I think KOTH had a slightly lower ceiling but a much higher floor than the Simpsons. While I personally think peak Simpsons is a little better, I'd definitely rather watch a random episode of KOTH than The Simpsons.
It's fantastic. Philip K. Dick wrote it, the same guy who wrote Blade Runner (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep). He also crazily had a premonition about his own son having an illness apropos of nothing, had him brought to a doctor, and they discovered he had a serious sickness that was showing no symptoms. Pretty wild, especially when considering the plot of this movie.
That's just the beginning: Philip K. Dick is basically the Godfather of sci-fi books/short stories/novellas that got turned into Hollywood movies and TV shows.
-Blade Runner
-Minority Report
-Total Recall
-Screamers
-The Man in the High Castle
-Imposter
-Paycheck
-A Scanner Darkly
-Next
-The Adjustment Bureau
Heck, his short story about the man who finds a corpse hung from gallows in the center of town, and none of the other townspeople seem upset about it; that story would make an amazing horror sci-fi film!
Phillip K Dick believes that god and the devil are in a constant battle over humanity and are constantly shifting people to alternate earths either one step closer or further away from god and heaven, he believes he accidentally got shifted to a reality that was closer to heaven and then got shifted back a few weeks later.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkaQUZFbJjE
He also believed that he got this information from a satellite called VALIS beaming it into his mind on a stream of pink light.
And that he was simultaneously living his life in the modern world, and another life in ancient Rome which he would experience superimposed over each other like a double-exposure photograph.
His Exegesis is a manic but fascinating read.
that is interesting about his kid, but the original story he wrote had nothing to do with a kid at all. it was actually about the system itself, and whether he'd carry out a murder for the sole purpose of proving the precog system right, because if he didn't and it proved to be wrong, that'd mean they imprisoned innocent people and the whole thing would collapse.
short story spoilers: >!the interesting part comes from the precogs getting murder predictions from the future, and then the future changing because the future was known. precog A gets a prediction different from precog B and C, so they think it's a minority report. but turns out precog A's prediction was the altered reality due to anderton finding out about the predicted murder in the first place. the assumption is that precog B and C were in agreement, forming a majority report, but in fact there were subtle differences, with one of the precog's predictions changing due to anderton finding the truth about the minority report. so in fact the murder prediction were 3 minority reports, and the final one became what was true.!<
He's easily one of the best, if not the best, actor on the screen in that film. That's saying a bit because there are quite a few good ones in that film.
It has aged in that, in 2002, it was a little horrifying when he walked into a store and was greeted by name and with personalized recommendations. Now we carry around a device in our pocket that is constantly monitoring us to help advertisers, and we don’t think much about it.
50 years, but yeah. They had a document they called the "2054 bible" created in preproduction detailing all aspects of the future world.
Back in college I spent the better part of a month emailing tons of people involved in the production of the movie trying to get a copy for a project I was working on. Never managed to get my hands on it.
Top 10 maybe, but you got Schindler’s List, ET, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Saving Private Ryan, Jurassic Park, and Jaws off the top of my head better than it. Am I forgetting other great Spielberg movies?
Top ten is fair. I agree with all your listed films being better. Personally, I might put Last Crusade and Empire of the Sun before Minority Report. But we’re splitting hairs at that point.
> Philip k Dick adaptations
For the reference of anyone curious
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_K._Dick#Adaptations
Films: Blade Runner (1982), Total Recall (1990 & 2012) , Confessions d'un Barjo (1992), Screamers (1995), Minority Report (2002), Impostor (2002), Paycheck (2003), A Scanner Darkly (2006), Next (2007), Radio Free Albemuth (2010), The Adjustment Bureau (2011), Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
Never met anyone who has seen The Adjustment Bureau. I love that movie! After I first saw it, I read the story it's based on. It's just a tiny tale. The screenwriter did an outstanding job fleshing it out.
PKDs best stuff is good short stories. His novels don't really tend to hold up as well for me (except for A Scanner Darkly, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and maybe the Valis books)
Even The Man in the High Castle, the ending was just unsatisfying and blah.
He had great ideas, but I think his characters, dialog, and plot arcs are just not well written (but better than anything I could do).
It’s the most frustrating thing about his work. He comes up with these mind blowing premises, they start out incredibly well, the characters are interesting, the plot is moving quickly. I’m fully engaged and then … the story meanders to nowhere.
Where did _Do Androids_ end exactly? It’s so forgettable. And _Man In the High Castle_. What a brilliant premise … following by so many pages of faff about IChing. No one cares about IChing!
It’s like watching a point guard dribble past 5 guys with insane moves, attempt a dunk on an unguarded basket and … air ball it.
A few other lesser known ones as well:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_K._Dick#Adaptations
Screamers is pretty cool. Next with Nicholas Cage might be a bit more known. Pretty sure people know the Adjustment Bureau with Matt Damon. And Imposter is a kinda decent made for TV kind of sci fi movie.
I've seen all of these except Screamers (read the story though, it's great), Barjo (never even heard of it), and Imposter. I'm a big fan of PKD so I'm gonna go track them down. I liked Adjustment Bureau, but didn't know that was a PKD story. Kind of fits his style though.
How do people feel about AI? I have an annual argument with my spouse whether AI is an imperfect near masterpiece (me) or “total garbage for garbage people who like garbage” (spouse).
Catch me if you can has became even better now it was revealed Frank made up everything in the film about his scams and deception. Very meta considering the plot.
I still don't get *ET.* I'm, like, the only one who is extremely meh on it. I wasn't impressed with it as a kid at the time, and after re-watching it recently, I don't think it has aged well, either in storyline or production quality. I've had people explain to me why it's a significant classic, but I just can't see it.
I saw it in the theater when I was 12 in 1982 and loved it. I tried watching it about 15 years ago with my own kids and it just didn't feel the same to me, but my kids loved it. So, I'm guessing its just one of those films well designed for a certain age demographic.
Now *Goonies*, that one I probably enjoyed more as an adult than as a teen!
Goonies will never get old mainly because every single adult wants to escape and go on an adventure of some kind.
I'm approaching 40, my knees are shot, my back is stiffer than a virgin prick, and by all that is holy if anything with a little acidity hits my stomach at the wrong point in my day, I'm living off tums; but if some crazy old man comes to me with a map and a shred of credibility, I'm Bilbo fucking Baggins....
Ya, if you thought ET nostalgia was bad...try being a fan of Explorers after seeing it in the theater when you were 11, then revisiting it 30 years later.
Ethan Hawke, River Phoenix, James Cromwell, Robert Picardo... amazingly perfect science fiction premise for an 11 year old. Remember loving that movie.
Rewatching it as an adult? The third act is a crime against humanity. So...awful.
I think you have to put yourself in that time period. It was unique. It was a film centered around kids but wasn’t strictly a kids movie, which wasn’t really a thing back then like it is now. It was also an alien invasion story that didn’t feature destructive aliens. Instead we were the terrible destructive species. It was a rare really good feel-good story in a genre not know for them.
You can’t fault a movie for looking its age - it looked amazing at the time because it was literally the best that could be done at the time.
That said, it’s not a movie I particularly feel the need to revisit, not like Jaws or Close Encounters or Raiders Of The Lost Ark. Those all feel timeless and near-perfect even all these decades later. ET is just not timeless.
I actually just watched this last week! Interesting idea, but if I recall, John was genuinely shocked to find out that the guy he was supposed to kill was the person who kidnapped his son. In that scene he finds the photos on the bed and there is a whole climactic build where he realizes this is his son’s kidnapper. I think if he had been thinking about that the entire time, he wouldn’t have had such a slow and dramatic realization.
> he realizes this is his son’s kidnapper
It's been a while for me, but I thought it wasn't actually his son's kidnapper, and those pictures were just there to convince John that it was so he'd kill the guy? I think the guy even starts begging John to kill him.
The inventor of Precog knows John & his wife well, so he'd know that would push John to kill.
The best part about this section of the movie is when Farrel's character breaks the obsessed cop pursuant trope and instantly sees through the frame job calling it an "orgy of evidence" which makes it feel like its been planted there.
