Okay, I'm not gonna give it a full review or anything, but if you feel compelled to see the movie (as I did, against my better judgement), bring along a copy of the original short story and a book light. You can read it while one of the interminable chase/fight scenes is going on and have a lot more fun.

Well i havn't read the book or anything, but i liked the movie. I thought it was a little slow, and one of the themes was just brought up waaaay to often, but other than that, it was a decent flick...imo.

I saw it and thought it was fantastic.

The excessive amount of action scenes was a criticism of a lot of people, but I don't understand that. Considering al the preaching going on, and the fact that there was a single action scene in the first 30 minutes of the movie, I thought it laid off the intense action pretty much. I thought it was a fantastic film. Don't compare it to the story. Why would you do that? It's a movie. I don't understand why people are always judging a movie by that criteria.

Just look at it. The visuals are perfect. They action scenes that you didn't like were extremely well executed. Great acting jobs all around. I don't know what you couldn't like. I'd like to hear specifics about what you don't like about it (provided people who haven't seen it yet don't read much of them ).

You tell 'im, DiGNAN. (You sound almost inDiGNANt!)

(MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD!)

I enjoyed it, too. I thought the action was pretty decent, and meant Tom Cruise didn't have to do too much acting. There were a few things I thought were kind of dumb -- first was Agatha walking around after spending six years laying in a tank of water. I'd expect her muscles to have atrophied so severely that it would have taken her much longer to start walking again than it did.
The second thing that I found ridiculous was the flailing about to operate the computer. I know that gestural UIs are in development, but I think that was a little excessive -- I mean... if it had been any more over the top, they would have needed John Travolta's performance from SNF.

Cheers,

The "active" UI seemed just optional, since the other guy in the office had a pretty normal workstation, as did the main character. He just chose to excerise and work in the morning it seemed.

"Don't compare it to the story. Why would you do that?"

Most of the time I can seperate a movie from its source, but there are a few occasions in which a movie has so badly missed the mark of a book that it becomes a laughable experience. I'll admit I actually enjoyed "Starship Troopers" (I know many didn't, but somehow I actually did like it). . . until I read the book. Once I realized how much they had destroyed the themes of the book and removed all of the important parts. I felt nothing but contempt for the movie.

As far as MR, I havn't read the story yet, but I plan to. I thought the movie was good, but I must admit I havn't seen a really great movie since LOTR and have been pretty dissapointed recently- it might not take much for me to enjoy something these days.

The Hunt For Red October was one of the best books I've read, but the movie was just horrible. And the reason it was horrible is because they took a good story and changed it and chopped it up.

All right. Here's what I didn't like (MINOR SPOILERS):

First, I didn't say that there were an excessive number of action scenes, but that the action scenes themselves were interminable, not to mention boring.

Second, I'm not really judging it against the story, but, at the same time, the story is about a million times better. In addition, it undermines the story. All of the themes expressed in the story are undercut and reversed by the movie. The only thing that really remains unchanged is the concept of pre-crime and that the ``chief'' is on the run. In fact, the story actually deals with the minority report, and even gives it a twist -- the movie mentions it and discards it. I don't want to give away the plot of either the movie or the story, but it just amazes me that they just discarded basically the entire plot and reversed the theme. Corollarily (it is now), it's not as if you could make the excuse that the story is too long to film, which certainly is a legitimate excuse for the legitimate liberties taken in some movies, and some of the liberties taken in this movie. The story is thirty pages -- that's too short for even a normal length movie, not to mention this two and a half hour snooze-a-thon.

Edit: I just reread my this (because I'm bored -- shut up! ) and realized that I claim that I'm not basing my viewpoints on the story, and then I seem to anyway. My point, really, is that you had a great story to start with, so why come up with something else that is much inferior? That's just another mark of incompetence in the filmmakers, IMHO. (The real answer to this is probably that the original story could be viewed as promoting the fascism that this movie was obviously made to complain about, despite the fact that it's not, really. It's just that filmmakers assume that we're stupid, and it's unfortunate to note that that is so often the case. Regardless, if that's the answer, then that's my point here, instead. Don't assume I'm stupid. That's one reason I liked The Bourne Identity, even though it wasn't otherwise a particularly good movie. It didn't treat me like an imbecile.)

Third, the plot that they did come up with is just a series of movie cliches. There's the guy haunted by the thought of his dead kid. There's the secretly manipulative politician. There's the estranged but still loving wife. There's both the nice and not-so-nice criminal contacts of the former policeman. There's the unexplained and ridiculous coincidences. There's the huge conspiracies. And those are just the ones I can think of right off the top of my head.

Fourth, the visuals, while pretty to look at (thanks, Janusz Kaminski) were just derivative of pretty much every other movie that this movie wanted to be. I don't really feel like supplying any evidence of this. It's pretty apparent, I think. (And probably the least of these reasons, anyway, except as point to the fact that Spielberg seems to have lost his imagination.)

Fifth -- slapstick. Did we really need all the totally inappropriate ``humor'' in the movie? The Chaplin-esque eyeball-chasing scene? The shots of the families being disturbed by the chase? All this undercut the movie itself. They were just stupid.

