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.

Minority Report trivia picture

Trivia: On the "subway" train, the man holding the USA Today paper is Cameron Crowe, and the woman in the seat behind him on his left is Cameron Diaz. Because "Vanilla Sky" and "Minority Report" were so close in shooting, the two directors (Crowe and Spielberg) agreed to put themselves as cameos in each other's films. (00:46:10)

Trivia: The flames in the fire at the end of the film when the camera pans out of the cottage are in the shape of AI, Speilberg's previous film!

Trivia: The author has given the three pre-cogs the first names of famous crime writers: Agatha (Christie), Dashiell (Hammett) and (Sir) Arthur (Conan Doyle).

Trivia: When Anderton moves down the hallway with all of the advertisements, you can hear one ad say "Move the old fashioned way, with Century 21."

Piemanmoo

Trivia: When the cops leave the mall the sign behind them says "see what others don't". The cops didn't see John behind the balloons.

Piemanmoo

Trivia: When John takes Agatha from PreCrime, Colin Farrell asks how much time do they have before John commits his murder, he is answered "51 minutes and 28 seconds", the time remaining until the end of the movie.

Malaver

Trivia: The man that is being told "You're the man!" in the club that John takes Agatha to is Scott Frank, the writer of the movie.

Trivia: On the DVD extras, the sound designer for Minority Report explains that he stuck a contact mike on his fancy new washing machine to obtain the sound samples that became the sounds made by the maglev cars. In the scene where maglev cars race down the side of a skyscraper, when Anderton is standing on one end of his maglev car, so that it is now carrying an unbalanced load, you can hear the EXACT unmodified noise of a washing machine when it has an unbalanced load. (00:44:32)

Trivia: The guy that plays the hotel clerk, the one that Anderton pulls the gun on in order to see the registration on the computer, is really Tom Cruise's cousin. He is best known for his role as the killer in "In The Bedroom".

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Mistakes

Plot hole: Anderton's wife gains entry into the jailhouse using her husband's eyeball - but he's already locked up inside, so his eye would not still have access to enter as it pleased. Any place anywhere that would have any sort of security system requiring anything from a simple passcode to a card key to a retinal scan, would immediately delete the user in such instances from all rights. And would also certainly report on any attempted use of such (retinal scan, pass code, whatever). (02:00:45)

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

Suggested correction: I thought that this was a mistake as soon as I saw it on screen, but reconsidered. It's perfectly possible that there was some, probably human caused, delay in updating the security system. After all, there wasn't a rush to do it since they already had the chief on ice. Maybe the sleep jail was still on a legacy system without automatic updating. Just assuming that in the near future that all systems are all perfectly integrated and instantaneous does not validate this as a mistake.

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Quotes

Dr. Iris Hineman: Sometimes, in order to see the light, you have to risk the dark.

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Questions

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.

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