Minority Report (2002)

Well, I don't know what you mean by that, but I am left almost unable to enjoy this film (which has great atmosphere, action and acting) due to it's lame third act and outright embarrassing ending (IMHO). I feel like all of Speilberg's worst instincts killed any edge or greatness this movie had going for itself

PS: Did anyone else notice that Speilberg envisions a future where the 3D Revolution has come to the living room? The 3D tv Cruise owns is a prescient window on things to come

PPS: Colin Farrell for the win!

PPPS: I just realized what you meant (you were talking about if he were dreaming it al in cryo sleep, no?) , and it would not change my feelings on the film. It would still be weak and downright embarrassingly clumsy in light of how Verhoeven artfully handled the same riddle in his Phillip K Dick movie

The third act hallucination theory certainly works if you want it to, and adds a certain meta Spielberg thing to the proceedings. I'm of the opinion now that it actually makes it a more satisfying ending than the Scooby Doo mystery it turned out to be.

Although if it truly was a hallucination, I've always felt that he would have been reunited with his son.

I disagree. Anderton is well aware that dead is dead.

The hallucination makes sense in terms of cinematography. There's a large shift to warmer tones during the last part of the movie that suggests that what we're seeing isn't reality.

You can say a number of things about Total Recall but artful is not one of them.

As for weak, you're completely wrong. It goes along with the theme of the movie.

There's plenty of artfulness in Total Recall

What I really wonder about the dream ending theory of Minority Report, is if we're all trying to invent something to support the comparatively less interesting ending?t

No matter how you read the finale, the journey getting there is infinitely more interesting than the resolution. I've often wondered what kind of movie this would be if the ended with his imprisonment.

Well if you buy into the hallucinatory interpretation, technically it does end with his imprisonment.

Personally it's an interpretation I happily employ when watching the film because it elevates the film to a whole new level of enjoyment and quality. If you simply see the final act as actually happening you're left with an ending that rivals War Of The Worlds as far as so profoundly unsatisfying as to actively piss me off. I'll take the interpretation that lets me enjoy the film personally.

Re: SENTENCE #1
Really? I thought the whole conundrum of "blue sky on mars" and the fade to white ending were quite clever

Re: SENTENCE #2
Oh, Ok...

Re: My odd way of quoting your post
I am on my cell, sorry!

I had only recently found out about the hallucination theory after purchasing the blu-ray. While it's a pretty cool theory that could be explain the shift in tone and the warm fuzzies at the end, I don't think that Spielberg or anyone else involved in the making of the movie intended for the final third to be a hallucination.

For instance, Colin Farrell is shot prior to Cruise's character being haloed. However, Anderton is not aware of this as he is on his way to his wife's house at this point. When his ex-wife meets with Max Von Sydow, they discuss the murder of Farrell's character. It's impossible that Anderton would be aware of this, making it impossible for him to hallucinate about it (unless he miraculously was a precog as well).

So while the theory makes the end less cheesy (Anderton rubbing the baby bump just feels so manufactured), I don't believe it was intentional by the filmmakers.

I think it's pretty clunky. It's on occasion a pretty movie with some neat ideas but it's as subtle as Showgirls.

Agreed on the journey. I think until that ending it's as good a movie as Spielberg has ever made.

It certainly would have been a less satisfying movie but I don't think that's bad. It certainly be more in the vein of Dick's work.

Please don't bring up the ending to War of the Worlds..

While it does make some sense I never bought the "it's all a dream" ending.

Either way I still like the movie flaws and all.

The Rain Dog,

I think you and I are of one mind on this, and while I wish I could see the movie the way you do, I can't really get past the fact that I don't think Speilberg at all intended a possible cryo dream ending. The thing about the color of the film getting warmer in the third act is interesting.. Execpt to my mind Kaminski is prone to gaudy cinematography and distractingly colored scenes anyway. Just look at IJATKOTCS. I think it was a purely aesthetic decision

The problem with the it's a dream thesis is that it only makes the 3rd act slightly less stupid, but does nothing to acknowledge the ideas and interests of the earlier parts of the film. Whichever way you read it, the film abandons what it's about for a seriously pat ending. And I'm sorry, Spielberg should be slapped on the wrist for ripping off LA CONFIDENTIAL. That shit's uncool, man.

