Minority Report - Spoilers!!!

AslanC hinted that someone should start a topic with spoilers for Minority Report.

So here's one.

First up, I thought the film was...OK. It looked great (but then, it's supposed to when they spend $100 million on it), and it did at least play around with some good ideas.

But there are some huge plot holes and problems.

First the obvious holes: why didn't the pre-crime HQ disable access for Anderton's retinal scans? Alarms went off in public when he was scanned, but the police HQ still lets him in?

And it's amazing how those disembodied eyes still scan correctly after a day or two in a plastic baggie.

And how, exactly, did Anderton's wife get into the confinement center?

The bigger problems with the whole plot:

1. The "minority reports". Anderton is told that sometimes the pre-cogs disagree or have different visions. The Ann Lively murder is an example of one such case. But when we learn what happened, it turns out that there was no disagreement at all. There were two different visions - but they were both correct! They were just visions of two entirely separate events. The "twins" saw the murder that had been arranged by Max von Sydow with the hired hitman, while Agatha saw the actual murder carried out by von Sydow himself. No dispute, no disagreement, no innaccuracy. No "minority report".

2. Anderton says after looking into the Ann Lively case that there were 11 other cases with a missing vision - 11 other "minority reports". What happened in those cases?

3. How was the pre-crime program going to be taken nationwide with only three existing pre-cogs? Especially since it was explained that they were the product of circumstances that were unlikely to be repeated.

4. Why were the pre-cogs able to see Anderton's murder of Leo Crowe as a premeditated murder, when it was (would have been) a crime of passion - he didn't know who Crowe was and had no anger or desire to kill him until he actually got to the hotel room? If it was premeditated because Max von Sydow had set the whole thing up, why couldn't the pre-cogs see that, too? Because if they can forsee the future crime of passion based on the manipulations that lead to the situation that will produce the murder, why didn't they predict the murder that opened the film the minute that the cheating wife made her date with her lover for that morning - after all, it's the husband catching them that drives him to want to kill her, and his catching them is foreordained the moment they arrange their date.

5. Why was pre-crime closed down at the end of the film? Nothing we saw demonstrated that it didn't work; precisely the opposite. Max von Sydow got away with the Ann Lively murder only because he ran - and designed in the first place! - the entire operation. He was literally the only person in the entire world who could have gotten away with that crime. Everything else confirmed that the visions were accurate and that the program did in fact prevent murders. So why close it?

As a former intelligence agent I'll address the first one: Anderton's access. I was read off on my top secret clearance in 11/99...but my access to the SCIF I worked in had still not be revoked by the time I had left service. How do I know? I keyed in to talk to one of my co-workers 2 days afterward.

People get distracted; especially when chasing your boss. It probably never occured to anyone, 'cause they were too busy chasing him. Trust me on this one, it's not as unlikely as you think for a bureaucracy to miss obvious stuff...like a bunch of Mulsims trying to learn to fly but not land.

1. There were two reports. There was no minority report; it was mistaken for a minority reort, for an echo.

2. The other 11 cases? They were pardoned afterward, with everyone else.

3. Good question. I was wondering if they were making more precogs.

4. The explanation seems to be, he had pre-meditated killing the person who did it. This was the one weak point in the deal. As for seeing von Sydow's part -- they only see murders. That's why they don't see other crimes. It was the metaphyscial disturbances of murder that caught the precogs attention.

5. Bad press. Also, I think the Danny W character showed the concern that some had on arresting someone for a crime they hadn't yet prevented. The whole idea, in a nutshell, has serious ethical problems.

Just my take on it.