As best I can remember from seeing the movie last night, the guard says that you live out your dreams when he puts Anderton with the other criminals. The fact that Anderton was a very realistic and practical person would not, IMHO, have stopped him from living the dream of never having lost his son in the first place. Especially since we saw him reliving experiences with his son when he was watching the data files in his apartment; he also relived the actual loss of his son when he was sleeping in the eye-replacement-guy’s apartment. Finally, his wife actually left him because everything he did reminded her of Sean. In other words: after Anderton lost Sean, he became the living embodiment of a desire to find him again. Since that’s not what we saw Anderton doing after he was put away, then I’m convinced he wasn’t living out a dream.
By the way, I think Minority Report is an incredibly good movie.
other movie spoiler
Wow, I considered the possibility of a Mulholland Drive- type ending, but only in passing, as a joke, when Witwer discovers whatshisface has kidnapped a pre cog and he (Witwer) makes the silliest gesture of all time- a mean ol’ scowl and a fist punching his palm.
“at the point where it became a murder mystery someone started making “stuff” up and no longer following the plot of the original story, hence the diffrent tones.”
I haven’t read the original story but I believe the movie departs from it regularly and not just the last 20 minutes .
About the agent killed by Burgess and why the precogs dont spot it, I thought it was because the location was outside the range of the pre-cogs but maybe I misheard what Burgess said ( he does give an explanation before he shoots)
** More Spoilers **
I think a lot of people here are trying to make a leap of faith based on the fact that Vanilla Sky (also starring Tom Cruise) was all about Cruise creating an alternate reality. It’s tempting to assume that since Cruise did it in last year’s movie that this year’s movie might have a reference to it (and yes I know that Cruise didn’t write/direct/have anything to do with the plot- I’m just trying to make a point.)
If Cruise/John really did “alter” his reality there would have been no change of perspective (from Cruise to his wife.)
Somewhere later in the movie someone talks about a 200 mile limit to the precog’s range, but I don’t believe that had anything to do with Witwer’s murder.
My understanding is exactly as AudreyK describes in her most recent post, namely that “the precogs could see all murders, and the nature of murder only affected how much of time ahead of time the murder was foreseen. (Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.) Unplanned murders are foreseen with the least amount of warning time. With regards to Witwer, when Lamar killed him, Agatha had been away from the twins for at least that long, thus unable to help the twins see Witwer’s impending murder.”
Her explanation is more clear than my feeble attempt earlier in the thread.
But could someone please confirm tanstaafl’s explanation of exactly what happened to cause Anderton to shoot Crowe? Or provide an alternative description? I’m still puzzled.
Oops. Forgot one thing I wanted to mention about Witwer’s murder. Agatha, since she was the most powerful precog, may have indeed forseen Witwer’s murder (the movie doesn’t indicate one way or the other). However, she was in no position to do anything about it even if she was so inclined.
Excellent point. And it wouldn’t have been too difficult to have the son reappear at the ending. A little soap-operatic, but still within the bounds of the narrative. After all, we never see confirmation that the son was killed.
I haven’t seen Vanilla Sky but I know that the Last Act Dream was used before in Star Trek: Generations. Unless you’re someone who believes that somehow Picard used the Nexus to transport himself out of the Nexus and prevented himself from ever going inside. Because that’s just silly.
This brings up another problem. The plan was for the entire system to eventually go national. If the precogs have a limited range, how could it possibly go national? Also, what happens after the precogs die? Since their original creation was accidental it doesn’t seem like they could be easily replaced nor could they be replicated to monitor other parts of the country.
Just because he did not reunite with his son does not mean that it wasn’t a fantasy. The only way that would be true is if he didn’t know in the back of his mind that his son was dead. He thought of what he would do to the man who took and killed his son. He thought of vengeance. Now, here is where the problem really lies. Why didn’t he avenge his son’s death? I don’t know. It must also be noted that he did get to experience the raising of a child again. His wife is pregnant towards the end of the movie. This might be his realistic “replacement” of his son in the fantasy. I don’t know. Perhaps it’s a fantasy, perhaps it isn’t.
