Minority Report

Continuity mistake: Lara, wife of John, seemingly has the ability to teleport. She goes from the building where the conference is being held, to the Pre-Crime building to jail break John, and then is back at the conference in the next scene. The time to go from the conference, as the antagonist is about to start his speech, to the pre-crime building, and back to the conference as his speech is ending, seems to break the continuity of time. (02:06:21)

Plot hole: Burgess was supposedly willing to commit murder to avoid losing one precog critical to the precrime effort. Indeed, the precogs are "offline" while Agatha is unavailable. But no system dependent on a key individual can last long or be scalable. At the banquet it is suggested precrime will somehow "go national." For that to happen there would need to be a way to create more precogs, which requires creating brain-damaged children of drug addicts.

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: Or, in the mean time since his project's success Burgess has been able to collect the funds and influences to actually breed precogs or some other form of procuring them. In whatever way possible as Burgess is not a moral or ethical man.

lionhead

Other mistake: At the beginning of the movie, we learn that the precogs "do not see what you intend to do, only what you will do" and that they cannot see suicides. At the end, Burgess intends to kill Anderton but does not go through with it; he commits suicide instead. Given these two facts, the precogs should not have seen Burgess' confrontation with Anderton at the end, and a red ball should not have been created.

Matty Blast

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: Burgess intention was in fact to kill Anderton, but the knowledge of the precogs predicting his murder attempt, the conflict inside his conscious, and the sound of the arriving helicopters made him change his mind at the last second, just like Anderton did in the apartment. The point is they have a choice, and having knowledge of that, only that, changes the future and makes it different from the visions.

lionhead

Continuity mistake: When we see the Leo Crow previsions for the first time, we see the numbers "9" and "6" backwards because we are seeing the previsions from behind the screen. But in the cyberparlor we see the previsions from the same side that Anderton and Riley are watching them, and the numbers are still backward.

Matty Blast

Continuity mistake: As Witwer tells Laura about John's apartment being full of drugs, she's sitting straight up with her hands at her sides, but in the next shot she has her legs crossed and her arm on the top of the painting. (01:10:20)

Piemanmoo

Iris Hineman: If the unintended consequences of a series of genetic mistakes and science gone haywire can be called 'invention', then yes, I invented Precrime. (00:57:50)

More quotes from Minority Report

Trivia: Paul Thomas Anderson, who directed Tom Cruise in Magnolia, has a cameo on the train. It is reported that he is so hard to find that Anderson himself does not know where he appears.

More trivia for Minority Report

Question: Why all the build up of John having sent the Russian eye-surgeon guy to jail, suggesting that he will hurt John; only to have him successfully complete the operation, and take care of John afterwards?

Nick N.

Answer: Because subverting the expectations of the viewer makes it more interesting. The audience (and potentially John) are set-up to expect bad things, which don't happen. Once the "bad thing" happened, the suspense would be gone and everyone could relax. Expecting something bad but knowing when it might happen maintains the tension.

Chosen answer: It's what's known as a McGuffin; a plot element that seems to be important when introduced, but serves no purpose other than to intrigue/distract the audience. The term was popularised by Alfred Hitchcock.

J I Cohen

That's not *quite* what a MacGuffin is. A MacGuffin not only seems important, it *is* important; in fact, one of its two diagnostic characteristics is that a MacGuffin is something around which the entire plot revolves. The other property fundamental to what makes something a MacGuffin is the fact that the origin, purpose, function, and, in some cases, even identity of the object is left either vague or completely undefined. The briefcase in Pulp Fiction is a classic example (although there *is* a compelling argument that the object in the briefcase is in fact a specific artifact).

Well, according to the doctor when the operation is beginning, the doctor reveals that in prison, he spent all of his time in the library, including books on medicine and technology. As a result, he found his "true calling", and is thankful to John for helping him see that.

More questions & answers from Minority Report

Join the mailing list

Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.