Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Dissecting the finale of Minority Report


It’s been ten years since Steven Spielberg made a movie that set a new benchmark in science fiction and changed the future of technology. It almost seems like Spielberg and his team of future experts were the precogs who predicted gestured controlled touch screens, interactive targeted advertising, automatic self-driving cars, all of which are on the verge of being mainstream technologies now.


There are plenty of articles on how Minority Report revolutionsed technology and how it is visionary filmmaking, so it is needless of me to talk about how fucking good the movie is. What I can tell you is that you may have missed something subtly epic in the film.

The year is 2054, a ‘precrime’ police division has emerged that peers into the future and stops crime from taking place. At the heart of the technology is a trio of precogs, the girl Agatha and twin boys who get dreams of future murders and precrime obtains the victims’ names and locations. Things take a turn when the precogs have a vision of the Precrime chief Anderton (Tom Cruise) committing a murder.


Anderton has never met or known his future murder victim and makes a run for it. The sympathetic Precrime Director Lamar Burgess (Max von Sydow) offers help but Anderton learns from a senior Precog researcher that the precogs are never wrong, but occasionally they do ‘disagree’ – when one of them predicts something different. These ‘different’ predictions are called Minority Reports, and they signal an alternate future to some of the criminals arrested by Precrime – which means Precrime sometimes imprisons innocent people. 

A devastated Anderton makes his choice to set off to find Agatha and download his Minority Report to prove his innocence. From Agatha he learns of the attempted murder of a certain Anne Lively, a drug addict who was saved by Precrime but has been missing ever since. He meets his future victim Crow, who appears to be his son’s kidnapper.  Anderton, however, exercises free will over determinism and stops himself from killing Crow, much to the latter’s chagrin. 


It turns out that Crow was directed by an unknown figure to pose as the kidnapper so that Anderton would kill him. Burgess is revealed as the unknown figure who framed Anderton. In the past, Anne Lively had rehabilitated herself from drugs and had wanted her child Agatha back, thus jeopardizing Precrime’s operations. Presenting the film’s great irony, Burgess is forced to kill her to create a world without crime. He hires a chump to kill Lively and gets him arrested by Precrime, and proceeds to murder Lively in the same way that the hired assassin was going to. The technician sees the repeat murder footage as an ‘echo’ and disregards it. 


Anderton visits his ex-wife’s home where he figures out that Anne Lively was Agatha’s mother, and is immediately arrested by Precrime. He is imprisoned in the containment chamber. After this point, the film takes a gigantic fork, and most viewers take just the one path they can see.


 



Anderton’s wife breaks him out of jail and he unleashes the truth about Burgess to the world, after which the villain kills himself. A thrilling, poignant, satisfying but convenient ending. A bit too convenient and improbable. Because it never happened.



Let’s turn the clock back. Earlier in the film, when Anderton goes to the Department of Containment, what does Gideon the guard say to him about the comatose inmates? 


“Look at how peaceful they all seem. But on the inside, busy busy busy. It’s actually kind of a rush. They say you have visions. That your life flashes before your eyes. That all your dreams come true”.


That’s right, the comatose inmates aren’t really sleeping. The imprisoned Anderton isn’t in a coma. Nor is he out of his chamber exposing the villain to the world. It’s only all his dreams that are coming true. 

This is made most obvious when Anderton is sedated, and the very next scene we see is Burgess extrovertly claiming that ‘It’s all my fault’. 


He then brings Burgess down in the most grandiose way possible – by broadcasting his wrongs at a public event honoring his achievements. His former squad members who had no qualms about tripping the alarms and arresting him are suddenly helping him expose Burgess.



When he is framed, Anderton has two choices – be on the run and prove the imperfection of Precrime, or kill his future victim, get arrested and create a mega PR disaster and cause the demise of Precrime. The events following his imprisonment are too perfect. As vengeance, Anderton offers a similar choice to Burgess – to kill him, get arrested and prove that Precrime is flawed, or to not kill him and get arrested and witness the fall of Precrime. Here, Burgess suddenly becomes moral and shoots himself, and apologises to Anderton, and calls him his son – three things that Anderton desperately wanted.   


If all that weren’t enough, the perfection only becomes more perfect as Anderton gives up drugs, his wife returns to him, and they have a new baby. This would be a believable real world in a Hindi movie but not so much in a Spielberg film about dreams. The dreaming trio of precogs are also set free and now live in a cabin on a picture perfect island, where Agatha holds a necklace containing her mother’s picture.


Not to mention the logistical mess. It would be preposterous for Anderton’s wife to simply walk in to the Precrime department, let alone into the Department of Containment simply using John’s eyeball. 



It’s the freaking police station that is holding all of the city’s criminals. Remember, it was difficult for Anderton himself to walk into the department and rescue Agatha – (he wears a face changing disguise and sneaks in through a hidden back door). 

