Minority Report/Fridge

Fridge Brilliance

• Minority Report has a moment, or even an entire third act, of sheer brilliance when Anderton gets imprisoned. From that moment on, the entire film could well be an implanted dream. What else would you expect from a film based on a Phillip K. Dick story? - Jearle
• MEGA Brilliance moment, though spoiler-iffic; Big Bad Burgess gets away with murder by disguising it as an "echo" that Precogs occasionally see even after the murder is supposedly prevented. The reason Agatha believes Anderton doesn't have an alternate future is because Art and Dashiell saw the future where Anderton does kill Crow in a vengeful rage while she saw the less-likely yet remarkably-similar Suicide by Cop future, where Crow yanks Anderton's hand on his gun's trigger to get his family the bribe money. The observers couldn't tell the difference, and neither could she. And all three futures were a brown ball because even the two where Anderton kills Crow out of rage were were also premeditated by Burgess. And Burgess planned for Anderton to be present when the brown ball dropped, ensuring that he would either be arrested on-site or run. The only thing Burgess couldn't see coming was Anderton figuring out everything in time to tell it all to his wife, even if he wasn't free to act on the information himself.
• Why did Anderton's ball come out brown, the sign of a premeditated murder? As he stated, he didn't even know the guy! Because he wasn't the one who planned it.
  • Alternatively, it come out brown because it was premeditated, just not in the traditional. He may not have known the guy, but he probably thought about what he'd do to the person who took his son for a LONG time.
  • Further alternatively, it came out brown because upon seeing the precog's vision of the murder, he was aware that it would happen ahead of time. Any decision to go through with it would therefore have been influenced by that plan, resulting in premeditation.
    • It was premeditated, but the Precogs saw only the person who would commit the murder, not the person who planned it.