Minority Report: The Book vs the Movie Essay example -- compare/contr

It is a fool-proof system born to ensure absolute base hitbut when it crumbles, would you go against everything it stands for just to save it? This is the platform that Philip K. Dick, author of the sci-fi go around story The Minority Report (MR), has given us. Set in a futuristic New York City, we see Police Commissioner John A. Anderton as the intermit of a promising new branch of policing Precrime, a system that uses Precogs (mutated and retard oracles) to predict all future crimes. However, the system appears to backfire when Anderton himself is accused to knock off a man hes never even heard of. The movie adaptation by the same name also centers on a younger Chief Anderton, a respected employee of Precrime, predicted to murder a complete alien who he was unaware existed. Amidst scandal, betrayal, and distrust, both Andertons must run from the justice system theyve worked so hard to put in place, and admit to themselves, as s healthful up as to society, that a perfect s ystem cannot be born of debile humans. Though the basis of the films plot and major conflict stayed true to the storys, many another(prenominal) changes were make to the personalities and roles of the characters, as well as the nature and detail of the main(prenominal) conflict and the sub-conflicts.Dick presents our main character, Commissioner John Anderton, as the balding, pot-bellied founder of a revolutionary new crime detection system whos been showing his years for longer than hed care to remember. In the short story, he has just acquired a new assistant, Ed Witwer, and fears being replaced by the younger man. In the beginning, Anderton is depicted as slightly insecure about his job (to the point of tightly fitting paranoia of being set-up), as well as his importance to society, though by the e... ...d. While in MR, Anderton is trying to accept the inevitability of retiring and what may be his less useful future, in the movie, much of his struggle is with his past, an d the guilty conscience he feels. His conflicts still revolve around evading Witwer and Lamar, whether to murder to prevent murder, and his protest inner turmoil. Though the similarities in the most obvious conflicts, those between Anderton and Kaplan, the adorer and antagonist, and fate remain intact, it is obvious that Philip Dicks story has been expanded upon and the main characters made to fit the big screen. Both stories, however, address the contradictions and repercussions of trying to bring forward free will and safety in an ultimately predetermined setting, the sanctioned moral conflict of destroying what is meant to represent a utopian security, as well as the issue of trading freedom for protection.