The fact that Spielberg cut the last line of the film about "the following year, there were 182 murders in the District of Columbia" makes me think that he intended to make the ending less ambiguous, not moreso.

Could not agree more, Andre. Maybe he doesn't do commentary tracks so he will never have to explain himself and either snub or praise LAC during that scene.


It is especially aggravating because LAC is a film that I don't think Speilberg would have the guts to make, and while I have not read every interview the man has ever given, I have not heard him talk it up before. That film was at least as good as any 90s Speilberg flick

I'm the guy with the biggest hard-on for L.A. Confidential around here, but let's not forget it pulls its punches in the last act, too.

Yes and no. Why should Bud die? Does that make it a better ending?

I actually like Bud living; I'm talking about Dudley dying. The ending is not the ending of the book, obviously, which means that they could have gone darker, and chose not to. So like you said, yes, it pulls it punches in that it's not the oil-black darkness that are Ellroy's endings, but no, in that it's captured what makes him and the novel so great in the ending we do get. (And the book is -- like a lot of Ellroy's stuff -- messy, and overcrammed. I enjoy his take on Walt Disney and pedo Jack Webb, but it's not the best in that quartet by a long shot.)

Dudley dying by Exley's hand completes his arc, as he's able to answer the question that Dudley asks him at the start of the film. So it completely works, and the scene where Exley goes in with the cops to cover up (and, I've always assumed, Bud and Lynn's safety) what happened with the Night Owel murders means that he sells his soul. It's a darker ending than I think people get -- we see Bud and Lynne ride off into the sunset, but the world they've left behind is pretty miserable, as Exley is effectively allowing the corruption that lead to Bloody Christmas in the first place to continue.

Okay, I ramble.

Mr Bandu,

Bud lived in the book, he was just more fucked up (if I remember correctly)

It's been a while since I read it, and I always fuck that detail up, which is kind of embarassing, because Ellroy's talked in interviews about what would have happened to Old Bud (which gives me hope that maybe Hanson and Crowe will get it together for a "sequel"). Anyway, Bud living is not what I meant in regards to the ending.

I'm not sure I can see an ending where the themes come together, though. Locking up Anderton (and leaving him in there, no hallucination) doesn't work. Having him escape doesn't work.

The ending we get seems to be ambiguous simply because Spielberg didn't want to come down on one side or the other of free-will/determinism. It can be interpreted either way and be reasonably satisfying.

Just to chime in, I couldn't agree with you more.

I've always thought that either interpretation of the ending more or less works for the film, and my enjoyment isn't enhanced or detracted by either one.

My enjoyment of Minority Report mainly comes from the fact that it's a well made scifi film playing by classic Hollywood rules. It feels like one of the breezier Hitchcock/Grant flicks (mainly North by Northwest). Except with sick sticks, jetpacks, and robots. This is a film that I revisit often just for the sheer pleasure of the ride.

That said, the film doesn't really register thematically because it pretty much refuses to take a stance on the free will/determinism front. At the end of the day, the film simply really has nothing to say to the issues it brings up.

I still remember Spielberg on Oprah saying that the moral of the story is that human beings would have the free will to shape their own destinies, if they could see what happens beforehand... which is a pretty weird fucking moral.
Seeing as a sequel wasn't planned and Dudley's eventual fate is a lot worse in Ellroy's books, I'm pretty good with the ending we got.

I think the way you view the last act of the movie does truly color your interpretation of MINORITY REPORT, though the hallucination thing has nothing to do with it. The question is: does the cinematic invention and imagination displayed in the first two acts outweigh for you the lack of thematic heft caused by the ending's flaccidity? At least it does for me, barely. But I think Spielberg has a lack of a killer instinct, or a lack of focus on what his movies are supposed to mean (CATCH ME IF YOU CAN strangely being his only exception for me), that has consistently deflated his work in this decade.

You can kinda thank A.I. for that, with Spielberg really battling with Kubrick's ambiguity coloring the most morally gray "happy" ending in filmdom. A lot Spielberg's struggles with that film carried to Minority Report, and the mixed results of leaving the ending open to interpretation is the proof.

