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Essay on Minority Report: The Book vs the Movie

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It is a fool-proof system born to ensure absolute safety…but when it crumbles, would you go against everything it stands for just to save it? This is the platform that Philip K. Dick, author of the sci-fi short story "The Minority Report" (MR), has given us. Set in a futuristic New York City, we see Police Commissioner John A. Anderton as the founder of a promising new branch of policing: Precrime, a system that uses "Precogs" (mutated and retarded oracles) to predict all future crimes. However, the system appears to backfire when Anderton himself is accused to kill a man he's never even heard of. The movie adaptation by the same name also centers on a younger Chief Anderton, a respected employee of Precrime, predicted to murder a complete …show more content…

Kaplan is the retired "General of the Army of the Federated Westbloc Alliance" (79), aiming to abolish Precrime and re-instate the Army. He is eventually killed when Anderton discovers the plan and fulfills his "majority" reports and shoots Kaplan, thus condemning himself but saving Precrime. The basis of Precrime’s operation, the three precogs named Jerry, Donna and Mike, are described as grotesque, inarticulate parodies of human beings, with swollen heads and withered bodies, retarded both physiologically and mentally. Their physical repulsiveness is demonstrated by Witwer's reaction to seeing the precogs for the first time: "For the first time Witwer's face [loses] its breezy confidence. A sick, dismayed expression [creeps] into his eyes, a mixture of shame and moral shock. 'It's not—pleasant,' he [murmurs]. 'I didn't realize they were so—' He [gropes] in his mind for the right word, gesticulating. 'So—deformed.'"(73). Conversely, in the movie, Anderton can walk with Agatha through a crowded mall and streets without drawing much attention (precogs are even, in fact, deified by the police force and the public). Also, in the film, John Anderton is a trim, athletic man in his 30s or 40s, and Police Chief of Precrime. Out of

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