Minority Report is one of the most compelling films thanks to the impossibly difficult moral dilemma it exposes. If there is no certainty that someone will commit a crime, are the preventable crimes worth the convicted innocent? You might save many lives, but you will also deprive society of one of its most fundamental freedoms.
For those of you who haven’t seen Minority Report (which you definitely should have) a short, spoiler free synopsis:
The year is 2054, John Anderton is the head of a specialized police department called PreCrime, which uses the psychic abilities to forsee every crime that will be committed, in order to stop it before it even happens, making the city as safe as ever. Everything seems well until one day, a Minority Report is filed, one where Anderton is sentenced for murder, a murder that, as you probably guessed, has not happened.
In the film, Anderson is a very strong advocate of PreCrime. Had it been around before, it might have saved his murdered son, which is why he wants this to become a nation wide system. But when HE is pre-sentenced for murder, will his position stand?
More Technology = Better?
Let’s talk first about the world-building because it becomes the real antagonist for the story and something very much alive in our current sociopolitical landscape.
In the world of Minority Report, your every move down to the blink of your eyes is monitored and recorded for a double purpose. Big corps use it to predict what, when, and why are you going to buy, so it becomes a very powerful marketing tool.
The second purpose is to help predict with almost perfect accuracy if you are going to commit a crime.
This is a big subject but let’s cut to the chase. Have you ever noticed you crave something or talk about a particular thing with a friend or family member, and then it suddenly appears in your computer as an advertisement? This is the future we are approaching. As you might know already, China is developing a scoring system, in which every action you make gets a positive or negative score, and depending on your personal score, your value as a citizen. You throw garbage on the street, you don’t get to buy bus tickets mate, you do volunteer job, you get benefits, and so on.
Now that might seem like a side topic, but is actually very relevant and we are gonna see why, let’s explore the main one that drives the entire story: Determinism VS Free Will.
Are We Really Free?
Is an AI machine alive? What if it has human features? What if it thinks, paints, composes music, goes for a walk with a friend? With each passing year, robots are more and more human-like. Soon enough you probably won’t be able to tell the difference.
You would probably argue that a machine is programmed, but aren’t we all? Instead of being binary beings programmed in 1 and 0, we are programmed by our genetic code and our daily experiences.
So if the government and big corps can narrow you down to what and when do you eat, which movies do you like, how much time you spend on your phone, etc. They can predict and condition your behavior
by doing specific ads for you, manipulating the media, or God know how.
I know it sounds very dystopian, but in some sense, it is happening right know.
So if it is possible to predict the behavior of a person or a group, that means there is some programming behind said behavior. If I eat an apple instead of the cake, was it a free choice? or have I been conditioned (in a good way in this case) to have healthy eating habits, either by my genetics, diet, a nutritionist, or even TV.
Freedom and Responsibility
18 years ago, a man was convicted of pedophilia. Later it was discovered that the man had an egg sized brain tumor, which was producing those disordered sex urges. When removed, he no longer presented said pedophilic behavior.
Is he guilty? he did commit a crime.
A mentally ill person commits a crime, is he more or less guilty of said crime than a totally sane person?
The more freedom, the more accountability for the action?
Steven Spielberg presents this and more questions throughout the film. Philosophers have been discussing this topic for ages and is still a topic of study and discussion, because there is no clear answer.
Final Thoughts
If you are just trying to find a movie with entertainment value, that you will enjoy and have a good time, Minority Report will do the job.
The beauty of it is that if you engage with the movie, and become an active viewer, you can extract incredible thoughts and knowledge that will give you the tools to engage in more relevant and interesting topics of discussion, whether its politics, religion, sociology, etc.
So what are you waiting for? Go watch it!
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