Joy's Rojak Architecture

‘Minority Report’ is a film starring Tom Cruise and directed by Steven Spielberg. This movie is about an imaginary police department called Precrime, in Washington DC in the year 2054, main lead by John Anderton, a Chief Inspector in Precrime. Precrime is the name given as crimes are predicted first by three psychics which they referred to as Precogs and they prevent crime from happening. The author, Philip K.Dick is very imaginative and tries to show us how the future would look like. For example, cars driven vertivally on the walls, scanned eyeballs instead of having IDs, people flying individually like Superman instead of sitting in helicopters.

Initially, this movie starts off with an introduction on how Precrime polices prevent murder from happening. Predictions from the Precogs are used to rewind time and catch the criminals before they committed the crime. Then there comes Danny Witwer, representative of the Department of Justice, in which he came with an aim to understand more about Precrime program. Then here comes the climax when Precogs predicts that John Anderton will kill a totally unknown man to him named Leo Crow. Shocked by the predictions himself, he ran away from Precrime. The author has then gave us an impression that Witwer could have set him up. Anderton suspected Witwer most for setting him up. Curiosity grows in viewers mind on whom has done it.

Anderton then looks for Dr Iris Hineman, the lead researcher for Precrime. Precogs predict the future but sometimes they have different thoughts on it and she reveals that Agatha, one of the Precogs often had different vision, the Minority Report. To avoid getting caught by Precrime, Anderton then undergoes surgery to replace his eyes and uses his old eyes to gain access to Precrime office. Agatha is stolen from Precrime as Anderton was keen to find out the true story of his life, why he wanted to kill the man he don’t even know. Reading images from Agatha’s mind, Anderton sees the same images as what he had seen in Precrime. After that, Agatha then shows images of this woman Ann Lively, who died drowning. Agatha asked Anderton ‘Can you see?’ which creates more curiosity among viewers.

Being chased by Precrime, Agatha and Anderton then ends up in Crow’s house where Anderton is going to kill Crow as in prediction. Curiosity builds up again when the author & director make us ask, Why Anderton wants to kill this man whom he don’t even know?? Answers are then revealed when he saw photos of his son on Crow’s bed. He is then determined to kill Crow. Agatha which has a different thought kept on repeating the line ‘You can choose, you can choose’ to prove that Precrime protocol is not always correct. Murderers can still choose their own destiny until the very last minute. Witwer then finds out something weird about Ann Lively’s death and met Burgess to discuss about it. Having thought that Witwer would discover the truth behind Ann Lively’s death, Burgess killed Witwer.

Anderton then had no choice but to bring Agatha to his ex-wife’s house. Here, Anderton comes to know that Ann Lively is actually Agatha’s mum and that is why she kepts on showing Anderton the same image of Ann Lively to let him know the secret behind her mum’s death. Precrime polices have tracked him down just because he knows this little secret. Then during Burgess’s celebration dinner, Lara helped Anderton and Burgess bad acts are shown to everyone. Burgess then killed himself….


There are a few things that I find quite impressive in this movie. One of it is the curiosity the author and director had created in this movie. The curiosity when John Anderson’s name, the chief inspector of Precrime appears on the red ball and images of him killing a man named Leo Crow. Curiosity when the director made it as if Witwer is the one who set Anderson up knowing his illegal drug problems. Curiosity to know who has been behind all this bad acts hiding himself up. Curiosity of whether Anderson would pull the trigger or not when he pointed the gun on Crow. In this scene, author tries to tell us that our future is still in our hands until you put your words to action. We still can change our decision until the real action has been carried out. For example, this is when Agatha says ‘you can choose’ and repeated it a few times. Curious also to know who killed Ann Lively just to prove that Precrime is correct. Another thing I find impressive in this movie is the author & director’s natural instint and impression of Future. He predicts the look of the Future and expresses to us via the movie with use of high-tech equipments as well as a play of natural sciences.

Well, the context of this movie is pretty much imaginary and futuristic with the use of high technologies and a little play of sciences, like cars driven vertically, eyeballs are scanned instead of using ids, 3D images appears from a small and simple drive and many more. And the story of this movie about predictions of the Future by these mutated humans called Precogs and from the predictions, Precrime crew would prevent crime from happening by catching the person before they commit the crime. I think this prediction story with mutated humans as predictors fits well with the context, a highly technology design environment.

I think the author of this movie tries to tell us that our future is determined by ourselves. Our future is not set and we should not let fate determine our future. For example in the movie, Precrime works to catch those people whom Precogs predicts as criminals. These criminals are not given a chance to change their minds. Predictions of future can’t always be correct. Maybe these murderers change their minds last minute and decided not to kill instead. However, they are not given the chance to do so, they will be caught innocent and jailed forever. I think that the author conveys his message well.

Personally, I think movies inspire design thinking sometimes. And of course movies like this have an impact on design thinking. Author or director often expresses their feelings through symbolic and figurative words, dialogues, and also the backgrounds/context of their works, similar to architects and designers in which they express their feelings in their designs. From this movie, we can see how the author expresses his impression of how the Future looks like and he creates nice context or environment by combining technology and sciences to give us a futuristic feeling. And of course the context fits well with his story…=)

Thanks for reading ya =)
References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minority_Report_(film)
http://www.ehow.com/how_5084277_write-critique-essay.html

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