They don’t give any clue that I can remember, but it may have symbolic significance. There is the scene where the eyeless drug dealer says, “in the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king.” Which I assumed was a reference to the scene where Anderton loses one of his eyes (I forgot to mention the whole eye scanner security plot hole but that one was gaping as well). Also, the poster for the film is a pic of Cruise bandaged with one eye showing through. WAG, but maybe it all has something to do with Anderton and/or precrime representing justice which is supposed to be blind, but they are cheating the system.
Thinking back on this film, it really seems like such a shame. It was a great idea for a movie, and it wasn’t all bad but I wonder if Spielberg was getting too confused by his own movie and began to worry that audiences would be lost and started cutting out elements that made it a more coherent film.
and I agree the whole living a fantasy in his own mind ending would have worked much better for this movie than that steaming pile of shit, Vanilla Sky.
They don’t give any clue that I can remember, but it may have symbolic significance. There is the scene where the eyeless drug dealer says, “in the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king.” Which I assumed was a reference to the scene where Anderton loses one of his eyes (I forgot to mention the whole eye scanner security plot hole but that one was gaping as well). Also, the poster for the film is a pic of Cruise bandaged with one eye showing through. WAG, but maybe it all has something to do with Anderton and/or precrime representing justice which is supposed to be blind, but they are cheating the system.
Thinking back on this film, it really seems like such a shame. It was a great idea, and it wasn’t all bad but I wonder if Spielberg was getting too confused by his own movie and began to worry that audiences would be lost and started cutting out elements that made it a more coherent film.
and I agree the whole living a fantasy in his own mind ending would have worked much better for this movie than that steaming pile of shit, Vanilla Sky.
Yeah, at the end, after he’s halo’d, they go through the evidence and it’s mentioned that the gun was a gift.
I still think the sick-sticks were weird. I can understand the idea behind them, but I still wouldn’t like carrying around a weapon that makes people vomit on me.
As for Anderton’s eye replacement: the spiders scanned his left eye for a few seconds, after it had six hours to heal. I imagine it could have caused some damage, but not enough to seriously impair his vision. Also, the surgeon didn’t really like Anderton, so he might have been exaggerating about the time (six hours might have been enough; he just wanted to make Anderton eat moldy sandwiches six hours longer just for the fun of it)
And it doesn’t really bother me that his eyescan still worked in precrime (as they said, if he walked into the place there are a dozen different scanners that would have caught him before he got anywhere near the temple, so it made sense to keep them active).
What bothers me is that he had access to the temple at all; they said that detectives couldn’t enter the temple b/c of the potential for evidence tampering. Then 30 seconds later, they show Anderton is, in fact, authorized to go there (as long as he’s willing to put up with 15 seconds of half-hearted whining from the caretaker).
Has anyone noticed the similarities in theme between Minority Report and Sophocles’ “Oedipus Rex”? For example: In each the hero struggles with the question of whether we can change our foreseen fate.
Oedipus learns from the oracle at Delphi that he will kill his father and marry his mother. So, he flees Corinth to prevent this from happening. But, this very act sets in motion the chain of events that ironically brings him to do just what the oracle predicted. Later on, when he organizes an effort to find his father’s killer, he find out that it was he himself who killed his father. Then his mother/wife kills herself. He realizes his that his fate came true, and in sorrow he gouges out his eyes.
The whole oracle/temple symbolism is very transparent. The oracle at Apollo’s temple went into a “trance” when she prophesied. Her prophecies were many times ambiguous, but they always came true (at least in Sophocles’ presentation).
Many of the same questions in metaphysics (free-will or determinism? Can we change our fate?) and ethics (what is justice?) are raised in both stories.
This is a very compelling plot. Aristotle said (in his Poetics) that this was the best tragedy ever.
Hm. Everyone knows what’s-his-name the annoying government guy has Anderton’s gun, right? It was confiscated as part of the evidence, I assume. So how is it that Anderton’s supposed to have gotten his gun back (without a fight, since WHN was perfectly tidy except for the bullet holes) and shot him?
Also, does anyone else find the eternal-damnation concept implied by the “prison” system disturbing? One wrong move and you’re gone forever. At least, that seemed to be the implication. They seemed to be treating murders like nuclear waste. They said early in the movie that everything but crimes of passion had pretty much stopped. I thought (do correct me if I’m wrong) that people who killed out of anger or grief weren’t very likely to do it again. So why the permanent cold storage? Also, isn’t that an inefficient and expensive way to handle criminals? And even if there’re fewer attempted murder, won’t they eventually run out of room?
This is all assuming that the cold storage is permanent. They never mentioned anything about release dates, so I assume it is.
I have an unrelated question about a minor point in the story.
