#7 Film of the 2000s: Minority Report (2002)

Before we do anything, let's get one thing straight: Stephen Spielberg is the greatest director of all time. If you disagree with me, that's cool. This is still a free country (for the time being ... but that's a whole other topic right there), so everyone's entitled to be wrong with his or her own conflicting opinion. To over-summarize my argument, no other director has had a resume, style, consistency, and following that even comes close to Stephen Speilberg.
In fact, there's only one argument you could use against that summary that I would even listen to ... and that's the "Tupac is still better than Jay-Z" argument.

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Seriously. Look at Jay-Z's career. Of his 11 or 12 albums, most have received critical acclaim (Reasonable Doubt is ranked #248 in Rolling Stone's Top 500 Albums of All Time; The Blueprint is ranked #464, and received a "Five-Mic" review from The Source; and Vol. 2: Hard Knock Life won the Grammy for Best Rap Album in 1999); each has sold at least 1 million copies; and Jay-Z has been the CEO of two record companies. Not bad for a guy who's still in his 30s.

While listening to his latest album with my best friend, Jimmy Lindsey, we both came to the conclusion that Jay-Z has officially passed Biggie as the #2 rapper of all-time. This is hard to admit, because I never thought Jay's talent belonged in the same ballpark as BIG ... ever. While Jay-Z can just think of an idea and roll out a verse at the blink of an eye, Biggie did the same thing with "Juicy," which remains better than any song Jay-Z ever put out. What separates Jay from BIG is Jay's fortunate ability to fulfil the extent of his potential; whereas with Biggie, we can only wonder what could have been. Yes, BIG has 2 All-Time Top 10 rap albums (Ready to Die and Life After Death, and I believe Ready to Die is the greatest album ever), but those are the only albums he ever put out. Jay has my #10 (The Blueprint), #9 (Reasonable Doubt), and #4 (The Black Album) albums of all time.

(#1 Ready to Die; #2 Illmatic; #3 Chronic 2001; #4 The Black Album; #5 All Eyez On Me; #6 Doggystyle; #7 Life After Death; #8 Venni Vetti Vicci by JA Rule; #9 Reasonable Doubt; #10 The Blueprint ... I smell a future article...)

Jay has also said everything a rapper could possibly say in a career. 1.) He prophesized his taking-over of the industry (see Reasonable Doubt). 2.) He dominated the airwaves with radio-friendly songs (see Vol. 2), to become a multi-millionaire. 3.) He told everyone he made it, while simultaneously raising the bar (The Blueprint). 4.) Went out on top, while prophesizing a Jordan-esque return (see "Encore" on The Black Album) 5.) Then he came back; and backed it up (see his work with Linkin Park, Kingdom Come, and The Blueprint III).

So why is Jay-Z still not the greatest rapper of all-time? Why is he not bigger than Tupac? The answer - and this may sound corny - is that Tupac was more than just a man. Here's an analogy for Tupac: imagine if Michael Jordan's athleticism and pop-culture influence was combined with Muhammed Ali's mystique and social commentary, you would then have Tupac Shakur. Jay-Z, like Michael Jordan, has the perfect pro resume; but Tupac accomplished almost everything Jay-Z accomplished before he turned 26. Pac wasn't a businessman, so he couldn't be the CEO of a company; however, he was the spokesperson for an entire generation; and that extends far beyond the measuring stick that Jay-Z uses to scale his career.

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Stephen Spielberg, much like Jay-Z, has accumulated the perfect resume. His handful of classics, influence on pop culture, and ability to effortlessly create masterpieces without over-thinking the details make Spielberg the most accomplished director to stand behind a camera. (For those of you who actually read the four-paragraph tangent, re-read it, and replace "Jay-Z" with "Stephen Spielberg" and you'll get the point). To my knowledge, there hasn't been a Tupac-like figure in the film industry to take away Spielberg's crown as the greatest.

