Steven Spielberg's Minority Report is on its way from the big screen to the small screen, and now we’re starting to get some details about what the TV version will look like, beyond what we saw in the trailer. How will the America of 2065 look compared to the world we know? Well, among other things, they finally got around to changing the name of the Washington Redskins. They’re now known as the Washington Red Clouds.
Speaking with TV Line, executive producer Max Borenstein discussed how the show was putting together their future world:
”It goes from little things to big. A small thing is we’re in Washington, D.C. and [the football team] is now called the Washington Red Clouds. We’re doing fun things like that, but we’re also doing larger things.
The Washington Redskins team name has been under fire for years because of its use of a word that many Native Americans find offensive. Creating a future where the team name has been changed is far from a stretch, since it’s very possible it could happen in the next 50 years. But Red Clouds? Ok, Red Cloud was a Native American Chief and warrior. We can already see the Redskins press conference that took place sometime in 2020. “We’re changing the name, but it’s still a reference to brave Native Americans, and we’re keeping the word ‘red.’ Please don’t be mad.”
We’re not even going to focus on the fact that Red Cloud was one guy, so how the hell do you make a plural out of one guy’s name? It’s like naming a team the Virginia Thomas Jeffersons. Yeah, spell check is totally against the word Jeffersons. Instead, let’s talk about the fact that the wars Red Cloud waged took place in Wyoming and Montana, a couple thousand miles away from the series’ home of Washington D.C. They couldn’t find somebody a little bit closer?
The EP does not go into further detail about what the “larger things” that the show will be doing are. We know the series follows the original Tom Cruise movie by about 10 years, so while they have the film as a starting place, there is still a decent chunk of the future to create. The trailer is lacking in any world-building detail, so we’ll just have to wait and see. He does mention they are working with a lab at MIT that is focused on figuring out what the world will look like in 50 years. We’re really hopping MIT didn’t come up with that team name.
The whole Red Clouds thing is probably a simple throw away line, so we shouldn’t get too worked up about it. Although, we now have to wonder what else is in store for the world of 2065, and we'll find out when Minority Report premieres on Fox on September 21.
