Minority Report (2002) | Sci-Fi Saturdays

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Everybody runs!

Few director’s command sci-fi films like Steven Spielberg, and Minority Report is one of his best from the 21st Century. It takes a serious look at the future of science and technology while providing an interesting tech-noir background in which to set the story.

First Impressions

This film’s trailer sets up a future in which crime is predetermined and people are arrested before they have committed an act. The system works, or so policeman Tom Cruise thinks, until he is tagged for a crime in this future. He objects stating he doesn’t even know the victim, and has to run to clear his name. Lots of interesting weapons, vehicles, and gadgets pepper the preview for this Steven Spielberg film. It’s the Minority Report.

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

The Fiction of The Film

In the mid-21st Century, John Anderton (Tom Cruise) is the head of the PreCrime division in Washington DC, a task force that uses three precognitives (precogs) to predict and arrest murderers before they commit the crime. After six years, and a 90% reduction in homicides, PreCrime is on the verge of going national. Danny Witwer (Colin Farrell) is a Federal agent sent to review the program and report back to the Attorney General. However, he believes that there is a flaw in this apparently perfect system, and it’s a human.

John discovers a weird flashback to the death of Anne Lively coming from the precog Agatha (Samantha Morton) and investigates. He discovers that a number of people arrested by PreCrime have a missing vision from one of the precogs. In the middle of his investigation the precogs detect another murder is about to be committed. John is surprised to learn that they believe that he will murder a man he has never met, named Leo Crow. John flees from the PreCrime offices and avoids being captured by Witwer and the PreCrime team, now led by Fletcher (Neal McDonough).

John seeks out Dr. Iris Hineman (Lois Smith), the “inventor of PreCrime.” She tells John that she never intended for PreCrime to be a thing. She was only treating brain damaged children born to neuroin addicts and realized that some had a telepathic ability. Dr. Hineman then informs him of the minority report, which is when one of the precogs sees a different future vision than the other two. It is removed from the system so as not to create doubt, explaining the missing vision in the Anne Lively case. She tells him that the missing vision is stored in the precog that experienced it; in this case, Agatha.

Knowing he will be flagged by the EyeDent system if he approaches the PreCrime headquarters, John seeks out a blackmarket doctor, Solomon Eddie (Peter Stormare) who replaces John’s eyeballs with ones from a donor. John is then able to sneak back into the “temple,” the nutrient bath where the precogs are stored, and escape with Agatha. He demands to see his minority report, but she has nothing for him. Agatha tells him that he still has a choice to walk away.

They hide out in a low-rent hotel where John discovers that Leo Crow (Mike Binder) is also registered. Breaking into the man’s room John discovers hundreds of photos of young children on the bed–including one of John’s son Sean, who was kidnapped years ago. Interrogating Crow, John realizes that this is a setup and Crow was hired to pose as the kidnapper. In a struggle John shoots Crow accidentally–which still fulfills the visions seen by the precogs. Meanwhile, Witwer realizes the mystery flashbacks they saw from Agatha indicate that they were watching a second murder.

Witwer takes his evidence to Lemar Burgess (Max von Sydow), the Director of PreCrime, explaining that the murder of Anne Lively was committed by someone who had witnessed the pre-vision and killed her in a similar manner, knowing that technicians will believe it to be an ‘echo’ of the system. Burgess shoots Witwer, having discovered his dirty secret. Lively was the mother of Agatha who had come back for her daughter after getting clean from her neuroin addiction. Burgess killed her so that PreCrime could succeed. John is found at his estranged wife Lara’s house and arrested for the murders of Crow and Witwer, and committed to the Department of Containment.

Lara (Kathryn Morris) has suspicions that John is innocent. She gets Burgess to slip up and admit that he knows more about the killing of Lively than he says. Lara then helps John escape and takes him to a reception celebrating Burgess and the success of PreCrime. John confronts Burgess, giving him a choice. Burgess can shoot John, proving the precogs correct–but Burgess would get put away for the crime. Or, he can choose to not shoot John, and prove PreCrime a failure. Burgess shoots himself instead. The film ends with the PreCrime experiment shuttering, and John reconnecting with Lara and expecting a baby. The precogs are released to live out their lives in seclusion away from the experience of witnessing murders on a daily basis.

“The fact that you prevented it from happening doesn’t change the fact that it was going to happen.” – John Anderton

History in the Making

The year was 2002 and a Steven Spielberg film closely followed a George Lucase film into theaters. It was like 1977 all over again. The Lucas film was the second of his prequel series, Attack of the Clones, covered last week, and the Spielberg film was, of course, Minority Report. However the two films are vastly different from the films they had released in 1977, Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Those two films had the wide-eyed innocence of youthful directors, while now, 25 years later, their films are both darker and show a more cynical version of the world. Minority Report was the second sci-fi film in a row from Spielberg and his sixth overall, after CE3K, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Jurassic Park, The Lost World, and A.I. Artificial Intelligence. The film marked a turning point in Spielberg’s style as well. No longer was the film filled with awe and wonderment, but instead containing a darker, gritty style of future-realism. He had experimented with that type of look a bit in Artificial Intelligence, but that film still had a fantastical and childlike element to it, as much of his previous sci-fi work. Minority Report has a more adult tone, featuring noir-style police escapades, drug addicts, homicides, abducted children, and an anti-authoritarian stance.

