minority report essay example

Utopia for Society in “Minority Report” by S. Spielberg Essay

Have you ever dreamt of living in a Utopian society? Can you believe that one day we all will be living in an ideal world without evil, wars, and crimes? In 1561, Thomas More described an imaginary island with a perfect social system. It was called “Utopia.” At that time, it was too difficult to believe in such a world. Sir More hoped that people would get used to such life in the future. Unfortunately, with time, it becomes more and more difficult to believe and accept the idea of “Utopia.”

In 2002, Steven Spielberg directed the movie Minority Report . That was another attempt to create and describe Utopia. The movie was based on the same name story written by Phillip K. Dick. The movie Minority Report interprets lots of ideas described in the book. Of course, the plot was changed a bit in order to make the movie a real action-adventure fiction. Minority Report is an amazing story about a world without murders and conflicts. This presentation of Utopia on-screen is verisimilar and impressive due to the successful implementation of film techniques, though the movie itself is aimed at proving that it is impossible to live in a perfect world where the actions of each person can be predicted and where free will and right of choice are ignored and changed for a life without crimes and conflicts.

Minority Report is a story about one of the possible versions of our future. Scientists created a new method to prevent crimes. Three pre-cogs (mutants with extrasensory perception) can see murders that are going to happen. They transmit the information received to the members of the police force. They name the murder, victim, date, and time of the crime. The pre-cogs visions make it possible for John Anderton (Tom Cruise), a member of precrime police, to discover the place where the murder is about to happen.

The film starts with a scene when pre-cogs see a murder. A quick reaction of the police, rapid searching, numerous images, and task-oriented actions – this is the way Spielberg chooses to begin the story. Such a beginning lets the viewers understand that a “utopian” society does not hesitate in making decisions. People do not pay much attention to the reasons for the crime. The only purpose they want to achieve is to prevent the crime and punish the perpetrator. Everyone believes that the chosen system has no drawbacks. Once, John said: “There has not been a murder in six years. The system, it is perfect.” ( Minority Report ) He could not even imagine that in several days all his ideas and beliefs will be wrecked.

After one more vision of pre-cogs, Anderton gets to know that he will commit the next murder. And what is more, he even does not know the victim. One of the pre-cogs sees that Anderton is not guilty, but unfortunately, the “majority” report has much more authority. So, John, with the help of one pre-cog, tries to prove his innocence.

Well, is everything so “perfect” in Utopia? Can it be that people forget about the right of choice and free will just in order to live without murders and conflicts? This is what the major character John Anderton of the movie will clear up.

John cannot understand how it is possible that he will kill a person whom he does not even know. He starts to think about whether the Pre-Crime system is really perfect. He wants to find cracks in the system that causes much indignation of other members of the Pre-Crime Policy—his abilities to plan and think logically over each step help to find and choose the right way. John has a purpose, and he knows that he must achieve it. It does not matter what ways he will use. His living principles turn out to be false. He should find a new way and accept the world as it is. So, his behavior deserves respect.

The physical settings of the movie also deserve special attention since they are indeed remarkable. Spielberg has always been famous for using rich decorations. Minority Report is not the only movie where Spielberg describes the future or past using modern technologies (among others are Transformers, Jurassic Park, War of the Worlds , etc.) Flying cars, high-speed trains moving vertically, and transplants – all these captivate the viewers.

Spielberg’s use of sound and light is worth attention as well. Let us consider the fact that this movie earned nominations for Best Sound Editing (Academy Awards) and Best Visual Effects (BAFTAs). The sound design of Minority Report is rather aggressive. Even during the quiet moments, the sound background makes a viewer prick up ears. The greatest example is, perhaps, the scene when Agatha tells John about her mother’s murderer:

John Anderton : Agatha, just tell me, who killed your mother? Who killed Anne Lively? Agatha : [whispering] I’m sorry, John, but you’re gonna have to run again. John Anderton : What? Agatha : [ screaming ] RUUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN! ( Minority Report )

After these words of hers, disturbing background music becomes louder. Such change with sounds makes the viewer worry about the character.

