Themes in Minority Report

The plot of the 2002 science fiction neo-noir film Minority Report, based on the 1956 short story of the same name by Philip K. Dick, includes a number of themes.

[5][6] As critic C. A. Wolski commented, "At the outset, Minority Report... promises to mine some deep subject matter, to do with: do we possess free will or are we predestined to our fate?

Berardinelli describes this as the main paradox regarding free will vs. determinism in the film, "[h]ere's the biggest one of all: Is it possible that the act of accusing someone of a murder could begin a chain of events that leads to the slaying.

"[5] Film scholar Dean A. Kowalski argues that in this scenario free will still exists, as the perpetrators control their actions, and the precogs' visions are but the facts that resulted from their choices.

To show him that people regularly use predetermination, Anderton picks up a wooden ball and rolls it toward Witwer, who catches it before it lands on the ground.

"[8] Kowalski feels this example is faulty in the sense that the ball has no free will; it merely acts according to the laws of physics, but he acknowledges that if an individual were to have freely chosen to commit murder, then it would hold.

This means that Howard Marks, the arrested potential killer from the film's opening scene, is destined to his fate and no action he could undertake would change it.

[17] Spielberg said that the arrest of criminals before they have a chance to commit their crimes in the movie had some real-world background in post-9/11 America, saying that "[w]e're giving up some of our freedom so that the government can protect us.

[19] Science fiction scholar Gary Westfahl asserts that in a political context, PreCrime may be seen "a metaphor for racial profiling, and one could view the liberation of the precogs as the end of a form of slavery.

"[4] The film presents a legal system where the PreCrime office gathers the images from the minds of the precogs then organizes them into a coherent order for display in front of a set of judges.

[23][24] Spielberg conceived of the idea of a future world permeated with intrusive capitalism and government surveillance after everyone at the "think tank summit" told him that "the right of privacy is a diminishing commodity" which will soon be thrown "right out the window.

[28] Film scholar Martin Hall says that the purpose of the advertisements Anderton runs into are "encouraging him to buy certain products and, by extension, affirm his place in society.

Cooper says the quandary arises when the film intimates that there were will be no way to escape the media industry's omnipotence in the future, while at the same time defending "the need for image manipulating institutions.

"[23] He feels that this logically raises another issue in that the same concern could be leveled towards image-makers such as DreamWorks, and he says the "film's virtue lies in provoking this question.

"[23] He notes that the film's tranquil ending concludes with the Andertons looking out into a peaceful exterior with only rain visible, and the precogs reading in their isolated, idyllic farm, and both families apparently free of electronic surveillance.

[23] Writing in the academic journal Rhizomes, scholar Martin Hall, while analyzing the film, discusses the self-perception an individual develops based on the views of those outside of themselves.

[29] At the beginning of the film, Anderton shows little concern for the precogs; when Witwer feels pity for them, he responds: "It's better if you don't think of them as human.

[31] Agatha enters a similar period of self-examination when she has visions of her mother's death, and is informed they are merely "echoes" i.e. a faulty image in her memory.

[29] When he escapes the building and enters the mall, Hall feels he is disturbed by advertisements calling to him by name not only because they will give away his presence, but also because they remind him of his lost place in society, and he begins "to see through the false consciousness his (illusory) previous position as fixed subject had allowed him.

[34][27] In Dick's short story, Anderton is a childless, married man whose main motives are self-preservation and preventing the disassembly of the PreCrime division.

Spielberg would later transform his next science fiction film, War of the Worlds, from a story about a single man to one about a divorced father concerned with protecting his children.

[35] Buckland notes that the two tragic parent-child relationships in the picture (Agatha and Ann Lively, John and Sean Anderton) have a common element.

John is underwater when his son is taken, and later in the apartment he is shown lying motionless, immersed in a filled bathtub, in a manner Buckland finds similar to the shots of Agatha and Ann.

[36] Buckland notes that co-screenwriter Frank introduced the water theme, as he wrote Agatha and her mother's back stories while adding the bathtub scene.