Finally watched Minority Report, which proves that the vocabulary of sci-fi movies is pretty much set in stone. Star Trek, Star Wars, Blade Runner, and Tron are among my favorites of pop culture, and everybody knows this. Filmmakers and ad-execs all over make reference to these four geek fantasies for a gauranteed paycheck, and working all four in strikes oil. Steven Spielberg of all people knows this, and has drowned a story about the morality of our criminal justice system in a wash of sleek rip-offs. The buildings look like Syd Mead, the cars are Light Cycles from Tron, the drop-ships are very much Boba Fett’s Slave-One, and to top it off — jet-packs! Also: ads speak directly to you (I’m sure someone like Neal Stephenson came up with that first), body parts are swapped on the black market (Neuromancer???). Assuming Philip K. Dick’s story is a thinly veiled critique of current trends in society (as all good sci-fi is), Minority Report is about the dangers pre-emptive justice poses to freedom, a very hot topic in the world today. The possibility for system-wide corruption is reduced to the brainchild of one corrupt man in Spielberg’s hands, oversimplifying the reality and misdirecting the audience to ignore what Dick wanted us to think about.