When I watched a movie on DVD for the first time, I thought that there was something wrong with my DVD because of its bleak and dark appearance. Yes, Spielberg’s use of lighting is quite unique. Steel and grey tones help to underline each detail in the movie. White light in the lab attracts attention and emphasizes that it is something different, not inherent to each character of the film.

Spielberg’s cinematography also contributes to the movie’s deeply impressing the reader. His way of presenting ideas and attention to each detail is noticeable from the very beginning. A scene when Howard Marks is going to kill his wife and her lover is a good example. He ascends the stairs slowly; the viewer does not see clearly his face or body. Spielberg uses shadows to underline that Howard’s presence at home is not that important and his role in his wife’s life is insignificant. Even when he is standing in front of their bed and is watching his wife making love with another man, he remains unnoticeable.

The flashforwards should be considered as anti-narrative attributes of the movie. Their presence distorts the plot of the story and hinders the derivatives. However, the methods Spielberg used while editing Minority Report are perfect. He mixed various methods of continuity editing. Remember the scene when Anderton and Agatha are walking in a crowd. She tells him to take an umbrella. A camera moves to a person with an umbrella, then to Anderton, showing how adroitly he takes an umbrella, and again moves to Agatha in expectation of what she will tell further.

Therefore, the unique plot of the story reminds the viewers that life in a perfect world involves a number of problems other than those which people encounter in a normal society; though people are able to live in a world without crimes and conflicts, they face unpleasant limitations of their free will and right of choice. Moreover, even the most perfect system can break down someday, leading to irrevocable mistakes. The director’s ability to make this idea clear for the viewers and his fantastic and appropriate usage of film techniques make the movie unforgettable.

In conclusion, Minority Report is a provoking and quite exciting fiction that leaves viewers in thoughts about the values of their lives. It is a story about people who got used to doing what is predetermined by someone else. They live in Utopia. What can happen when something goes wrong? Who is responsible for our future? Maybe, it is high time to understand that we can change our future in accordance with our own desires, rather than with the desires of someone else. Minority Report helps to perfectly realize the essence of life and even change it for the better.

Works Cited

Minority Report . Dir. Steven Spielberg. Perf. Tom Cruise, Colin Farrell, Steve Harris, and Samantha Morton. DreamWorks. Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation. Cruise/Wagner Production. 2002.

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IvyPanda. (2021, December 2). Utopia for Society in "Minority Report" by S. Spielberg. https://ivypanda.com/essays/utopia-for-society-in-minority-report-by-s-spielberg/

"Utopia for Society in "Minority Report" by S. Spielberg." IvyPanda , 2 Dec. 2021, ivypanda.com/essays/utopia-for-society-in-minority-report-by-s-spielberg/.

IvyPanda . (2021) 'Utopia for Society in "Minority Report" by S. Spielberg'. 2 December.

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1. IvyPanda . "Utopia for Society in "Minority Report" by S. Spielberg." December 2, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/utopia-for-society-in-minority-report-by-s-spielberg/.

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Dystopia — Dystopia In Films The Minority Report And The Trial

Dystopia in Films The Minority Report and The Trial

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Published: Apr 29, 2022

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Minority Report (Film)

By steven spielberg.

• Minority Report (Film) Summary

The year is 2054. Murders can be now be stopped before they even occur, thanks to the sophisticated techniques of the PreCrime police unit, headquartered in Washington, D.C. The method by which the PreCrime unit prevents murders is through a mixture of advanced technology and the use of Precogs. The Precogs are three human beings with powers of precognition that allow them to visualize crimes before they happen. Heading the PreCrime division is John Anderton. Anderton is a highly competent cop who has spiraled into drug addiction since the disappearance of his son, Sean, six years ago.

The PreCrime unit is being audited for its effectiveness and efficiency by Danny Witwer of the Department of Justice. After Anderton discovers a mysterious record of a murder from early Precrime days, he is suddenly revealed by the Precogs as the next murderer on the loose. Shocked by this realization, Anderton makes a run for it, pursued closely by his colleagues in the Precrime unit.

