History Fridge / MinorityReport

[[AC:FridgeLogic]]
* A precog sees a crime happening, the police are sent in, and the suspects are... kept in some sort of stasis despite having either not committed the crime or being caught in the act, in ''clear violation'' of their 5th and 6th Amendment Rights? How many alternative ways of preventing a crime are there?
** They've been repealed.

** In the case of premeditated murders, could there have been some sort of psychological intervention to prevent the killer from even attempting the murder in the first place?
** In the case of crimes of passion, such as the attempted murder of a cheating woman and her lover at the beginning of the film, would marriage counseling be provided if there was time?
** In the case of the charges against Anderton, why weren't Anderton and Crow formally interrogated for any possible motives the former would have for killing the latter?
* The "Precrime" department are sent to arrest [[spoiler:Anderton]] AFTER [[spoiler:he's]] (supposedly) commited the crime. No longer in Precrime's jurisdiction, surely?
* Precrime makes the arrest and sends the precriminal to jail under the pretense that the future couldn't change from the psychic visions, that the precriminal was ''certain to commit the crime''... yet the moment they are arrested, the future has changed and the crime ''cannot happen.'' Time isn't quite so resistant to change, is it?

* Dr. Hineman's little demonstration with the moving vine has a double meaning. Her parting words to Anderton, and the vine's increasingly-violent struggles, suggest that any living creature's base instincts will always trump other concerns in a pinch. But Hineman herself is ''overriding'' her own instincts even as she says this, by deliberately gripping the vine until it rips her palm open in its efforts to escape being crushed. She's non-verbally showing us that human willpower can override drives that would otherwise be inevitable, and thereby hinting that [[spoiler: Anderton ''will'' have a choice about killing Crow, or Burgess.]]

** In the case of crimes of passion, such as the attempted murder of [[YourCheatingHeart a cheating woman and her lover at the beginning of the film]], would marriage counseling be provided if there was time?

* The "Precrime" department are sent to arrest Anderton AFTER he's (supposedly) commited the crime. No longer in Precrime's jurisdiction, surely?

** Even if there ''were'' enough other psychic children produced to allow Precrime to be expanded upon, that's horrific in ''two'' ways: it suggests that the drug that causes them was even more widely-abused than initially indicated, ''and'' it implies that, given that any additional hive-minds won't have an Agatha-caliber member, they might have to sync up ''dozens'' of hapless low-grade precogs for every new city the program would cover.

** Even if there ''were'' enough other psychic children produced to allow Precrime to be expanded upon, that's horrific in ''two'' ways: it suggests that the drug that causes them was even more widely-abused than initially implied, ''and'' it implies that, since any additional hive-minds won't have an Agatha-caliber member, they might have to sync up ''dozens'' of hapless low-grade precogs for every new city the program would cover.

[[AC:FridgeLogic]]
** Really the only problem with Precrime is the fact that Director Burgess murdered Anne Lively instead of taking it to the courts and leaving it in their hands if the woman should be given her daughter back. Outside of a very complicated coverup to murder Lively and the questionable treatment of the precogs, Precrime really ''does'' work.
** There is also the issue of just how rare minority reports actually are. Iris states that a Precrime suspect might have a possible alternate future in which they do ''not'' commit their ascribed murder, but adds that this happens only "every once in a while," and as Lamar points out towards the end of the film, the comparative rarity of that -- even when combined with the PoweredByAForsakenChild treatment of the Precogs -- is simply not relevant when weighed against the much, much more common occurrence of soon-to-be murderers who have no alternate futures and so are guaranteed to successfully murder their victims if Precrime doesn't intervene first. So, really, which is the smarter reaction: restructuring Precrime so that the police simply don't pursue a murder suspect when and if they're shown to have a possible alternate future? Or, as they do in the film, shutting ''the entire system'' down after that just because of a relatively small number of false positives?
** Also there is the CentralTheme of the [[Series/MinorityReport2015 2015]] SequelSeries - what steps should the government take to keep its citizens secure? What sacrifices are permissible? What is the suffering of three "[[TheyWouldCutYouUp genetic freaks]]" compared to the lives they could save if they were [[PoweredByAForsakenChild kept drugged and plugged into computers]]? What is [[LibertyOverProsperity forsaking privacy compared to a world without crime]]? Perhaps most importantly; once the government has that much power, ''who could stop it from doing anything else it wants?''