Part of the film’s tone can be attributed to the source material from which it was drawn. Minority Report was based on a 1956 novella by prolific sci-fi author Philip K. Dick. This was the fifth film based on Dick’s work in the last 20 years, which began with his most famous adaptation, Blade Runner, and also included Total Recall and Screamers. The story and plot of the film basically follows the same arc as that of the book. John Anderton (a middle aged man) works for PreCrime in which three precogs are able to see future murders, one of which is committed by Anderton. But a number of changes were made, including having Tom Cruise cast as the lead, to make it different enough from the source material. At one point, in the mid-90s, the film was even considered to be a sequel to Schwarzenegger’s Total Recall, but when that star declined the role, it was reworked to something closer to the current version.

This was the first time for Cruise to work with Spielberg. They had actually met almost two decades earlier when Cruise was making Risky Business, and had been looking for a project to work on together. Spielberg almost ended up directing Rain Man before leaving to make the third Indiana Jones film instead. The stars then aligned for them to make this film. The two would also cross paths again in 2005 on the remake of War of the Worlds, which would be Spielberg’s next sci-fi project. Minority Report was Cruise’s first sci-fi film (not counting the technologically pseudo sci-fi Mission: Impossible series) which he would follow with Oblivion and Edge of Tomorrow in the early 2010s.

Genre-fication

Minority Report created a look for the future that would become commonplace over the next several decades. Since the film is a neo-noir future thriller, similar to Blade Runner, Spielberg wanted the cinematography to be similar to the old black and white crime thrillers of his youth. Janusz Kaminski, the Polish director of photography that had been working with Spielberg since Schindler’s List, devised a desaturated and blown out look to footage. This future was not the wet neon look of Blade Runner, or a more colorful world of Back to the Future Part II. It was a cold, blue and gray look which belied the dystopian world in which Big Brother was not only watching you, but watching what you were going to do, and then arrest you before you did it. In this vein, the film falls into the categories of Seven or The Matrix with their toned down color palettes. Kaminiski achieved all of this with lighting and processing of the film, even though digital tools existed to alter the colors of the footage after the fact. Many futuristic films in the last two decades have created a similar look to indicate the bleakness and coldness of their future world as well using computers to evenly change the tone of the film as a whole.

As mentioned above, this is really a techno-noir film and so it owes much to the look and styles of films like The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep, or North By Northwest as it does to futuristic films like Blade Runner and Johnny Mnemonic. Spielberg peppers the film with quirky characters like the eyeless neuroin pusher or Gideon, the prison guard, who each utter very distinctive phrases and are the seedy kinds of characters found in hard-boiled fiction. If there’s any doubt about the noir aspects of the film, a viewer need look no further than the names of the precogs, Agatha, Dash, and Arthur, which are all references to famous crime authors. There’s Agatha Christie, known for her murder mysteries with Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, Dashiell Hammett, author of hard-boiled detective stories like Red Harvest and The Maltese Falcon, and Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes.

Whether intended or not, Minority Report also references some other science-fiction films in oblique ways. The shaven head of Agatha within her nutrient bath environment evokes the bald characters from THX-1138. Peter Stormare’s bizarre medical doctor, and that scene in general, very much feels like a character straight out of Terry Gilliam’s dystopian Brazil. While the chase through the car factory with the robots building a car as Witwer and John struggle to avoid welding arms, feels like it’s right out of the droid factory from Attack of the Clones, which is impossible as both films were in production at the same time.

Societal Commentary

Minority Report is a unique science-fiction film. It’s a story that is not about time travel, but still has themes of fate versus predestination. No other examples of this type of story spring to mind. Most films that deal with these themes allow the characters to witness or experience new timelines wherein they are able to alter the events and hopefully create a better outcome. Minority Report only has characters with precognitive ability which inform other characters about their future.  John Anderton is given a choice about knowing his future; the killing of Leo Crow. He has the ability to decide if he will make that future come true, or walk down a different path. He takes that alternate path, even though events still lead to the shooting and death of Crow, proving that even with a choice, some moments may always play out as predicted.