I don't think the "dream ending" theory has any real weight, and even if I did, I don't think it would make Minority Report a better film, the concept is fascinating, Anderton's journey isn't.

Spielberg obviously bit off more than he was willing to chew at the time. I would probably discard most of the third act, because none of that is interesting, and I would probably have Cruise kill the man who actually murdered his child. That's way more Vertigo-Hitchcockian.

That makes it nothing more than a revenge story, though. The ending may not entirely work either way, but to go *that* obvious would be a bigger disservice.

The way it plays now, but making Leo Crow the actual kidnapper/murderer, it does make it more heroic that Anderton refuses to pull the trigger, but nothing else.

But if the film's about fate and predetermination, that's the text. And the Hitchcockian/operatic thing that Spielberg flirts with in the film, well, that's the BLOW OUT/VERTIGO version of the film... perhaps he doesn't do it exactly the way it's envisioned. But it then also does what those films do, which is put Anderton in the position of helplessly watching himself repeat a failure that he knows he could prevent, etc. but in a way that isn't directly aping those other films. This wouldn't be just a cut and paste thing, obviously, you would have to rework the structure, probably play that they are getting close to the killer, etc.

But my greater point is that you have to remove the ending that has nothing to do with what came before. And also, I don't really enjoy this sort of fanwank. My point is that if that's the story, then that's your end point.

See, that's an ending I could work with. It pays off the theme of will/determinism plus it doesn't shit all over what came before.

It's an interesting comparison to A.I., which is a movie I've only seen once (and too long ago). After reading all this I'm less willing to give Minority Report a break because while both A.I. and M.R. have arguably ambiguous endings only A.I. feels like Spielberg himself committed to an interpretation. Maybe Kubrick's vision allowed him to go there, maybe not, but I don't think Spielberg felt he was making a movie with a happy ending in A.I. But I'm coming around to the idea that he didn't know how he felt about the end of M.R., so he kind of decided to have it both ways.

Is that OK? I think (I think I think) that an artist needs to commit to his or her vision - it's fine for a piece to be open to interpretation by the audience (you could argue that every piece of art is to some degree) but the artist should be able in his/her heart of hearts to come down on one side or the other, and M.R. really feels like Spielberg couldn't.

I don't think there's anything ambiguous about the end of this film, it's just not good, and people want it to be ambiguous. There is no endpoint that suggests the text isn't the text.

I don't think a hallucination ending would really elevate the film at all for me.

Why would I want to watch an extended third act that's not even fucking real, and is left with no REAL hints that it isn't. Otherwise we're just left with Anderton being imprisoned and Mr. Old Guy getting away with it all and the Pre-Cogs put back to slave work, and then eventually more pre-cogs are made somehow and the whole world ends up with pre-crime with a fatal flaw.

I'd rather have the unnecessarily long ending. I'm not sure what's so unsatisfying about it story-wise. I mean the world ends up fucked anyway because now Pre-Crime is over with. It definitely doesn't compare to the rest of the movie, but it ends the way it SHOULD end, even though I would've rewritten or trimmed a lot of it.

I agree though that what happened with A.I. and Minority Report is part of whatever he was going through at the time. Since he seemed to get his balls back in Munich and I can't really blame him too much for Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

I haven't seen Minority Report in a long time, and this debate about the ending has come up since then. That said, I remember the shitty little jokes in the movie more than I do the ending. The one that stands out in my mind is the bit where the jetpack fries the burgers on the stove. Really, I think that kind of moment symbolizes all of Spielberg's worst instincts in a nutshell.

About him getting his balls back in MUNICH, I'd argue that movie was bit muddled thematically as well, and not just in the whole Israel/Palestinian issue way.

Nup, can't let that slide. Please explain.

...and almost got away with it too.

Anyway, the movie begins with the murder of Israeli athletes, setting the scene for a justified revenge plot for the rest of the movie. Which it proceeds to do with gusto, leavened heavily with dabs of regret and guilt felt by the main character. Which is fine by itself and could add some complexity to the film, if not for a couple of things. One, the Palestinians are cyphers. They're portrayed as unsympathetic and it's hard to follow how Eric Bana's character actually ended up where he did. If Spielberg wanted us to actually feel morally ambiguous about the protagonist's actions, he should have bothered painting in his antagonists a bit more. Why should we give a shit about them (at least in this movie)? Second, putting aside what the actual political point of this movie was, which for the life of me I can only guess was "Palestinians want a homeland, Israelis need to protect theirs, what can you do?", is the basic question of what the movie was trying to be: Thriller or morality play? He tries at both and the movie just doesn't have enough juice for a proper thriller and doesn't have the necessary complexity for a morality play.