When Anderton and Agatha enter the shopping mall in their escape, Agatha turns to a young Asian woman and says “He knows. Don’t go home.” I just assumed that we, the audience were supposed to guess what this warning was about. Perhaps the woman was having an affair that her husband found out about - something like that. Was there anything more to this encounter that I might have missed? It’s been nagging me.
I think it was implied that prisoners were to be stored as long as the experiment continued. After some decision was made about the permanence of Pre-Crime, i.e the vote, their ultimate fate would be decided. I haven’t read the source material, that is just my impression from one viewing of the film. If anything, I would expect arrests as a result of Pre-Crime to result in shorter prison sentences - a few years at most. Since no real harm was done, all they would have to do is prevent the immediate event. Any future attempts by the ex-con would be seen by the Pre-Cogs.
I assumed that she got a vision that “he” was waiting there to get violent with her, possibly to kill her, and since the pre-cogs couldn’t see anything right now, nobody would have known about it. I didn’t think there was anything more to it than that, plot-wise. Just a way to show that she can still “see” the future w/o the other two cogs and w/o that milk bath stuff.
My big issue is about the pre-cogs ability to determine murder. Murder, of course is not just killing someone it involves a whole host of other issues such a s intent or other extenuating circumstances. Murder is not a metaphysical concept itis a strictly legal one. Consider, for example if Anderton had killed Crowe. If the evidence could be brought out that he was set-up and theat Crowe actually wanted to die - an elaborate suicide. there is a very good chance John would not be convicted of murder, maybe manslaughter. Yet the system set up in the movie would have put John away for murder without any factual finding of such.
I still think my Minority Report/Oedipus theory has some validity. Another similarity is that both Oedipus/Cruise are public officials on a quest to avenge the death of their father/son respectively.
The whole drug-addict theme is a concrete symbol reminiscent of the fact that the tragic hero always has a fatal flaw, as in Oedipus.
But if that’s true, they don’t have to store them away for any length of time. That crime has been prevented. It won’t happen. The guy who was supposed to have killed Ann Lively must have been in there for at least five years. I didn’t see any indication that he was going to be released.
Hey guys, I went and saw the film a second time again last night - this time with different people so that I could get a different perspective. My observations…
(1) After having seen the film for the second time, at least one thing became clearer - at least in the context of the ‘seemingly vindictive’ doctor who performed the eye-surgery. It seems Mr Spielberg kinda slipped up here insofar as he didn’t make things quite clear enough. My friend who watched the film with me listend very carefully to the dialogue during that scene and it would appear that the doctor was actuall ‘grateful’ believe it or not for having been sent to prison. He explained that the experience allowed him to break free of his formely ‘wasteful ways’ and he had the opportunity to spend all the time he wanted studying in the prison library - which gave him the knowledge to work in a field he’d always wanted to work in - namely, opthamology.
(2) Product placement was/is everywhere in that film. Bulgari, Kawasaki, Nokia, Lexus, Pepsi - quite astonishing actually.
(3) In theory, the supply of precogs was indeed infinite. They could have produced more ‘pre cognitives’ by feeding the same ‘pre refined’ version of Neuroin to pregnant mothers and then putting the offspring through the same treatments that Dr Hinemann put the originals thru.
(4) Lamar Burgess did NOT need to murder Anne Levine - his only goal was to get her out of sight. He could have just as easily accomplished this by leaving her to slowly suffocate in an airtight container for example - which would have circumvented the metaphysical fabric arguement. The precogs would not have seen a slow drawn out death methinks due to something like that… indeed, it’s the one REALLY major plot flaw in the film. I personally would have far preferred to have seen the Whitworth character try to work out the Anne Lively link via this scenario - thereby discovering that John Anderton did not ‘kill’ Leo Crowe - thereby discovering that the system had a flaw and that all the ‘frozen criminals’ could be thawed out and vindicated. This variation on the plot would have elevated the film to masterpiece status methinks. The Lamar Burgess ‘murder’ was simply unnecessary and non realistic given Burgess’ knowledge of how the pre cogs worked. Spielberg spent so much time setting up Whitworth’s character as a ‘baddie’ - and to have ‘elevated’ him to a saviour would have been just mesmeric I reckon…
(5) I spent a lot of time pondering some of the earlier points in this thread DURING the film last night (thanks guys for the mental fodder) and in particular, the arguement regarding John Anderton committing a murder yes or no ONLY because he saw the pre cogs vision? Here’s my take on it… Lamar Burgess had set up the apartment with the ‘orgy of evidence’ weeks, maybe months earlier. His instructions to Leo Crowe were to visit the apartment occasionally but not live there and one day, expect to be killed… (a pretty shitty gig if you ask me but such is the power of money I guess). When Leo Crowe’s death was 36 hours away the pre cogs saw it coming - regardless of WHEN the death was calendar wise. THe only logical problem I have with this is the ‘red ball vs brown ball’ issue - that is, a brown ball indicated ‘pre meditation’ and if we are to accept that ‘pre meditation’ was OK for the plot to work, and that the pre meditation was actually Lamarr Burgess’s making, why did Lamar Burgess’s name not appear as the murderer, instead of John Anderton’s? A minor thing I know but one which leaves the film sufficiently flawed to bring it back from ‘masterpiece’ standard I feel.