Sixth, the acting was largely abysmal. Tom Cruise turned in yet another non-performance (which, given, I was expecting). Max von Sydow was unable to break free of the caricature he was given to work with. All the guys at the office apparently didn't even have personalities, except for, maybe the Clancy Brown wannabe second-in-command guy. He got to be a caricature as well. Colin Farrell was okay, but largely due to just the fact that he's just entertaining to watch on screen. And Mike Binder was actually entertaining in his five minutes of screen time.

Seventh, I'm tired of all the human bodily fluids flying about in movies these days. The vomit and the snot were just gratuitous and nauseating for no reason other than that is the style of the day. (No one ever claimed that Spielberg wasn't a populist.)

Then there are just the random stupid things. Like the thing about going blind if he removed the bandages too soon, which was pounded into our heads, but then dropped on the floor. (Though it would have taken about 5 seconds of screen time to show that it wasn't. And that might have explained the eyeball-chasing scene.) The end of the opening scene where he can't decide what house to go into. He's got as many men as houses. Go into all of them. Which leads up to the fact that the cops are always in a big bunch, never spread out, when looking for someone (remember the inane balloon vendor thing?).

On the other hand, there were a few things that I think the movie got right on its own. Again, the cinematography was excellent. The explanation for the Lively woman's murder was kinda neat (even if it was a part of the poor treatment of the original story). The scene with Leo Crow was actually mostly very good, taken by itself. (It was the point at which the movie definitively became about the opposite of what the story was about, but I'll put that aside.) I liked the concept of the ubiquitous retinal scanners. That's a concept that would have worked well if they'd decided to actually make a film of Minority Report. I'm sure there were a few other things I liked as well, but they certainly didn't overcome the dregs of the rest of the movie.

Most of the time I can seperate a movie from its source

I agree. I'm a huge Philip K. Dick fan. When Blade Runner came out, there was a huge backlash against it because of the liberites it took with it's source, Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? But, really, those liberties were largely superficial, and the backlash overly pointed (read ``incorrect''). The movie had the same themes as the novel (which really was a more-or-less full-length novel in this case), it just changed some stuff around and excised other things that couldn't be fit in the time constraints of a movie. Even if you take into account the Hollywood happy ending that was tacked onto the original release, the themes were still the same, it just had a ``happy ending'', which was bad, but didn't undercut the entire point.

But Minority Report is a travesty of its source. I'll let you both read the story and see the movie to determine why. And it also totally throws away Dick's style. It's hard to translate writing style to a movie, but this one didn't even try.

Ah well. I didn't expect it to be good. I just didn't think it would be this bad, either.

In reply to:

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I'm a huge...Dick fan.

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haha.

child

penis.......... he hehhehe hehehehehehehhe ehehe he ehhe e e ehhehehehe e he

over it?

I read Starship Troopers way back when, and was very loath to go an see it 'cos I thought they would destroy it, but was very impressed they managed to keep the satirical, dark humour in there. The basic theme wasn't messed with at all. I loved it. Plus, I like any good animation done by Alias|Wavefront - geeky, but hey I've always enjoyed messing with A|W stuff.

Of course they had to have that annoying girl from Dawson's Creek as a love interest. Too many teeth - not natural ;-)

Interesting, maybe I would have had more tolerance if I'd read the book first, I was just so upset when I realized that in the book there was no love interest (she was "just a girl"), there was a hugely important dynamic with the main characters father, and - this is the biggie - they had really cool mechanicle armor that wasn't even mentioned in the movie. Also you had the unisex bathroom thing in the movie where in the book the women were VERY seperated from the men, a great dealt of time was spent on this very issue. I thought what was left after they changed everything from the book was a somewhat silly violent satire about killing bugs, completely lacking the effect that the book had.

Sounds like I may have the same issues with MR . . . bummer. I really need to start reading the books first so I don't get dissillusioned.

IIRC, one of people's biggest problems with Starship Troopers is that it was exactly the opposite of how they interpreted the source. They saw the point of the Heinlein story as the fact that the humans were the invaders and the bugs were innocent natives. But the movie turned that on its ear so that it was just a ``patriotic'' war movie/western.

Now, to be honest, I've never read the book or seen the movie, but I'm basing this largely on the independent comments of a good number of people I know and whose opinions are usually intelligent and accurate. Just to say that even though you saw it as very accurate, they saw it as way off.

I havn't seen a really great movie since LOTR

did you happen to catch the movie Donnie Darko? it was a really great movie probably one of my favs for this year i would deffinatly recommend it. I dunno if its your style or not thou, im not really a big fan of LOTR's or Starwars and stuff, but its worth the rental.

Thanks! I enjoyed your criticisms. I wasn't really concerned with most of the things you had problems with, but I liked hearing your opinion on them nonetheless.

I agree with you on one thing, though. [SPOILERS?] After the movie was over, my first thought was "wow, that was a great movie" (not yours though), the second was "wow, the visuals were incredible."

The third, however, was "It's strange that a movie called 'Minority Report' actually had nothing to do with the minority report". I thought it was strange how they made this huge thing about the minority report, and then it was inconsequential. Odd.

But I liked the movie.