And that's not even talking about the other (less existential) deficiencies in the movie: laborious pace, unnecessary detours, odd directorial choices (heavy handed sex scene I'm looking at you). I like the movie (Spielberg has a wondrously sure hand as a director) but the movie has some very deep faults.

ETA: so as to not further derail a Minority Report discussion I've transferred my response to Ali to the Munich thread...

Minority Report is by far my favorite Spielberg film since '93, one of the main reasons is because it's so Spielbergian. People complaining about his lost balls seem to forget the true nature of this artist and one of his main running traits throughout his whole career is his childlike optimism.

He always had, and never lost, his balls. That's a factor that isn't only determined by how the film ends in my opinion. If you're gonna criticize his work in that department only because of the way he ends most his films, then you're criticizing one of the main things that makes Spielberg the artist he is. It's like criticizing Polanski for his cynicism.

A film should be analyzed on it's own terms, without the filmmaker's history coming in to play. The lamest critique you can ever muster up is "oh, Spielberg sugarcoated it at the end again" and not take in to account how this ending actually works for the film. And in this case I cannot see the film ending any other way.

Oh, and I completely disagree with Ali's analysis of Munich, but this is not the time or the place.

For the subject matter he's been taking on this decade, Alien 9-11 and jewish assasinating and the like, don't you think mixing all that and wide-eyed optimism is a bit...awkward at least? It fit much more with Catch Me if You Can and is one of the reasons why I like the movie.

EDIT: I'm not saying Munich had wide-eyed optimism in it. Just to be clear on that.

Thanks for starting this thread... A lot to chew on. First, let me get LA Confidential out of the way...

Yes, I think so. The problem with the ending of LA Confidential is not necessarily the non-death of Bud. It's the fact that, after building to a perfectly well-pitched climax that ends on a particularly satisfying note, we then get an additional 10 or so minutes where the entire plot is explained to us like a bunch of toddlers. Seriously, all that's missing from that awful debriefing scene is Guy Pierce drawing diagrams. And then, to cap it off, we have that sunny ending that feels so out of place in this dark noir story.

Basically, if Curtis Hanson had chosen to bring up the credits right after that great shot of Guy Pierce holding up his badge for the oncoming police cars, you'd have a terrific ending.

The movie is still one of the great 90s pictures, don't get me wrong. But that tacked-on ending really deflates its power considerably.

That's exactly it. People are reaching. It's not a dream guys... Sorry to burst that little bubble. It is what it is and Spielberg went right on trucking with his tradition of lame endings to good movies. A habit he picked up with Saving Private Ryan and he really hasn't looked back since.

This brings up something else... I find it very interesting that, while A.I. is literally his attempts to make a Kubrick film, the experience rubbed off on him in such a way that his Kubrick film actually ended up being Minority Report.

A.I. never really feels like a Kubrick film to me. It's too self-conscious to feel natural. Whereas Minority Report is almost constantly Kubrickian in my view. And I don't think that was conscious on Spielberg's part, he's trying to do a futuristic noir mystery in the Hitchcock tradition... Or, as has been pointed out, directly rip off LA Confidential and give us that movie with jet packs.

But, due to psychological residue, it's the Kubrick influence that stands out the most for me.

For that reason, I like it much more than A.I.

Regardless of the lame ending, the movie is a breathless ride of a picture. I'd argue it's the best and most satisfying movie he's made in the last 12 years.

I'm sorry but I really don't see the Kubrick influence in MINORITY REPORT. Could you be a little more specific?

Meh. More than the ending bothering me, what bothered me was that the precogs vision actually caused the chain of events that led to Anderton being in the situation the precogs showed. If they had never had the vision, Anderton never would have gone down that road at all. It's this weird logic fold in the movie that they just don't address.

