thesis for minority report

“Minority Report” by Steven Spielberg Film Analysis Essay

The movie presents Captain John Anderton (Tom Cruise) as the head of the Washington D.C police force. The law enforcing agencies apply one of the most sophisticated technologies in preventing crime. The technology makes it difficult for murderers to accomplish their objectives making the city crime-free. Unfortunately, the head of the police service is an addict of an illegal drug. Colin Farrell is given the responsibility of evaluating the behavior of the police boss using modern technology, whereby he determines that Anderton will kill a man named Leo Crow in less than thirty-six hours.

Anderton is worried to the extent of seeking advice from the lead researcher named Dr. Iris Hineman, who notifies him that the technology can give different predictions. The doctor observes that the two reports might be similar, but the third one is considered a minority report where the predicted murderer might do something different. Even though it had been predicted that Anderton would kill Crow, it was later revealed that Crow wanted to die to benefit his family.

The main subject of the movie centers on free will and determinism where philosophers ask the question whether the future is already determined or free will influences it. The idea of using precogs to determine the future is highly debatable because Anderton was not prepared to kill Crow; instead, it was a creation of criminal gangs who wanted compensation. Some philosophers allege that Anderton’s knowledge of the future was the cause of Crow’s death.

The information presented is contradictory because of the accusation of an individual causes murder. If Anderton were not accused of murdering Crow in the future, he would not have committed the criminal act. The murder of Crow was a self-fulfilling prophecy to Anderton. It is argued that free will was never interfered with because Anderton managed to control his actions, but the precog visions played a role in making a choice. In the fourth scene, contradictions between free will and determinism are brought out because the pre-crime system infringes on the rights of individuals given the fact it leads to the arrest of innocent people.

Even though it is claimed that people arrested would commit a crime, Anderton observes that the purported offense is simply an image that will never take place. To prove his point, Anderton threw a wooden ball towards Witwer’s direction who tries to catch it unsuccessfully. Asked why he tried to catch it before it fell, he claimed that the instrument would fall. However, Anderton challenges him to explain why the instrument never fell. According to Anderton, it does not mean the ball would fall if Wetwer never intervened to catch it. Kowalski had a different view, as he claimed that the ball has no free will meaning it acts based on the laws of physics. While Anderton relies on precog visions in giving his explanation, Kowalski is scientific, as he gives testable facts.

According to Peter Van Inwagen (38), the main problem is not whether an individual has free will, but the issue is whether free will is compatible with determinism. The philosopher suggests that the two are incompatible. He defines determinism by assigning it three subordinate notions, one being a proposition. This notion is closely related to other notions, such as truth, denial, and entailment. In the movie, the precogs are believed to be perfect because they determine the future behavior of an individual. However, Kowalski suggests that technology only gives knowledge of the conditional future. He tries to justify his position by giving two examples one entails an incident where Agatha guides Anderton through a mall.

Agatha reveals to Anderton that he could have come across dangerous things that would have harmed his life, but he is helped to sail through smoothly. Again, she narrates to Anderton and his wife what would have happened to their only child could he have survived. In the first instance, Agatha is aware of what Anderton could have done since he has the freedom to do so, especially when presented with various options. In the second example, Agatha understands what Anderton’s son could have done, as well as the actions of other people on his life.

The new technology meant to control crime plays an important role in controlling the behavior of individuals. For instance, an individual is forced to change his or her behavior in case he or she had planned to murder. Anderton would not have known the future without the predictions suggested by the precog visions. Nothing came as a surprise to Anderton because he was already aware that he would kill somebody.

It is concluded that an individual has the freedom to do anything, but he or she should consider the plight of others. This means an individual’s life is predetermined in the sense that he or she has to follow the law strictly. One person cannot come up with a radical decision to kill the other without sufficient reason. Similarly, an individual cannot be forced to do something that he or she does not desire.

Works Cited

Inwagen, Peter. An Argument for incompatibilism . Oxford: Oxford University Press. Print.

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A Fourth "Minority Report": Film, Literature and the Foreseeable

In analysing adaptation, the first rule is to look for equivalencies between the "original" and adapted text, the book represents an event this way and the film another, but this is only the beginning of the analysis. For the difference between the texts is not simply one of directorial or authorial choice, it is also determined by cultural value, technological changes and, most importantly, the nature of the medium itself. In this article, I take as my subject the adaptation of the short story Minority Report into film and use this to speculate on the limits of each medium. I do not limit my analysis to the adaptation of the story but to those concepts embedded in the story which have themselves been adapted into narrative form. This is central to the understanding of science fiction texts, which often speculate on the future through exploring the limits of scientific and philosophical concepts. The works of many science fiction authors are generated by the concept itself rather than character, plot or setting. In Minority Report, the concept is precognition and its use in law enforcement. The examination of how precognition is adapted into film and book is further complicated by the fact that science fiction itself functions as a form of precognition. There is a certain reflexivity involved in the representation of precognition, where we are shown images of the future within a medium that is itself creating a future world. In following the representation of precognition from one medium to another we also have cause to reflect upon the medium itself and how it delimits the precognition. Each medium develops different techniques for speculating upon and articulating a conception of the future. Film adapts the literary description of events into a visible world. In Minority Report, the broad meaning of precognition in the book is restricted to the concept of foreseeability, where the future is visualisable, rather than predicted or foretold. To highlight the cinematic function of the foreseeable, I adopt Henri Bergson's criticisms of the belief in a foreseeable future. Bergson's critique allows the experiential aspects of foreseeability-what does it mean to experience an actual future-to be contrasted with the structural features of cinematic narration. Through examining the experiential aspects of future prediction, the article broadens its scope to include an examination of the expressive limits of cinema, unlike logico-scientific examinations of precognition where the emphasis is generally on the

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Minority Report

• First Online: 12 February 2023

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• Vladimir Rizov 4  

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Crime, Media and Culture ((PSCMC))

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This chapter continues with the analysis of Minority Report ( 2002 ) and predictive policing. The established framework in Part I is applied to the specific case, and connections are established to the analysis of RoboCop ( 1987 ). The chapter begins with an analysis of the film’s plot, whereby some of the ideological tensions on the level of the narrative are identified. It continues with an analysis of how predictive policing is conceptualised in relation to time and space. With regard to the former, the problem of opacity in terms of surveillance is highlighted, while with regard to the latter, the importance of the traversal of space is emphasised. Finally, the chapter engages with literature on predictive policing by examining their representation in Minority Report .

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This is different in the short story, where the assessment is not collective but individual and sequential. That is to say, the first precog provides one image of the future, which in itself can change the future, thus making it possible for a second precog to see an alternative future, and so on.

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Rizov, V. (2023). Minority Report. In: Urban Crime Control in Cinema. Palgrave Studies in Crime, Media and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12978-0_6

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Minority Report (Film) Steven Spielberg

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 Spi...

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