A Minority of One

Minority Report

by Ian McCullough, www.cinemonkey.com

ne of the things that is most, and I mean most difficult to do in all of science fiction is time related stories. It's one of my favorite science fiction themes, just because it rarely is done well and even in failure will provoke thought. There are a couple of ways one can go about time science fiction, but the source material for Minority Report is from a master, Philip K. Dick. With his adaptations being Blade Runner, Total Recall and now Minority Report, I cannot imagine why a tidal wave of his short stories won't be adapted in the future. The previous two movies are high water marks in thoughtful science fiction movies for me , and with my admiration for Dick's work I had soaring expectations for Minority Report.

When analyzing science fiction one of the best exercises is really thinking about what you have to accept as true, which you don't necessarily agree with in day to day life, to allow the movie to work. My phrase is, "Does it burn out the bullshit chip?," the little part of my find that at some point goes, "BULLSHIT!" if a movie is poorly thought out scientifically. The better the science fiction, the easier it is to accept the postulated advance, future, or alternative timeline. In Minority Report, you have to accept mental powers such as you would find in the Metaphysics section at Powell's and an increase in identity checks and governmental control. The entire movie only needs a minor suspension of disbelief and I found this to be an admirably low bar.

An example of falling apart at the premise is The Matrix, which asks the viewer to disbelieve the second law of thermodynamics—I simply cannot swallow that. The second task, after getting the audience to buy into the premise, is how well the story deals with it's own logic. This is where most science fiction movies fall apart. A good example of burning out the bullshit chip at this point is Hollow Man. The premise of invisibility is easy to accept, the premise of a mouse not smelling an invisible cat is just plain stupid. Pitch Black had a wild premise, but followed the internal logic pretty well and thus worked as a science fiction movie.

ack to the topic of precognition—let's look at the basic premise, which we have to accept as a viewer. There are three people who can see the future with incredible accuracy, if not perfect accuracy, but most powerfully in the realm of murder. They only see murder because of some touchy-feely Jungian throw away lines about disruption of the fabric of reality. I use accuracy in the scientific sense—the visions agree with each other repeatedly amongst themselves (the experiment is reproducible—therefore scientific). Scientists in the audience already know that there are no perfectly accurate reproducible experiments, just ones that work so well that the differences are statistically inconsequential. So the possibility that the precogs are always accurate is within the realm of possibility (like an extremely well calibrated instrument). However, when the system is described as perfect, a viewing scientist knows that a breakdown is in the works. Scientists define reality with experimentation, honing in and agreeing to what is true. A perfect scientific system almost always equals hubris and a fall, and gets you wondering exactly how is this system going to fuck up.

Often time stories revolve around "changing things but not really changing anything"—that the actions of the protagonist upon learning of their future is exactly what makes that future come true. The idea is that knowing your destiny does not allow you to avoid it—by yourself. In this movie, others can and do intercede to change fate—so why can't the actors change things themselves?

The movie's answer is that, like a train, there are tracks of decisions, some passionate and short some long and premeditated. Basically, "time's arrow" still flies forward but that it's path can be deviated. A "red ball" is when an actor shifts to a murderous track through—what? Chance? Why is leaving your glasses at home, or discovering you're a cuckold, any less predestined than stabbing your wife or the bizarre plot twists that land Cruise's character in the apartment of Leo Crow? The precogs then are not really sensing the future. They are sensing the decisions which lead to murderous thoughts in the present and calculating probability of success. Cruise is previsioned to be a murderer as soon as Sydow's character decides to set him up. Sydow's plan is ingenious and the probability approaches 100% so the precogs see the murder (and J.P. VanStratten from Beat the Geeks of all people on a billboard).

So why don't they see accidents and suicides? Why don't they see death when someone decides to talk on the phone instead of pay attention to the road or when they become so depressed they decide to kill themselves? I will buy into the mental signature of murderous thoughts being different from suicidal. A person willingly participating in their own death would have substantially different feelings (relief, maybe guilt, et cetera...) than a murderer (rage, savage glee, et cetera...). In an accident, obviously the victim does not decide to kill themselves, but they might experience substantial and traumatic horror or fear before their death. So the precogs have to be detecting murderous thoughts, not the premature or unwilling death trauma.

something we know will happen. However, when it does happen it is the past. The present is experienced in reflection, even if the time gap is synaptic. Therefore, as humans, what we experience cognitively and even perceptually is the past. The future is simply a construct we create from our experience. The precogs get the image of the future murder immediately after someone has made the watershed decision which will lead to murderous thought. The precogs have a form of telepathy and empathy, which allows them to receive massive amounts of data from the decisions people make, and the feelings they have. They collectively do this like a parallel processor and compile trend lines rather like a seismographer. When they detect what I now think of as a train of murderous thought they communicate it.