Starship Troopers is fun, but not much of a movie. I can totally see how they might have screwed the story up with that one. I just thought it was funny how my friend and I went to it thinking it was a Star Wars type space film, and the next thing we know there's gratuitous nudity and people's limbs being torn off. Also odd.

I mostly agree with them. To be honest, the movie is more of a satire of the "patriotic"/war movie, but even with this understanding of the it still doesn't get the themes of the book right. My memory seems to be failing me about the exact differences, but I remember reading the book thinking that so much of it was the opposite of the movie, not just in facts but in theme.

I thought it was strange how they made this huge thing about the minority report, and then it was inconsequential.

I would suggest you find a copy of the original story and read it. The minority report in it is remarkably important to the story, and its consequence to the story varies dramatically throughout as the events around it change. In fact, that's one of my favorite literary devices -- the single unchanging fact whose meaning changes dramatically depending on the viewpoint.

The Minority Report is available as a new oddly bound hardcover, but you could spend $2 more and get a collection of other fine short stories in The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick, Volume 4. It's also old enough that you might be able to find it in the library, conceivably. And it's only about 30 pages long. It won't even take you long to read. You might even be able to read the whole thing in the bookstore, if it's liberal enough. Maybe you'll decide you want to buy it, anyway. (Anything I can do to turn people onto PKD.)

I just saw A Beautiful Mind the other day and wasn't too impressed. It just seemed like a sad attempt to copy off of Fight Club, which is one of my all-time favorite movies.

Boy, that never occurred to me, but you're right that there is more than a passing resemblance in plot structure. At the same time, I find it hard to believe that a Hollywood type would push it for that reason. It's not like Fight Club was a big hit or anything.

I went to see A Beautiful Mind in hopes that there would be more math in it than there was (although there was more than I had expected), to see Russell Crowe, who is a fine actor, and to see Jennifer Connelly, who is fine. On the other hand, Ron Howard is a greatly overrated director, and Akiva Goldsman may be one of the worst screenwriters ever. (I know he won an Oscar for A Beautiful Mind, but that doesn't mean that it was actually good.)

Um, the two movies were hardly similar. Just because the guy saw things that weren't there? Aside from it being completely different, I don't know if you knew this, but that's a real person. It's a true story (even if parts were left out). How could the story of a man living with Schizophrenia since the 60's be ripping off Fight Club?

But oh dear, I just realized we're getting back into that mental illness thing. Sure don't want to go there again...

Jennifer Connelly, who is fine

Aaaaaaaagreed.

Fight Club is a good movie. The commentary on the DVD is also fun to watch which is coll because I've found that most commentaries are pretty boring.

Something I failed to mention about the movie, oddly, since it's one of my biggest problems with it, is that the plot fails to hold water. In fact, it wouldn't hold a dump truck, IMO.

The only way for Anderton to meet Crow is for him to be told about him. The only way he'll be told about him is through the precogs (since no one else is going to tell him, since that would make the huge conspiracy not work). This establishes a paradox, but the simplest thing is that if they don't tell him, it won't happen. And confabulation doesn't seem to be in their nature.

Note that this particular chain of events does not happen in the short story. There is, however, a somewhat similar chain of events, and it's completely waterproof. When I initially read it years ago, I remember thinking to myself that there was no way that it could possibly make sense. So I went over it time and again. There are no holes in Dick's entire plot. It's absolutely perfect. It's phenomenal. (Which leads me back to why they changed it.) There are not even any outlandish absurdities that are so common in this sort of story of paranoia.

Edit: And let's not forget the fact that he's been convicted of future murder, yet no one bothered to revoke his clearance at the police station. In addition, they immediately notice when he's been ID'd on the Metro, but not when he scans to come into the building. It's like the screenwriters weren't even trying.

BTW, sorry about all the obsessing.

Yeah I forgot it was a true story. It just didn't seem as well made as Fight Club, in my opinion.

Haha, no it's okay! I'm quite interested in reading the story, I just don't tend to read very much, unfortunately, so it takes me a long while to get around to something. I'll pick it up sometime.

Interestingly I recall an Asmov story in which they had the computer that could pretict future murders. It predicted its own demise, therby causing the accused person (actually his son) to try and attack it in order to stop the arrest. Of course, the whole point was that the computer was doing this on purpose because it was tired of dealing with mans problems. I thought of this story while watching MR, even though I know they had nothing to do with each other.

Yeah. That was The Life and Times of Multivac, IIRC. Pretty good story. One of Asimov's darker ones, IMO. But I prefer Harlan Ellison's I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream for the ultimate in bad-computerdom.

im telling u guys go see donnie darko if you havent already. get it off netflix or something.

Bitt, the way you go on about this, I almost *don't* want to read the book, because it will utterly destroy my enjoyment of the movie. Oh well. What to do? What to do?

Calvin

Are you kidding? Starship Troopers was nothing like the book. Much of what I liked in it was gone or altered in the movie. oh well.

Calvin

My opinion is that no one should have enjoyed this movie. However, if you liked it, then I imagine that the short story will seem like an almost entirely different experience. It'll be kinda like it was a similar story set in a similar universe.