Moreover, the footage that exposes Burgess isn’t the least bit like the dreams and visions that the precogs have. The videos of the precogs’ premonitions are dark, grainy and choppy, while the one that proves Burgess as the killer is perfectly still, clear and bright and vignetted. Because it's the vision that Anderton sees, not the precogs.


It is a storytelling miracle that Minority Report works even with the straightforward happy ending third act, but it is unlikely that Spielberg, who put in so much thought into the film constructed just the one layer. And if you haven’t seen the movie, it’s a precrime. But you preventing yourself from watching it doesn’t change the fact that it is going to happen.


32 comments:

  1. OH MY GOD, STOP FUCKING WITH MY MIND. That is brilliant.

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  2. Your view point is quite interesting and maybe right.But even then
    I am not really sure.If he was dreaming why at the end he doesn't dream of his son returning to him alive..that would have been his biggest desire.I am sure if it was a dream sequence Spielberg should have used some kind of absurdity like Scorsese used in The King Of Comedy or Taxi Driver..there is no hint from the director to consider this interpretation of the ending as the correct one.

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  3. His dream was based on the present, also that part was fulfilled when Agatha (at his ex wife's home) tells him about the alternative universe where his son is alive. Why would any director hint any interpretation as the correct one?

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  4. It was kind of obvious. It's funny how I realized the real ending.
    The first time I saw it my mind was blown but the ending was a huge letdown. And Agatha and the other Precogs living in a cabin in some idyllic place just seemed too good to be true.
    But then when I saw it again, whatever you've written in your post dawned on me. I totally saw it now and the relative lameness of the ending became perfectly clear.
    In that way, Minority Report is very similar to Paul Verhoeven's Total Recall which happens to be, like Minority Report, adapted from a Philip K Dick story.

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  5. Hmm agree..i have to watch it again though..thanks for the article.

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  6. Interesting. Very, very interesting. The first time I saw it, I was like, 'Whoa!
    How did the wife get into the prison facility?' I saw John's eyeballs then and assumed, "Ah well, that's how!" Thanks Mihir. Brilliant dissection.

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  7. U made me feel low . Discriminated .too good theory

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  8. How did Lamar set up Anderton? He did he make the precogs show a vision of Anderton killing an unknown person?

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  9. It was easy for Burgess to lead Anderton to Crow. He could've used any means to direct him to Crow's evidence-orgy hotel room, and seeing as the precogs predicted that Anderton would murder Crow, Burgess' plan was already in motion.

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  10. So this and Vanilla Sky are kind of the same movie. Love the Cameron Crowe shot to cap it off.

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  11. Amazing man... Never saw the movie that way

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  12. You are looking too much into it.. Watch Ek Tha Tiger to take your mind off :D

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  13. The only thing I had not liked about this movie was its convenient ending. Also seemed so not Spielberg. Now I do anyways. Nice one!

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  14. Ah, finally someone noticed Cameron Crowe :)

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  15. I am going to admit I really didnt think it through when she entered the facility. But the grandiose end certainly didn't fit in. Completely blown by this!

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  16. http://www.flakmag.com/film/spielberg/minority.html

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  17. Nice. Here's another discussion of why Minority Report's ending was a dream or not.
    http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=325059

    I'm surprised that there isn't a raging debate here :-)

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  18. I think the ones who disagree are mostly people who have chosen to accept that Spielberg can only makes movies with sappy endings.

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  19. Fuck! Now I understand the unsettling feeling that unfolded towards the end of movie. I just put my mind to ease thinking that its the kind of ending Spielberg would make. Absolutely brilliant dude!

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  20. Dude this is awesome!! Went back and watched the ending again. All you have written makes perfect sense! Dont understand however, how in 2054 they had thermal detectors and all that but cudnt locate Anderton through CCTV footage etc!!

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  21. haha.. well, he was on the run, and Robot Spiders are so much cooler than CCTV.

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  22. I have couple of questions

    1. Why pre cogs have no vision about Lamar Burgess killing Danny Witwer ?.
    2.Anderton didn't kill Crow (thats what really happened, but crow pulls the trigger and kills himself), so that's what really happened ?

    so why precogs didn't predict that one

    thanks

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  23. During both the murders the precog Agatha is with Anderton, and disconnected with the Precrime mechanism. All three precogs are needed for the system to work.

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  24. Few minutes before precrime division arrests Anderton, Agatha predicts it and asks him to run ? so she predicted his arrest ( am i misunderstood here ?)

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  25. Yes, Agatha is more gifted of the three.

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  26. so why doesn't she predicted burgess killing witwer ? ( sorry for asking the same question) she is the strongest of three right, Is there something, for predicting a murder we need three pre cogs

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  27. u are making me feel better ur recco of kill list and minority report and now its dissection

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  28. Mind Completely Blown !! Awesome Mihir !

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  29. I WANT TO LIVE TO SEE THIS TECHNOLOGY. *I should stop drinking.*

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