The victim of Anderton’s future murder is identified as Leo Crow, a man he doesn't even know, and the crime is set to take place in just 36 hours. Anderton’s escape allows him to track down the person who created the Precog technology, an eccentric older botanist/scientist named Iris Hineman . During their conversation, Hineman tells John that on rare occasions, one of the three Precogs will experience a vision of the future crime that differs from the other two. This divergence from unanimity is referred to as a “minority report,” and most of these reports originate from the Precog named Agatha , the "most talented" one. The occurrence of minority reports has been obscured from public knowledge because its discovery would throw the PreCrime system’s credibility into question. Anderton realizes that his only hope to prove his innocence and avoid arrest is to make his own minority report public.

Technological advancement in surveillance have essentially stripped everybody of their privacy in the future. People are identified by their irises, so John must seek out a black market eye transplant in order to keep his identity secret so he can remain underground. After receiving a shady blackmarket surgery, John sneaks back into the Precrime headquarters and proceeds to abduct Agatha, causing a system-wide shutdown of Precog activity (since everything depends on the three psychics working in tandem).

John visits a hacker in order to download the minority report involving the murder of Leo Crow, but he is disturbed to find that no such report appears to exist. Reviewing Agatha's visions, John once again comes across the memory of the murder that he saw just before getting targeted. It is the drowning of a woman named Anne Lively by a hooded figure a few years before.

As the hour of John's projected murder of Leo Crow draws near, Anderton brings Agatha to Leo Crow’s apartment. There, he discovers a collection of photographs of various children, including his missing son, Sean. When Crow arrives homes, Anderton assumes that he's the one who kidnapped his son, and intends to carry out the murder the Precogs have predicted. However, when Agatha convinces John that he possesses the power to change his own future as a result of becoming conscious of the narrative, John decides not to kill Crow. Crow further complicates that narrative, however, when he admits that he’s not really a child killer at all. In fact, he signed up to be murdered by Anderton in exchange for the future financial stability of his family. Eager for his payoff, Crow grabs Anderton’s gun and shoots himself with it.

Still on the run for his life, Anderton, with Agatha in tow, flees to the home of his estranged wife Lara, who lives near a lake. While enjoying this brief sanctuary, Anderson discovers that the drowning victim Anne Lively was actually Agatha’s mother who, under the influence of a drug addiction, sold her daughter to the Precrime program. While she attempted to get Agatha back after getting off drugs, she was murdered. Anderton realizes that he has been framed for the murder of Leo Crow because he discovered this connection between Anne Lively and Agatha.

What Anderton doesn’t know is that Danny Witwer has now reached the same conclusion about Anderton’s actual involvement in the death of Crow. Investigating further to determine why someone would frame Anderton for that murder, he studies the footage of Anne Lively’s death, which reveals that the successful drowning was actually the second attempt on her life. The first attempt was averted by the PreCrime system, but the subsequent attempt occurred mere minutes later, and went unprevented. When Witwer informs the department’s director, Lamar Burgess , of what he's found, Burgess shoots him with Anderton's gun.

Burgess has Anderton arrested for the murder of both Crow and Witwer. Agatha is returned to the Precog Temple and the PreCrime system comes back online. While consoling Lara, John Anderton's ex-wife, about Anderton's arrest, Burgess inadvertently reveals that he is hooded figure from the footage who murdered Agatha’s mother. Realizing that Burgess is the villainous mastermind behind everything, Lara manages to disarm the device imprisoning Anderton’s brain functions, and Anderton, in turn, manages to unveil Burgess as the murderer by showing the entire footage of Agatha's vision of Anne Lively's killing during a formal banquet celebrating the success of the Precrime unit. Suddenly, the system issues a report that Burgess will kill Anderton.

When Burgess and Anderton finally confront each other, Anderton points out that Burgess is in a bind: if he kills Anderton, he will be locked up, but if he doesn't, the efficacy of PreCrime will be disproven and his corporate legacy will falter. Burgess shoots himself, and PreCrime is disbanded.

Afterwards, John and Lara reconcile and get pregnant with another child. The Precogs are given a home in a small rural cabin in an undisclosed location.

Minority Report (Film) Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Minority Report (Film) is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Minority Report, Report

The Minority Report attempts to judge what someone will or will not do.

These reports are important for the Precrime unit to predict what will or will not occur.

Reports are destroyed so that they cannot be made public. A publicized mistake would...