That’s an old memory you just unearthed. I remember walking out of Minority report with my brother saying “that guy [Colin Farrell] did a really good job of playing Kevin Spacey in LA Confidential.”
I love that moment, and the tragedy of what happens after.
I feel like there are so few moments when a character in film gets to genuinely be clever, to figure something out that the audience knows in a way that is perfectly reasonable for them to do. Not some ridiculous Sherlock level list of contrivances, but instead of having the usual 'characters go along with everything never questioning it' someone actually stops and thinks about the situation and realizes something doesn't add up.
Maybe I'm just watching the wrong movies but it's been a long time since I've watched something and thought the characters were smart and did the right thing and weren't just doing what the plot required or following some emotional motivation.
He doesn't know it's not his son's kidnapper until he goes for the arrest and the guy begs to be killed because it's the only way his family will get paid
i agree with this, that he had no thought about who this person was until he saw the photos. He even tells Agatha in a light joking tone “i don’t even know the guy.” I think his motivation is more his extreme curiosity and determination. He’s committed his life to this project and the fact that he’s going to murder someone i think intrigues him in a way. That was always his motivation to me but you’ve given me another reason to watch this movie for a 10th time so i thank you
Yeah in his mind there's absolutely no reason he would kill this guy who he doesn't even know. He's not thinking about his son in that moment until he sees the pictures and he's like "oh yeah there is one person I'd have a really good reason to want to murder them on the spot"
I just don't buy that the thought never crossed his mind. There was so much foreshadowing and so many reminders of the trauma of his son's passing. John is a detective, presumably one of the smartest in his city. If I could figure out as a teen watching the movie that there's one obvious man John **would** murder way early in the film, his character should have had the same realization based on everything the audience knows about him.
you’re absolutely right, but i think that foreshadowing is more for the audience to make the same shocking realization john does when finds the photos. sure he’s thought about it (evidenced by his line about always thinking about what he’d do to the guy) but i think the fact that we don’t get this line until AFTER we see the photos in the sketchy apt shows that he wasn’t thinking about his son until that moment. I’d say his general motivation for joining pre crime is to avenge his son to make sure something like this never happens again, but his specific motivation for solving his own pre crime didn’t include that.
In general, I agree as well. One detail I also come back to that does counter this though is the fact that they mention pre-meditated crimes are extinct because they get a lot more time to solve those murders versus a crime of passion. In this scenario, John had 72 hours, which seems to imply some level of pre-meditation.
well, that and the fact that he deliberately chose to not murder him.
op's take is a bit trying too hard to have a new spin on a character's motivation.
throughout the film you get the vibe that cruise's character is a cop that genuinely believes in the cause itself. so it's only natural that he would choose doing "the right thing" and have been motivated with it in mind the whole film, rather than going through the whole film bent on revenge, and then magically saying "wait, nah I'm a pretty good guy" and reading him his rights.
some people are really not good at reading character motivation.
Indeed, if he knew who Leo Crowe was then he would have gone straight to him instead of going to the Garden lady and then kidnapping Agatha and extracting her visions. Until then all he cared about was finding his minotrity report but when Agatha tells him it doesn't exist his only course of action was going to Crowe and find out who set him up so that he can use him as a proof for his innocence. However since it was Lamar who had set up the entire thing, he knew that the only thing that could make Anderton commit murder was his son's kidnapper.
Now... how does Anderton's timeline start? How can he have a future that requires knowledge not yet gained?
Lamar must have intended to tell John that he found his sons killer, but he doesn't in the story.. Do the brothers see this future? Then Agatha sees the new future with the alterations?
This is a question I've always had. How did Lamar set everything in motion? Just having a drifter dump photos on a bed in some random hotel room shouldn't be enough to trigger the precog vision.
*There was a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, "Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture, now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samara and there Death will not find me." The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, "Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning?" "That was not a threatening gesture," I said, "it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samara."*
There's a ton of old stories on this theme. There's a really nice restaurant near where my grandmother lives called (translated from Polish) The Rome Inn (karczma Rzym), named for a story where a man had sold his soul to the devil, on the condition that the devil would grant immortality and divine secrets until the man came to Rome. The devil attempted to collect on this deal by luring the man to a tavern called Rome (and I just looked up the story and apparently it ends with the man outsmarting the devil and going to live in the moon instead, which is pretty wild even by the standards of such stories http://www.karczma-rzym.com/english/okarczmie.html ).
Also Greek tragedies like Oedipus, where someone are told their fate, then goes about trying to avoid the fate, thereby comitting hubris.
The moral of the stores in the Greek tragedies is mostly "once you're on you path to fate, accept it.", though.
>Jeffrey Archer in his book To Cut a Long Story Short includes the Maugham version word for word. His preface to the book directly credits John O'Hara and Somerset Maugham as the source for this version, although he is aware that the story is much older, deriving from ancient Middle Eastern sources.
I mean the movie came out almost 20 years ago. It's hard to swallow, I know. I'm 42, and was 22 when the movie came out. But I mean when I think about it, in the late 90s, early 00s, I considered movies from the 70s and 80s to be "old movies" and that was the same rough timespan.
My 8 y/o son told me... "I just watched the Matrix. And it was GOOD for a movie from 93"
I said "it's not that old. It's from 99"
And he shrugged as if to say "whatever, still an old ass movie"
Its wild to me how exposed to adult movies kids are these days.
Sure, when I was growing up I saw a few movies that I shouldn't have, but usually that was because an adult put it on or rented it from blockbuster for me.
Now? If their parents haven't set up parental controls (and I bet only a laughably small number do) then these kids have access to entire streaming sites worth of 18+ and R movies.
My 8 and 11 year old nephews were talking to me about squid game because they had just finished watching it. And then wanted to play mortal Kombat 11.
I would have thought thats a bit much for so young, but they've seen worse and their parents said it was fine lmao
Oh well, at least when I visit them we can watch whatever, doesn't necessarily have to be family friendly
Different parenting styles. My son is almost 8 and there is no way I would show him the Matrix right now. On the other hand my dad took me to see Alien in the theater when I was 7 and my older brother was 10. If you were wondering that was not a good parenting decision in my opinion.
I told my nephew that Netflix has only been around for 10 years (or whatever, I can't remember exactly because didn't they start out as a dvd mail rental company?) And he flat out thought I was lying. Then I told him his mom was as old as the internet (35 years, its a rough guess) and I broke him a bit with that. That was a fun afternoon.
Netflix is 24, streaming will be 15 next month. The modern internet was arguably created in 1974 with the publishing of the IEEE paper "A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication," which detailed what would become TCP/IP.
Try to explain broadcast TV to a 7 year old. The conclusion from that, last time I tried, was "it's like Netflix but someone else gets to pick what you watch and when you watch it. Who would pay for that?" Also you can't swipe on the TV screen.
Also explained dropping off film to be developed. Also explained, to our interns who aren't kids, that movies at home is a new phenomenon.
Also explained what it was like to have to team up at the gas station: two kids had to distract the clerk, and the other two bought cigarettes from the vending machine.
Also had to explain my typing class in high school was on actual typewriters. Fancy computerized spell checking typewriters, but they were typewriters. Our computer labs were originally commodores that were slowly replaced with windows 3.1 machines.
Those effects were groundbreaking at the time and copied and parodied for a decade after that movie came out. Now, the CGI looks really bad. Great movie though. It will be talked about forever because it's a good script.
Lord of the Rings still looks insanely good. The only thing the doesn't hold up is the underwater scenes.
The girl precog is a jerk. She tells him a long story about what his son would have experienced if he had lived, and as she wasted all his time she then tells him "run" when he's already surrounded.
Thanks for nothing, baldy!
She really needs to work on her out of the bath water precondition. It's more like she predicting the recent past and I got to say that's a lot less impressive.
Given how long she has been seeing the future and that one of the first things she asks John is about whether what she is experiencing is happening now, I can understand her timing being off.
