ABSTRACT
If Chapter 5 essentially looked backwards, aiming to remove certain obstacles to a proper appreciation of the nature of my project in the first edition of this book, then this chapter aims to look forward – to prepare the ground for Part III of this second edition in a number of useful ways. To begin with, since Part II of this book is, in effect, transitional
in its nature – being my attempt to forge a natural link between the main body of the first edition (now Part I) and the new but equally concrete material that constitutes the heart of the second edition (its Part III) – I did not want it to consist solely of a more general, and so inevitably a more abstract, discussion of film and philosophy. For even though, as I noted at the end of Chapter 5, that discussion has a purely negative purpose (one of clearing away misunderstandings rather than constructing a positive theoretical system of any kind), it nevertheless might appear to betray my central concern throughout this project – namely, to give priority to the particular: to specific films and my experience of them. So this chapter is designed to correct that imbalance within Part II taken as a whole, and thereby to ensure that this guiding methodological commitment stays at the centre of my readers’ attention. But why this particular film? First, viewed as a hybrid or synthesis
of the genres of science fiction and crime thriller, Minority Report (Steven Spielberg, 2002) will help to facilitate the transition from my primary concern with varieties of science fiction films in Part I of this book to my central focus on a series of espionage thrillers in Part III (thus helping to dispel any anxiety that my intuition of an
internal relationship between philosophy and film applies only to the domain of science fiction). Second, since the star of Minority Report is also the star of the Mission: Impossible series, this chapter will also initiate a change of focus in the book’s investigation of the condition of cinematic stardom – from Sigourney Weaver to Tom Cruise. And finally, given the prefatory or preparatory role I wish this discussion to have, it is striking how far Minority Report makes a variety of uses of the ‘pre-’ prefix, but particularly the idea of a preview or prevision, central to its own reflective concerns. To see that, however, we must turn to the film itself.