Does the system of justice described in The Minority Report truly benefit society

I don't think so because fate and free will become a tangled mess. The premise of PreCrime is that human beings' actions can be predicted, and that there is a certain amount of predetermination that goes into every act. In this schema, free will...

How does Agatha, even while in the water and hooked into the Precrime computers, make a choice?

I don't think Agatha makes a decision. With the other two Precogs, she projects visions of crimes that have yet to happen to the PreCrime Division. Agatha is the most talented of the three Precogs, as Iris Hineman tells John when he visits her...

Study Guide for Minority Report (Film)

Minority Report study guide contains a biography of Steven Spielberg, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About Minority Report (Film)
• Character List
• Director's Influence

Essays for Minority Report (Film)

Minority Report literature essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of the movie Minority Report directed by Steven Spielberg.

• Spielberg's Interpretation of Minority Report
• The Perpetual Exploitation of Minorities in Philip K. Dick’s “Minority Report” and Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report
• A Comparison of Spielberg's film and Dick's novella, Minority Report

Wikipedia Entries for Minority Report (Film)

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Minority Report : A Dystopic Vision

The following is an abridged extract from the forthcoming Citizen Spielberg .

In the summer of 2002, Steven Spielberg again explored the dystopian future he first envisioned in A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (2001) taking themes which engaged his imagination from his earliest movies into darker and more precarious territory. But unlike the largely negative popular and critical response to the earlier film, Minority Report struck a responsive chord with critics and audiences, garnering excellent reviews and quickly crossing the $100 million box-office mark. The same director whom critics earlier disparaged for creating the blockbuster mentality and infantilising the cinema now found himself hailed for going “against the grain” by challenging “the big fluff of summer” and offering “a counterpoint to…the dumbed-down standard for summer fare” (Lyman, 17). Amidst a summer season stuffed with endless car chases and mindless explosions, pale sequels and comic-book heroes, Spielberg emerged as the thinking man’s filmmaker: always recognised as having the technical skills to dazzle the eye and the narrative gifts to quicken the pulse, he was now hailed (as he was for Schindler’s List [1993] and Saving Private Ryan [1999]) for having the intelligence to engage the brain.

Author Philip K. Dick wrote the 1956 short story upon which Minority Report is based. Laid out in 36 novels and over 100 short stories, Dick’s disturbing literary worlds form the basis for ‘realistic’ movie fantasies such as Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982), Total Recall (Paul Verhoeven, 1990) and Screamers (Christian Duguay, 1995). Though the subject of an avid cult following, Dick attained broad, popular acclaim only after the success of director Ridley Scott’s 1982 film based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? which appeared soon after the writer’s death from a stroke at age 53. Dick’s bleak, intense, often paranoid visions inevitably focus on the complexities of human memory and psychology, rather than technological gadgetry and flamboyant aliens: the brain, not the computer, remains the focus of his futuristic thrillers. As such, Dick, who called himself a “fictionalising philosopher,” fits more comfortably in the tradition of Kafka than that of Asimov, as one of those writers who turn personal paranoia into communal nightmares. In particular, his consistent motif that “humans are becoming increasingly mechanical while machines are evolving to meet them halfway” (Edelstein, 7) becomes a significant theme Spielberg examines in both A.I. and Minority Report .

Like its literary source, Spielberg’s foreboding, expressionistic film starts with an engaging plot premise – the social and personal repercussions when people can be convicted of murders before they commit them – and expands the concept into a political warning and ultimately a compelling meditation on the ancient question of whether human beings are predestined to execute certain acts or possess the free will to decide their own fates. It also maintains Dick’s tortured central character, a futuristic cop psychologically wounded from the loss of his child, addicted to illegal drugs and assigned to prevent these ‘pre-crimes.’ Simultaneously, Minority Report explores the potentially disastrous misuses of modern technology, particularly how digital manipulation can destabilise visual images permitting their abuse for ideological reasons.

