Minority Report

I consider myself a fan of science fiction, and I was surprised to hear that many people in the class had never seen The Matrix before, which I consider one of my favorite movies of all time; however, the second and third were horrible. The sequels were examples of a profit seeking Hollywood firm crossing the fine line of what is considered realistic and eventually surpassing the “possible, yet not probable” motivation that keeps my attention during a movie. The first Matrix focused on a computer generated world where outsiders who tapped in could bend and slightly break the rules governed by 0’s and 1’s. The next two focused on the love story and on a computer generated world where outsiders who tapped in could bend and slightly break the rules governed by 0’s and 1’s; well… also I guess the real world now. My point is that the basis on realism of this future predicament was thrown out the window and anything could have happened. I wanted to cry.

The Minority Report, in my opinion, is a movie that adheres to the physical laws that govern our world while still imposing a “few” potential discoveries about space-time that scientists are so eagerly studying today. The “foreseeing the future” attribute to The Matrix (original), and to The Minority Report were well constructed and original ideas that provided a background history into how they were discovered, which meant a great deal to me in believing the plot to the movies. It is still unclear to me what the “gender” adaptation was in Dick’s story though. The way in which the precogs displayed their futuristic powers were somewhat different in the story than in the movie. In the story, for example, the precogs only spoke their visions, there was no “mental tapping,” and the movie was centered around discovering the minority report of Agatha (Donna in the story) whereas Dick’s story did not relate the minority report specifically to one precog and the visions were in sequence rather than showing the same times at different viewpoints. There were many other differences, ranging from the ability to leave earth in the story to the character’s names and the way in which they are described. Overall, the plot is completely different; Anderton didn’t even kidnap a precog in the original story. I guess I would have to say that the Movie displayed more gender roles than that of the story. The dependence of so many lives on the visions of a female being more important than that of the two males was an interesting adaptation from the original storyline. Other than that, I didn’t see anything that would have caught my eye relating to gender roles. I hope we can find more things in class that we can discuss.