The film’s technology, PreCrime, is based on the ability for the precogs to see a murder before it happens. In the opening moments, the system is debuted to the audience with the future murder of Sarah Marks (Ashley Crow) by her husband Howard (Arye Gross). It is described as spontaneous murder, a crime of passion, and as such one that shows up “late” for the precogs. Howard appears to be in the act of trying to stab his wife when the PreCrime officers intervene and arrest him–before any physical crime has been committed. If Howard had been shown his future, would he have chosen to move ahead with the events? Anderton explains the process to Witwer, and the audience, by rolling a ball across a table. Witwer reflexively grabs it when it rolls off the side. Anderton illustrates his point about PreCrime. Witwer grabbed the ball because it was going to fall to the floor. His stopping the event doesn’t change the fact that it would have happened. The film seems to indicate that there is a limited predetermination of events. That once certain events have started, or when people are in a specific place, the probabilities that events will unfold in a set (predetermined) way are highly likely. When Howard Marks discovers his wife with another man, and he has access to a pair of scissors, there is a high chance that he will kill her. This is what the precogs see. But John, knowing that he is predicted to kill Leo Crow, has a chance to alter that future, and change that probability, by making a choice–which is the wildcard in this and any situation.

With this idea in mind, the film is not wholly about predeterminism, and simple cause and effect. The ball being rolled across the table would certainly fall off the other side. But no system is simplistic and closed. If John rolled the ball in the absence of others, it would fall. But he introduces his “experiment” in the presence of Witwer who intercedes and stops the ball from falling. The observation of the event has the ability to affect its outcome. Every choice that the individuals arrested by PreCrime were about to commit was fabricated on hundreds of variables, many of which might change depending on the actions (or inactions) of others. This is probably why premeditated murders can be seen clearer and early by the precogs. Those premeditated choices are harder to change once an individual has committed to them. The crimes of passion, like Howard Marks, are spur of the moment decisions that give the officers very little time to stop. John then is able to make choices to not kill Crow, even if the events unfold with Crow still dying. This would seem to prove a deterministic universe, but maybe there are just some things that are always supposed to happen. The end of the film seems to be more hopeful with John being able to discover Burgess’s plan, which crumbled PreCrime in the process. As Witwer, a non-precog predicted, the only flaw in a perfect system will be a human.

The Science in The Fiction

Steven Spielberg’s take on science-fiction has never been as pop-culture inspired as his friend George Lucas’s. Spielberg’s vision is always a bit more realistic and Minority Report falls into an extremely realistic future society. He wanted to create a more believable future, rather than the ubiquitous dystopian or utopian futures seen in other films. Rather than having a production designer run wild with ideas, Spielberg gathered 15 futurists for a three-day summit to come up with a plausible future tech for the year 2054 which blended futurism and reality. Spielberg stated that he really wanted the elements seen in the film to come true and not be a fantasy idea. In the film, the EyeDent identity system is used to not only track individuals for security purposes, but also being used as a marketing tool, much like the way that information on computers tracks users on the internet. The police of this world have batons called “sick sticks” that induce vomiting in the victim, as well as sonic powered guns that use concussive force rather than ballistics. They too have jet packs, which might have been a small conceit from Spielberg to still have some fun and cool future tech.

Another interesting tool used by the PreCrime offices are spyders, small, robotic creatures that can squeeze into tiny places, allowing officers to scan a building with less risk than going in themselves. These devices, which walk on three tentacle-like appendages (perhaps a nod to the Martian machines from the novel War of the Worlds) have built in EyeDent scanners for finding perpetrators, along with a shock probe, to coerce the victim to open their eyes. This future also imagines a Washington DC that has huge high-rises and a zero-emission transportation system. However this utopian element has led to a darker, underground section of town–known as the Sprawl–where the less fortunate, and drug addicts, exist. The goal of the film’s futurism appears to be for every positive device that was conceived, another dystopian element was to be created, as almost a balance between the intended good, and unintended consequence. That unintended consequences from certain technological creations creating some other blight is something that can be seen in society today. This circles back to Dr. Hineman’s view of PreCrime as a “series of genetic mistakes and science gone haywire.” The complex systems of society do not exist in a vacuum, and changes to one element can alter others in unpredictable ways.

The Final Frontier

Minority Report, like a number of other science-fiction properties, had a short-lived television series on Fox. It debuted, and shuttered after ten episodes, in 2015. The premise was that, 12 years after the film, precog Dash uses his abilities to help a detective solve crimes. The three precogs, recast for this show, were the featured characters, giving a twist to the procedural format beloved by television. It was an interesting experiment, but one that did not get off the ground enough to survive.

Spielberg would go on to remake a version of War of the Worlds in 2005, and then leave sci-fi behind for more than a decade, returning in 2018 to direct the adaptation of Ernest Cline’s novel Ready Player One. Philip K. Dick’s works would continue to be produced in Hollywood, including a remake of Total Recall, this time featuring Colin Farell. Max von Sydow, having played Ming the Merciless in Flash Gordon and Dr Kynes in Dune, would return to the sci-fi genre in The Force Awakens.

Minority Report remains a strong sci-fi film for many of the reasons listed above, as well as a film that doesn’t date itself. Until a number of the futuristic elements within come to pass, it will always seem like a near-future story. The look and design of the film also influenced many other early 21st Century films including Edge of Tomorrow, the remake of Robocop, and I, Robot. And though it may not be one of the best Spielberg films available, it still features plenty of thought-provoking ideas of which science-fiction is best known for.

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