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.
lionhead
19th Jan 2023
Minority Report (2002)
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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.
31st Aug 2021
Minority Report (2002)
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.
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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.
29th Apr 2020
Minority Report (2002)
Plot hole: Lamar makes his crime look like a glitch. But the pre-cogs must show these two as two separate murders. And they should give two sets of wooden balls.
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Suggested correction: A ball is created when the precogs identifies the killer and victim. However they get their visions randomly and seperately, Agatha being the most powerful one but they have to work together to identify a victim and killer. They put visions together and eventually balls with names will appear. The pre-crime team, led by Anderton, then pieces the visions together to find the location and then go after it, that's all they do, technicians are the ones that bring the visions together for processing by the pre-crime team. The visions they got were seen as "echos" and disregarded before the precogs were able to identify the killer. If they had it would put Burgess as the perpetrator. But since it looked exactly the same as the previous one they didn't allow the precogs go futher into the visions and not put them together. Agatha did have the vision of Burgess but Burgess removed those vision from the system.
But the previous "one" was not a murder so it should not justify a vision (it was only a staging). The real murder is committed by Burgess and it was premeditated, so a brown ball with Burgess' name should have popped out.
The first murder is not a "staging." Quoted from the film: "all you'd have to do is hire someone to kill Ann Lively, someone like a drifter...someone with nothing to lose." Burgess hired someone to kill her so they do have the intention to commit murder, hence the vision. He knew it would be stopped the first time and then the second time would be seen as an "echo" of the vision of the murder that was stopped and erased before a ball is produced.
Staged may have indeed not been the right word. A blame murder or false flag murder may be a better term. Planned in order to point the finger at the wrong person for the murder in any case.
Even staged murders are put in visions, same with the one Burgess tried to set up Anderton with. If someone is killed, the precogs get visions, but they don't know the context (the biggest flaw with the system of course). The visions come before the balls and if the engineers think it is a echo they will discard those visions and prevent the precogs from identifying the victim and killer. If they had the time, indeed a brown ball would be formed. Remember that premeditated murders come much earlier to the precogs in vision than emotional ones, so that was the reason why those visions showed up so soon after the staged one, adding to the idea it was an echo, perfectly calculated by Burgess.
7th Sep 2019
Minority Report (2002)
Plot hole: Anderton getting to Crow pivoted on seeing the Precog visions of Anderton killing Crow. But it's a causal loop. How did it happen the first time without the vision? To top it off, Anderton had Agatha in the room. Later Burgess points our to Witwer that there are no signs of Precrime descending on him because the Precogs can't see him about to kill Witwer because of their separated condition. However, that's the exact same condition the Precogs were in when Anderton was supposed to shoot Crow...so how would it be seen in pre-vision?
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Suggested correction: The pre-vision of Anderton killing Crow happened before the Precogs were seperated, for Witwer's murder the pre-vision came too late. It's paradoxal but the fact there was a pre-vision of the Anderton-Crow murder, it was going to happen. But at the last second Anderton made a choice not to, something which the pre-cogs can't see as Agatha explained to him, the pre-visions are only 1 possible outcome of the future. Thats the flaw in the system.
21st Jun 2010
Minority Report (2002)
Plot hole: In the scene where Anderton is talking with Hineman, she says to him that "You will bring down the [Precrime] system yourself if you manage to kill your victim. That would be the most spectacular public display of how Precrime didn't work." Shouldn't she be saying "If you manage to not kill your victim"? (01:01:30)
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Suggested correction: Well, if Crow did die, then Precrime wouldn't have worked because the whole point is to stop murder from occurring at all.
Ether way it is a hit against precrime. If he does not kill Crow then it shows that the vision may not come true so you do not know if someone would really have killed someone else, outside situation like with the cheating wife at the start where they interrupted the murder. If Crow is murdered then it shows the system is flawed, which would not be as bad as the first as you would still be stopping a lot of the murders.
I can't tell if this reply is suggesting the correction is wrong or stating the line should be "not kill", making the mistake valid. By not killing the victim, that shows how Precrime is actually working and that knowing the future means you can alter it. If the murder occurs, it would weaken Precrime's stance and support that it can prevent crime.
No if he chooses not to kill Crowe then that means that the visions are just a version of the future, and thus not the actual future. So all the people with the halo on them are locked up wrongfully, as they may have decided not to do it like Anderton did, so the system collapses. That was the point, and it did. Hineman's remark is about the idea that precrime stops all murders, unless Andrton does manage to kill Crowe. The system then is flawed but like the previous commentor says, they still prevent most murders instead of all of them, which would count for something.
3rd Sep 2004
Minority Report (2002)
Corrected entry: When Lamar shoots Colin Farrell, where was a pre-cog ball?
Correction: It's explained quite clearly in the film - unless the three precogs are together, it doesn't work. As Agatha is away from the twins, off with Anderton, there's no precognition, so Lamar can kill Witwer without being picked up.
The question still remains though: why was there no pre-cog ball of Witwer's murder rolling, before Agatha was kidnapped by Anderton? Witwer's murder happened a few hours after Crowe's death, hence the pre-vision of Witwer's murder could have easily occurred a few hours after the pre-vision of Crowe's death.
The decision to murder Wither was not made until after Agatha was taken. As stated at the beginning of the film premeditated murder gives them more time to look at the visions and decode the information, crimes of passion only give them minutes.
Well yeah but they aren't attained only after the decision is made by the perpetrator. Anderton got his ball well before he even knew he would do anything. His ball came hours before the intended murder, so should Lamar's. I like this question.
But with Anderton there were events that lead to the murder that happened before he knew anything, like Burgess hiring Crow to be the victim. So somehow the Precogs pickup on that and created a ball. With Wither there was nothing before hand that would trigger the Precogs.
The PreCrime system works by the PreCogs scanning for people with the intent to kill and then determining details. Burgess' intent to murder Witwer came well after Agatha was disconnected, when he discovered that Witwer knew about the framing of Anderton. Therefore, there couldn't have been a ball, as the system was offline.
Correction: It's because Burgess' murder of Witwer would count as a red ball since he doesn't have any reason to murder Witwer until Witwer reveals he's getting too close to uncovering the truth. By the time the precogs would normally have foreseen such a murder (remembering the movie states red ball killings only have a few minutes worth of warning) Agatha has long since been removed from the equation so yes, it makes sense Witwer's death isn't picked up ahead of time.
19th Jul 2019
Minority Report (2002)
Plot hole: Burgess frames Anderton for Witwer's murder, using Anderton's gun in Anderton's house, but Anderton has an airtight alibi; at the same time as the murder, he was arriving at his ex-wife's home. His ex is even on the phone with Burgess, who asks if that's John arriving with Agatha.
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Suggested correction: This is all a matter of trust and knowledge. At this point the precogs aren't available so they don't know who killed Witwer, the word of Burgess is enough for the precrime team to believe it was Anderton, especially considering everything that was going on. All the precrime team wants is get Anderton and put the halo on him. There is no trial, no interrogation of witnesses. The team simply don't see Anderton can't have killed Witwer and they don't care as they no longer act as real cops anymore (only Witwer did). They might find out later, but Anderton's escape changed that possibility anyway. It's not a plot hole that things went as they went.
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