Was there a Minority Report for John Anderton?

Question

In Agatha's vision we see that John kills Crow soon after saying "Goodbye Crow", which does happen later.

However, it does not happen at the time that Agatha's vision predicts. We see that John does not kill Crow until after the timer stops.

Does it mean that John had a Minority Report?

However later When John shoots Crow, it was exactly like the vision where John says "Goodbye Crow".

Does that mean that Agatha predicted the murder but somehow failed to predict the time correctly?

We also see that when John does not kill Crow till the timer stops, even Agatha calmed down.

Does it mean that even John did have a Minority Report but it was so similar to the original one that it even managed to confuse Agatha?

Answer 1

It was answered in the movie that he didn't actually have a Minority Report.

From the script:

ANDERTON
Is there a Minority Report?
She just looks at him. A what?
ANDERTON
An alternate future. Do I have one?
She looks at where the images were projected a moment ago.
AGATHA
No.

It is because John saw his future that he was able to change it.

ANDERTON
I can't leave. You said so yourself, there is no Minority Report. I don't have an alternative future.
AGATHA
But you still have a choice. The others never had a chance to see their future. You did.

Crow shooting himself is passion based, not premeditated. Had all three pre-cogs been in place, they might have detected it with a brown ball, although, do the pre-cogs detect suicide?

Answer 2

The movie pretty clearly states that he does not have a minority report. This is quite different from the short story where it turns out that all three precogs see a slightly different version of events (each produces a minority report). The minority report of the film turns out to be a MacGuffin.

I think the timer discrepancy in the film is actually permissible given that the precogs ultimately prove to be flawed. Lamar Burgess proved the flaw when he fooled the system by murdering Ann Lively in the early days of Precrime; that he has gotten away with this murder all these years shows the system was flawed all along. What the precogs see does not necessarily come to pass, or, at least, our knowledge of the future allows us to alter its very existence; Agatha herself convinces Anderton of this.

These flaws, including your timer discrepancy, end up lead to the dissolution of Precrime in the film. In the short story, however, Anderton's actions ultimately lead to the preservation of the Precrime system (he commits a murder to hide the existence of a minority report where he does not actually commit the murder). The two versions have very different messages, I would say.

Answer 3

John doesn't have a minority report per se. John asks if he has a minority report. He doesn't. There is no formally flagged disagreement or different point of view between the precogs, which would constitute a minority report. But John doesn't change his destiny or report, he fulfills it and the interpretation is wrong. It's a false positive like danny whitwer was talking about.

John doesn't shoot Crow. Crow had pressed the gun in to his own abdomen and pulled the trigger himself. As John steps away, the events or images from the prevision play out exactly as they were seen before, and they give the appearance that John killed Crow. Agatha wasn't wrong about her prediction, and indeed John didn't change anything. He fulfills the prevision by actually going to where it is supposed to happen, he does for a bit have the intention of killing Crow (this sort of trauma is what sparks the prevision), chooses not to and then appears to have killed him. The prediction was correct but the interpretation - that it's a murder - was incorrect. We don't see the whole picture from the prevision. John chooses not to Kill crow and Crow takes his own life all during the same traumatic event, thus making it seem to the precogs that he committed the crime.

This is exactly what Danny Whitwer was talking about when asking if they ever got any false positives. To paraphrase the "mother" of precrime, "the precogs are never wrong. However, they do sometimes disagree" They sometimes see things from different perspectives. That's called a minority report - but John and perhaps others only ever appeared to have killed a person when in reality they didn't go through with it.

So whether those wearing halos have a minority report out there where we have discrepancies or the precogs merely assume it's a murder because of an incomplete picture and it's violent nature, the whole program is fatally flawed.