Steven Spielberg has directed and produced a wide diversity of films in his career. But out of all of his films, Spielberg expected that his sci-fi hit Minority Report might’ve been his darkest yet.
Minority Report is one of a few films where Spielberg teamed up with megastar Tom Cruise. Although the film was released in 2002, Spielberg had the feature in his mind for years before then. In a 1999 interview with the New York Times, he predicted that Minority Report was going to be his most cynical feature yet. This was due to the film’s premise.
Minority Report was about members of a special organization tasked to stop future crimes. It was adapted by a story from author Philip K. Dick, with Cruise introducing both the book and the script to Spielberg. And the filmmaker recalled having a strong reaction to the material.
“At its core the movie is a whodunit. It’s actually a whodunit-to-me. I responded immediately to that. And then, I responded to the myriad possibilities of creating a future that is not too distant, yet with the kind of technologies we can only dream about but wish we had now,” he once told Wired.
Many alterations were made to Minority Report in the years before its script transitioned to the big screen. For instance, the film was originally going to be set in 2080. But Spielberg chopped off a few decades and changed the movie’s setting to 2054. It was a date Spielberg arrived at after meeting several experts in the fields of science, medicine, technology, and others.
“Most of the software in the movie is based on their suggestions of what it will be like in 50 years,” he said.
After Minority Report hit theaters, Spielberg agreed that it could be a tonally dark film. But he had a different opinion on the movie’s potential cynicism.
“I was wrong. It changed,” Spielberg said. “Because, well, it’s not cynical to want to believe that there could be a miracle – that they could stop people from killing in the future. So in a sense, it went from being a cynical story to being a movie about wishful thinking.”
The Oscar-winner also felt that films like Minority Report reflected his own maturity and growing boldness as a filmmaker.
“Certainly in the last few films – Amistad, Schindler’s List, and Private Ryan, and A.I. and Minority Report – there’s been a, well, I’m not sure I’d call it skepticism, but a being unafraid of the dark truth, the difficult realities. I feel as I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten more courageous,” he said.
In an interview on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Spielberg confided that he doesn’t re-watch many of his films. But he considered ET one of his few notable exceptions. And on the occasions he did revisit one of his most iconic features, he realized how proud he was of his work.
“Sometimes I see things that I had intended to do that I didn’t do, and sometimes I see things that would have been a better idea than what I’m now seeing all these years later – but for the most part, ET is a pretty perfect movie,” he said.
There are other movies in Spielberg’s filmography that may have equal replay value. But Spielberg didn’t want to disclose which movies those were.
“I’ve made like 34 films and – I’m not gonna name which ones they are beyond ET – there’s about five or six films that I can watch again, but I don’t usually do that,” he said.