What signifies Spielberg is his ability to release multiple classics every decade. Most directors never get the opportunity to tell one classic, let alone two beasts every 10 years. From Jaws to Close Encounters, Raiders to E.T., or Jurassic Park and Schindler to Private Ryan, you can always count on the Dreamworks founder to find a dream and make it work on the big screen.

Entering the 21st Century, Spielberg has put out 2 films that will go down as classics; however, it won't be the flash and epic nature of the films I've listed above that will make these 2 films classics. They're both cop movies, both released in 2002, and both are told as cat-and-mouse throw-backs to the 1940s. What's nuts is that they don't look anything like each other. The first is Catch Me If You Can, featuring the true story of Frank Abagnale, Jr. and all the shinanigans he caused as a teenager in the '60s. While you won't be seeing it in the Top 20 of the 2000s, you will be seeing it on TV every Christmas, just before Love Actually or It's a Wonderful Life. It features a convincing performance by Leonardo DiCaprio; a touching turn from Christopher Walken; and Tom Hanks armed with the best knock-knock joke ever. I also rank it just behind The Shawshank Redemption as the #2 Guy Movie that Every Girl Likes.

The second film is Minority Report - a fascinating parable on human nature, destiny, and how you would react if you knew your own future. For sake of time, space, and your own reading sanity, I'll go over three quick facts that I love about Minority Report; and if you have any additional questions, I'll post your question and my answer for all to see.

1. The Technicalities. Minority Report was nominated for 1 Academy Award: Sound Effects Editing. That may be the most pointless category of all Oscars, and I almost wish the Academy went all-out to completely forget the movie altogether. Instead, I'll take it as an insult that such a well-crafted film didn't receive critical acclaim for its cinematography, art direction, and visual effects.

...or maybe they simply didn't notice? Now that I look back at each film nominated for cinematography, art direction, and visual effects, each features over-the-top performances of each category. Road to Perdition and Far From Heaven looked like motion-paintings, not motion-pictures (cinematography); Gangs of New York literally re-built NYC, and Lord of the Rings-Two Towers literally re-built all of Middle Earth (art direction); and Spider Man and Attack of the Clones consisted of characters doing corny poses in front of green screens (visual effects). With all of these showy effects, the audience loses its grip on the actual storyline; therefore, in my opinion, weakening the film. Minority Report - while using a plethora of effects - stays so loyal to the storyline that we may not even notice the efforts involved to make each scene possible. We just enjoy it.

The realistic future of Washington D.C. is set up with understated cinematography, art direction, and visual effects. His long-time cinematographer Janusz Kaminski (Schindler, Private Ryan, and the non-Spielberg film Diving Bell and the Butterfly to name a few) takes out the majority of the color in each shot: creating a hazy, gray world that's filled with smog and lacking excitement. With pre-cogs preventing every murder, the world is transparent; and Spielberg embodies this transparency using glass-walled sets througout the picture. Pre-Crime Headquarters, for example, doesn't seem to have an opaque substance in the building. All walls are made of glass; and computers show images on a clear screen that can be viewed throughout the building. On the surface, this company has nothing to hide. Even the weapons the police use are understated. Minority Report's triumph comes through its use of CGI to accentuate (not show off) the intensity of each scene. Example: I never thought to myself, "Wow, what kind of technology did they use to come up with those spiders that trace the building?!" Instead, I was thinking, "Holy crap, what are those spiders going to do when they find Tom Cruise?!" This is a lot different than my feelings when watching the first Spider Man ("Dang, that looks fake as hell. Yea, it looks cool and all. But that's fake as hell.")

2. The Story Itself. Spirituality, fate, prophecy, action, suspense, noir, drama, and sci-fi: Minority Report has it all. While I won't dive in to the details of each thing that makes Minority Report a complete film, I will go back to how it fits the three criteria in choosing this list: Quality, Lasting Effect on the Memory, and Rewatchability.

