Rewatchables Reference

• Consensus: The ~15-minute action sequence from Wally giving Anderton 2 minutes before he hits the alarm through Cruise pulling out in the new car. CR: 'It's a 15-minute run and it is fucking pure.' Includes: running fire escapes, jetpack fight, Cruise jumps 50 stories, crashing through apartments (the sick stick / cereal comedy beat), automated car factory where the car gets built around him, then the crane fight with Colin Farrell. Bill: 'WW Hell in the Cell 1997 crane fight.'
• Other scenes: Howard Marks red ball opening sequence, Cruise discovering the Leo Crowe murder and seeing himself (Van: 'a brilliant scene'), taking Agatha to Dweezil Zappa's club, the Leo Crowe confrontation, Lamar getting caught at the banquet, the ID spiders scene, first meeting between Farrell and Cruise ('the feel-out where he rolls the ball').

• Bill: Still-normal Tom Cruise with no baggage. No social media in the 50-year future. Cutting-edge virtual USA Today. Young mustache Colin Farrell. The TV show COPS being in a 2054 movie – 'Cops is long gone.'
• Van: Physical media – 'his memories of his son aren't streaming. He has to get little discs out. It's one of the things they got wrong.'
• CR: The introduction of government surveillance warnings coming out of 9/11 – 'are we sure we want to have unconditional surveillance powers?'

• CR: All the noir Philip K. Dick elements – blind drug dealers, disgraced plastic surgeons, wheelchair-bound prison supervisors. 'All these broken, damaged people.' Also: 'Adult Spielberg – this is a movie with sex, adultery, drug use, murder.'
• Van: The gesture-based interface. 'My Apple Vision Pro, which I'm back on... I'm moving stuff around.' The futuristic world-building that all happens seamlessly within action, never through exposition.
• Bill: Cruise using his hands (studied Tai Chi). Samantha Morton as Agatha – 'so creepy and weird, a great performance.' Spielberg's real-time trick: when Danny asks 'how much time do we have' and the answer is '51 minutes, 30 seconds' – exactly the time remaining in the movie.

• CR (winner): The overhead shot of all the apartments being invaded by the ID spiders. Also: the scene in the Leo Crowe apartment lobby where both Cruise and Agatha's heads are in the frame.
• Van: The shot with the Washington Monument behind Von Sydow talking to Cruise. A shot where Neal McDonough's character visually splits Cruise and Farrell – 'Spielberg just says these are two guys on opposite sides.'
• CR (technical): Spielberg's camera movement technique – doing four shots in one continuous take with panning and whip-panning instead of traditional coverage.

• CR: 'Moon River' playing when Cruise walks through the mall.
• Bill: The COPS theme song ('Bad Boys') in the 2054 scene.

• CR and Van: The Lara character (Cruise's wife). CR: 'The Lara character is just not that dynamic.'
• Bill: Max Von Sydow accidentally saying 'the girl drowned' when nobody told him she drowned – 'this guy is so smart and then all of a sudden he's just like yeah, the drown girl.' Also: the CGI on the highway, and the 25-minute stretch with the eye doctor where 'nothing's happening.'
• Van: The greenhouse scene 'seems like a different movie to me.' CR defended it: 'He's now passed into the realm of fantasy and mysticism.'

• CR: The eye stuff (Clockwork Orange-style disturbing).
• Van: 'Eating gross shit. Every time he eats and drinks it.' Also the physical media and the CGI when they're jumping around – 'that's like 'Star Wars' prequel level.'
• Bill: Early 2000s CGI, especially Cruise jumping cars on the fake highway.
• Craig (extended take): 'I just don't like the look of the early aughts movies, that cold blue bleached out. 80s and 90s movies actually aged better than early aughts movies because the early aughts movies are in that awkward period between bad CGI and good CGI.' Van agreed: 'Bad CGI effects put you in a position where you understand what they're imagining. Middling CGI makes it look like they couldn't do what they wanted.'

Van: Samantha Morton as Agatha – 'turning it up to fucking 14, screaming, yelling.' Bill agreed borderline: 'When he's about to kill Mike Binder, a couple ISO shots of her screaming her fucking head off.'

• CR: From Howard Marks's perspective – why not use precogs to prevent the triggering event instead of just the murder? 'If you can see the whole crime, wouldn't it be better if Anderton came by and was just like, don't cheat on Howard?'
• Craig (big take): Lamar Burgess was right – get the precogs back in the milk. 'Even if it's like a 98% hit rate, what are we doing here? What's our hit rate now? Like 60%? I'm just running the numbers here. This still looks like a pretty good move to me.' Bill: 'This would be an unbelievable First Take segment.' Van: 'This is the problem with this generation – this is an ethically utilitarian generation.'

• Originally optioned in 1992 as a sequel to 'Total Recall' with Schwarzenegger. Carolco filed for bankruptcy.
• Spielberg's original casting offers: Colin Farrell role to Matt Damon (doing Ocean's 11), Doctor Iris to Meryl Streep (declined), Lamar Burgess to Ian McKellen, Agatha to Cate Blanchett, Lara to Jenna Elfman.
• Javier Bardem was offered the Farrell role – 'he said he didn't feel like chasing Tom Cruise around for an entire movie.'

• Bill: Steve Harris (Jad on the pre-crime team) – 'Wood Harris's brother.' Bill: 'Why wasn't he in The Wire?'
• CR: Patrick Kilpatrick (the guy standing next to Neal McDonough).

• CR (winner): Peter Stormare as the eye surgeon. 'He gives Tom Cruise anesthetic as soon as he walks in, basically knocks him out and then dances around Tom Cruise and chews scenery for 5 minutes. Has anybody ever done this to Tom Cruise before?' Bill: 'He might be Level 5 of the That Guy Hall of Fame.'
• Van: Tim Blake Nelson as Gideon the warden.
• CR also: Doctor Iris (Lois Smith) and Tim Blake Nelson.

