Jun 28, 2002 By Scripps Howard News Service 5 min read

The makers of “Minority Report” probably spent much of last weekend wishing they had some Pre-Cogs on the payroll to foresee the movie’s box-office performance. (If you have seen the movie, you know what a Pre-Cog is; if not, keep reading, and we’ll fill you in.) Everyone had to wait until Monday afternoon to find out whether Steven Spielberg’s futuristic thriller or the animated feature “Lilo & Stitch” would triumph. The future squeaked ahead to win the No. 1 spot for “Minority Report,” which pulled in $35.7 million at the box office in its opening weekend. “Lilo & Stitch” landed No. 2 with $35.3 million.

Besides the major impact at the box office, “Minority Report” is also likely to have an impact on our vision of the future itself.

Spielberg looked ahead with the help of scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as well as special-effects wizards (including a group called the Pixel Liberation Front) to come up with the movie version of Washington, D.C., circa 2054. A century earlier, in the mid-1950s, Philip K. Dick wrote the short story upon which the movie is based. (Dick, whose work was the basis of the movies “Blade Runner” and “Total Recall,” is a master of the dystopian universe.)

Here’s a look at the future, according to “Minority Report.” Consider it a preview. It also can be helpful if you haven’t seen the movie yet, but want to sound as though you have.

– Ahead of time with Pre-Crime: The Justice Department’s Pre-Crime Unit will stop killings before they occur, thanks to the images of murders that come to the unit’s psychic Pre-Cogs. (The chief is John Anderton, played by Tom Cruise.)

– Pre-Cogs in the machine: Pre-Cogs stand for “pre-cognitive,” but you already knew that, right? In the movie, there are three of them with the terrible psychic gift of seeing murders before they occur. Lying in a state of semi-consciousness while floating in a liquid suspension chamber, their visions feed directly into the imaging equipment of the Pre-Crime team.

– Scrubbing the images: Cruise is a master of this method of examining images from the Pre-Cogs. He looks like a conductor as he uses gloves with glowing fingertips to manipulate the images on a transparent screen.

– Along came a spider: And peeked in her eyeball. Another high-tech law enforcement tool: robotic Spiders that will be as commonplace as cockroaches but nosier, jumping on your head to scan your eyes during police sweeps. In the movie, the sound of the pitter-patter of the Spiders’ little feet came from a recording by researchers at Cornell University of actual spiders jumping.

– The eyes have it: Eye-scanning devices also will be the way to unlock your office and home doors. In the movie, there are many jeepers-creepers peepers moments, including an eyes-rolling-in-the-aisles scene and another eye-opener that brings “A Clockwork Orange” to mind.

– Forever branded: Lexus, Aquafina and the Gap will still be here. Lexus created the car Cruise takes for an assembly ride. The Gap still will be using retro-music campaigns (remember the swing-music ads?). But this time it will be Billie Holiday singing “(In My) Solitude” to remind us that we will never be alone or undetected.

– Cyber Parlor: Do you want celebrities to kiss you – or just flatter you? You’ll be able to experience it all at the Cyber Parlor, where you can have virtually any experience.

– Feed the plants … or else: All respectable mad scientists in the future will have plants that can reach out and touch someone, or even grab and maim.

– Hall of Containment: Orwellian name for the prison where would-be murderers will be housed in a state of suspended animation, thanks to brain-numbing “halos” affixed to their heads. They have to stand forever upright in cylindrical tubes, with images of their thwarted crimes endlessly playing in front of their eyes.

– Home for the holographs: People will be making home videos, but they’ll be really cool three-dimensional images that are captured on small, transparent disks.

– Jet-packing heat: Cops will use jet packs to chase bad guys literally up and down alleys.

– Live news coverage: Newspapers will feature moving pictures that keep up with breaking news. But does that mean that we’ll get to buy only one paper and read it forever?

– Mag-Lev: Short for Magnetic-Levitation, the system that allows for traffic to run up, down and upside down without having to worry about any pesky traffic inhibitors, like, say, gravity.

– A mall world after all: Shopping will still be big – and noisier than ever. Mall City is a chattering place of billboards with moving animated images that talk to you by name and know your retail history, thanks to eye-scan identification. Talk about targeted advertising.

– Shake a stick: The Sick Stick would be nice to have. It causes immediate involuntary vomiting (parents could throw out the syrup of Ipecac). “Generation X” author Douglas Coupland reportedly thought up the upchuck device for Spielberg.

– The Sprawl: That’s what we call Los Angeles now, but in the future that’s what we’ll call bad parts of town, where you can buy little mini-inhalers filled with illicit drugs.

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.shns.com.)