Sunday Morning

I doubt the ending is a dream either.

I liked the film a lot, but I have problems with the holes in it.

Like why wouldn't they have leo crow's hotel room staked out?
They knew he was the intended victim, and that john would eventually end up there. I know it was a setup, but the authorities would still follow that procedure at least.

Maybe I am missing something.

collven

Remember, the cops had no idea who Leo Crow was and they couldn't find his apartment in time.

dhmac

Correct, staking out Leo Crow's room wasn't a plot hole because Danny Witwer (Colin Farrell) and the Pre-crime personnel were working very hard to find out the location in which the murder was supposed to take place. If they did find it in time, though, it would've ruined the whole frame-up against John Anderton (Tom Cruise). And given that the Pre-crime Unit had found every other pre-crime scene since the system was put in place, it makes the frame-up look like a one in a million shot to succeed. In that sense, the whole frame-up was a bit of a stretch, plotwise.

What I think is a huge plot hole, though, is the missing wooden ball. Even though Lamar Burgess (Max von Sydow) carefully planned killing Agatha's mother so that it looked like a previous murder, a wooden ball with his name on it should've been rolling down that Pre-crime device. (That is, unless there is a good way to explain the lack of this wooden ball.)

Geofferson

I agree that there are some plot holes in this film. However, I watched this for the 3rd time the other night and am simply amazed by the 'look' of it. As a film presented as a visual medium, this is one of the finest examples of that to date, IMO.

mikehunt

this came up whiel I was reading the thread


I watched part of the movie today before going out. from what I remember of the ending I don't think it was a dream.
I'm amazed something like pre-crime was ever allowed to exist in the US though, that's a scary thought
plus, were they going to go national with just the 3 precogs? how would they increase their range? or were they going to try to make more precogs?

Sunday Morning

It just seemed pretty silly to me that in the future, with all this advancement and knowing the murdered persons name, they couldnt find him before john could. It looked like he was living in a hotel room.

fumanstan

Did you see the hotel building that he was in? There was a whole row of them, all looking alike. Notice how close John was to missing the crime at the beginning of the movie? It's just like that. Plus, they spent a lot of time trying to catch John himself, not find the place of the murder.

Blade

They mention a number of times that the techs look out for "echos" and erase them. Presumably before the ball gets made. Not spelled out, but, I think, a reasonable explanation.

Blade

I disagree, not only was it established that they couldn't find Leo Crow through normal means, Anderton was their best pre-crime investigator. The openning scene established this pretty well, as well as how difficult it can be to find the location of a murder. And as already mentioned, they were focusing on finding Anderton.

Also, I believe this is pretty near-future stuff.

darkflounder

I'd have to disagree with the Brazil-esque dream ending. I think it all happened as shown on screen.

Spielburg isn't that good of a storyteller.

Calculon

This is probably just sloppiness on Speilberg's part. The guard's dialogue is likely the remnant of an earlier screenplay draft, which must have included the twist ending. Speilberg apparently chose to go with a more conventional finish -- one that is riddled with numerous plot holes -- and kept the references to the prisoner's dreams out of convenience.

I gather from the early Department of Containment scene that the pre-cog visions were repeatedly replayed in the minds of the prisoners in an effort to reabilitate them. "Busy, busy, busy." So, if anything, Anderton would be forced to re-live the Leo Crow pre-vision over and over.

I don't think the entire debacle is deliberate (like the unicorn in Blade Runner). It would be interesting to hear Speilberg's or the screenwriter's thoughts on this. Maybe I should check out the commentary on the DVD... (D'oh! )

ScandalUMD

If all of Anderton's dreams came true, he'd have gotten his kid back. Also, the dismantling of Precrime is not necessarily what Anderton would want. He believes fundamentally in the system, and it's clearly saved a lot of lives.

I really don't think this interpretation is at all suggested by the movie.