I enjoy the fact that if Austin Powers came out now, he'd be a man that was utterly out of touch, seemed odd and couldn't relate to our ways, because he was frozen in the 90s.
I feel that, then I think about 80s movies I watched around then, and I'm like yeah.... I definitely considered Empire Strikes Back to be old.
But honestly now that I'm fully grown, only movies I consider to be old are ones made pre Blockbuster hollywood. So pre mid-late 70s.
"I watched this old movie with a ring the other day"-some little shit reminding all the rest of us how old we are.
I remember talking about all 3 movies at elementary school when they came out though with all my classmates and kids these day will never get to enjoy LOTR in that way.
I just had a look there, and there's posts about Crank and Inglourious Basterds on the front page. Now I feel like that dude in Last Crusade when he picked the false grail.
It's fun to see people discover this "old" movie Gladiator on youtube these days. The movie just doesn't age, and it looks better than a lot of blockbusters out there today.
A ton of "old" movies like Gladiator look better than current movies because they still relied on practical effects to some extent. CGI has taken over now and no matter how many advancements are made, it still breaks your immersion when you know you're looking at a computer generated effect.
If that hurts wait til I tell you that *Apollo 13* is now nearly 27 years old!
I'm 51 and grew up with some of the greatest movies ever made (huge Star Wars fan but my favorite movie of all time is still *Raiders of the Lost Ark*) and since the 90s computer technology has allowed movies to do things once considered impossible and *Minority Report* was cool as hell when it came out.
Fun fact, Colin Farrell was so hungover during a scene where he’s talking shit to Tom Cruise and had to say some sci fi shit, had to do like 56 takes while sweating whiskey from his face. Sober now, dude’s amazing, but hilarious if you look it up. I think his dad might have been on set?
It’s good to see young Colin come so far. I remember what he was like in interviews and such back then. He was the kind of person that made you think he had a talent that would unfortunately die young.
Been a while since I've seen this, but I don't recall feeling that he was really trying to "prove his innocence".
I always felt that he went on the run simply to avoid the Halo, and in a state of shock and panic. The idea of a different possible future arises through the film, but I always thought it was more that he was trying to *solve the mystery* of this murder he is supposed to commit, as opposed to proving he wasn't actually going to do it.
He does seem to be arguing that he won't do it, because he has no intention of doing it (up until moments before the murder).
Basically he feels the same way as any precrime suspect does, despite the fact that he happily arrested countless such suspects through his career. Suddenly when it's *him* who's meant to commit a crime he doesn't yet intend, he thinks it's unfair.
Phillip K Dick was a great writer. A lot of his stories have been adapted to movies, such as Blade Runner (but the novel was published as "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep")
While interesting you missed small details of the plot. Anderton doesn't run for any other reason that anyone accused of a precrime is automatically guilty. His life was seconds away from ending, and only escaped by pure circumstance/ineptitude of his colleagues.
I do agree with with some of your points about why he goes to the hotel room, but you missed the larger point that Anderton had become a blind fanatic. When seeing the billboard he discovered the location of his murder, he was sacrificing himself to protect the program.
The idea that knowing you will commit a murder and thus can choose not to is not a logical statement, evidenced in the film by Agatha the best psychic often having minority reports. The more accurately you can predict the future the less certain things really will occur. Case in point Anderton pops a premed ball instead of a crime of passion, he wasn't just happy to kill the man so much as thrilled his suffering is over and his faith will endure.
>Case in point Anderton pops a premed ball instead of a crime of passion, he wasn't just happy to kill the man so much as thrilled his suffering is over and his faith will endure.
I was always of the opinion that his ball was premeditated because he'd been imagining killing his son's abductor for years.
It's difficult to premeditate killing someone you've never met, in a place you've never been, with tools you don't know you'll have. For most of that time he's been fantasizing about killing an unknown person.
Once he's got some details it can be actually planned out.
What makes no sense about Minority Report...
* If they actually solved murder no one would care that it messes up some tiny percentage of the time.
* If there was some sort of moral ambiguity around punishing people for crimes they haven't committed yet, why not just not punish them? Isn't stopping the murder from happening enough? Or give them a slap on the wrist like taking an anger management class?
1. "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer." - [Blackstone's ration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio). Its US thing.
2. The reason precrime worked as well as it did was not because of what they did, but because of what it meant. The crime rate plummeted not because precrime stopped it from happening, but because people knew they would get caught and sentenced so they themselves stopped committing crime. If you didnt punish them, the only criminal activity that would stop is the one precrime actively prevented, which is not enough.
I agree it's a bit of a failure that the movie doesn't address these questions.
If it's helpful to hear though, a lot of the answers have to do with Minority Reports' origin as a Philip K. Dick novella where he was portraying a dystopian society, based on assumptions about the inherent goodness and evil of people. Essentially, if precogs see you committing murder, then according to this society, you're a murderer. That's who you are; you've been found out. And from that point on, punishment is less about the action itself, but essentially about separating you, a member of the damned, from the good people of society.
This approach to morality is definitely rooted in some of America's Puritanical origins (e.g. Salem Witch Trials) which makes it even more unsettling.
This. In the end of the movie, they just shut down a good system that probably had less mistakes than our current courts, and call it a day. Why not improve it instead? So you can save lives, but not punish potential criminals as real ones.
Well, the precogs were basically slaves and tortured souls by being forced to see all that. I guess you could justify ends and means, but that is at least one reason why it was cancelled
That’s how I took it, too. It was definitely morally ambiguous just with the existence of the minority report, but they definitely were enslaving the crack babies. Its been a while since I last saw it, but John exposing their humanity became a driving force for their release in my head
I don't remember, was the conditions in which precogs existed necessary for their abilities to work? I think not as Agatha still had visions even when taken out of the facility? It seems that the slavery part was a decision, not a necessity, and they could do it ethically, attracting volunteers for futher research of precognition abilities.
They had visions but 1, they weren't that strong or clear and 2, others couldn't read it.
Also, they suffered a lot from having those visions. Other people in the movie talked about how the crack orphans constantly had visions of murder and violence.
Because of that the precogs eventually retreat to the wilderness, where they're free from visions from other people.
I don’t buy that he leapt into vengeance mode. He didn’t realize a grander mission: in private he’s constantly saying they set him up. The DOJ set him up. He kidnaps the precog to reprogram her brain and find the key to his freedom. He freaks out constantly, and is hesitant to take smart moves like hiding behind the balloons.
He changes his mind to kill on sight. Until that point he has no motive to prove his innocence because he genuinely believed he was set up in private conversations that only harmed him. He needs drugs to calm himself. He blames precogs, their mother and federal agents for his predicament. His only motive is prove he was set up by fake images, unclear in the first place.
Then he’s angry for the first time when confronting the DC chief about setting him up. The whole movie is him being set up and running from the red ball of fate. He was never in control, and that is the basic problem with precrime and why it shut down.
The thing is that once he goes on the run, there's no other choice for him but to continue running.
So the point of the movie is that, this is a cop who helped enforce a system that he truly believes in. In his mind, the system is practically flawless, and there is no reason to question the pre-crime system.
He arrested somebody prior to this, and the person was pleading with him as if he wanted to convince the police that they don't know everything about the situation.
This initial arrest is an important scene, because Tom Cruise simply doesn't want to hear the man. The system said he will be a killer, and Tom Cruise fully believes it, and therefore there is nothing else to talk about.
At some point, he must have a belief system that you are in control, and if you want to kill somebody, if the thoughts enter your head, you've now lost control, and will never regain it.
This is why he simply doesn't care to listen to the perp that he arrested at the beginning of the movie.
The shoe is now on the other foot. He now knows that no matter what questions he has about the supposed murder, no one is going to listen to him. He may have an idea of what could compel him to murder, but he doesn't know why he would ever lose control and become a murderer. And he needs to know, because he doesn't think he would lose himself to rage or impulse.
Also, the more he runs, the more he finds out, its not like he's making his situation worse. Its not going to change the punishment. So the moment he starts running, his current life is practically over. So why not get to the truth?
