BIG SPOILERS AHEAD. This is in response to Maggie's overly harsh critique of the fine, fine movie Minority Report. If you haven't seen the film yet, you should, because it's great. Then read this.
-- technology that serves no purpose - although I appreciate sliding cars, they served no purpose at all
The sliding cars were a wonderful piece of art direction that you failed to pick up on - they were a visual reference to a World's Fair exhibit from the 50's called "Futureland". A lot of footage of this exhibit can be seen in any given documentary that talks about futurism or world's fairs. They were a statement about futurism, actually.
-- inconsistent technology - all cars are always shown as the sliding cars, however, Tom Cruise gets to have a red Lexus, just to be different
The lexus was clearly a luxury off-road vehicle, not meant to be driven on slide-y metropolitan roads, and meant to be owned as a status symbol for the very rich.
-- eyeballs - first of all, the Clockwork Orange reference was unnecessary and stupid; second of all, when tumbling down a harsh surface, such delicate tissue like eyeballs should definitely get partially destroyed and hence, make the eye scan unusable
One's retinas are located at the back of the eye, protected by the whites, the optic nerves, etc. A few good bounces will NOT ruin the pattern on your retina. Lots of good flesh is protecting it.
-- entering The Temple - after Tom Cruise starts being chased, you'd figure they'd disable his accounts and therefore, disable him from entering places that require some sort of a clearance, duh. I mean, the first they that gets done when someone is fired is that their e-mail address, windows nt username, etc. get cut off.
This is a good point, actually. Although, the guy who ran the temple did seem to like Tom Cruise. But I can't imagine another way the plot could have worked out.
-- stupid ads, all over the place - it may be amusing at first to see ads for Lexus, Gap, Burger King, but it gets really old and really stupid really fast
NO!!! I'm a BIG fan of the ads. I thought they were good as:
1. Funding for the film - good special effects are not possible without a high budget, and:
2. The super-obnoxious quality of the ads, individualized and aimed at every consumer, serves as an excellent warning for advertisers never to be this way. It is a cautious warning of things to come.
-- Gap clothes - in 2050 (or whatever the year is) look exactly the same as the clothes you can purchase at the Gap right now
Eh. Maybe they were "retro 2000's stylin'".
-- stupid, unnecessary gags - what's up with Tom Cruise eating a moldy sandwich? stupid and unnecessary, geez
Alright, there were a lot of weird, unnecessary gags. But I thought they made the movie lighthearted and fun!!
-- unnecessary characters - the wife, the detective guy (who gets killed), the guy with no eyes who sells Tom Cruise drugs, etc. They served little to no purpose and could've/should've been substitured by better futuristic technology and better futuristic fashion.
NO. These were some of the best-developed supporting characters that I have seem in a movie in a long time. Each of them taught us something about the plot, and about futuristic lifestyles. Except the wife... she was lame and undeveloped. What detective guy who got killed? I don't remember that. The drug dealer was VERY important as a forewarning of the eyeball action to come, an example of the extreme future citzens are willing to go through to remain anonymous, AND he was necessary to give us an idea of the dark undebelly of D.C., AND he reminded us what extent Cruise was willing to go to in order to buy drugs.
-- "spiders" too cute - it was much better when they made the eyescanning spiders just a piece of technology, however, once the bit with the "spider" almost leaving through the crack under the door but coming back upon an air bubble bursting was cutsie and stupid
bholes in the plot
The spiders were NOT cute. They were scary. The bubble bursting was COOL and scary and suspensful. I believed it.
-- Tom Cruise was not to take off the bandages for 12 hours or he'd go blind. The "spider" lifted his bandage after the 6th hour. So how come Tom Cruise didn't go blind?
He may have gone blind in one eye. It clearly hurt, as he did wince. Maybe it damaged his sight without blinding him. He did get 6 solid hours before and after the scan.
-- flying suits badly executed - all the time I kept wandering how they prevent their butts from bursting into flames from the hot exhaust from the flying backpacks.
They had seriously armored gear. They did catch some stuff on fire. The jet propultion obviously wasn't that great, since it couldn't carry two people. It was a very limited flame. Plus, it's the FUTURE. They found a way to deal.
-- everyone is insane or too trusting - insane people: Tom Cruise, the guy who killed Ann Lively, the precognitives, the plant lady,
These were great characters, see my above comment, but let me address them one by one:
- the surgeon (what was up with that anyway? it was unnecessary and pointless for the surgeon to be insane;
In was totally necessary for him to be insane. He ran a cyberpunk style underground clinic. the only people willing to do illegal surgery are obviously insane...
- also, if Tom Cruise once put him in jail, the guy should've still been in jail,no? Everybody else was getting apparent death sentences.),
They weren't DEAD, they were being rehabilitated. This, I'll admit, was not explained well in the film. Apparently in the short story it was explained better. While "haloed" you are not dead or suspended indefinately, but rather, your brained is conditioned to prevent future crime, and sometimes they teach you a trade to aid in your rehabilitation. In the surgeon's case, he learned surgery.
- surgeon's assistant,
see above comments
- the jail keeper;
Yup. He was nuts. But that's what we call CHARACTERIZATION. Would you rather he be some boring guy? Also, who takes a job like that, except for the insane?
-- too trusting people: the wife, Agatha, Tom Cruise. Everyone else was either insignificant or ended up dead or both.
Hum... I'm not sure about the "too trusting" stuff. People mostly trusted people they'd known for a long time.
-- more stupid technology - the see-through screens not only seem implausible but also extremely impractical.
That was another clever piece of art direction. Implausible, yes, but they were going for "cool looking" more than believeable. Impractical? Well, no more impractical than today's flat screen monitors...
-- Same goes for holographic tvs. I mean, you'd think that in the future people would make TVs better to watch and more crisp rather than blurry and awful.
In Tom Cruise's old home movies, the image quality may have been poor because he'd watched the damn things so many times he wore them out, or, since they were older by maybe 6 years, the technology wasn't as good. Plus, it was from his home movie camera, which is consumer-level stuff. Your home holograms are not going to be as good as the ones on TV.
-- And what's wrong with the computers? What's so bad about using the alphabet as the keys that you press on the screen? Why do they have to be such stupid symbols? I mean, it's extremely implausible that such drastic change from alphabet to "other" would occur in about 50 years.
There WERE keyboards. Tom Cruise's fancy image editing gestures were all a big reference to Avid editing. Each hand signal was clearly an Avid function. Rewind, Pause, etc. It was GREAT.
-- There's more, but what I wrote so far should be plenty. In conclusion, Spielberg shouldn't make anymore movies. They tried to make the movie like 1984 or something dealing with a dystopian society, but failed miserably (maybe because of the cop-out of having a happy ending, damnit).
It was AWESOME. It was a total 180 from A.I., and I'll let Spielberg keep working for a few more years at least.
Erin Finnegan
@ 1:19 AM
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