Response to a Prior post

Rating: 10/10 (22 June 2002)

In response to another's comments:
"First of all, the foundation of the movie lies on the issue of the Pre-Crime department operating solely within the District of Columbia...riddle me this, Batman - how is it the Pre-Cogs ONLY have information about future murders only in DC?"

There is a line in the film that suggest their pre-cognative abilties are limited to a specific geographic radius from their own person. Someone says they can't believe anyone would contemplate commiting a murder within 200 miles - I took that to mean the pre-cogs would key in on anything within that radius. !!POTENTIAL MINOR SPOILER ALERT!! As for the final shot, well, it suggests that to get away from their visions they need to be far from civilization and other people, far enough away so as not to be troubled by their visions of future murders. !!END SPOILER!!

In the original story the Dept. of Pre-Crime is already a national program.
"it has been expected as part of the project that it would be expanded to a national project - yet the selection of the Pre-Cogs was shown to be a singular, non-recurrent event."

Is it singular and non-recurrent? Presumably you could have more pre-cogs born due to that drug being abused, and then train them. I might be wrong, but wasn't Tom's character addicted to the same drug that caused the pre-cog mutation? If he's addicted, then no doubt others are, too.

"Wouldn't the recruitment of more Pre-Cogs be needed? But the movie makes it clear that would be impossible."

Another potentially chilling aspect to the project is that these pre-cogs might have to be "farmed." Keep some women addicted to that drug, artificially inseminate them then raise and train the kids over the years. You'd need a large pool of "talent" because the process is so dangerous so that's a lot of women being kept to breed these kids. (or maybe just paid off). Even if you don't extrapolate this out so far, the whole notion that the project requires children born from mothers who are addicted to an illegal drug give it a very "Phil K. Dickian" moral taint. The notion of presumably benevelont institutions secretly addicting innocent people to drugs to further their own ends actually happens in at least one of Dick's novels, "A Scanner Darkly."

"Another key scene in the movie is Anderton returning to the Pre-Crime Laboratory in order to extract Agatha's hidden Minority Report - this after having been revealed as the perpetrator of a future murder and on the run from the Pre-Crime unit. Admission to the Pre-Crime unit is secured by, among other things, a retinal scan of the person's eyes, so Cruise remembers to bring his previously extracted eyeballs with him"
I'll concede that this was a bit of a problem, then again there wasn't much time for a security alert be be caused by his eyeball scan, and he clearly had his escape plan worked out in advance. Still, why was he not locked out of the system? In the original short story, when he goes back to examine the Minority Report, he is let in through security by one of his loyal former employees. There were hints, but not nearly overt enough, that some of his former employees might have given some help (that one particular black woman who clearly didn't believe his guilt). I get the feeling a scene may have been cut that helped better explain this.
"(fortunately there is no such thing as decomposition [of his eyes] in the future)."
The eyes were out of his head for less then a day by that point and had been kept on ice for much of that time, you might recall. They wouldn't have decomposed much, if at all. Actually, it wasn't a retinal scan but an iris scan the computers were doing, if I recall. So long as the pattern of irises are intact the scan would work.
"Didn't it occur to him to just STAY THE HELL AWAY from Les Crow??? He is even told to do so several times in the movie yet for reasons unexplained continues to pursue this person - HUH???????"
If he DOESN'T face Les Crow he's totally screwed. If he doesn't find Crow, his only link to possibly finding out who is framing him, he'll never prove his innocence. It's implicit that the future CAN be changed - they stop murders from happening all the time as it is, that's their job. What it doesn't change is his assumed guilt before the fact - the potential murderers they stop are still convicted as if they were guilty of murder. His only way to prove he will not commit this murder is to go to the scene of the future crime, at the appointed time, and then not commit said crime.