Minority Report is a fantastic movie that everybody must rush to go see twice. It melds Spielberg’s knack for movie magic with riveting science fiction, and pays plenty of tributes to previous science fiction classics. And finally a director has managed to create a blockbuster movie with a wholly convincing future world that does NOT look like a Blade Runner clone–unlike most other recent science fiction, including Attack of the Clones and The Fifth Element. A big influence is A Clockwork Orange: look for such details as the eye operation and the drunk in the hallway–but also in the dystopian aspects of the society that is portrayed.

The plot is complicated, and Kim has rightly pointed out a problem that I haven’t found a satisfying answer for in the newsgroups, though others there have noted it. Spoilers follow, so please see the movie first…

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Pre-cogs can see murders that will happen in the future unless they are prevented by the pre-crime police. One way to make a pre-cog see a future murder is to hire an assassin–as with the ploy to kill Agatha’s mother. But the way in which John Anderton is set up doesn’t seem to fit this requirement. All we have is a paradox, because it is not enough to hire somebody to wait to be killed–this is not sufficient cause for a murder to happen: the intended murderer–Anderton–only starts the chain of events when he sees himself in the pre-cog’s vision. Director Burgess does not appear to have any control as to whether the pre-cogs see this particular future and show it to Anderton–and so he gets set up–or see a future in which Anderton does nothing, in which case nothing would have happened and there would not have been a setup.

Is all that Burgess does hire a murder victim? That to me seems insufficient to propel the plot. But perhaps I’ve missed something, and I need a second viewing. In the newsgroups, some argued that indeed this is enough. Others noted the special aspects of a future that is perceived by a intended perpetrator–in other words, only in Anderton’s case was it sufficient to merely hire an intended victim, because he has access to futures, including his own, and is in a unique position to act on this pre-cognition. Burgess would know this.

My own theory is that Agatha is much more of a plot driver than we are let on. She shows the stored memory of her mother’s murder to Anderton in order to set him on a path to solving it. Part of this process involves Burgess trying to derail him, and in doing so he is shown to be the villain, and the murder of Agatha’s mother is solved. There are still some loose ends here, but I will go see the movie again and check if this interpretation stands up to scrutiny.

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