4. Minority Report (2002)
Based on PKD’s 1956 short story THE Minority Report, the film is the story of a future detective agency charged with preventing crime through the use of precognition (Precogs) and the program’s leader. Of course not everyone is happy with the thought that people are detained and imprisoned indefinitely when no actual crime was committed. And what about self-determination and fate? If you are foreseen as committing the crime and you know, can you stop yourself?
Both the story and the movie explore these themes although the film version is a bit more heavy handed in its take.
The Good: Exploration of PKD themes. Above average acting all around by the entire cast. The mechanisms of precrime work almost word for word as they do in the book. The mystery and the use of the actual Minority Report was actually done better in the movie.
The Bad: Bubble gum storyline. As is par for the course Spielberg inserts his own brand of feel good tragedy. The entire brooding Anderton storyline – the drugs, the loss of a son, etc. – are all add-ons that were unnecessary. The scene where Anderton is faced with his victim is a HUGE letdown. It’s almost the equivalent of having Greedo shoot first in the Cantina – ALMOST. And the happy ending probably had PKD rolling in his grave.
Written word to film differences: Anderton is old and full of self-doubt in the story. In the movie he’s Tom Cruise (literally). The son-kidnapping-revenge storyline is specific only to the movie.
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5 Comments
I have to be honest that A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report and Blade Runner are three of the most BORING movies I’ve ever seen and in fact it took multiple viewings for me to get through them without falling asleep. Total Recall is #1 on my list of terrible movies that I happen to enjoy anyway and I think you’re spot on in your assertions of the good and the bad. Screamers, I’ve honestly just never seen.
Oddly enough this is true. PKD stories are chock full of inaction. It doesn’t make them necessarily bad in any way. I love most of them in fact. Its thinking man’s scifi. Very few laser pistols and a lot of tech that’s never actually seen or experienced by the protags. We never see a single spaceship in Blade Runner its simply aluded to.
Of course Hollywood sometimes realizes this and they add things like Ben Affleck on a motorcycle. Sometimes the most faithful adaptation is the most boring one I guess. :)
By the way Screamers is bad but its so bad its good. Right on par with Total Recall IMHO.
Clearly some one had to define the best films based on Phillip K Dick. However like Adam I believe that Total Recall is a distant 5, The new Total recall with Colin Farrell I believe will bump Arnold out. As we see remakes of Arnold’s films we realize that in Sci-Fi the Guvenator was pretty weak. Terminator remains his seminal film. My order disagreeing with Adam would be 1. Blade Runner, 2. Minority Report 3.Screamers 4.A Scanner Darkly and……………Arnold ‘s Totall Recall. I can suspend disbelief in all the films except for one film Total Recall maybe physicians cannot go to far off the medical facts in Sci-Fi. When Rachel Ticotin and Arnold are blown out onto Mars atmosphere, once you’re inttraocular pressure causes your eyes to bug out your intracranial pressure is so high the bends and gaseous bubbles are so large you be DEAD.
John – I think Total Recall’s value is only in its campiness and the effects at the time. I remember seeing the moving x-ray and thinking holy cow that’s cool. Now I just think they’d install them at every airport. LOL
I’ve heard that assertion about the Martian atmosphere before. I have no reason to doubt it. Of course it only holds true if the subject isn’t going by what the memory implant tells them happened! :)
I think Impostor with Gary Sinise is worth mentioning here, very good adaptation imo, full of Dick’s main themes (drugged protagonist looking for his identity).