Will the future really look like Minority Report? “Two of Spielberg’s experts explain how they invented 2054.”

Underkoffler: …. I’m a huge fan of all of Dick’s writings. It’s a very compact little piece with a fascinating central idea that very much competes with all his other stuff. As with the rest of his writings, he recognizes that social science fiction is more interesting than pure science fiction. He was one of the few guys back in the ’50s who knew the truth about technology. Everyone else wanted shiny ray guns and perfect societies floating around in anti-gravity space stations and who knows what. Dick knew that technology mostly doesn’t work or complicates things in unforeseen ways. And so, in Dick’s books and stories, you always have doors that won’t let you through ’cause you have to give them a quarter and you have to argue with them because you don’t have any spare change. In general, with him, it’s the intersection of high-end science with other more human elements: individual psychologies, larger-scale sociology or politics. That’s what makes him continue to be relevant where other authors of the same era … their shiny spaceships and ray guns look a little tarnished right now. Salon

Whatever you might say about the plotting, it certainly had a distinctive look. It joins Blade Runner, also from a PKD story of course, as an original and meticulously executed vision of the future. No matter what else, it ought to get the production design Oscar. Only a couple of things didn’t really work for me. For one, the vertical highways; maybe 150 years, but surely not 50. And, while much has been made of the gestural computer interface Cruise uses (“like conducting an orchestra”), I would imagine a way would have to be found for the control movements to be more subtle, less sweeping and dramatic (less cinematographic?); otherwise computer use would be exhausting!

And then there’re all the egregious product placements.