MovieChat Forums > Minority Report (2002) Discussion > TRASH! I officially hate Spielberg movie...

TRASH! I officially hate Spielberg movies now.

posted 5 years ago by [deleted]
16 replies | jump to latest

I saw this for the first time today, and I was absolutely livid. I always saw issues with his movies, but I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, being that he's such an accomplished director. With MR, whatever goodwill I had was done. I officially hate Spielberg as a director.

The man is a stone cold moron who's learned the art of making movies that look and feel intellectual, but are shallow as hell. MR pissed me off so much for this very reason. It set up this fascinating premise and went down so many directions trying to seem as if it was thought provoking, but was anything BUT. Literally, the "moral" of the movie was, "Pre-crime is bad because a bad, bad man created it using his bad, bad ways. And then people saw how bad the bad, bad man was and dismantled his system."

Why is this the moral? Because Spielberg/the screenwriters weren't smart enough to come up with a legitimate reason why pre-crime is a flawed system. So basically, they took the easy way out. They sent audiences through a wild goose chase thinking it would have a lot of food for thought, only to cop out and have the system work perfectly but say that it was bad because its creator was morally bankrupt himself and used murder to justify setting up a legal system designed to stop murder.

Another thing Spielberg has to realize is that for a movie to be truly sci-fi, the science in it--though fanciful--has to be both plausible and rooted in reality. There is absolutely no way the pre-crime system, as played out in this movie, could ever be possible. Clairvoyants don't exist. Even if they did, they'd be clairvoyant about everything; no amount of drugging them could force them to be so single-focused on just murder events.

You can't hook people up to machines and record their visions. Cars being assembled at a factory can't just roll off the assembly line, out of the factory, and into the street. The list goes on. Decent sci-fi is all about taking preexisting technological, cultural and political trends and trying to predict how they might play out in the future. It's not about making shit up.

One last thing I can't stand about Spielberg is how he uses children as a cheap emotional ploy. Almost every movie I've seen of his does this. He can't illicit sympathy for his characters without having them be attached to a cute, cloying child. Lame!

[–] JimmyFishCakes (451) 5 years ago

Why rip on a movie that’s almost 20 years old?
If I remember correctly Spielberg worked with a lot of scientist at the time to try to accurately predict future technology like targeted advertising, self driving cars and other stuff in the movie I can’t remember.
Also I understand what you are saying how Clairvoyants don’t exist, but weren’t they created in a laboratory?

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

Why rip on a movie that’s almost 20 years old?

What does the age of this movie have to do with anything?

[–] JimmyFishCakes (451) 5 years ago

I do agree having the creator as the bad guy was lame but there was enough visuals, action and ideas to keep it interesting upon its release 20 years ago. And like I said, weren’t the Clairvoyants created in a lab? It was common back then (and still is) to believe that we only use 10% of our brain and I always believed these creations had unlock their potentials just like the film Lucy(2014) explored.

[–] Calledforblackup (126) 5 years ago

The movie already explained why precrime is flawed with Tom Cruise's situation. That is, to have knowledge of the crime you could commit presents you with a choice. If Tom Cruise doesn't kill the guy, that means precrime was wrong (and couldn't predict the murder). On the other hand if he kills him and they didn't catch him beforehand, they didn't prevent the death and it's flawed in that way too. The stuff with the old bad man is just icing on the cake on why the system as a whole is bad. As Colin Farrell states, the flaws are human in nature. The other part of why it's a bad system is because people aren't actually committing the crimes. they were going to, but they didn't, so it is a deep philosophical question at that point, if they didn't commit the crime how can they go away for crimes that they didn't actually commit?

I agree though, the use of clairvoyants is totally insane/out of the realm of possibility. but it's suspension of disbelief, man~

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

That is, to have knowledge of the crime you could commit presents you with a choice. If Tom Cruise doesn't kill the guy, that means precrime was wrong (and couldn't predict the murder). On the other hand if he kills him and they didn't catch him beforehand, they didn't prevent the death and it's flawed in that way too.