The resulting movie functions on at least three linked levels: the personal, the political and the philosophical, each accompanied by an interlocking set of visual motifs. Stylistically, Spielberg cites the influence of master directors of film noir like John Huston, Howard Hawks and Sam Fuller and emulates their classic techniques to produce an ominous landscape of fear and foreboding: 1) complex, overly cluttered spaces that swallow up figures; 2) stark and opposing areas of light and dark that contain uncertain points of refuge and danger; 3) undiffused, low-key lighting that harshly illuminates characters; 4) great depth of field that keeps most frame elements in focus; 5) distorting, disorienting camera angles; 6) suffocating close-ups that chop off parts of the anatomy; 7) irregular, discomforting spacing between objects and characters. Such techniques allow him to capture what he characterises as “the photo-realism of film”:

We decided to put the film through a process called bleach bypass, which essentially takes all of the Technicolor out of your face and makes your face much more pale. What it does is take those happy, delightfully rosy skin tones away from people that are naturally that way and washes everything out. Then we shot some of the scenes on 800 ASA film stock which creates a kind of graininess that makes it feel more like an old film noir (Lyman 26).

These elements of noir construction create, as J.A. Place notes in her essay on film style, “a visually unstable environment in which no character has a firm moral base from which he can confidently operate” (Place 338). “You shouldn’t trust anyone,” Dr Iris Hineman (Lois Smith) tells the distraught police detective John Anderton (Tom Cruise), advice accentuated by the film’s visual style. By entering this threatening noir sphere, Spielberg creates an ideologically equivocal and inherently treacherous atmosphere that remains far more personally tangled, politically duplicitous and morally relative than in many of his previous films.

This destabilisation appears in particular through one recurring visual and thematic motif: water. Minority Report is awash in images of water on every imaginable level. To cite just the most obvious, Agatha (Samantha Morton) and the other Pre-Cogs transmit their visions of future crimes while floating in pools of nutrient–enhanced water; the water sprinkler in the Marks’ front lawn rotates throughout the crime sequence; the Sprawl is filled with puddles and often seen through rain showers; Lara’s hologram image wants Anderton to “watch the rain” with her; Anne Lively (Jessica Harper) is drowned in a lake; Anderton and Agatha leave the shopping mall in a downpour; Dr. Iris Hineman (Lois Smith) waters her exotic plants as she converses with the frustrated Anderton; Anderton and his now-pregnant wife Lara (Kathryn Morris) watch the rain outside the windows in their final scene; and the Pre-Cogs eventually live in a cabin alongside water. When Anderton seeks to escape from the surveillance ‘spiders,’ he immerses himself in a bathtub filled with ice water, though a single air bubble betrays him to the invading horde of mechanical spies. Most crucially, Anderton loses his young son while underwater: playing “how-long-can-you-hold-your-breath” with Sean (Spencer Treat Clark) at a public pool, he sinks to the bottom and, when he resurfaces, finds the child gone, abducted by an unknown and never-found kidnapper. In an ironic reversal of traditional baptism symbology, he emerges from the pool a different man, one reborn not into spirituality but into emotional pain. While present in the idyllic settings surrounding both Lara’s house and the Pre-Cogs’ cabin, water functions more as scenery than substance; elsewhere, it obscures clear sight, particularly when Anderton’s son is stolen and more pivotally in the ambiguous visions of the Pre-Cogs. As such, water functions as both positive and negative imagery throughout the movie, a component of meditative creation or psychological destruction.

The film’s second level is the political, and Spielberg once again taps into a sensitive communal nerve. Though conceived, shot and edited long before the current crisis in domestic security spawned by the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center Towers, Minority Report hit movie screens at a time when questions about how much personal liberty Americans were willing to sacrifice for the promise of public security stimulated an ongoing national debate. Can we trust the FBI and the CIA to exercise appropriate restraints, to monitor only those who endanger our safety and not those who hold unpopular opinions, if given greater power to patrol our lives? Will President Bush’s and Tom Ridge’s Department of Homeland Security prevent violent activities or routinely engage in unjustified surveillance of our personal lives? Does the former justify the latter? It is also a time when, while ethicists debate the ramifications of the latest scientific findings about genetic predispositions, prisons throughout the United States contain people arrested because the government suspects they would have committed future crimes.