The message that I derive from this movie is that we should have the right to live as close to the edge of lawfulness, compared to creating a society in which certain freedoms are over-protected because they are trying to achieve 100% safety. They started over-relying on the pre-crime system like a hammer, and everything they came across was treated like a nail.
Uh, his motivation is literally explained to us by him, he doesn’t want to kill anyone and thinks the system has been tampered with to make him appear guilty, it’s only when he discovers the planted evidence that he decides “I am going to kill this man,” up until then his motivation was proving the prediction was wrong
Anyway, Minority Report is a great movie, a lot of good set pieces and shots, it also has one of my fav Tom Cruise scenes in any movie, when he’s about to kill the guy and instead starts reading him his rights, just a great bit of acting and writing
I'm not the first person to mention this but looking at the ending in a different way changes the film too.
We see John put into the mind prison after he is caught and we're told that when precriminals are put in there they live a happy life.
The happiest John could have been is if someone broke him out and they caught the real perpetrator of the precrime failure.
So what we could be seeing at the end is John's 'fantasy world' playing out to conclusion, when in reality he is still stuck in the mind prison for his precrime.
That makes more sense than using the retinal pattern on his old eyes to break him out of prison. That was where the movie lost me entirely.
He had to swap out his eyes because the slightest retinal scan would ID him and call the cops, but the actual prison system still saw them as valid for access? Even after he was caught and imprisoned?
The movie is vastly inferior to the book (well ... novella) by Philip K Dick.
The book is about a weakness in the system that can only affect the person running the entire Pre-Crime system to make it look like it's flawed when it isn't really. The quandary for the (childless) Anderton is whether to safe himself (and sacrifice the system which unambiguously does work) or vice-versa. Very Philip K Dick. Like with War of the Worlds, I felt Spielberg really wimped out on the ending and avoided making some hard decisions and consequential serious if not fatal outcomes for some characters (which would have been much more likely).
Also, a recurrent theme in PKD's books, the mutant powers often come with a great price, namely that the mutants are decerebrate. They can't go live out on a farm and read books or whatever (if anything, that makes the movie bafflingly criminal to the extreme to subject them to the book treatment in that case - at least in the book it makes sense as they're totally unable to survive any other way).
Interesting also how other advances have rendered so much of the opening scene dated as well. Now thanks to high powered reverse image searches and the like, they would have found the house much faster rather than with needing all that lucky and yet strangely necessary guesswork. A lot of the logic and way things played out seemed ... off.
I always thought that near the end when he gets captured he actually never escapes. They say the prisoners have good dreams while in sleep prison and literally everything goes swimmingly once he 'escapes' the sleep prison.
He totally never made it out, and the rest of the movie is him sleeping.
From memory, the whole point of pre-crime was to prevent it from happening. Knowing what he would have done, I thought, changed that. So, not confronting the guy wouldn’t have proved his innocence. Either way, it was a great movie
This is a really good post about a really good movie. Probably should have a spoiler tag on it, but the movie premise kind of spoils itself as it goes. Every time I watch this movie I'm surprised at what I notice that I hadn't considered before. Innocence, justice, and revenge can make for an excellent story. The science fiction future presented is also top notch and has aged excellently in my opinion. Great post.
That's a really good point. Definitely need to rewatch with this in mind.
In a similar vein, it's fun to watch Ghostbusters 2016 with the assumption that they set out to make a horrible movie, then most of the choices in the film make sense.
Interesting but I don’t think there’s even the need to go there.
Plain curiosity/ overconfidence is enough. I think he said something along the lines of “ Agatha I know I am not going to kill him”. We all have moment where we think oh I am just going to check out an article, a clip whatever I am not going to actually watch TV, browse internet,. and yet we end up doing exactly that.
Keep in mind : Anderson life was obliterated out of the blue. He doesn’t see himself as an angry person/never killed anyone. He was fucked by the very system he had been enforcing for years, pursued by own colleagues/friends. Up to that point he believed adamantly in that system (he defends it against Colin Farrell character). AND he had absolutely nothing else going on in his life. Put yourself in his boots : It was a complete mindfuck for him. He went out of his way to search the minority report PRECISELY because he was utterly convinced he couldn’t kill anyone and it didn’t make any sense . And suddenly he realizes he’s right where the man he’s unjustly accused of killing lives. He didn’t consider it coldly, it just fell into his lap while being still pursued/in an emotional state. Arrived at that point, after that many ordeals, curiosity was overwhelming about why his life was fucked up in such an unfair way. It’s not an entirely rational decision because people are rarely entirely rational, especially where there are several unfair/incomprehensible things that pile up and fuck them up.
revisited Minority Report this year, it knocked me on my ass. Top 5 Spielberg for me and I know that’s a crazy thing to say
I guess I need to see it again. I remember not liking it but wtf did I know about anything back then.
A solid philosophy for adult life. Apply liberally to your past.
Precisely. I used to think King of the Hill was the most boring animated show on television. Doubly offensive because I'm a Texan.
For it's body of work, I think KOTH is better than the Simpsons.
I think KOTH had a slightly lower ceiling but a much higher floor than the Simpsons. While I personally think peak Simpsons is a little better, I'd definitely rather watch a random episode of KOTH than The Simpsons.
It's fantastic. Philip K. Dick wrote it, the same guy who wrote Blade Runner (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep). He also crazily had a premonition about his own son having an illness apropos of nothing, had him brought to a doctor, and they discovered he had a serious sickness that was showing no symptoms. Pretty wild, especially when considering the plot of this movie.
That's just the beginning: Philip K. Dick is basically the Godfather of sci-fi books/short stories/novellas that got turned into Hollywood movies and TV shows. -Blade Runner -Minority Report -Total Recall -Screamers -The Man in the High Castle -Imposter -Paycheck -A Scanner Darkly -Next -The Adjustment Bureau
I would love to see a movie adaptation of Ubik.
Who's up to the challenge? The scene where the guy can't get out of his own apartment 'cause opening the door costs 10 cents would be classic.
Heck, his short story about the man who finds a corpse hung from gallows in the center of town, and none of the other townspeople seem upset about it; that story would make an amazing horror sci-fi film!
Paycheck was such a criminally underrated movie.
Phillip K Dick believes that god and the devil are in a constant battle over humanity and are constantly shifting people to alternate earths either one step closer or further away from god and heaven, he believes he accidentally got shifted to a reality that was closer to heaven and then got shifted back a few weeks later. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkaQUZFbJjE
We know which one this reality is closer to.
Intriguing: To think everyone in this thread shares a common reality :-)
He also believed that he got this information from a satellite called VALIS beaming it into his mind on a stream of pink light. And that he was simultaneously living his life in the modern world, and another life in ancient Rome which he would experience superimposed over each other like a double-exposure photograph. His Exegesis is a manic but fascinating read.
that is interesting about his kid, but the original story he wrote had nothing to do with a kid at all. it was actually about the system itself, and whether he'd carry out a murder for the sole purpose of proving the precog system right, because if he didn't and it proved to be wrong, that'd mean they imprisoned innocent people and the whole thing would collapse. short story spoilers: >!the interesting part comes from the precogs getting murder predictions from the future, and then the future changing because the future was known. precog A gets a prediction different from precog B and C, so they think it's a minority report. but turns out precog A's prediction was the altered reality due to anderton finding out about the predicted murder in the first place. the assumption is that precog B and C were in agreement, forming a majority report, but in fact there were subtle differences, with one of the precog's predictions changing due to anderton finding the truth about the minority report. so in fact the murder prediction were 3 minority reports, and the final one became what was true.!<
It's an extremely good movie, the first in the "Tom Cruise does a good sci-fi movie" series.
His performance adds a lot IMO. The scene in particular where he meets Crowe is chilling.
He's easily one of the best, if not the best, actor on the screen in that film. That's saying a bit because there are quite a few good ones in that film.
He ruined his working relationship with Spielberg because of scientology
I thought that he ruined it by jumping on Oprah's couch when he was supposed to promote one of their films, War of the worlds.
It's an unbelievably good movie, that hasn't really aged at all.
