into office space and retail. The mall, which closed in the mid-90s, will be redubbed South Bay Center One [5].
  • A futuristic weapon is featured, which seems to have been designed to be non-lethal. A gun that utilises concentrated sound waves to knock a person off their feet, no doubt then allowing law enforcement officers to move in and arrest a suspect.
  • The 1955 movie, House of Bamboo, can be spotted being played on a projection screen in the scene where we first see Dr. Solomon (the scene shows a man being shot in a Japanese hot-tub).
  • As Anderton and Agatha attempt to elude the pursuing PreCops, Agatha uses her abilities to assist Anderton. She asks him "Do you see the woman in the brown dress? She knows your face" - and the camera pans quickly across a woman with a surprised expression who looks very much like (and may be) Mary Alice Smith, the second incarnation of The Oracle in The Matrix.
  • It is said that Minority Report is a "supposed" Prequel to the movie Artificial Intelligence set nearly 118 years before the events of A.I..
  • The look of Minority Report was set with a visual effects device called the "Squishy Lens" that resembles a breast implant squished between two plates of glass.


See also

en:Minority Report (film)

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Minority_Report_(film)&oldid=38308400"