Netflix has added a Tom Cruise classic directed by Steven Spielberg and, despite coming out over 20 years ago, many feel it was eerily able to correctly predict the future.
The film stars Tom Cruise alongside a star-studded cast, joined by Colin Farrell, Samantha Morton and the late, great Max von Sydow.
Based on a Phillip K Dick classic novel, it was included in the New York Times’ list of the greatest films of the 21st century.
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This saw 500 influential names in the industry name their ten favourite films, leading to the list of 100.
With Parasite leading the list, it was incredibly varied, seeing comedies such as Superbad and Anchorman there alongside arthouse films like Mulholland Drive.
At 94 on the list though is Minority Report, and people think it was, ironically, an incredibly prescient movie.
What is Minority Report about?
The cyberpunk science-fiction film stars Cruise as John Anderton, a cop who works for the PreCrimes division.
These cops don’t arrest people after they’ve committed a crime, they arrest them before they’ve even done anything.
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The futuristic film sees people able to use predictive technology to tell who is going to commit crimes, however John is forced to go on the run after he is framed for a future murder of someone he has never met.
Minority Report is based on a Philip K Dick story, a writer who often predicted the future in small ways. He also wrote Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, the book Blade Runner was based on which predicted the increased use of AI we find in today’s society.
Minority Report, fittingly for the plot of the film, is similarly considered to have predicted things happening today.
What has Minority Report predicted and got wrong since the film came out in 2002?
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The film, set in 2054, predicted a number of technological advancements. These include driverless cars, using gestures to control computers, and personalised advertising (though that one is a bit far from being the exact reality shown in the film).
That isn’t to say it is perfect of course, with Cruise in the film making ample use of jetpacks and shots that can completely alter your face temporarily.
With it being set 30 years from now though there is more than enough time for that to become a reality.
The biggest way Minority Report was able to predict the future however was in its vision of police using algorithms to try and solve crimes before they happen.
Many major police forces now use ‘predictive policing’, using machine learning algorithms and AI to try and predict crime trends before they happen.
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This is also at times used to identify suspects that need to be watched closely.
CBR posted a feature about the film in 2022 titled Minority Report Predicted the Future We Are Already Living In, saying: “Society may still be quite far from 2054, but the movie serves as a cautionary tale to watch out for unethical practices that may derive from an ever-evolving technological world.”
As good as the film is at predicting the future however, there is one important thing to note – it is also a fantastic watch.
Rated at 89 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, the New York Times said of the film in its inclusion of it in the top 100 films of the 21st century so far: “A gnawing agony powers Spielberg’s noir in which colour has almost been drained from the world.”
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The Cruise classic seems one set to stand the test of time and is now available to watch on the world’s biggest streaming platform.
Minority Report is available to watch in the UK and Ireland on Netflix.
Topics: Netflix, Tom Cruise, TV and Film, Film, Crime
Michael Slavin