And so goes the curse of bringing a book to the screen. Look at the most recent liberties taken by hollywood in their quest to out-crap themselves over and over: The Bourne Identity, Lord Of The Rings. To the uninitiated - including me - I had no idea Minority Report was based on a novel. That opens up a new can of worms for me that I was going to rant about this afternoon anyway. Case in point:

The Sum Of All Fears - there's a line in this movie that goes something like "...I'm not worried about nations with thousands of nukes, I'm worried about the person who has one" This sound familiar peeps? Indeed, what was it Nicole Kidman's character said in The Peacemaker? Oh yeah that's right, "Colonel, I'm not worried about the man who wants 10 nuclear weapons, I'm terrified of the man that only wants one." So I'm up in arms after hearing this in The Sum the other night, I'm screaming rip-off rip-off, but before I went telling y'all, I thought I'd just check it out. Its a Clancy novel this one, shouldn't be too hard to get some goss. Lo and behold, the book was released in 1991. The Peacemaker on the other hand? 1997. So who's ripping off who now? Well its made me re-evaluate a little, lets put it that way. Moving on to Minority Report, the Philip K Dick book/short story was first published in 1956 - now what's that tell us straight away??? Who really is ripping off who here? Since the story has been around since 1956 and the screen adaptation not released until 2003, how many people had their hands in that pool of original thought? Countless I'll bet.

A little history on Philip K Dick for you: he is considered one of the most important infuences on the science fiction genre than any other author. He wrote a book in 1968 called "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?", Ridley Scott brought this vision to the big screen in 1982 and called it Blade Runner. Another story written by Dick back in the day called "We Can Remember It For Wholesale", this came to life under the moniker of "Total Recall" in 1990. And now Minority Report. All from the same mind. Pretty amazing mind it is too by the sounds. A collection of his short stories has just been re-released actually, called "The Minority Report and other short stories", something like that. I'm happy to get out there and read it now. Dick's writings have also influenced the likes of the X-Files and the Matrix. Go figure.

So back to my new can or worms, and these things are all over the place, my desk is a shambles. Can a director be forgiven for trying to be true to a book that has had the sum of its parts recreated previously time and time again? I personally hold true to my opinion that Minority Report (the movie) is the most original sci-fi flick, both conceptually and visually, that I have seen in recent years.

Now, before I go, read a little bit of what a hardcore Philip K Dick fan had to say:

"As a die-hard Philip K. Dick fan, I went into last night's opening of Minority Report with some pretty high expectations. I had seen all the previews (including the internet-only Spielberg edited trailer), watched Cruise and Spielberg interviewed multiple times on television, read a plethora of articles and of course read the short story at least three times. After all that, I was holding out hope that Minority Report would live up to the concept I had built up in my mind. Despite my enthusiasm and desire for this movie to finally articulate PKD's vision on the big screen, I was almost prepared to be let down in some way.

Thankfully, I am glad to report that this movie succeeds on almost every level. The anticipation of the last two years has paid off in a big way for this Phil Dick aficionado. After all the time us PKD fans have spent trying to explain the complexities and profound paradoxes in our favorite author's fiction, we can now direct our friends to the local multiplex to experience a sense of the trademark phildickian paranoia for themselves."

If you get a chance, read the full article here: http://www.philipkdick.com/hollywood/minority/review.htm.

This is cool hey.

BH