Minority Report: From Story to Screen
Adaptations are never carbon copies. A prime example is Philip K. Dick’s short story and Steven Spielberg’s 2002 film, Minority Report. The structure of the storytelling is indeed different as well as other key elements. The narrative transforms its structure into a more episodic approach when brought to the screen. Words on paper take on a new identity when brought to life on a visual basis.
Philip K. Dick’s Minority Report, written in 1956, was ahead of its time. The short story explores the consequences of technology and science and how the technology echoes the present state of society. Both the story and the film emphasize the same basic themes, however the actual plot is almost completely diverse. The film takes place around the year 2054. For five years (six in the film), the Pre-Crime Unit has successfully made murder a thing of the past. Their astounding technology is credited to three pre-cogs. These “idiot” pre-cogs identify killers before they commit their crimes, drastically cutting the crime rate by “ninety-nine and a decimal point eight percent” (in the film this rate was zero) (Dick 74). However, this infallible system runs amuck when Commander Anderton, played by Tom Cruise, is accused of a future murder. Anderton finds himself with only 24 hours (36 in the film) to discover who set him up and in the process, flee from the hands of the authority he once governed. If he fails, Anderton will fall victim to the perfect system he co-created. Both the story and the film are suspenseful and ask the question, “Is pre-crime justified?” The notion of innocent until proven guilty is virtually discarded. The accused murderers are based upon pure metaphysics...
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...short story, it would be pretty dull.
The timeliness of Minority Report is uncanny, given the current situation in politics. Philip K. Dick’s short story emerged in 1956. The script for the film, written by Jon Cohen and Scott Frank, was completed well in advance of the shock of the post-9/11 terror frenzy. Dick’s intuitions of pre-crime enforcement have been brought to the big screen at just the moment when his seemingly sixth-sense is starting to be seen in real life. Both the story and the film warn the future of society of the suffocating effects of an encroaching police state.
Works Cited
Dick, Philip K. Minority Report and Other Classic Stories. New York City: Citadel Press, 1987. 71-102.
Minority Report. Dir. Steven Spielberg. Perf. Tom Cruise, Colin Farrell, Samantha Morton. DVD. Twentieth Century Fox and Dreamworks, 2002.
Philip K. Dick is one of the more prolific science fiction writers of the second half of the 20th century. His dark plots, themes, and characterizations differ greatly from those who preceded him. This has seemingly translated well onto the big screen, as at last count, nearly ten of his novels and short stories have been adapted into films. Several of these films have garnered critical acclaim for both their movie credentials and use of source material. Blade Runner, originally released in 1982 and based off a 1968 novel entitled Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? along with A Scanner Darkly, a 2006 film based off a book of the same name released in 1977, are two such examples. They provide an excellent base to compare the adaptations in terms of visual style, plot authenticity, and characterization. Both movies took alternate routes, yet both were very well received, though one’s financial success is far greater than the other.
Due to production costs and financial restrictions, the director and screenplay writer can never fully reproduce an entire literary work into a screen version. With the complications of time restriction in major motion pictures, a full-length novel is compacted into a two-hour film. This commonly leads to the interference in the sequence of events, alternation of plots and themes, and the elimination of important characters or events. But the one true adversary of novel-based films is Hollywood fabrication. Producers, directors, and playwrights add or eliminate events and characters that might or might not pertain to the storyline for the sake of visual appeal, therefore defacing the author’s work.
Primarly, cerebral edema occurs in children. Studies show that the largest reported cases are 95% with patients younger than 20 years of age. One third of these cases occur in patients younger than 5 years of age. Generally, after the initiation of therapy, within 3-12 hours it occur in children who seem to be metabolically returning to normal. (Pandey) Insulin was discovered in 1922, prior to, “the moratality due to DKA was virtually 100%. With the discovery of insulin, antiboiotics, intravenous potassium replacement and use of norepinephrine for blood pressure support, mortality rates ranging from 2.5%...
All in all, the man accused of murdering Trayvon Martin, was not found guilty and will undoubtedly be imprinted in America’s history. As a result of the verdict, many citizens were alarmed around the nation and has generated an immense amount of controversy. The three academic government reports I have used explained why crimes occur within certain neighborhoods and what can be used to prevent and deter individuals from committing the same type of offense.