Minority Report offers a sobering scenario of how dangerous it is to exchange individual freedoms for governmental assurances. A dire warning lies at the heart of the film: because human beings create and control the necessary machines, as well as the system that employs them, no safeguards can infallibly shield citizens from violence. Even more importantly, all mechanisms, however sophisticated and refined, remain open to human interpretation and, by virtue of that fact, such devices are inherently susceptible to corruption and misuse. The cynical Witwer (Colin Farrell), though he misjudges his true enemy, understands this: “The flaw is always human,” he tells Anderton. Spielberg beautifully illustrates this fatal flaw via layered visual constructions that mesh with his narrative. The Pre-Cogs, called “pattern recognition filters” by one officer, project images of future crimes, drawn from their tortured consciousness, onto the tripartite, screen-like apparatus attached to their temple’s ceiling. From there, the images get transferred onto a transparent video screen where Anderton, using specially designed gloves, manipulates the colliding image fragments, ultimately orchestrating them (to the strains of Schubert’s “Unfinished Symphony”) into a coherent narrative.

Thus, the Pre-Cogs function as authors – or at least transmitters or channellers – of the text, the images as the physical text itself and Anderton as its reader, the one called upon to fashion the disjointed images into a coherent story, identify the scene and prevent the crime. Because the meaning of these narratives inevitably shifts from reader to reader, as Spielberg demonstrates throughout the film, governmental actions based on those constructed patterns rest on a shaky foundation of interpretive selections. The images themselves flash so quickly onto the ceiling screens that an immediate, accurate understanding of their meaning is never possible. Also open to question is whether or not each Pre-Cog projects identical scenes: do they see the same angles, events, sequences and outcomes simultaneously? (Viewers finally discover this is not always the case, since “minority reports” provide alternate endings.) Only after slowing down the rapid images, and then re-arranging them into a seemingly logical narrative configuration of cause and effect, does the government take action. But the apparently precise montages sutured together by Anderton prove inherently ambiguous, a series of actions open to competing interpretations despite their ostensible clarity. As numerous theorists have demonstrated, a viewer’s subjective positioning always colours both the individual reception and interpretation of visual images: we inevitably see what we have been trained to understand and, sometimes, what we want to see (as does Anderton’s nemesis Witwer). All the variables which constitute one’s personal and social identity determine how, and even what, one sees.

The importance of this admonition becomes evident as Anderton, who initially places total faith in the system, ultimately learns its limitations by becoming its victim. The Pre-Cogs project him killing a man, Leo Crow (Mike Binder): he points his gun, fires it at close range, and blasts a man out of the window, all the while being watched by a third man from the outside of the high-rise building. But, when the murder actually occurs in real-time, a set of previously unrecognised circumstances totally change Anderton’s (and the viewer’s) perception of what occurs: the man looking from outside the building is actually a painted figure on a billboard, another ad not a witness; the crime scene proves a false set-up purposely designed to enrage Anderton; the man shot is not a kidnapper but a criminal who agrees to be killed; Anderton chooses not to shoot the man he thinks killed his son; it remains uncertain who ultimately pulls the trigger. Therefore, the series of images/events reconstructed from the Pre-Cogs’ original vision, and now deemed sufficient to arrest Anderton and send him into the Hall of Containment for the remainder of his life, ultimately conceals serious discrepancies between the reassembled interpretation and the actual events. Spielberg forces us to speculate about how many other “criminals” suffered through similar false readings: incarceration by misinterpretation. Add to this the fact that we, as viewers, watch these two “movies” with sometimes more and sometimes less information than the characters on the screen, and all sorts of questions about the complexities of spectatorship, the shifting truth of images, and the inherent subjectivity of visual information immediately arise.

