Why does PreCrime's machine report murders by carving names onto wooden balls?
When the precogs predict a murder, the machine in PreCrime carves the names of the murderer on a red wooden ball and the victim on another red wooden ball. What is the point of this? I see a lot of downsides:
- The process takes a while, which given that reported murders are imminent and every second counts, seems like a problem
- You can't store them very easily for record keeping
- The balls are identical except the names, so if you drop them, you could mix up the two and arrest the victim
Given all this, why does the PreCrime machine report its murders through carving names on wooden balls, instead of just displaying them on a screen or printing out a sheet of paper? I know that someone says a screen could be faked, but I find that to be a dumb explanation given that an engraving machine is basically a glorified printer (so why not use that and just have special watermarked paper or something)?
Best Answer
Because its a poorly thought out aspect of a beta project intended to impress politicians into expanding Pre-Crime nationwide. Murder is seen as an epidemic around the country, and this program is seen as the cure for it. The wooden balls are a decorative touch intended to be decorative and impress, not be completely practical.
But I believe they also justified it as each ball being unique, and unable to be duplicated or counterfeited. The wood provides a unique fingerprint for each report. From a draft script:
INT. PRECRIME ANALYTICAL ROOM - DAY
As Jad, Fletcher and Knott show Witwer one of the wooden "eggs". All of them now chewing gum, friendly with Witwer.
FLETCHER: The information we need is embedded in the grain of wood. And since each piece is unique, the shape and grain is impossible to duplicate.
Pictures about "Why does PreCrime's machine report murders by carving names onto wooden balls?"
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Lamar killed Anne Lively for the same reason that he later set up John to murder Leo Crow - in order to protect Precrime.What is an echo in Minority Report?
An echo event: a pre-cog re-sees an already seen vision. It can happen at the group level when, for example, all 3 precogs re-see Howard Marks' murders. It can also happen at the individual level when Agatha re-sees Burgess's murder of Anna Lively.What is a precog in Minority Report?
Three mutants, known as precogs, have precognitive abilities they can use to see up to two weeks into the future. The precogs are strapped into machines, nonsensically babbling as a computer listens and converts this gibberish into predictions of the future.Pre-Crime will Blow Your Mind | The Edge
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