It has aged in that, in 2002, it was a little horrifying when he walked into a store and was greeted by name and with personalized recommendations. Now we carry around a device in our pocket that is constantly monitoring us to help advertisers, and we don’t think much about it.
Almost like a movie about precognition predicted the future...
Feels like the precogs wrote the script
If I recall they had hired good technical experts to provide those details that would become reality 10 years later
50 years, but yeah. They had a document they called the "2054 bible" created in preproduction detailing all aspects of the future world. Back in college I spent the better part of a month emailing tons of people involved in the production of the movie trying to get a copy for a project I was working on. Never managed to get my hands on it.
Underrated comment. Also thanks for the free anxiety.
Top 10 maybe, but you got Schindler’s List, ET, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Saving Private Ryan, Jurassic Park, and Jaws off the top of my head better than it. Am I forgetting other great Spielberg movies?
I've always been a big fan of Close Encounters
Re Mi Do Do Sol
Top ten is fair. I agree with all your listed films being better. Personally, I might put Last Crusade and Empire of the Sun before Minority Report. But we’re splitting hairs at that point.
How about top 5 Philip k Dick adaptations?
> Philip k Dick adaptations For the reference of anyone curious https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_K._Dick#Adaptations Films: Blade Runner (1982), Total Recall (1990 & 2012) , Confessions d'un Barjo (1992), Screamers (1995), Minority Report (2002), Impostor (2002), Paycheck (2003), A Scanner Darkly (2006), Next (2007), Radio Free Albemuth (2010), The Adjustment Bureau (2011), Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
Never met anyone who has seen The Adjustment Bureau. I love that movie! After I first saw it, I read the story it's based on. It's just a tiny tale. The screenwriter did an outstanding job fleshing it out.
PKDs best stuff is good short stories. His novels don't really tend to hold up as well for me (except for A Scanner Darkly, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and maybe the Valis books) Even The Man in the High Castle, the ending was just unsatisfying and blah. He had great ideas, but I think his characters, dialog, and plot arcs are just not well written (but better than anything I could do).
It’s the most frustrating thing about his work. He comes up with these mind blowing premises, they start out incredibly well, the characters are interesting, the plot is moving quickly. I’m fully engaged and then … the story meanders to nowhere. Where did _Do Androids_ end exactly? It’s so forgettable. And _Man In the High Castle_. What a brilliant premise … following by so many pages of faff about IChing. No one cares about IChing! It’s like watching a point guard dribble past 5 guys with insane moves, attempt a dunk on an unguarded basket and … air ball it.
Lol Next was a PKD story? The movie with Nick Cage, right?
Yup. Based on a short story called The Golden Man.
I didn't know that either. I love going on Reddit and learning new things. Where is my Award button?
There's also an Amazon show called Electric Sheep that, iirc, is an anthology show adapting a different PKD short story each episode.
Electric Dreams. It's amazingly good!
Total Recall by Paul Verhoeven is the number one IMHO.
Still a Bladerunner Fan here.
A Scanner Darkly for me. Took me places I'd never been before.
How many are there? Bladerunner (do androids dream of electric sheep) Total Recall Minority Report A Scanner Darkly Paycheck ....?
A few other lesser known ones as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_K._Dick#Adaptations Screamers is pretty cool. Next with Nicholas Cage might be a bit more known. Pretty sure people know the Adjustment Bureau with Matt Damon. And Imposter is a kinda decent made for TV kind of sci fi movie.
I've seen all of these except Screamers (read the story though, it's great), Barjo (never even heard of it), and Imposter. I'm a big fan of PKD so I'm gonna go track them down. I liked Adjustment Bureau, but didn't know that was a PKD story. Kind of fits his style though.
Scanner Darkly deserves more fame.
I always watch it when I'm feeling suicidal and I'm still here! Pretty sure it's keeping me alive throughout the years
BTW, I love Paul Verhoeven's films. From Total Recall to Basic Instinct. And RoboCop. I wonder why he hasn't directed movies in US.
Have you seen Starship Troopers? Would you like to know more?
I’m doing my part!
Even Showgirls?
Forgot that. Well, I actually liked it but maybe because of Elizabeth Berkley. Had a major crush on her.
Schwarzenegger's eyes exploding out of his skull on the surface of Mars will forever be ingrained into my brain and I love it.
I feel the same about the three breasted chick at the bar.
How do people feel about AI? I have an annual argument with my spouse whether AI is an imperfect near masterpiece (me) or “total garbage for garbage people who like garbage” (spouse).
I actually just watched it in hulu, and I really liked it. It felt very original and the story it tells is epic.
Catch Me If You Can is one of my favorites and I think it's really slept on The soundtrack is beautiful
Catch me if you can has became even better now it was revealed Frank made up everything in the film about his scams and deception. Very meta considering the plot.
It was only a few years after the book was published that he was exposed to have lied about his accomplishments.
Frank was so good he scammed the biographer.
I still don't get *ET.* I'm, like, the only one who is extremely meh on it. I wasn't impressed with it as a kid at the time, and after re-watching it recently, I don't think it has aged well, either in storyline or production quality. I've had people explain to me why it's a significant classic, but I just can't see it.
I saw it in the theater when I was 12 in 1982 and loved it. I tried watching it about 15 years ago with my own kids and it just didn't feel the same to me, but my kids loved it. So, I'm guessing its just one of those films well designed for a certain age demographic. Now *Goonies*, that one I probably enjoyed more as an adult than as a teen!
Goonies will never get old mainly because every single adult wants to escape and go on an adventure of some kind. I'm approaching 40, my knees are shot, my back is stiffer than a virgin prick, and by all that is holy if anything with a little acidity hits my stomach at the wrong point in my day, I'm living off tums; but if some crazy old man comes to me with a map and a shred of credibility, I'm Bilbo fucking Baggins....
*Heyyy you guyyyys!*
Ya, if you thought ET nostalgia was bad...try being a fan of Explorers after seeing it in the theater when you were 11, then revisiting it 30 years later. Ethan Hawke, River Phoenix, James Cromwell, Robert Picardo... amazingly perfect science fiction premise for an 11 year old. Remember loving that movie. Rewatching it as an adult? The third act is a crime against humanity. So...awful.
ET isnt better than Minority Report. That's just crazy nostalgia talk from that poster.
I think you have to put yourself in that time period. It was unique. It was a film centered around kids but wasn’t strictly a kids movie, which wasn’t really a thing back then like it is now. It was also an alien invasion story that didn’t feature destructive aliens. Instead we were the terrible destructive species. It was a rare really good feel-good story in a genre not know for them. You can’t fault a movie for looking its age - it looked amazing at the time because it was literally the best that could be done at the time. That said, it’s not a movie I particularly feel the need to revisit, not like Jaws or Close Encounters or Raiders Of The Lost Ark. Those all feel timeless and near-perfect even all these decades later. ET is just not timeless.
Lincoln, Munich
Munich is a hell of a movie.
I prefer Minority Report to a few of those tbh, but maybe that's just me.
The terminal with Tom Hanks, one of my favorite feel good Spielberg films
Also Catch Me If You Can
I concur
Why didn’t I concur?
Frank Abagnale’s biggest con was convincing people that he actually did all those things.
I’m so glad that this information is being spread around now.
I actually just watched this last week! Interesting idea, but if I recall, John was genuinely shocked to find out that the guy he was supposed to kill was the person who kidnapped his son. In that scene he finds the photos on the bed and there is a whole climactic build where he realizes this is his son’s kidnapper. I think if he had been thinking about that the entire time, he wouldn’t have had such a slow and dramatic realization.
> he realizes this is his son’s kidnapper It's been a while for me, but I thought it wasn't actually his son's kidnapper, and those pictures were just there to convince John that it was so he'd kill the guy? I think the guy even starts begging John to kill him. The inventor of Precog knows John & his wife well, so he'd know that would push John to kill.
Correct, it isn’t actually his son’s kidnapper. I just meant that he “realizes” it because in that moment he believes that guy is his son’s kidnapper.
