Badmovies.org Forum

I know I'm a little behind, but I just watched Minority Report the other day. My opinion? The special effects were good...  (Some spoilers may follow)

I thought the whole idea of pre-crime was very poorly thought out. If the whole program depends on these three psychics, then what would they have done if one of them died? The whole system came to a screeching halt when Cruise kidnapped the woman, so they obviously didn't have any kind of backup plan. Which means that the program only had a limited lifespan anyway. They also say that there hadn't been a single murder since the pre-crime program started, but how is that possible? Are we expected to believe that Cruise and his team figured out the scene of every single murder that was about to take place, in time to prevent it? What if two murders were going to take place at almost exactly the same time, could they figure out both?

As for the rest of the movie, why is it that every big budget movie set in the future has to make everything needlessly complicated? I know they want to put a lot of special effects on the screen, but it seems like they don't put any thought into whether what they're showing makes sense or not. For example;

Clear glass used for computer screens - Sure it looks impressive, but what kind of a moron would design a transparent display that allows whatever is behind it to show through? How can cops search for important clues on a display where you can see people walking by in the background?

Controlling a computer with hand motions - How would this be either more accurate or easier to use than a touch screen? Instead of touching controls, you have to stand in front of a screen and perform complicated hand gestures, hoping that you're pointing at the right part of the computer screen so that it analyzes the video rather than ordering a pizza.

Cars that travel vertically up and down buildings - Since there didn't seem to be any tracks to hold the cars in place, I have to assume that some artificial force like electro-magnetism is used to keep them from falling. What happens if there's a power failure? Even if the power source is contained in the cars themselves, what happens if one car fails? It could hit other cars and start a chain reaction of dozens of cars falling off a building. Does this seem like a really stupid system to anyone else?

The ferris wheel thing in the back of the flying police vehicles - The ship lands, the back opens and the ferris wheel deposits them on the ground two at a time. WHY? Who would think that this would make more sense than just having the cops run out the back when the door opens?

Sick-Sticks - What police force would want a weapon that causes a suspect to puke on them?

Finally, can someone please explain to me why, when today's DVD's and HDTV are striving for clearer, sharper images, the video of the future seems to be grainy, static-y, and prone to glitches? I'm not even talking about the psychic visions, none of the other video shown in the movie looked very good either. I've seen this in many movies, a person will activate a futuristic computer and the picture is a flickering, jumping image with bad colors that you hardly make out anything from. This is considered progress?

Most of the technologies you point out have already shown up in other work so..whether they're smart or not, it's not really "Minority Report"'s fault.

Some things show up often enough that they become taken for granted so that a new work neither needs to explain them not defend them.

>Most of the technologies you point out have already shown up in other work
>so..whether they're smart or not, it's not really "Minority Report"'s fault.

True, I just wish the writers/producers/whomever would put a little thought into what they're showing.