What??? This is the kind of stuff that makes me hate this movie!

The precogs foretell what is fated to happen, like the demonstration that was given in the beginning of the movie when the ball is rolled off the table and the agent catches it, and that entire sequence with Arye Gross (the businessman who was being cheated on). That is what the movie establishes without reservation. Pre-Crime is so fated to happen that the only thing that prevents it from happening is last minute intervention.

Spielberg (or whoever wrote this crap) can't establish on one hand that the precogs are 100% accurate in their predictions, but then argue on the other hand that people can go against their predictions via choice. If the precogs can only predict what is fated to happen, a person who was aware of himself potentially committing a crime could never commit a Pre-Crime in the first place. This is what's known as a paradox, and it's one that no amount of bullshitting (Agatha screaming, "You have a choice!") can erase.

What's so frustrating about this is paradox is that it could've been easily been solved by having Pre-Crime be based on probability, not fate. ETA: I just read the short story, and that's exactly how it's set up. The precogs foretell multiple potential futures. To pin down an exact prediction, Pre-Crime stitches together a prediction based on the two precogs whose predictions match and choose that over the one whose prediction doesn't match. The prediction of the two precogs is called the "majority report." The one that doesn't fit is called the "minority report."

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

But wasn’t it based on a short story by Philip K. Dick? I haven’t read it so I can’t really say but I assume most of the sc-fi technology was from the book. Maybe Spielberg changed some aspects of it.

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

I read that the movie was completely embellished by Spielberg and that the "minority report plot" was completely changed from what it was in the story.

Also, a lot of the scenes/tech are ripped off from other movies that Spielberg obviously cribbed ideas from, like A Clockwork Orange, Total Recall, Bladerunner, etc.

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

Interesting, didn’t know that.
Will definitely have to read the story now.

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

I'm tracking down the story right now as we speak, too, because I'm intrigued. I want to see how much Spielberg changed. PKD was a genius; there's no way he could've written something as dumbed down as this movie.

ETA: I found a copy online and read it. It's absolutely nothing like the movie. Some changes--

1. Anderton in the story is more like the Lamar Burgess character. He is an older guy who not only created Pre-Crime but will do anything to preserve it.
2. The main plot is driven by political intrigue between Pre-Crime and some other organization (I won't say which)
3. The story takes place after either WW3 or some other type of massive conflict that has left everything more in less in ruins.
4. The precogs are grossly deformed, mentally retarded mutants (literally called "retarded") who are hooked up to a computer that reads their thoughts. They're mutants, presumably as a creation of atomic/nuclear weapons.
5. The story takes place in NYC.
6. There is very little "future tech" outside of spaceship ports and technobabble involving electronics. But for the most part, there are still phones, radios, etc.

[–] TheTwoYutes (238) 5 years ago

Stick to watching Twilight

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

*puts on ignore*

[–] ATG6 (3000) 5 years ago

I think you missed the point.

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

I think you're someone who thinks he "got" the movie, without really knowing for sure what it was to get.

[–] Redsfan001 (6218) 5 years ago

A little of topic..
but I recently read that the CIA is trying to look for 'superforcasters'..these are not experts, just ordinary people who follow the news and can give mostly accurate accounts of neartime future worldwide political events.

I believe you can go on it's website ( the CIA has a Twitter and website! kind of funny) and answer some questions predicting future events...don't know how much it pays though.

[–] TheAdlerian (2092) 5 years ago

That was good stuff!

You're THE ONLY person I've ever seen online who knows what science fiction is.

It's supposed to be stories exploring how people will react to possible scientific developments.

Most science fiction is films is about the same as a religious story.

[–] KD637 (488) 5 years ago

I agree with everything until the 4th paragraph. In the future, you just might hook up people to machines and record their visions. A fancier version of EEG is not that implausible. And how do you know what car production will look like in the future? You can say 99% of all sci-fi is trash if your standards are that high.