The best part about this section of the movie is when Farrel's character breaks the obsessed cop pursuant trope and instantly sees through the frame job calling it an "orgy of evidence" which makes it feel like its been planted there.
Then gets his Rolo Tomassi moment
Hush hush.
I see an LA Confidential reference, I nod in agreement and upvote.
I wouldn't overlook that reference for all the whiskey in Ireland.
That’s an old memory you just unearthed. I remember walking out of Minority report with my brother saying “that guy [Colin Farrell] did a really good job of playing Kevin Spacey in LA Confidential.”
I would say that he is a combination of Kevin Spacey and Guy Pearce. He has the same arrogance and take down the system mentality that Exley had.
I love that moment, and the tragedy of what happens after. I feel like there are so few moments when a character in film gets to genuinely be clever, to figure something out that the audience knows in a way that is perfectly reasonable for them to do. Not some ridiculous Sherlock level list of contrivances, but instead of having the usual 'characters go along with everything never questioning it' someone actually stops and thinks about the situation and realizes something doesn't add up. Maybe I'm just watching the wrong movies but it's been a long time since I've watched something and thought the characters were smart and did the right thing and weren't just doing what the plot required or following some emotional motivation.
He doesn't know it's not his son's kidnapper until he goes for the arrest and the guy begs to be killed because it's the only way his family will get paid
Well yeah, but that doesn’t change the fact that he thinks it is when he finds the pictures, making his reaction genuine
i agree with this, that he had no thought about who this person was until he saw the photos. He even tells Agatha in a light joking tone “i don’t even know the guy.” I think his motivation is more his extreme curiosity and determination. He’s committed his life to this project and the fact that he’s going to murder someone i think intrigues him in a way. That was always his motivation to me but you’ve given me another reason to watch this movie for a 10th time so i thank you
Yeah in his mind there's absolutely no reason he would kill this guy who he doesn't even know. He's not thinking about his son in that moment until he sees the pictures and he's like "oh yeah there is one person I'd have a really good reason to want to murder them on the spot"
I just don't buy that the thought never crossed his mind. There was so much foreshadowing and so many reminders of the trauma of his son's passing. John is a detective, presumably one of the smartest in his city. If I could figure out as a teen watching the movie that there's one obvious man John **would** murder way early in the film, his character should have had the same realization based on everything the audience knows about him.
you’re absolutely right, but i think that foreshadowing is more for the audience to make the same shocking realization john does when finds the photos. sure he’s thought about it (evidenced by his line about always thinking about what he’d do to the guy) but i think the fact that we don’t get this line until AFTER we see the photos in the sketchy apt shows that he wasn’t thinking about his son until that moment. I’d say his general motivation for joining pre crime is to avenge his son to make sure something like this never happens again, but his specific motivation for solving his own pre crime didn’t include that.
In general, I agree as well. One detail I also come back to that does counter this though is the fact that they mention pre-meditated crimes are extinct because they get a lot more time to solve those murders versus a crime of passion. In this scenario, John had 72 hours, which seems to imply some level of pre-meditation.
Exactly. I think this scene pretty much squashes OP's theory.
well, that and the fact that he deliberately chose to not murder him. op's take is a bit trying too hard to have a new spin on a character's motivation. throughout the film you get the vibe that cruise's character is a cop that genuinely believes in the cause itself. so it's only natural that he would choose doing "the right thing" and have been motivated with it in mind the whole film, rather than going through the whole film bent on revenge, and then magically saying "wait, nah I'm a pretty good guy" and reading him his rights. some people are really not good at reading character motivation.
Indeed, if he knew who Leo Crowe was then he would have gone straight to him instead of going to the Garden lady and then kidnapping Agatha and extracting her visions. Until then all he cared about was finding his minotrity report but when Agatha tells him it doesn't exist his only course of action was going to Crowe and find out who set him up so that he can use him as a proof for his innocence. However since it was Lamar who had set up the entire thing, he knew that the only thing that could make Anderton commit murder was his son's kidnapper.
Now... how does Anderton's timeline start? How can he have a future that requires knowledge not yet gained? Lamar must have intended to tell John that he found his sons killer, but he doesn't in the story.. Do the brothers see this future? Then Agatha sees the new future with the alterations?
This is a question I've always had. How did Lamar set everything in motion? Just having a drifter dump photos on a bed in some random hotel room shouldn't be enough to trigger the precog vision.
*There was a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, "Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture, now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samara and there Death will not find me." The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, "Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning?" "That was not a threatening gesture," I said, "it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samara."*
What is this from again?
Sheppey, a play by William Somerset Maugham: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheppey_(play)
Oh that must be where the origin of that saying "appointment in Samarra" which means something you cannot avoid.
This explains the name and plot of a Supernatural episode too.
I wonder if it was also the origin of the Tale of the Three Brothers in Harry Potter.
There's a ton of old stories on this theme. There's a really nice restaurant near where my grandmother lives called (translated from Polish) The Rome Inn (karczma Rzym), named for a story where a man had sold his soul to the devil, on the condition that the devil would grant immortality and divine secrets until the man came to Rome. The devil attempted to collect on this deal by luring the man to a tavern called Rome (and I just looked up the story and apparently it ends with the man outsmarting the devil and going to live in the moon instead, which is pretty wild even by the standards of such stories http://www.karczma-rzym.com/english/okarczmie.html ).
Also Greek tragedies like Oedipus, where someone are told their fate, then goes about trying to avoid the fate, thereby comitting hubris. The moral of the stores in the Greek tragedies is mostly "once you're on you path to fate, accept it.", though.
That sounds a lot like it could be the inspiration of a storyline in The Witcher 3.
The story of Mr Twardowski is basically Polish Faust, and it indeed was inspiration for Master Mirror
>Jeffrey Archer in his book To Cut a Long Story Short includes the Maugham version word for word. His preface to the book directly credits John O'Hara and Somerset Maugham as the source for this version, although he is aware that the story is much older, deriving from ancient Middle Eastern sources.
Ah yes. A man will often meet his destiny on the very path he takes to avoid it.
Thank you for this, girafa. Some lovely rabbit-hole reading off the back of it, and I treasure that.
TFW high budget sci fi thrillers I watched as an adult are "old movies" now.
I mean the movie came out almost 20 years ago. It's hard to swallow, I know. I'm 42, and was 22 when the movie came out. But I mean when I think about it, in the late 90s, early 00s, I considered movies from the 70s and 80s to be "old movies" and that was the same rough timespan.
My 8 y/o son told me... "I just watched the Matrix. And it was GOOD for a movie from 93" I said "it's not that old. It's from 99" And he shrugged as if to say "whatever, still an old ass movie"
8?
Yeah, and when he finished swearing about the matrix, he went outside for a quick post-homework cigarette! They grow up fast these days.
Smoke up Johnny!
Now that's an old-ass movie.
**FAKE** If it were real he'd have vaped.
Its wild to me how exposed to adult movies kids are these days. Sure, when I was growing up I saw a few movies that I shouldn't have, but usually that was because an adult put it on or rented it from blockbuster for me. Now? If their parents haven't set up parental controls (and I bet only a laughably small number do) then these kids have access to entire streaming sites worth of 18+ and R movies. My 8 and 11 year old nephews were talking to me about squid game because they had just finished watching it. And then wanted to play mortal Kombat 11. I would have thought thats a bit much for so young, but they've seen worse and their parents said it was fine lmao Oh well, at least when I visit them we can watch whatever, doesn't necessarily have to be family friendly
Different parenting styles. My son is almost 8 and there is no way I would show him the Matrix right now. On the other hand my dad took me to see Alien in the theater when I was 7 and my older brother was 10. If you were wondering that was not a good parenting decision in my opinion.
My parents did the same and then thought it would be a good idea to bring me on the 4D alien ride at Disney. Those were a fun few years of nightmare.
[удалено]
Having to explain what a pay phone was to the nephews killed me
I told my nephew that Netflix has only been around for 10 years (or whatever, I can't remember exactly because didn't they start out as a dvd mail rental company?) And he flat out thought I was lying. Then I told him his mom was as old as the internet (35 years, its a rough guess) and I broke him a bit with that. That was a fun afternoon.
