Minority Report
Minority Report mistake picture

Visible crew/equipment: When Lamar shoots Witwer it shows the the bullet's point of entry. Looking closely at his shirt, you can see the outline of the square/rectangular blood pack. (01:48:50)

Minority Report mistake picture

Continuity mistake: In the scene where Danny Witwer and Burgess are going over something that wasn't seen before, Danny's tie is loosely undone, but in the next shot it's perfectly done up. (01:54:50)

Visible crew/equipment: When Anderton visits his wife after the auto plant scene, the camera pans around the car and the camera operator is clearly seen in the reflection on the bumper. (01:57:05)

Continuity mistake: At the end of the film when John's wife is talking to Lamarr he says "I haven't worn this in years" and turns around, in the following shot he turns around again. (01:57:15)

The-Immortal

Continuity mistake: When Agatha is in Lara's bedroom, she talks about John and Lara's son Shawn. When John is sitting on the floor in the bedroom you can see his eyes have changed colors. First they are brown from the eye transplant, but the next shot of his head you can see his eye color is his real color. (02:00:00)

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)

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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.

Audio problem: When John Anderton's wife throws John's eyeball (stored in a clear plastic bag) onto Tim Blake Nelson's pipe organ, an ongoing organ note is heard, implying that the weight of the eyeball is depressing a key or two. We then see a shot of the eyeball resting on the organ's keys, none of which are depressed. (02:01:20)

Continuity mistake: When Anderton is finally caught at Lara's place, we see a shot (from behind Anderton) of the precop resting the top of the halo on the back of Anderton's head. In the next shot, the halo is rested onto his head again. (02:02:00)

Matty Blast

Continuity mistake: Lara, wife of John, seemingly has the ability to teleport. She goes from the building where the conference is being held, to the Pre-Crime building to jail break John, and then is back at the conference in the next scene. The time to go from the conference, as the antagonist is about to start his speech, to the pre-crime building, and back to the conference as his speech is ending, seems to break the continuity of time. (02:06:21)

Character mistake: Near the end of the movie, John's wife calls one of his colleagues and says, "Jad, it's Laura, John needs a favour." Her character's name is Lara. (02:08:30)

Continuity mistake: In the final scene of the movie, as the camera pulls back from the cabin where the three pre-cogs were taken after leaving the Temple, there is a tractor to the left of the cabin. Between the tractor and the cabin is a small bush that is moving like it is being blown by a strong wind. However, the smoke coming from the cabin is more or less rising straight up into the air. In fact, it is drifting a little to the right while the bush is being blown to the left by the helicopter which has the camera. (02:18:25)

Factual error: The time period of the movie is 2054. There is an election day (April 22nd) that is on a billboard and then announced as a Tuesday. However, April 22nd, 2054 is actually on a Wednesday.

Video

Continuity mistake: When Anderton first starts getting chased, he kicks the glass out of the back side of the automated car. He then proceeds to climb on the top of it at which point the car then goes over a cliff leaving Anderton hanging from it. He then climbs onto the back side of the car (as this is not the top) and the glass is present again.

Plot hole: It's good to know that in the future we will be able to simply walk inside a car factory (without anybody working, neither employees, security people, or an automated protection system), get inside a brand new car and just drive away...

Continuity mistake: During the jet pack escape scene, we see Anderton scaling the side of a building followed by a group of precrime officers who fly up to catch him. When Anderton jumps and catches the officer directly below him, we cut a shot of the pair falling directly towards the camera. If you look to either side of them, you'll notice that all the other officers - including the one hanging from the rail without a jet-pack - have disappeared.

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.

Cubs Fan

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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.

lionhead

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.

lionhead

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.

lionhead

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.

lionhead

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.

lionhead

Factual error: When they are given the Federal Agent a tour of Pre Crime in the beginning, they say that the victim ball appears on the left and the perpetrator on the right. Yet later in the movie, when Leo Crowe's murder is revealed, Anderton picks up his own ball (the perpetrator's ball) from the slot on the left. If he had wanted to pick up the correct ball, he would have grabbed the one on the right.

Visible crew/equipment: When John and Agatha come to Rufus T Riley's place there is a low camera view of them walking through a doorway as Rufus starts saying about Anderton getting 'a little jerky for himself'. To the left of the doorway the crew are reflected going backwards filming the action.

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

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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)

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Question: There's a quote that I don't understand: "The fact that you prevented it from happening doesn't change the fact that it was going to happen." I immediately thought, "Yes, it does change the fact that it was going to happen." If Witwer hadn't put his hand there, it would have happened. However, he did, thus "changing the fact that it was going to happen," right? Isn't this the point of the whole movie: determinism is foolish and that different actions produce different consequences?

Answer: No, he didn't change the fact that it was going to happen. He prevented it from happening. But until he stopped it, it was going to happen. And no matter how many times you look back at that sequence, it was going to happen. Up until a point, it was going to happen. It was just prevented.

Garlonuss

Answer: The statement involves the idea of arresting people who did not commit the crime yet but are going to. Until the precogs tell someone to change things, the idea is that it will happen. If Anderton had rolled the ball and the other guy was not watching, it was going to fall. The only way to change it would have been for Anderton to say something. Things will happen unless the future is changed. Ultimately the idea is proven sketchy at the end at best.

oldbaldyone

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