“The Minority Report”, by Philip K. Dick, is set in the year 2054 where three mutants called “Precogs” have cognitive abilities to see into the future and predict crimes before they happen. These Precogs have been plugged into machines that decode their visions to serve the pre-crime division, which arrests individuals before they commit any crime. Founded and Headed by John Anderton, the pre-crime division has gone five years without failure and has cut down felonies by up to 99.9%. In order for this to happen, all three precogs have the same vision of an even. In some cases, the precogs have different visions, and then a computer analyses the visions and produces a majority report (where two precogs have similar visions) and a minority report
You might find yourself reading the topic of this paper and automatically shaking your head in disagreement. After all, this is the 20th century and the Jim Crow Laws are a thing of the past. These laws are something that we read about in our History books. Racial segregation and discrimination is all but a thing of the past. Right?.....................Wrong! The facts and statistics (which I will document below) are overwhelming and the crux of the matter is that racial disparities and bias are indeed found within our criminal justice system today even in the year 2014. The truth is that our U.S. criminal justice system is a very racist system.
Larger pieces of debris can cause catastrophic collisions with both manned and unmanned spacecraft. Currently, manned missions are planned around known pieces of space debris, "continuation of present design and operational practices and procedures ensures that the probability of collision will increase and will eventually reach unacceptable levels, perhaps within a decade."
Space junk, also known as orbital debris, comes in many different sizes, shapes and forms. It is separated in to two main parts – natural and artificial debris (Space 1). The natural debris is meteoroid and comet debris that was left behind (Space 1). Natural debris only revolves around the sun, so it is not heard or talked about on earth (Space 1). The artificial debris, known as man-made, sizes in from one centimeter to a whole rocket! The smallest kind which is smaller than a penny has over 100 trillion pieces floating around in space, such as flecks of paint (Dunbar 1). The next kind which is bigger than a penny but smaller than a softball has over 100,000 pieces, such as nuts and bolts (Dunbar 1). The biggest kind which is bigger than a softball has over 13,000 pieces, such as satellite pieces and entire satellites left in space (Dunbar 1). Most of the items in space were not put there but were created through explosions that created thousands of other pieces of debris. Most of the debris which is satellites has come from Russia (Plumber 1).
perception is that all men of color are prone to commit more crimes than white men. Studies from Pollock (2014) noted, “Courts that administer the laws, and the corrections system that makes decisions regarding the liberties of those convicted have all been described as agencies that systematically and pervasively discriminate against minority groups” (p. 138). Based on the aforementioned researches from Clear et al. (2013) and Pollock (2014), many questions were raised about police ethics, powers of discretion, pre-conceived discrimination, and prejudices that society has bestowed on individuals of minority background.
This research is unique because it will give light to the individuals who are against social networking that will not take to consideration that it has any positive outcomes at all and to those who believe that social networking has no downfalls and are too blinded by the social networking to even notice the affects it has on their own lives.
Space debris: the accumulation and collection of trash left in orbit. Space debris is also referred to as space junk, space waste, orbital junk, orbital debris, and space trash. Space junk consists of nonfunctional satellites, old pieces of spacecraft, bits and pieces of booster rockets, lost equipment, and other pieces of garbage. Subsequently, space debris is put into several categories, including but not limited too large and small as well as high and altitudes. All the space debris travels all throughout Earth's orbit.
Space debris are all manmade objects, including their parts and fragments, whether their owners can be recognized or not, in Earth orbit or re-entering the dense layers of the atmosphere that is worthless with no reasonable bated breath of their being able to assume or resume their proposed functions or any other functio...
According to NASA, more than 500,000 pieces of debris, or “space junk,” are tracked as they orbit the Earth- just hundreds of miles above us. Space junk-which is also known by the names space and orbital debris, are made up of a mixture of natural (meteorites) and man-made materials that no longer serves a further purpose or function.
Statistics show that in 1998, 2,256,000 couples became married, and 1,135,000 couples became divorced (Fast 1,2). For every two couples getting married, there is one that is getting divorced. In fact, half of ALL marriages end in divorce (Ayer 41). That is a sad reality to face. Those percentage rates increase as the age of the participant’s decrease. It seems these days, fewer and fewer teens between the ages of 14 and 18 are getting married. This is a change for the better. Teens are usually not prepared for marriage. Marriage comes with many responsibilities; most of which teens are not prepared to handle. “Early marriage, though possessing certain inherent dangers, is widely practiced in contemporary America” (Teenage 1). Even if teens feel they have the potential for a lasting marriage, they should still wait to become married.
Space debris is man-made objects in Earth’s orbit or objects that reenter the atmosphere, including parts that have finished their active existence and are no longer useful. This widely accepted official definition was adopted by the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (IADC), an international governmental forum for the worldwide coordination of activities related to the issues of man-made and natural debris in space (Rossi, 2011).