Precog Clarity
Watched Minority Report today. I had fun trying to detect traces of Scientology in the movie. I noticed that the drug Cruise bought was called “Clarity”, and this combined with”precogs”resembles“Clear” and “Preclear” that are so important to Scientology. The entire movie had Cruise acting like a clear, with the only real reactive mind episode coming from a restimulated engram. Of course, you can find reactive mind/engram episodes in any drama, but in this case the movie was so devoid of any other drama that it stands out.
The basic story (sans the engram) was written by the same guy who wrote Blade Runner. The science in Minority Report was integrated into the world in a way that was believable; with things like personalized billboards, spy spiders, and retina scans. This is a huge step forward from A.I., which ruined some perfectly good ideas by presenting them in a way that defied credibility (does Spielberg know the difference between love and obsession?) I’m glad Speilberg has learned to not try writing his own stories.
On the other hand, good special effects and a relatively consistent story line are not enough to make a classic in this genre. Blade Runner is still a classic because of the multiple layers of moral paradox it exposes. (For example,what is man’s response to the fact that he was created in the image of God, but deliberately made flawed by a built-in expiration date?) Like Blade Runner, Minority Report could have been a bonanza ofparadoxical layers of moral dilemma, all without detracting from the story. Instead, we get Tom Cruise struggling to control his emotions (”you can choose”) and choosing to not murder someone he is angry at. The only other moral paradox we see is at the climax, where Cruise maneuvers the bad guy into the position of having to choose between two bad things (he chooses the less bad thing). Not only is this a very weak paradox, but Spielberg insults the audience further by telling them it’s a paradox. Cruise stands there and tells the bad guy, “You see the paradox here, don’t you — if you do A then X, if you do B then Y”.
The first rule of moral dilemma is that moral dilemma adds spice to a movie, but is never the main course. Therefore, there is no need to put the moral dilemma on the menu or tell people that they are eating it. Lots of people enjoyed “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” without noticing any painful moral dilemmas. And if a plot-segment has to jump out and grab the audience by the throat and scream “Look at me! I’m a moral dilemma!”, it is probably not much of one. The only reason I can imagine that Spielberg had Cruise do this is because he wanted the movie to be compared with complex movies like Blade Runner andThe Matrix. And apparently Spielberg thought it would be good enough to just tell the audience that they were experience a deep moral dilemma. It sure takes the hard work out of actually delivering a complex storyline — too bad it didn’t work.
Finally, there wereplaces in the movie that talk about “due process” and the issues with jailing someone for a crime that they didn’t yet commit. However, these do not come close to qualifying as moral paradox, in my opinion. The movie gives us our first glimpse of a precog-engineered arrest taking place right at the moment that the crime is taking place, which kind of biases the audience. And further, there are plenty of ways within our current legal system to put people away for intent without having actually committed the crime they intended.
But that is not to say the story was poor. The story itself was capable of some truly heinous moral twists. The only thing I’m complaining about is that Spielberg didn’t take any of those twists. Because of that, I would rate evenGattacca above Minority Report, and Blade Runner and The Matrix are better without question.