(6) Lastly, a least significantly, from profile, Tom Cruise’s nose is getting REALLY big!
Wow, there are lots of questions in this thread, and I don’t have time to think about all of them. I’ll just tackle a couple right now.
Three possible answers:
1.) PreCrime has been around for six years, but we don’t know whether or not the red ball / brown ball system has used around for the entire time. Ann Lively’s murder might have happened before that system was put into place.
2.) When the technician deleted the “echo”, he also prevented any balls from being created.
3.) Von Sydow tampered with the system somehow.
Inside the temple, the precogs are kept on drugs that keep them in a permanent semi-asleep state. Perhaps once Anderton disconnects Agatha from the injection system and she regains full consciousness, she can control what aspects of the future she wants to look at.
And now my question. In the very last shot, we see two of the precogs playing chess. Wouldn’t a chess game be pretty boring if both players knew how it was going to end before it started?
I’m still not sure if I like this movie or not but
I believe the pre-crime system was shut down because the basic idea and basis of the system was that ‘the precogs are never wrong’. Agatha, the most talented of the three, tells Anderton that he has no minority report and that she did see him kill Crow. She also tells him that he still has choices and that the future is not fixed.
He can and does chooses not to kill.
Max Von Sydow chooses not to kill Anderton but kills himself.
I really liked the movie, but you know what would have been a much better ending? Don’t change a thing up until the conversation between Burgess and Anderton’s wife in Burgess’ office. When he makes the remark about Lively being drowned, don’t have Lara respond. Finish tying his tie, he leaves for his award, and she walks out of the building; cut to a brown mall with “Lara Anderton” dropping into the “Perpetrator” slot, fade to black. That ending would be way too dark for Spielberg, though.
Just saws this today, here’s my takes on several things:
Brown ball vs Red Ball: Anderton knows that he is going to commit a murder, but proceeds down the path toward that murder. So in a sense it is premeditated, even if he doesn’t know why.
Severe justice: PKD was paranoid and anti-goverment. He was “inspired” quite a bit by things like Nixon and Watergate. In his future this may be how the system ends up. Read Valis, The Man in the High Tower, etc as reference.
Young Asian woman in the mall: that was Lucy Liu in a cameo, wasn’t it?
Agatha predicting stuff like umbrellas and balloons: this was, in the end, part of the march toward the crime. So she may have already seen it in the tank, and if not, what goods a psychic if she can’t foresee an old guy and his coins?
On a topic not yet raised, I liked the kooky woman (Hinman?) that started the whole thing, and her fun little pets. I wonder if Carnivorousplant has seen this film?
Near the end, Cruise’s ex-wife threatens the jailkeeper with a gun to get him to release Cruise. By that time the pre-cogs were back and working, so why would he have felt threatened? If she tried to kill him, they would have stopped her.
She could have shot him in the knee.
My question is this:
In the temple scene, when cruise is kidnapping Agatha, why did the guy tell the cops to stop the chase because
Agatha is in the motel room so he must escape. If this is true than why do they bother trying to arrest him at all???
I thought so too, I said it in the theater but none of my friends commented.
**GenWoundwort **if she was pointing the gun at me, I’d have felt threatened, it’s amazing how much you can live through, especially being shot, ummm down there. Yeah, i meant the knee too of course.
Regarding the bathtub scene – am I the only cynic who thinks it may just have been for dramatic purposes? I saw it as an action scene to emphasise Cruise’s fugitive status, with the twist that he can’t just run/fight like he did before since he’s effectively blind.
I think there is a paradox in the Crow murder. The precogs are not able to predict the future that results from a person knowing their predictions. This is why there is a final choice if a person knows about the prediction. Anderton and Burgess make a choice because they know (or think they know) the prediction. If the precogs could predict the future that would result from someone knowing their prediction, then they would in fact never be wrong and would not have predicted the Crow murder or Anderton’s murder. So how could they possibly predict that Agatha would be in the room with Anderton? It makes sense that Anderton could still be set up to kill Crow, but it makes no sense that Agatha would be there, unless they are taking into account the reactions to their own prediction at the same time they are predicting, which they can’t do.
I want to see the movie again now, just to test the theory that the last 30 minutes are a dream. Anyone have an opinion on that? That would be a darker ending than you would expect, but then again they may just not expect anyone to get it. It would explain why they say the halos make you dream of the perfect life. Nothing about the system in the movie makes me think they would give their prisoners nice dreams, so that line now seems suspicious to me.