RoyalTea

that's what I thought too, but at the end he's back with Lara and she's pregnant. perhaps she's pregnant with sean?

Numanoid

I could easily argue aganist this. Perhaps Anderton's subconscious figured it all out, post-halo. Quite likely...the subconscious usually gets the jump on the conscious. Or, the reality (unseen to us) is totally different than what we see (Anderton's dream). Maybe the old man's covering something else up. Maybe the Anne Lively murder is just what Anderton uses to appease himself as it gives him a villain and a resolution.

After A.I., and the completely misunderstood "happy ending" of that film, I'm willing to give this the benefit of the doubt and explore the possibilities. At least it will make for another interesting viewing.

Thanks CitizenKaneRBud!

ScandalUMD

You tend to underestimate Spielberg. While he tends to be emotionally manipulative, he has the ability to raise subtle intellectual questions. "Minority Report" is less a sci-fi flick than a hypothetical situation from which to examine a philosophical dilemma.

Spielberg makes the case for Precrime at the beginning of the film. Anderton makes the same case for the inevitability of the events which Precrime works to prevent.

The strength of the movie is that Spielberg does not judge Precrime. While some critics and viewers saw Spielberg's Washington as an Orwellian dystopia, the film is much more complex than that.

Anderton suffered every parent's worst nightmare, and Precrime is a system that could stop things like that from happening. And it was a system that was very effective.

Given 50 years of population growth, a system that could stop every murder in Washington for 6 years would have saved thousands of lives. The complication is that there are heavy costs associated with that system.

There are widely accepted philosophies such as utilitarianism that would find Lamar's actions justifiable, while others, such as the categorical imperative, would label them unconscionable.

Further complicating the issue is the question of how to treat these would-be murderers who are stopped by Precrime, especially given the occurence of the "minority reports." The issues the movie raises are fascinating, and certainly much more interesting than some sort of warmed over variation of "it was all a dream."

Groucho

What's with interpreting every movie as "it was all a dream" lately? First Signs, now Minority Report. What's next, The Hot Chick?

ScandalUMD

Well, she had long hair in his flashback at the beginning, and she has the short haircut at the en.

Also, they're in his apartment. As I understood it, they'd lived in the cottage, and he got the apartment when they divorced but that wasn't clear.

I think if Spielberg had meant for that to be an interpretation, he would have made it more intuitive.

As it appears, the most apparent conclusion is that they got back together and she got pregnant again.

Numanoid

I advise you to never attempt to analyze a David Lynch film.

p.s. The Hot Chick is clearly a nightmare.

Sunday Morning

that one falls more under the category of nightmare i hear.

TCG

I believe or wanna believe it IS a dream.

1. Spielberg is wrongly accused of making happy endings. His endings are not sad, but many are relatively ambiguous.
i.e. Jaws: Shaw gets eaten!, and the two guys swim back.
Close Encounters: Neary leaves his entire family behind for a completely mysterious trip.
ROTLA: Indy & girl are unsuccessful in finding the ark again, and the government puts it into eternal storage.
E.T.: E.T. leaves forever! How happy is that?
SPR: A very sad ending, IMO.
A.I.: Also very ambiguous.

2. The prison operator mentioning that all their dreams come true - right before his dream starts - is TOO coincidental, seeing that everything wraps up nicely. TOO nicely, even for Spielberg.

3. The island where the precogs live looks like it could be the same beach where Sean was practicing running. Anderton has the memory of it (good memories at that), so he would want the precogs to live there. Look closely.

4. Re: Blade's post
Yes, Anderton did not KNOW that Burgess was guilty. But he did find out on his journey that someone was hiding the minority reports, so obviously Burgess would have the most to lose if it became public.
He also discovered Crow was an impostor! Anderton then KNEW someone was setting him up.
Anderton also saw the flaws of the system, and hence began to sympathize with Witmore.
Anderton must have wondered why one murder (Lively) was so important to the precog. It makes sense that it is someone Agatha knew and that it deeply affected her.
All these clues could easily lead Anderton to think Burgess of being the evil mastermind.
His mind may have easily seen, and then dreamed the connection.

