The Cult of Singing Cereal Boxes - Scientology.

The Minority Report - movie style

Plot


Once upon a time, there was a short story called "The Minority Report." Then Steven Spielberg wanted to make a movie out of it. He decided "Oh, let's keep the title and the main character's name, but, uh, let's change everything else." I suppose though, changing one of the shortest short stories to one of the longest movies known to man does take some revamping. So, let us begin with the similarities. The idea of precrime and precogs remain constant. A minority report is still sought after. John Anderton is set up. Differences include the physical appearance of John Anderton who is a young strapping lad in the form of Tom Cruise [as opposed to"I'm getting bald. Bald and fat and old." (pg 119)] and one of Precrime's top agents rather than the Commissioner. Precrime in the written story has been institutionalized in American culture and is a nationally run program. In the movie, Precrime seems to be run privately and limited to Washington D.C. The country is supposed to vote to make the program go national. Enter Witwer, a government agent who looks to bring down Precrime by exposing flaws. Unlike the short story, he's shot and that's about all there is too it. Leopold Kaplan, the man Anderton is supposed to kill, is not the conspirator, nor does he play much of a role in the movie. His character is of a recovering drug addict who wants to die so his family will be given money. Anderton has a dead son, a divorced wife, and is a drug addict. At least in the story, he had a hot trophy wife who kind of put up with him. Quite possibly one of the biggest differences is that the minority report that Anderton seeks to clear his name doesn't exist in the movie, whereas there were three minority reports in the story. And, finally, in the end, Precrime is abolished due to its unethical nature and Anderton and his wife get back together and have a baby. The short story ends with Precrime being saved by Anderton because it works except in the case of the Precrime Commissioner who has access to the reports. These differences were some of the largest and just scratched the surface. The whole movie is the difference, in entirety.

John Anderton also gets fancy gloves with LED lights.

Point of View


So the point of view, just as in the story, is third person. Almost all movies are third person. The only movie I can recall being in first person was Doom, and that set the industry standard of a flop. So at least Steven Spielberg and Philip K. Dick can agree on point of view! Yay! It have been really odd if the viewer was John Anderton and we wouldn't have Tom Cruise as man candy to look at.

Ohhh yeaahhhh.

Characterization

John Anderton is characterized indirectly in the movie, as most characters in movies are. Literature can get away with stating outright what the character is or is not. It would be very difficult, though, to watch a movie in which the minor characters tell the audience exactly what the main character is like and then the main character acts exactly how the minor characters say he would. What is to be characterized in the movie compared to the short story, contains a vast array of differences. For example, John Anderton in the story is old, insecure, perpetually weary of human existence, and has bouts of paranoia. Tom Cruise (who will represent John Anderton in the movie) is confident, young, robust, and has that poignant critical flaw of being addicted to drugs that brings him ever closer to perfection. "He's troubled, but I can help him," says the middle-aged woman in the audience pining after the stud on screen.

While we're working on personality flaws,

let's all remember that he's in an extremist cult too.

Setting

This was der biggie y'all. It was in Washington D.C. and not New York, ahhhh!!! Washington D.C. added a kind of political flair to the plot, which I feel was a positive change for the direction the story was taken. Technically, because Precime was nationwide in the story, the setting is limited in the movie to just D.C., but that's plenty of room for the Precrime cops to make their exceptionally stereotypical ninja entrances in. That was probably the funniest part of the movie for me. Another biggie was that the story only mentions that the events were occurring sometime in the future after a big war. The year 2054 is clearly given in the movie and the only downfall of man was the catastrophic degrading of moral standards and the hedonism of humanity running rampant. One thing that I found consistent was the film noir feel to it though. Kate Schutte asked a marvelous question referring to the translation of the term, and yes, it does mean "black film" in French. It is used to refer to the black and white nature of the detectivey who-dun-it movies of the 40s and quite possibly the "dark" nature of a murder mystery thriller. The dark, film noir tone of the story was conveyed with word choice and gloomy settings, such as the slums of New York. The film noir aspect of the movie is kept alive in that, even though it wasn't black and white, the colors were painfully muted and the lighting was more of a sickly green or blue rather than a warm yellow, as  you may find on a sunny day in a romantic comedy, implying a kind of "black and white" effect.

This too is black and white; Tom Cruise is a mystery for the ages.

Theme

The Big Brother theme is still kinda pretty much there throughout the movie. Even more so than the story which mostly implied it. Rather in the movie, everybody was all eye scanned up to keep tabs on them which led to people switching out eyeballs on the street. Not even the story was that weird. Yet, because it's a Hollywood movie, there's gotta be a happy ending or heads are going to roll. Precrime is abolished and Tom gets the girl. It kind of shows how "humanity really isn't all that bad; we're just misguided beings." But the real theme here is that Hollywood should grow a pair and end a movie other than in true Disney form.

Because someone has to do it.