The Minority Report

When it came to the choice of our movies, I had to go with The Minority Report. I found it to be a clever whodunit mixed in with a metaphorical philosophy of our destiny and is it predetermined or do we make the ultimate choice. I also found the premise of the film to be believable yet a little on the extreme side. When I originally saw the film, i thought of it only as another Tom Cruise action film (Before he went crazy). Once again, I saw many recurring themes of free will, drug inducing and obvious political metaphors. The film was originally made in 2002 but it is surprisingly applicable to the modern world of our existential and political views. In this film, the Precogs are able to see the future i.e. see a crime before it happens and prevent it making the audience believe that everyone has an ultimate destiny and that we truly don't have free will. Tom Cruises character works for PreCrime but becomes a fugitive for he is seen by the PreCogs as killing someone. I argue the point that if someone knew their own future; couldn't they change it for the better and prevent the absolute worst? I mean, take yourself out of the film and try to picture yourself being able to see yourself kill someone. Wouldn't having the knowledge of knowing that you are going to be responsible for someone death ultimately make you think differently about the choices you make going forward? As I was watching this, in my head I kept imaging Christopher Lloyd’s character from Back to the Future contradicting the film because the age old message has always been that knowing your own future puts the future in danger and ultimately alters the everything going forward. As much as I enjoy Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise, I felt the film was overall great and a clear example of government dystopian Hell but had more flaws in it than the other films we have watched just based on the theme of free will. Now granted Anderton worked for PreCrime so he was able to see the crime he committed unlike all the other criminals he had locked up (making a good argument that we all have a destiny) but his example alone is strong enough to make a case for free will. He is the one who decides not to kill Crow at the expected time thus making it that he avoided his so called destiny. he does all of this before he is informed about Crows deal and eventually Crow actually makes him pulling the trigger and makes the free will question very mixed like was it just Crows destiny to die? I say no because he chose to dies. It’s that scene alone that makes me believe that we have free will and while one destiny is always a possibility, every choice we make realistically leads to the ending or fate that we wanted all along.