But why don't the pre-crime people in the movie understand the metaphysics of the precogs abilities? Why wouldn't they understand that there is absolutely no reason in the world that Cruise would start plotting a murder while at his job? Even the dumbest person in the audience knows Cruise is "innocent"—that he has zero intentionality to commit murder. So, someone has to be plotting to drive Cruise into a murderous rage. In addition, why don't the precogs pick up that Leo Crow is a suicide? He has no beef about shedding this mortal coil, he's damn eager to go. The mental signature of his departure, his getting ripped from the group mind or whatever, will be very different from a murder victim. So, we have a further refinement.

The precogs are only sensing the decision that will lead to someone believing they are in the process of killing someone. This is born out by how Sydow's character gets away with murder—the decoy believes he is going to kill someone and barring intervention he would succeed. Intuitively, it does not make sense that what the precogs see in the future is so disconnected from the input they receive in a decision, leading to a string of events which would end in murder. I find it interesting that the role of the victim has nothing to do with the precogs abilities—which I believe contradicts the base premise of murders being so traumatic to the victim that they are seen most strongly. But if it takes a few paragraphs to get this logical refutation, the audience isn't going to see the flaw during the movie. It's too bad really. They could easily have rewritten the narrative dump sequence to maintain internal logic.

Other niggling problems in a movie with precognition—you know that when two characters are fighting, they aren't going to kill each other. You know that Cruise will get his poison antidote (it is considered murder to watch someone die without assisting), you know no one will perish during the jetpack scene, and you know the surgeon isn't going to kill Cruise. This I did realize during the film and was glad they didn't destroy the movie by murdering someone in the heat of the moment.

One big beef—why did Cruise's eye still work to gain entry into the precrime lab? Today we have technology which wipes a person out of their company's data bank in less than five minutes. My last day at Powell's they accidentally erased me four hours early. There is just no way in hell that gag would ever work.

Idle thoughts on the precrime system. Could you plan a murder outside of the 200-mile radius, drive in and abduct someone, take him or her outside of the radius and then kill him or her? Would they detect the murderous thoughts of the plotter the instant he drove in range? What if the plotter hired someone strictly to kidnap someone and deliver him or her outside of the precogs range? Couldn't you just kill them then? Why don't the precogs detect attempted murder? The victim thinks they are being killed and the perpetrator thinks they are killing. What about the victim left for dead who struggles through? The discrimination between sensing murderous thought which leads to successful murder and those that lead to botched attempts is a little too fine for me to swallow.

o where does this leave the movie? Well, pretty Catholic really— that having a thought is the same as doing something in the criminal justice system of the future. I flat out didn't buy that given our justice system (you know, innocent until proven guilty) something like this program would be accepted in the form portrayed. I just don't see establishing habeas corpus ("body of the crime") that a crime was committed). In addition, all suspects are given the same sentence regardless of circumstance without a jury of their peers, all incredibly unrealistic. But it's easy to suspend disbelief on these topics when you're buying into people who have mental powers.

Overall, ethical questions really stuck with me from zMinority Report. Is the enslavement of three people—people with amazing, nearly divine, gifts—for the good of their inferiors acceptable? What were they talking about when they said they were going "nationwide"? There are three precogs out of hundreds of experiments that have a radius of 200 miles. Would this mean sacrificing thousands to create dozens to protect the millions? Think about what people were voting on, "We will perform horrifying experiments on drug addicts, killing most of them and selectively mutating the others into a role of permanent slavery and mental anguish." Hello! But is the payoff big enough? We live in a time of economics running society, is the cost of some drug addicts really anything to the profit of preventing all those murders? In today's society I think it has become wrongly accepted that not everyone can succeed and it is their fault if they are left behind by prosperity. Kind of like IBM's old up or out philosophy. We currently throw people into workfare in jobs they cannot possibly ever advance themselves—virtual enslavement. With the decision makers we have today, I think the decision to enslave low income people for the good of property owning taxpayers would be frighteningly easy, as would gaining the acquiescence of the voting populace.

o, in summary, the plot idea has a few holes, especially in precrime's lack of understanding the process they are involved with. They should have to ask, When did he decide to murder? Why? Spielberg is scoring some points here about how the police do not question the laws or their duties—they just obey even when they know something is fishy. His portrayal of power brokers easily committing immoral acts for the greater good along with personal aggrandizement is also timely. The point has been made better than here, but Minority Report is a great movie for people to see in the Bush/Ashcroft 2.0 version of America.

Sometimes, people read something I've written like this and say, "Well, Okay Mr. Geek, but did you like the film?" Yes, I did. Very much. Look at how much I cared about this film from the response given. Minority Report has some piffling logic flaws, but they don't intrude on enjoyment of the story.

an struggling mightily against society to avert destiny and save his life? Sounds important to me. It made me think about metaphysics, logic and ethics with similar depth, but more entertainment, than Waking Life. It addresses some important issues (predestination, free will, governmental autocracy) while having enough action to please the I see movies to turn off my mind and have fun crowd. It will take a little more time to digest, but Minority Report is one of the best science fiction movies made to date.

7/02

Return to Archive Index

Return to Top