Thus, Minority Report fundamentally questions our sight: How does one see? What does one see? How do we understand what we see – or think we see? The film’s very first image is blurred and unrecognisable, only slowing evolving into a distorted kiss between characters we cannot identify. As with water, the film incorporates a vast array of spoken references to and pictorial emphasis on eyes. In the opening sequence, for example, the “pre-criminal” Howard Marks (Arye Gross) returns home for his glasses (“You know how blind I am without them”), only to find his wife (Ashley Crow) in bed with another man. Earlier his son plunges a pair of scissors through the eyes of a cardboard picture of Abraham Lincoln, the same instrument Howard later attempts to drive into his unfaithful wife’s eyes. The drug dealer who sells Anderton his narcotics has no eyes so he cannot be identified. “Can you see?” Agatha asks Anderton several times throughout the film, a physical as well as metaphysical question. “The eyes of the nation are upon us,” Director Lamar Burgess (Max von Sydow) tells Anderton in warning him about the upcoming vote on the Pre-Crime Unit. When the cops search for Anderton and Agatha, they “have got their eyes on them.” One set of exotic flowers in Hineman’s greenhouse are called “Doll’s Eye,” and, most importantly of all, the “mother of Pre-Crime” informs Anderton that, “in order to see the light, you have to risk the dark.” The entire population in the year 2054 experiences repeated retinal scans, this sophisticated verification procedure functioning as both surveillance apparatus and consumer inducement: a citizen’s identity is checked numerous times throughout the day, while manufacturers personally target him/her (through the eyes) to buy an array of products. In the future, the eyes are less the window to the soul than the path to the check book – or to jail. Such intrusions merely refine already existing devices now routinely used at airports and received via email. Spielberg, however, takes them to oppressive levels: when government agents search for Anderton, they release swarms of tiny, robotic “spiders” which leap onto the faces of innocent citizens and force them to endure retinal scans. The resulting scene is a visual tour-de-force. Spielberg sets up his camera initially looking steeply downward into all the compartments of the tenement building and then, dipping and darting, it dashes along with the spiders from room to room as they visually interrogate its helpless inhabitants: frightened children, a couple making love, another man and woman fighting, an old man sitting on the toilet. None can find sanctuary from the government’s intrusive, and ultimately oppressive, tactics.

On a more literal level, Spielberg incorporates macabre humour within various scenes involving eyeballs. In an extended, creepy sequence, Anderton hires an unsavory, criminal surgeon (Peter Stormare) to remove his own eyeballs and replace them with a new set, one that will allow him to pass undetected through the ubiquitous retinal scans. Tied down, drugged, and eyes clamped open in a scene which overtly references A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick, 1971) – another film about society’s attempt to stop criminal violence – a terrified Anderton belatedly realises that his vision rests in the grimy hands of a once prominent plastic surgeon he sent to prison for setting his patients on fire so he could ‘cure’ their burns. Blindfolded following the operation, able to feed and relieve himself only by pulling on ropes which lead to rancid food and a filthy toilet, the detective faces the prospect of literal blindness to accompany his metaphorical state. In a weirdly comic moment, Anderton desperately chases after his removed eyeballs as they careen down a hallway, only to watch one fall through a grate. Though he survives, Anderton never looks at the world in the same way: the veil of certainty which surrounded his faith in the Pre-Cogs has been ripped away, replaced by a tattered and uncertain cloth which reveals the world as a more ambiguous and less trustworthy place. In a literal sense, to pun on the film’s title, Anderton now views the world from the perspective of a member of an ethnic “minority” – Mr. Yakamoto, the Asian whose eyes have been substituted for his own.

This repeated use of eye imagery throughout Minority Report leads to the film’s third, and most philosophical, level: the age-old argument about whether human being possess free will or whether their actions are predestined by some higher power. Such debates are as ancient as Oedipus Rex (the drug dealer with empty eye sockets seems an modern counterpart of Tiresius, Sophocles’ blind prophet) and as modern as the controversies swirling around the Human Genome Project. They are found in virtually every religious conceptualisation, play a significant part in great and small literary works, and rest at the heart of endless philosophical speculations. Spielberg gives voice to this debate via an extended dialogue between two of his central characters, Anderton and Justice Department Agent Danny Witwer, the man sent to investigate the Unit and, if it goes national, to replace Anderton. Initially, Anderton defends the fundamental philosophy of stopping crime before it happens, while Witwer asserts that “It’s not the future if you stop it.”