It's quality rests within it's visual flair and it's unique way of storytelling. There's rarely a wasted shot in the 2 hours and 20 minutes of running time (except the "Rocketeer" chase scene; I'll admit that was pretty corny and probably shouldn't have been included in the final cut); and each shot has it's own unique symbolism. Credit the trust between Spielberg and Kaminski for allowing this to manifest. The use of eyes (close-ups, eye-scanners for advertisements, black-market eyeball dealers, etc.) creates such a powerful motif that complements the "what-if-you-could-see-your-future?" premise. Nearly every scene focuses on some attribute pertaining to the eyes, thus giving us a cornerstone to talk about all the themes permeating the film (spirituality, fate, prophecy ... all the ones listed in the paragraph above can be tied back to the motif of "eyes" or vision).

Rewatchability is a big duh. Minority Report has all the popcorn entertainment you can ask for in an action film; and with all the visual motifs permeating the film, it will keep detail-oriented critics like myself consumed for 20+ viewings.

3. Lasting Effect on the Memory. This film will only get better as it continues to predict the future. Could we predict in 1968 that a computer (which, at that time, was the size of a building) built with artificial intelligence would create a world of its own, go crazy, and maybe start killing people? We can definitely forsee it now, and that's the main reason the American Film Institute ranked 2001: A Space Odyssey the #15 film of all-time (up from #22 in 1998). Could we predict in 1998 that a reality television company would adopt a human being and put his entire life on television, thus raising him in a completely ficticious world? Shoot, we didn't even know was reality television WAS in 1998. In fact, the only show that ever fit the description of reality TV was Real World on MTV (this was the Real World when they actually had to get jobs, work together to make a living, and not base their entire television career on how many people each person can sleep with and/or fight). Now, in 2009, if a reality TV company decided to adopt a human being and create his life on television, would it even MAKE the news? Probably not. So tell me this: how prophetic was The Truman Show?

What makes Minority Report such an effective futuristic movie is that its hypothesis of our future isn't without reason. With Facebook's marketing team placing ads on your website that are catered to the information you put on your profile, along with ever-developing webcam technology, would it be hard to envision a contraption that scans your eye, identifies you, and includes your name in their advertisement? Personally, I don't think so. Do me a favor and watch the scene when Tom Cruise walks through a tunnel; and all of the billboards start calling out his name. All those companies have to do is invest in an eye-scanner thingy and BOOM: target marketing. In the real world, how long do you think it will take to invent something like this? My guess: not very long, especially if a company decides that an invention like that would provide a spike in revenue.

On the Special Features DVD, Spielberg describes how they went about creating the technology of the future. In a nutshell, folks from Dreamworks went to work with grad students from MIT, Cal Tech, and a bunch of think-tank universities; and they brainstormed methods of police weaponry in the not-so-distant future. Two clever tricks I noticed in Minority Report: the only gun we see apears in the very end; and all weapons the cops use are non-lethal. For sake of argument, let's say our Second Amedment rights are tossed out the window and we can no longer carry guns. How will we defend ourselves; or, better yet, how will cops be able to subdue criminals? These answers were provided by those MIT and Cal Tech kids, and were included in the film. They have "sonic boom" guns (that Tom Cruise uses at car manufacturing plant) that knocks you unconscious; "sick sticks" that cause you to throw up the moment they touch you (no more tasers, I guess); and jet packs that get you from place to place. Yes, all these weapons seem expensive ... and way too expensive for your basic police department. However; for sake of the futuristic world of Minority Report - where there aren't any murders, and the crime rate has dropped by epic proportions - there probaby aren't that many cops out there to pay, thus freeing up money to pay for all the new toys.

The point I'm trying to create is this: while Minority Report hasn't received the critical accolates it deserves, neither did 2001 or The Truman Show when they first came out. Sure, they were well-received; but so was The 40 Year Old Virgin. Classics become classics because of their influence. Their ability to predict the future - whether it be the future of the real world (like in 2001 or The Truman Show) or whether it be the future of filmmaking (like Citizen Kane or Star Wars) - is what make classics, classics. I believe Minority Report will become a classic; so let's wait and see.