I think that if they would have shown the son come back at the end, the movie would have been ruined with the feel-goodedness (is that a word) that Spielberg seems to enjoy putting in his movies. I actually think the film’s showing the precogs and Cruise/wife happy at the end was totally unecessary; however, I think the already very good movie could have been one of my favorite of all time if they bring the son back at the end, show the happy precogs, then for the last shot of the film, show a closeup of Cruise’s face slowly backing up and morphing into a shot of Cruise still in prison.
I don’t think it’s a trick ending, or that the makers even intended this as a possibility. I’d say it’s more accurate to say that the final act is none-too-expertly bolted on to what has gone before, but does resolve the various plot threads satisfactorily if you don’t mind neat, happy endings.
My question concerns Tom Cruise’s meeting with Mr. Scary Illicit Eye Surgeon. Mr SIES gives Tom a magic face-changing thing which Tom later uses when he tries to break in to the Precog Temple. First question: why bother with this magic face-changer since it doesn’t change his face much at all and he is still recognisably Tom Cruise (or TC’s character). The Temple nerd who attends the precogs recognises him easily. Second question, does Mr SIES actually say that the effects are short-lived and his face will revert to normal soon? I don’t recall him saying this at all, yet in the very next scene after TC breaks out of the Temple with Miss Super Precog, he’s got his regular Mr. Handsome face back again.
I just didn’t get the whole magic face-changing thing at all. Seemed like a perfectly redundant bit of the plotting.
Well the face-changing device does change the face enough to be useful with people who don’t know you well or in poor light. From the point of view of the character it does make sense to give it a shot since he doesn’t know in advance how good it is. But yeah from the point of view of the director/scriptwriter it does seem redundant since it doesn’t help Cruise. I assume it’s there to show off another cool piece of technology. It also serves to stress how determined Cruise is (since it’s highly painful)
Another thing that bothers me is when after Tom gets his new eyes, he goes back to police station to get Agatha. In order to get inside he puts his old eye up to the scanner which announces his name nice and loud. But security didn’t really show up to get him until Witwer noticed him in the temple. I would have thought that security would have rigged an alarm to go off if Tom came back to the facility.
Or cancelled his access altogether. I mean, geez, dot-coms are more thorough about firing their employees…
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tanstaafl, that was my response to my daughter when she asked me after the movie. But her follow-up was “then why was Anderton standing there, arm outstretched and sighting down the barrel of the gun at eye level?”
I didn’t have an answer to that logical question.
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My recollection was that Anderton had the arm outstetched in the pre-cog vision, but had his arm at stomach level after Crow was actually shot.
I guess we’ll have to see it again on video. 
OP: Ok, if the happy ending was real, what’s the point of the prison guard’s remark? According to the Second Hollywood Law of Economy, all scenes, appearances and dialogue must serve some particular purpose.
I would think that the face-changing thingy would provide a good enough disguise for the odd surveillance camera.
I thought Agatha’s story was about what would have happened if their son had not been killed…a fantasy for people who have lost loved ones and wanted to know how their life would have been lived out.
I never thought about the fantasy ending until reading this post. Interesting thought.
My SO noticed that there was a handicap sign (the same as we have today) on the elevator, and also found it odd that with all the wonderful innovations of the future, that guy was still sitting in a wheelchair that was designed years ago.
I had a thought that the end proceeded as normal, but the precogs were put in a hologram chamber like one of Rufus’. There they would not be haunted by their visions and they would be away from prying eyes. Besides, do you really think that there are pristine islands left in the future?
Idea! The neuroin dealer at the beginning says that “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king”. As it turns out, John has only one functional eye as the result of revealing one to the spider. In the land of the blind (the halo-prison), the one eyed man (John) is king (master of his own fantasies).
As an alternative to my previous post, maybe the precogs were haloed.
Geez, this needs a bump so I can get a reply on my ideas! Shoot them down if you have to, I am desperate for attention!