Minority Report

Analysis of Opening Sequence (0:00 to 2:17 minutes)

Steven Spielberg’s 2002 film Minority Report is based on a short story by the well-known Science Fiction writer, Phillip K Dick. Dick also wrote “When androids dream of electric sheep” which was adapted to become Ridley Scott’s 1982 sci fi classic, Bladerunner.

Minority Report is an example of a science fiction/ thriller hybred and the conventions of these genres are inter-twined in this opening sequence. The first image we see, in close up, is a pale, almost child-like face. This face is underwater, with wide, staring eyes. The close angle and eerie mise en scene we are being introduced to create enigmas and tensions at the very outset. Who is this person? Why are they immersed in water? Our proximity to this image is uncomfortable. As with all thrillers, we can assume that we will be as dis-orientated by the action to come as is the protagonist.

The camera then cuts to a mid-shot, centrally framing a machine which seems to be adjusting two balls. The machine is automatic, futuristic and coldly efficient. The iconography of the futuristic world of science fiction is clearly established. As far as whether we are being introduced to a dystopian vision of the future, a utopian vision or a mixture of the two, the audience is not yet sure. The non-diegetic sound begins to be more apparent at this point and is created using long, repeated, unresolving chords; a typical staple of the thriller genre. The protagonist’s entrapment within the complexities of the narrative is clearly mirrored by the refusal of the soundtrack to liberate the viewer from its never-ending repetition. 

In close up, the shot now cuts to one of the balls being released and quite slowly rolling down a perspex tube. The mise en scene is clinical and stark, signifying the futuristic setting and the strangeness of what we are watching. The audience follows the ball until it rests, in another close up and the word ‘victim’ is revealed. ‘Sarah Marks’ and ‘Donald Dubin’ are identified as victims, establishing a crime at the centre of the thriller narrative. The camera then cuts to a glass door and then tracks forward to follow a man through an extremely high-tech office environment. In long shot, we realise that this is the actor Tom Cruise and that it is probably a star vehicle for him. Cruise’s character’s clothes are black and he is framed within a scene of chrome, black, bright light and shadows. This is a mono-chrome environment which appears devoid of life. Cruise’s character walks as if he is in a rush and the non-diegetic sound speeds up to entrench the idea of urgency further.

Credits on the screen at this point in the sequence set the place as Washington DC and the date as 2054. Science Fiction films are often set in the ‘not too distant future’ in order to be able to combine mise en scene and themes which the audience will recognise, as well as those that they won’t. Too much distance from the world of the film can destroy viewing pleasure. From the Cruise character the sequence cuts again to the submerged person and then back to the second ball which rolls down and stops to reveal the name of the ‘perpetrator’, Howard Marks. A siren sound is heard in the scene and the audience is encouraged to link the submerged person with the emergency of the revealed identity of the criminal.

The camera then tracks Cruise’s character to what we soon understand to be a control room and the uniformed men in this room brief him on the crime, using language which can only be associated with crime prevention. Cruise is then framed in a long shot looking through a window. The camera then pans down to reveal what he describes as ‘pre-cogs’ who have somehow predicted the crime. The mise en scene clearly evokes the science fiction genre. The edit is now to what is revealed to be an operations room from which Tom Cruise’s character can attempt to track criminals. He then ‘conducts’ a screen in front of him to reveal the visions had by the pre-cogs and is accompanied by diegetic classical music. The futuristic iconography of the scene evokes science fiction and the race against time to find the criminal is synonymous with the thriller.

The sequence doesn’t offer institutional information; this comes later in the film, but does locate the viewer clearly in the narrative and genre of the film.