Minority Report - a podcast by Chris, Sean, Jeremy | Force Fed Sci-Fi

This time, we take a look at the future noir crime thriller Minority Report and along the
way we ask just how far is the government willing to go to stop crime, does Tom Cruisenot run enough in this movie and why 2054 will hopefully be just alright? Let’s dive in…
Minority Report Movie Cast and CrewDirected by Steven Spielberg: At this point, Spielberg had established himself as
the director in Hollywood. He had made hit after hit for over 20 years by the timeMinority Report was released and this was his first time pairing with actor Tom
Cruise.Starring Tom Cruise as John Anderton: Cruise has had staying power in the film
business since he came onto the scene in the early 80’s and has now becomeone of the top actors in Hollywood and is able to sell a film based on his
attachment alone.Colin Farrell as Danny Witwer: In the early 2000’s, there was no actor hotter than
Farrell after appearing in the films Tigerland, American Outlaws, Hart’s War,Phone Booth and S.W.A.T.
Max von Sydow as Lamar Burgess: Sydow enjoyed a nearly seven decade longfilm career including several Oscar nominations and worked up until his death in
2020.Also Starring:
o Neal McDonough as Gordon Fletchero Steve Harris as Jad Watson
o Kathryn Morris as Lara Andertono Samantha Morton as Agatha
o Tim Blake Nelson as Gideono Peter Stormare as Dr. Eddie

FROM THE MIND OF PHILIP K. DICKOne of the most prolific science fiction writers of the 20th Century also gave us some of the most memorable films of the genre; Philip K. Dick wrote stories that would later be adapted into films like Blade Runner, Total Recall and Paycheck. He also wrote the story for Minority Report and for the most part, the film is faithful to the original plot. There are some differences but that’s almost become the norm with a Philip K. Dick story. 

The rights to produce a film based on Minority Report were optioned back in 1992 and was originally envisioned as a sequel to the 1990 film Total Recall starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and it’s likely this version of Minority Report would’ve starred him as well but the film labored in developmental hell for so long that the film went through several different versions before the filmmakers settled on the version that released in 2002.Development originally began in 1997 and many actors were either offered roles or were cast including Matt Damon, Meryl Streep, Ian McKellen, Cate Blanchett, Jenna Elfman and Javier Bardem. Production was delayed twice; once so Cruise could complete Mission Impossible II and another time so Spielberg could direct A.I.: Artificial Intelligence and these delays caused the original cast to be shuffled around.

PRESCIENCE OF TECHNOLOGYIn the years since Minority Report was released, it has been cited as being particularly prescient for its display of future technology. One of the main points of the film is every citizen being scanned via their retinas literally everywhere they go throughout Washington, D.C. and this forces Anderton to undergo illegal surgery to swap out his eyeballs.

Retina scans or other forms of biometric security are becoming more and more prevalent among technology firms as well as financial institutions in order to better safeguard sensitive equipment. The use of these retinal scanners are then used to create personalized advertisements when people walk into a particular store. These advertisements are tied to an individual’s shopping history and in a precursor to today’s tracking cookies, make recommendations based on that history.The idea of using technology to stop or prevent crime has also made its way to the real world via IBM and the University of Memphis. Working together, they developed the Criminal Reduction Utilizing Statistical History (CRUSH) program to be used by the University of Memphis to help the Memphis Police Department predict and help stop crimes. It was credited for helping reduce crime in Memphis by 31%...

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