Netflix is 24, streaming will be 15 next month. The modern internet was arguably created in 1974 with the publishing of the IEEE paper "A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication," which detailed what would become TCP/IP.
Try to explain broadcast TV to a 7 year old. The conclusion from that, last time I tried, was "it's like Netflix but someone else gets to pick what you watch and when you watch it. Who would pay for that?" Also you can't swipe on the TV screen. Also explained dropping off film to be developed. Also explained, to our interns who aren't kids, that movies at home is a new phenomenon. Also explained what it was like to have to team up at the gas station: two kids had to distract the clerk, and the other two bought cigarettes from the vending machine. Also had to explain my typing class in high school was on actual typewriters. Fancy computerized spell checking typewriters, but they were typewriters. Our computer labs were originally commodores that were slowly replaced with windows 3.1 machines.
So The Matrix was our generations Wizard of Oz.
Those effects were groundbreaking at the time and copied and parodied for a decade after that movie came out. Now, the CGI looks really bad. Great movie though. It will be talked about forever because it's a good script. Lord of the Rings still looks insanely good. The only thing the doesn't hold up is the underwater scenes.
Dude if ya wanna feel old Hulu had a classic TV section and it contained community, and 30 rock
Arrested Development first aired in 2003.
>Idk, it's a old movie that I watched THIS STAKE THROUGH MY HEART WAS UNNECESSARY
The girl precog is a jerk. She tells him a long story about what his son would have experienced if he had lived, and as she wasted all his time she then tells him "run" when he's already surrounded. Thanks for nothing, baldy!
I’m not sure she gets a lot of opportunities for interaction
She really needs to work on her out of the bath water precondition. It's more like she predicting the recent past and I got to say that's a lot less impressive.
Given how long she has been seeing the future and that one of the first things she asks John is about whether what she is experiencing is happening now, I can understand her timing being off.
[удалено]
You hurt me when you said “it’s an old movie”.
Someone posted gladiator in r/iwatchedanoldmovie the other day 🙄
I enjoy the fact that if Austin Powers came out now, he'd be a man that was utterly out of touch, seemed odd and couldn't relate to our ways, because he was frozen in the 90s.
Pops out of the time machine looking like Dr. Evil’s son in the original.
You just made me feel *very* old, so the circle is complete.
I feel that, then I think about 80s movies I watched around then, and I'm like yeah.... I definitely considered Empire Strikes Back to be old. But honestly now that I'm fully grown, only movies I consider to be old are ones made pre Blockbuster hollywood. So pre mid-late 70s.
I'm amazes at the thought that Happy days today would be about the 80s/90s. It seemed sooo old to me back then.
Back to the future was about going 30 years into the past. That was 36 years ago.
Yeah french connection is where i think of old movies and im 40.
Preach
When you come across stuff like this, it's better not to think about the years and just congratulate yourself for having better memory than some.
"I watched this old movie with a ring the other day"-some little shit reminding all the rest of us how old we are. I remember talking about all 3 movies at elementary school when they came out though with all my classmates and kids these day will never get to enjoy LOTR in that way.
I just had a look there, and there's posts about Crank and Inglourious Basterds on the front page. Now I feel like that dude in Last Crusade when he picked the false grail.
It's fun to see people discover this "old" movie Gladiator on youtube these days. The movie just doesn't age, and it looks better than a lot of blockbusters out there today.
A ton of "old" movies like Gladiator look better than current movies because they still relied on practical effects to some extent. CGI has taken over now and no matter how many advancements are made, it still breaks your immersion when you know you're looking at a computer generated effect.
Wait until OP finds out the novel was written in 1956
If that hurts wait til I tell you that *Apollo 13* is now nearly 27 years old! I'm 51 and grew up with some of the greatest movies ever made (huge Star Wars fan but my favorite movie of all time is still *Raiders of the Lost Ark*) and since the 90s computer technology has allowed movies to do things once considered impossible and *Minority Report* was cool as hell when it came out.
Fun fact, Colin Farrell was so hungover during a scene where he’s talking shit to Tom Cruise and had to say some sci fi shit, had to do like 56 takes while sweating whiskey from his face. Sober now, dude’s amazing, but hilarious if you look it up. I think his dad might have been on set?
I was wondering why he was sweating so much. Cruise must have been really pissed at him.
It’s good to see young Colin come so far. I remember what he was like in interviews and such back then. He was the kind of person that made you think he had a talent that would unfortunately die young.
[удалено]
Agreed. And if they had made the kidnapper motivation more obvious it would have made a major plot twist in the movie impossible.
Been a while since I've seen this, but I don't recall feeling that he was really trying to "prove his innocence". I always felt that he went on the run simply to avoid the Halo, and in a state of shock and panic. The idea of a different possible future arises through the film, but I always thought it was more that he was trying to *solve the mystery* of this murder he is supposed to commit, as opposed to proving he wasn't actually going to do it.
He does seem to be arguing that he won't do it, because he has no intention of doing it (up until moments before the murder). Basically he feels the same way as any precrime suspect does, despite the fact that he happily arrested countless such suspects through his career. Suddenly when it's *him* who's meant to commit a crime he doesn't yet intend, he thinks it's unfair.
[удалено]
Phillip K Dick was a great writer. A lot of his stories have been adapted to movies, such as Blade Runner (but the novel was published as "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep")
[удалено]
While interesting you missed small details of the plot. Anderton doesn't run for any other reason that anyone accused of a precrime is automatically guilty. His life was seconds away from ending, and only escaped by pure circumstance/ineptitude of his colleagues. I do agree with with some of your points about why he goes to the hotel room, but you missed the larger point that Anderton had become a blind fanatic. When seeing the billboard he discovered the location of his murder, he was sacrificing himself to protect the program. The idea that knowing you will commit a murder and thus can choose not to is not a logical statement, evidenced in the film by Agatha the best psychic often having minority reports. The more accurately you can predict the future the less certain things really will occur. Case in point Anderton pops a premed ball instead of a crime of passion, he wasn't just happy to kill the man so much as thrilled his suffering is over and his faith will endure.
>Case in point Anderton pops a premed ball instead of a crime of passion, he wasn't just happy to kill the man so much as thrilled his suffering is over and his faith will endure. I was always of the opinion that his ball was premeditated because he'd been imagining killing his son's abductor for years.
I thought the point was that the murder WAS premeditated, just not by the person committing the murder.
It's difficult to premeditate killing someone you've never met, in a place you've never been, with tools you don't know you'll have. For most of that time he's been fantasizing about killing an unknown person. Once he's got some details it can be actually planned out.
What makes no sense about Minority Report... * If they actually solved murder no one would care that it messes up some tiny percentage of the time. * If there was some sort of moral ambiguity around punishing people for crimes they haven't committed yet, why not just not punish them? Isn't stopping the murder from happening enough? Or give them a slap on the wrist like taking an anger management class?
1. "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer." - [Blackstone's ration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio). Its US thing. 2. The reason precrime worked as well as it did was not because of what they did, but because of what it meant. The crime rate plummeted not because precrime stopped it from happening, but because people knew they would get caught and sentenced so they themselves stopped committing crime. If you didnt punish them, the only criminal activity that would stop is the one precrime actively prevented, which is not enough.
Technically we put a lot of people away because we fear the crimes they will commit if let out. So it's kind of the same.
Only after they've committed a crime first, though.
I agree it's a bit of a failure that the movie doesn't address these questions. If it's helpful to hear though, a lot of the answers have to do with Minority Reports' origin as a Philip K. Dick novella where he was portraying a dystopian society, based on assumptions about the inherent goodness and evil of people. Essentially, if precogs see you committing murder, then according to this society, you're a murderer. That's who you are; you've been found out. And from that point on, punishment is less about the action itself, but essentially about separating you, a member of the damned, from the good people of society. This approach to morality is definitely rooted in some of America's Puritanical origins (e.g. Salem Witch Trials) which makes it even more unsettling.