• City: CR said DC works well – 'feels like All the President's Men.' Bill suggested New Orleans. Van: New Orleans or Chicago. CR: Philly – 'running by the Liberty Bell.'
• Agatha recasting: Bill suggested Jada Pinkett Smith. CR noted Cate Blanchett was 'an incredible shout.' Bill considered Halle Berry as precog; CR redirected Berry as Lara (the ex-wife). Natalie Portman discussed but probably too young.

• Cameron Diaz, Cameron Crowe, and PTA are on the subway uncredited.
• In the Philip K. Dick novel, John Anderton is 'a balding, out-of-shape old man.' Anderton and Lara 'get basically kicked off of Earth' and transported to another planet. The precogs are 'intellectually disabled and deformed individuals.'
• The car factory scene is based on a never-shot sequence from North by Northwest that Hitchcock told Truffaut about.
• Bill's Janusz Kaminski connection: his daughter was in the same elementary school class as Kaminski's kid. Kaminski took all the end-of-year photos – 'it was like a fucking coffee table book.'
• CR: Cruise confronting Max Von Sydow at the end while wearing a dark hood mirrors the opening of the 1957 movie The Seventh Seal.
• Spielberg threw himself a film festival (Asphalt Jungle, Key Largo, Maltese Falcon) and told Kaminski to 'deliberately over-light the film and then bleach bypass the negative.'

• CR: 'Nokia Wave' – a made-up genre spanning from 'GoldenEye' through the Bourne movies (95-early 2000s). 'All about technology that's futuristic but still tactile, people are still wearing earbuds, phones are almost there, everything is about paranoia and the state surveilling you.' Includes 'Ronin', Spy Game, Mission Impossible. 'Minority Report is Apex Mountain for Nokia Wave.'
• Samantha Morton: Bill: 'She's cooked right there.' CR agreed – this and In America.
• Neal McDonough: Not apex – 'his apex mountain's a 25-year apex mountain' of recognizable character roles.
• Precogs / pre-crime departments: Apex for both.
• Cruise and Spielberg collaboration.
• DC movies and Philip K. Dick movies: in conversation.

• Van: The Colin Farrell role – 'the fight scene suffers' but 'he was kind of sneaky athletic.'
• Bill: The Peter Stormare eye doctor role – 'he just comes in hot for 5 minutes.'
• CR: Gideon (the Tim Blake Nelson warden role).

• Bill: Swapping eyeballs and being in an action scene 3 weeks later. Cruise stumbles into the exact Anne Lively drowning in about 20 seconds. Lamar accidentally saying 'the girl drowned.'
• CR: 'Lamar shooting himself in the heart is not commensurate to the rest of the film's imagination – you guys had a jetpack fight an hour ago.'
• Van (best one): 'Who's in charge of updating the retina files? Tom Cruise is now a fugitive but his retina still gets you into the police station.' CR: 'That's one of the best picking nits I've heard in a long time.'
• Van: In the Anne Lively crime, 'they come and get her murderer and then just leave her there to be killed – they don't need her to give a statement?'
• Craig: The John Anderton murder is a catch-22 paradox – Anderton wouldn't have known about Leo Crowe unless Agatha told him, but Agatha wouldn't have seen it unless he was already destined to do it. CR: 'Craig, welcome to the world of Dick, man.'

• Bill: 'Prestige TV probably should have worked – it feels like a show Apple would have made.' Fox actually did a remake TV series in 2015 that didn't last.
• Van: Could do a one-season limited stretching Anderton's story or leave pre-crime around for multiple seasons.
• CR: A prequel – 'the first guy who gets caught by precogs.'
• Van: 'Or you do all the minority reports' – each episode is a different minority report.
• Bill: 'Law and Order: Pre-Crime' – the cheap version.

• CR (as Doris Burke): 'We see you Miss Agatha. You've been swimming in the photon milk for all this time. Not just grinding tape, but making the tape for the freak-on police to act on.'
• Bill: 'In honor of the NBA playoffs, is Lamar Burgess going to take his life?'

Bill: Janusz Kaminski for cinematography. 'The vibe of it is so unique. It really stands out.' Only actually nominated for sound editing.

Bill: Did Howard Marks's wife deserve to die? Has any actor ever worn more masks in a movie than Tom Cruise? (Every Mission Impossible, Vanilla Sky, this movie.) What's the FanDuel line on the crane fight with Farrell and Cruise? Bill: '-310 over Cruise. He's got size on him, he's younger.'

• CR: The pre-crime screen – 'but only so I could watch Second Spectrum and grind tape.'
• Bill (rare 'not want'): The eyeballs.
• Van: The Halo (the prison device).

• Bill: 'Careful, chief. You dig up the past, you get dirty.'
• Van: 'Everybody runs.'

• Van: 'Edge of Tomorrow'.
• CR: North by Northwest.
• Bill: War of the Worlds – 'just to get the combo.'

Unanimous: Spielberg. CR: 'Steve.' Van: 'Steve too.'

Craig: 'I have seen this movie before. This is only the second time. And I don't deny that this is exactly what Spielberg wanted. It just doesn't click for me. It doesn't work.' Found it half an hour too long. 'I just don't like the look of the early aughts movies, that cold blue bleached out. 80s and 90s movies actually aged better than early aughts movies because the early aughts movies are in that awkward period between bad CGI and good CGI.' He added: 'This movie is either 10 years too early or 10 years too late.' Also wished it had been the 'Total Recall' sequel in 1991.