Minority Report
It seems ironic that Spielberg adapts sci-fi stories, when he flatly doesn’t care about the story. Feels like a bet he won, making a blockbuster about something he couldn’t give a shit about.
No societal consequences are explored, the protagonists stand in a sea of sheeple. Nobody seems to bat an eyelid at people being arrested for pre-crimes, and the extra-judicial punishment for murder seems to be life in a vegetative state. The death penalty seems a more humane sentence.
Despite this, it remains a staple of contemporary sci-fi and is considered a classic.
The cast helps, and the visuals effects are fantastic, but it’s a bit dry on other fronts. Blatant but accurate references to other works complete the package (who calls a person Dashiell?).
There’s a lot of Spielbergian wishy-washy magical realism. And the ending is a complete cop-out, considering the tone of the first 2 hours. I would expect major fallout from all the actions, but it appears to be Tuesday in that universe, just a small kerfuffle in the halls of power.
I, Robot was clearly inspired by this, but I feel it managed to much smarter about the meat of the story, plus has a sense of humour.
A lot less stuffy than Artificial Intelligence. Could have used a little more intelligent script.
This is my place for ramblings about sequences of images that exploit the human visual limitation know as persistence of vision.