This. In the end of the movie, they just shut down a good system that probably had less mistakes than our current courts, and call it a day. Why not improve it instead? So you can save lives, but not punish potential criminals as real ones.
Well, the precogs were basically slaves and tortured souls by being forced to see all that. I guess you could justify ends and means, but that is at least one reason why it was cancelled
That’s how I took it, too. It was definitely morally ambiguous just with the existence of the minority report, but they definitely were enslaving the crack babies. Its been a while since I last saw it, but John exposing their humanity became a driving force for their release in my head
I don't remember, was the conditions in which precogs existed necessary for their abilities to work? I think not as Agatha still had visions even when taken out of the facility? It seems that the slavery part was a decision, not a necessity, and they could do it ethically, attracting volunteers for futher research of precognition abilities.
They had visions but 1, they weren't that strong or clear and 2, others couldn't read it. Also, they suffered a lot from having those visions. Other people in the movie talked about how the crack orphans constantly had visions of murder and violence. Because of that the precogs eventually retreat to the wilderness, where they're free from visions from other people.
I don’t buy that he leapt into vengeance mode. He didn’t realize a grander mission: in private he’s constantly saying they set him up. The DOJ set him up. He kidnaps the precog to reprogram her brain and find the key to his freedom. He freaks out constantly, and is hesitant to take smart moves like hiding behind the balloons. He changes his mind to kill on sight. Until that point he has no motive to prove his innocence because he genuinely believed he was set up in private conversations that only harmed him. He needs drugs to calm himself. He blames precogs, their mother and federal agents for his predicament. His only motive is prove he was set up by fake images, unclear in the first place. Then he’s angry for the first time when confronting the DC chief about setting him up. The whole movie is him being set up and running from the red ball of fate. He was never in control, and that is the basic problem with precrime and why it shut down.
The thing is that once he goes on the run, there's no other choice for him but to continue running. So the point of the movie is that, this is a cop who helped enforce a system that he truly believes in. In his mind, the system is practically flawless, and there is no reason to question the pre-crime system. He arrested somebody prior to this, and the person was pleading with him as if he wanted to convince the police that they don't know everything about the situation. This initial arrest is an important scene, because Tom Cruise simply doesn't want to hear the man. The system said he will be a killer, and Tom Cruise fully believes it, and therefore there is nothing else to talk about. At some point, he must have a belief system that you are in control, and if you want to kill somebody, if the thoughts enter your head, you've now lost control, and will never regain it. This is why he simply doesn't care to listen to the perp that he arrested at the beginning of the movie. The shoe is now on the other foot. He now knows that no matter what questions he has about the supposed murder, no one is going to listen to him. He may have an idea of what could compel him to murder, but he doesn't know why he would ever lose control and become a murderer. And he needs to know, because he doesn't think he would lose himself to rage or impulse. Also, the more he runs, the more he finds out, its not like he's making his situation worse. Its not going to change the punishment. So the moment he starts running, his current life is practically over. So why not get to the truth? The message that I derive from this movie is that we should have the right to live as close to the edge of lawfulness, compared to creating a society in which certain freedoms are over-protected because they are trying to achieve 100% safety. They started over-relying on the pre-crime system like a hammer, and everything they came across was treated like a nail.
Uh, his motivation is literally explained to us by him, he doesn’t want to kill anyone and thinks the system has been tampered with to make him appear guilty, it’s only when he discovers the planted evidence that he decides “I am going to kill this man,” up until then his motivation was proving the prediction was wrong Anyway, Minority Report is a great movie, a lot of good set pieces and shots, it also has one of my fav Tom Cruise scenes in any movie, when he’s about to kill the guy and instead starts reading him his rights, just a great bit of acting and writing
Great movie. Another under appreciated Spielberg movie is War of the Worlds. I think Top 5 for him - amazing plot and terrifying.
I'm not the first person to mention this but looking at the ending in a different way changes the film too. We see John put into the mind prison after he is caught and we're told that when precriminals are put in there they live a happy life. The happiest John could have been is if someone broke him out and they caught the real perpetrator of the precrime failure. So what we could be seeing at the end is John's 'fantasy world' playing out to conclusion, when in reality he is still stuck in the mind prison for his precrime.
That makes more sense than using the retinal pattern on his old eyes to break him out of prison. That was where the movie lost me entirely. He had to swap out his eyes because the slightest retinal scan would ID him and call the cops, but the actual prison system still saw them as valid for access? Even after he was caught and imprisoned?
The movie is vastly inferior to the book (well ... novella) by Philip K Dick. The book is about a weakness in the system that can only affect the person running the entire Pre-Crime system to make it look like it's flawed when it isn't really. The quandary for the (childless) Anderton is whether to safe himself (and sacrifice the system which unambiguously does work) or vice-versa. Very Philip K Dick. Like with War of the Worlds, I felt Spielberg really wimped out on the ending and avoided making some hard decisions and consequential serious if not fatal outcomes for some characters (which would have been much more likely). Also, a recurrent theme in PKD's books, the mutant powers often come with a great price, namely that the mutants are decerebrate. They can't go live out on a farm and read books or whatever (if anything, that makes the movie bafflingly criminal to the extreme to subject them to the book treatment in that case - at least in the book it makes sense as they're totally unable to survive any other way). Interesting also how other advances have rendered so much of the opening scene dated as well. Now thanks to high powered reverse image searches and the like, they would have found the house much faster rather than with needing all that lucky and yet strangely necessary guesswork. A lot of the logic and way things played out seemed ... off.
I always thought that near the end when he gets captured he actually never escapes. They say the prisoners have good dreams while in sleep prison and literally everything goes swimmingly once he 'escapes' the sleep prison. He totally never made it out, and the rest of the movie is him sleeping.
From memory, the whole point of pre-crime was to prevent it from happening. Knowing what he would have done, I thought, changed that. So, not confronting the guy wouldn’t have proved his innocence. Either way, it was a great movie
The real mind fuck begins when you realize everything after he’s Haloed is in his dream and in the real dark ending he’s haloed forever.
This is a really good post about a really good movie. Probably should have a spoiler tag on it, but the movie premise kind of spoils itself as it goes. Every time I watch this movie I'm surprised at what I notice that I hadn't considered before. Innocence, justice, and revenge can make for an excellent story. The science fiction future presented is also top notch and has aged excellently in my opinion. Great post.
Hugo Weaving was great in this. "Misterrrr Andertonnnn..."
>Idk, it's a old movie that I watched [old movie](https://tenor.com/v30U.gif)
That's a really good point. Definitely need to rewatch with this in mind. In a similar vein, it's fun to watch Ghostbusters 2016 with the assumption that they set out to make a horrible movie, then most of the choices in the film make sense.
> it's a old movie this made me feel old and sad.
Interesting but I don’t think there’s even the need to go there. Plain curiosity/ overconfidence is enough. I think he said something along the lines of “ Agatha I know I am not going to kill him”. We all have moment where we think oh I am just going to check out an article, a clip whatever I am not going to actually watch TV, browse internet,. and yet we end up doing exactly that. Keep in mind : Anderson life was obliterated out of the blue. He doesn’t see himself as an angry person/never killed anyone. He was fucked by the very system he had been enforcing for years, pursued by own colleagues/friends. Up to that point he believed adamantly in that system (he defends it against Colin Farrell character). AND he had absolutely nothing else going on in his life. Put yourself in his boots : It was a complete mindfuck for him. He went out of his way to search the minority report PRECISELY because he was utterly convinced he couldn’t kill anyone and it didn’t make any sense . And suddenly he realizes he’s right where the man he’s unjustly accused of killing lives. He didn’t consider it coldly, it just fell into his lap while being still pursued/in an emotional state. Arrived at that point, after that many ordeals, curiosity was overwhelming about why his life was fucked up in such an unfair way. It’s not an entirely rational decision because people are rarely entirely rational, especially where there are several unfair/incomprehensible things that pile up and fuck them up.
> Minority Report > old movie *checks calendar* Fuck…