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Overview The story looks at the paradoxes and alternate realities that are created by their precognition when the chief of police intercepts a prediction that he is about to murder a man he has never heard of. It also touches on the danger of a powerful post-war military during peacetime, the main theme not revisited by the movie (see below). Like many stories dealing with knowledge of future events, "The Minority Report" raises the question of the existence of free will. Precrime Founded thirty years prior to the story, Precrime is a system that has replaced the previous system of discovering a crime and its perpetrator after it had been committed (with punishment given as a penalty for such action), with imprisonment before the crime takes place to prevent it happening. As one character says in the introduction to the story, "punishment was never much of a deterrent and could scarcely have afforded comfort to a victim already dead". It is specified that Precrime deals solely with cases of murder. How the system works The system of predicting the future in reports is carried out by three mutants, called 'precogs', all of whom have the capacity to see up to two weeks into the future. Precogs are created by identifying the talent within a "subject" and cultivating it in a government-operated training school - for example, one precog was initially diagnosed as "a hydrocephalic idiot" but the precog talent was found under layers of damaged brain tissue. The precogs sit in a room which is perpetually in half-darkness, constantly talking nonsense to themselves that is incoherent until it is analysed by a computer into predictions of the future. This information is assembled by the computer into the form of symbols before being transcribed onto conventional punchcards which are ejected into various coded slots; when cards are produced, they appear simultaneously at Precrime and the Army GHQ, in order to prevent corruption. The precogs are kept in rigid position by metal bands, clamps and wiring, which keep them attached to special high-backed chairs. Their physical needs are taken care of automatically and it is said that they have no spiritual needs. Their physical appearance is somewhat different from that of ordinary humans, with enlarged heads and wasted bodies. Precogs are deformed and retarded... the talent absorbs everything; the esp-lobe shrivels the balance of the frontal area. They don't understand their predictions. Most of the data produced is useless in preventing murders and is then passed on to other agencies. A minority report The system of three precogs finds its genesis in the computers of the middle decades of the 21st Century. The results of a computer are checked by feeding the data to a second computer of identical design but two computers are not sufficient. If each computer arrived at a different answer it is impossible to tell a priori which is correct. The solution, based on a careful study of statistical method, is to utilize a third computer to check the results of the first two. In this manner, a so-called majority report is obtained. It can be assumed that the agreement of two out of three computers indicates which of the alternative results is accurate - it would not be likely that two computers would arrive at identically incorrect solutions. It is much more common to obtain a collaborative majority report of two precogs, plus a minority report of some slight variation, usually with reference to time and place, from the third mutant. This is explained by the theory of multiple-futures. If only one time-path existed, precognitive information would be of no importance since no possibility would exist, in possessing this information, of altering the future. Other media A movie, Minority Report (2002), starring Tom Cruise and directed by Steven Spielberg, was loosely adapted from the initial storyline of this short story. Although considering the sparse nature of short stories, the expansion of the story is unavoidable, the film remains faithful to several themes of the short story and was one of the most critically acclaimed films of 2002. Critic Roger Ebert hailed it as "a masterpiece" and the best film of the year. Many other leading critics included it on their lists of 2002's best films. Spielberg assembled a "think tank" of science and technology experts to create as realistic as possible a look at the future and emulated the tone of the classic John Huston film noir thrillers of the 50s and 60s, down to the rogues gallery of morally ambiguous supporting characters, portrayed by the likes of Colin Farrell and Max Von Sydow. "Minority Report" is frequently identified as Spielberg's most dark and adult "popcorn" film. A video game, Minority Report: Everybody Runs, published in 2002 by Activision, was based on the movie. Text of Minority Report ((hu:Különvélemény)) | ||||||||||
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