That's it for now.

zekeburger1979

I want to believe that the ending is all a dream except for one line.

Lamar tells Lara that they found John's gun at his apartment with Danny's body. Since John had no idea where Danny is when he is arrested, he wouldn't think in deep sleep that Lamar tells Lara the location of the gun.

This one line makes me believe that everything that happens after John gets haloed is true.

Blade

I originally argued this (note, I was relaying the gist of this same conversation on another forum) but it was pointed out to me that at no time during the movie did Anderton ever have a reason to doubt Burgess.

We know it was him because we saw Burgess kill Whitmore. The characters in the movie know only because of Burgess' slip up with Lara. The only way Anderton could know this is by Lara telling him after breaking him out of "jail."

TCG, if I remember correctly, Anderton was interupted before he could completely review Agatha's minority report on the Lively case. So again, he has no reason to suspect someone who has been a trusted mentor and father figure in his life since the traumatizing death of his son.

Knowing this, how is it that in Anderton's supposed "Dream," the minority report of Lively's death projected on the screens in the banquet hall so closely matches what we (as the audience) know to be true?

Moreover, there's no reason to make the end a dream sequence. Yes it's a clever idea, but all it does is make the previous 2 hours of the movie a waste of time...having the end of the movie be all a dream would be an enourmous and pointless cheating of the audience.

Finally, the end of Minority Report is plenty ambiguous without it being a dream sequence... ScandalUMD makes some excellent points and I think making the ending out to be a dream detracts from the impact of the ideas that Spielberg is putting forth with this movie.

Jocko6577

I finally saw this movie on DVD, although I really wanted to see it in the theaters. I was more interested in it being it was adapted from a short story of Phillip K Dick's. The movie had many holes, which is irritating when trying to do a movie of this nature. You would think the filmmaker would try to go through it all and clear these up preproduction. The biggest flaw in my opinion is that the Precogs would have made brown balls rather than red ones for Max van Sydow's character killing the woman. The fact that he planned the whole thing with hiring someone to kill her and then to kill her himself. It was premeditated, which would have sent out a brown ball much earlier and wouldn't have been an "echo". This was infuriating to me. The problem with many movies of this nature is that they don't follow their own "RULES". I have no problem with a futuristic movie making outrageous rules, but they must follow them. When they don't, it is a huge disappointment. The beginning of the movie was interesting, but once it broke it's own rules I lost all interest.

ScandalUMD

These are weak connections at best, and arrived at through extrapolations and mental contortions not evidenced in the film.

Total Recall, on the other hand, draws attention to its ambiguity. If indeed, it was a dream, all the material outside of Anderton's perspective and experience should not be included, since his dream would not include any exchanges outside of his experience or perspective.

Yet, when Lara confronts Burgess, the exchange is clearly seen from Lara's perspective, and when Anderton confronts Burgess over the phone, we see this exchange from Burgess's perspective rather than Anderton's.

While "it was all a dream" may be "darker," than the obvious interpretation, I don't think it would be a better ending. The central concept which the movie is built around is the validity of Precrime, which the movie never quite judges. Early in the movie, Danny speaks about the potential for flaws in the system based on human error, and this proves indeed to be the only flaw evidenced.

Thus, the dismantling of Precrime is ambiguous in and of itself, and is much more challenging than the alternative "Total Recall" conceit, which I tend to view as something of a cliche.

DigIt

While these films may leave some people with mixed emotions -- they are all happy endings; perhaps the word you're looking for is "bittersweet" -- they are certainly not ambiguous endings. The shark dies, the alien goes home, the ark gets recovered, etc.

I think someone could have potentially made an ambiguous ending to MR, but Spielberg clearly did not. It has the same old (disappointing) happy ending. Albeit MR was a very good film.