An L.A. Confidential without the ending it has is an L.A. Confidential that probably doesn't get made, and as has been discussed earlier in the thread, the "sunny" ending is darker than people give it credit for.

I’m a HUGE fan of Phillip K. Dick so I have no choice but to give Minority Report a fisting. This time it takes the fantastic premise of Dick’s original short story and, once again, Spielberg turns it into a movie made of technically superior set pieces barely held together by the theme of Free Will Vs. Destiny while giving John Anderton this bullshit back story of a missing child never mind that we never even find out what happened to the kid not to mention the laughable idea that a child could go missing in such a technologically superior era. They have eye scanners everywhere but no video surveillance at a PUBLIC SWIMMING POOL? Sorry but that shit doesn’t wash with me.

 

This movie is like a lot of Spielberg’s in that it’s lacking in technical details. The Pre-cogs can predict murder, okay, so how much range does their vision have? Is it only Washington? How do they plan on implementing Pre-crime nation wide? Wouldn’t that involve cloning the pre-cogs and setting up pre-crime facilities in every city across the country? Just there I came up with some really good questions that could have led to some really interesting ideas that could have been sprinkled through the movie but instead Spielberg’s brain can only focus on the simple premise of Free Will Vs. Destiny which he even manages to fuck up, flying right in the face of the brilliant, cold, hard logic of the original story.

 

In the original story, Anderton is accused of a murder that he has no intention of committing. He goes on the run and discovers that a military General is the one who has set him up in the hope that it will discredit pre-crime. Anderton breaks into the pre-cog chamber and learns about the “minority report” that proposes the question “what would you do if you discovered that you were going to commit a murder” leading Anderton to believe that he has been arresting innocent people. However, he learns that every murder predicted has a minority report because one of the pre-cogs, the female, is out of sink with the twins. This allows her to see a future where the person is given a choice but if the person would commit the murder either way then they have a majority report and Pre-Crime arrests them. Anderton learns that he has no minority report and that all three pre-cogs predict he will kill the General. Now knowing that Pre-crime does indeed work, Anderton decides that he must kill the General or Pre-Crime will be shut down. He kills the General and is given a suspended sentence to an off world colony.

 

I haven’t read the story in a few years so some of the details are fuzzy but that is the jist of it. Dick’s story is so tightly constructed that had Spielberg expanded on it, while retaining the water tight logic, we could have had a Sci-fi masterpiece. But instead he gives us this bullshit ending where the pre-cogs see Anderton being shot to death by Max Von Sydow who ends up shooting himself instead which completely shits on everything we have seen over the last two hours including the fact that Anderton accidentally kills the man who he thinks abducted and murder his son.

 

That part of the movie was brilliant in how the pre-cogs vision looked like Anderton deliberately murdered the man named Crow but the problem is that the death was accidental which creates all sorts of issues as they shouldn’t have seen the death since Anderton chose NOT TO murder Crow and thus shouldn’t have been registered by the pre-cogs as a murder in the first place. The movie spends so much time establishing the pre-cogs abilities while also showing them off during the chase with Anderton and the pre-cog Agatha that it’s a complete fucking cheat that they show Anderton being murdered by Sydow and then just has him kill himself. Bull. Shit.

 

I think the reason that Spielberg and Cruise fucked with the pre-cogs logic is that their bleeding heart liberal sensibilities (and I FUCKING HATE saying that because I’m a lefty liberal type myself) couldn’t allow the idea that people were being arrested for crimes that they haven’t yet committed although they would have. So we end up with a stoopid fucking ending where Cruise and his Ex wife are now back together and she is expecting another child even though we still don’t know what happened to their first kid. The Pre-cogs are living together in a cabin in the middle of fucking nowhere which is convenient since the movie doesn’t have to explain how they live the rest of their lives. But most irritating is how Pre-crime is shut down and we don’t learn if the murder rate in D.C. skyrockets or even if that guy went back and killed his cheating wife.

 

The problem with Hollywood adapting Phillip K. Dick is that they strip the premises of his stories to their core, uses them as the basis for action flicks while ignoring the intellectual and philosophical theme’s that run through his work. If you want a real PKD movie then you should watch A Scanner Darkly as it is the best adaptation of his work so far and perfectly captures his voice in ways that are beyond the simplistic comprehension of Steven Spielberg.