P.K. Dick’s The Minority Report and Steven Spielberg’s The Minority Report
Death can occur in four ways. A person can die from a physical illness, viruses and infections. A person can die from an accident. A person can commit suicide. Finally a person can be murdered by another person. What if murders could be prevented? In P.K. Dick’s story The Minority Report, and in Spielberg’s film The Minority Report, the future can be altered by using incredible technology. The success of Spielberg’s adaptation of Dick’s short story to film can be determined by the way each was presented.
While giving a tour or precrime to Edward Witwer, the main character John Anderton finds the he is supposed to kill a person he never met Leopold Kaplan. When he tries to run and hide from precrime, Anderton is kidnapped by Kaplan. Kaplan is about to turn Anderton in to the police when Anderton is rescued by Fleming. Fleming gives Anderton money and a clue, which leads Anderton to conclude that he has an alternate future that will clear his name. He then goes to precrime to find his minority report and prove to the police that he will not commit murder. He is discovered by his wife, who he suspects is working against him, and they both leave precrime in a helicopter. On the helicopter, Anderton, his wife Lisa, and Fleming get into a fight and Anderton kills Fleming after discovering that Fleming is working for Kaplan in order to take precrime down and establish a military police state. Lisa and Anderton return to precrime where Witwer and they come up with a plan to save precrime by proving the predictions of the precogs correct where Anderton will kill Kaplan. At a press conference, Kaplan is about the revel the failure of precrime to accurately predict the future, when Anderton surprises him and kills him. Anderton and Lisa are exiled for the murder of Kaplan.
The Minority Report by Spielberg is about a one man conspiracy to keep pre crime up and running. In the book by Dick, there is a larger conspiracy to destroy precrime. The final results are opposite as well; in the book precrime was maintained and still operational. In the movie, precrime was shut down and destroyed. The methods of precrime are also different. In the book, there are three precogs which mutter an indecipherable language, which a machine interprets into images of a murder. Then a card comes out of the machine with the name of the killer and name of the victim on it. Spielberg made a more modern method out of this. In the movie, images are taken directly from the three precogs brain and then interpreted by a person who tries to find out the location of the murder. Also there are two wooden balls made, one with the name of the killer and the other with the name of the victim, on them. The movie also goes deeper into the creation of precrime, how crack babies whom had...