Does knowing what the future holds automatically change it? As the plot progresses, both men shift their positions on this question. Witwer sees the Pre-Cogs’ images of Anderton murdering a man and goes after him solely on that basis, never realising that his interpretation arises from what he wants to see rather than what actually transpires. His lack of clear vision causes his death. Anderton learns that the Pre-Cogs don’t always agree, that a so-called “minority report” can exist which provides an alternative version of future events. Pinning his hopes on such a 2–1 decision, he captures Agatha to prove his innocence, only to discover the verdict was unanimous in his case. In answering this conundrum about free will vs. predestination, Spielberg has it both ways, via sleight of camera movements. “You can choose,” Agatha tells Anderton as he faces Crow. Yet the future acts projected by the Pre-Cogs literally transpire: though Anderton doesn’t assassinate anyone, a man still dies. (On a whole other level, nothing “real” ever happens because everything the audience views is an elaborate illusion, literally pieces of celluloid passing in front of a light source that our imaginations endow with power and meaning.) Ironically, therefore, Anderton’s decision to overcome his rage and refrain from killing the man he thinks kidnapped his son – the most profoundly ethical decision in the film – results in his moral rebirth but not in any alteration of the predicted concrete actions.

Minority Report is the least overtly religious of Spielberg’s science-fiction films. Though the Pre-Cogs inhabit a room called the ‘temple’ and Witwer compares their work to priests rather than law enforcement personnel, Anderton forcefully rejects this notion as an inappropriate description of their responsibilities. Ironically, he fails to recognise that his absolute faith in the Pre-Cogs visions of the future amounts to a zealous defense of a particular belief system. As will be demonstrated repeatedly throughout the movie, Anderton must go blind before he can see; he must lose his way in the darkness before he can find a light which will lead him to personal redemption and political reality. The film posits that uncritically trusting in any system whatsoever inevitably leads to disastrous consequences. When Anderton becomes a criminal in the eyes of the state, he finally understands that the nature of truth always remains subjective, vulnerable to manipulation and abuse. Skepticism, rather than doctrinaire conviction, provides the only appropriate safeguard against human frailty and desire. One can choose to accept (or reject) a particular formulation of belief, be it in a higher power or the construction of the state itself, but coercion in the name of those doctrines creates oppression – not freedom. In Minority Report , therefore, salvation rests in the reconstitution of the family, not the power of the state or, for that matter, any sort of superior being or consciousness. Since the forfeiture of individual freedoms inevitably leads to miscarriages of justice and ultimately social repression, the surrendering of our liberties in a quest for security is seen as far too high a price to pay. Ultimately, then, Minority Report warns us that, even during times of wide-spread public anxiety, the motto of the Pre-Crime unit – “That Which Keeps Us Safe Also Keeps Us Free” – must be reversed: that which keeps us free also keeps us safe.

Works cited

Edelstein, David. “Philip K. Dick: Mind-Bending, Film-Inspiring Journeys,” New York Times , June 16, 2002, p. 1/7.

Lyman, Rick. “Spielberg Challenges the Big Fluff of Summer”, New York Times , June 16, 2002, Arts and Leisure, p.17.

Place, J.A. “Some Visual Motifs of Film Noir” in Bill Nichols (ed.) Movies and Methods , University of California Press, Berkeley, pp. 325-338.

The Minority Report by Philip K. Dick — Literary Analysis and Movie Guide

Description.

In this resource, your students will read and  analyze the science fiction/ dystopian short story (novella) “The Minority Report” by Philip K. Dick.  Your students will love to debate which is more important: safety or liberty? Additionally, students will engage in philosophical questions like is life predetermined by fate, or do we all have free will?

Included in this purchase:

• Suggested Lesson Procedure for teachers
• Pre-reading Discussion Questions based on themes from the story
• Background information on Philip K. Dick
• Historical Context of the Cold War and 1950s America
• Introduction of the short story “The Minority Report”
• Academic Vocabulary Words and Definitions
• Graphic Organizer for Vocabulary Words
• “The Minority Report” Reading and Analysis Questions broken into 10 Sections
• After Reading Discussion Questions
• Theme Analysis Chart and Graphic Organizer
• Film Comparison/ Movie Guide worksheet based on the 2002 Film “Minority Report” directed by Steven Spielberg (PG-13) and stars Tom Cruise and Colin Farrell
• Answer Keys

File Types Included:

Teacher Guide and Answer Keys (PDF)

Student Copy of Activities (Word document—editable for teachers)

Student Copy of Activities (PDF—ready to print)

Powerpoint Presentation

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