He goes and lives life in this parallel world still inhabiting the body of Sean.. How does Sean feel about all of this? At what point does Christina realise he's a completely different person?
Please say I'm missing something because it seems a gaping plot hole or just incredibly selfish.
No, I'd say it's the darkest timeline, but it's clearly the best of the whole lot, except for Sean, who is now nothingness, he is gone. Colter gets to live again, but Sean is now gone. Effed up.
I just want my kids back.
Sean Fentriss is already DEAD in the real universe and many other corresponding ones. Colter just takes up Fentris' identity in one of them. Nothing wrong in stealin a dead man's identity.
shareThe tacked-on ending makes it out as if Colter changed the "real" universe's past. The email he sends to Goodwin suggests that she must still allow him to do the simulations until he prevents the explosion. So I took it as a time loop.
No, he changed what would happen in the dimension that he was sent to. In that dimension the bombs never go off and they're still waiting for a catastrophe that would give them a chance to test project Source Code. In the dimension from which he left, the catastrophe had already happened and he was merely accessing alternate dimensions - albeit very like his original one - where he changed minutiae details every time he visited. Most of the time only inside the train and therefore actually changing very little. In this final inter-dimensional travel he is yet again whisked into another dimension that forks from the moment of time that he enters it. He saves the train, the city, sends the email, calls his dad and gets the girl because of the knowledge he has gained from all those other dimensions he has visited - dimensions (including his original one) that are at the same time independently advancing through time with all the repercussions of his actions in them.
In this latest dimension that he has accessed they never get to use Source Code because the Source Code used in another dimension (the original one) plants Colter into this dimension to prevent the disaster. They say he can't change events and he disagrees but I guess it's up to debate who is right since he can't change the past in his OWN, _original_, dimension from which he comes from. A classic problem of "time travel" in multiverse-stories. I can remember this problem being prominent in Crichton's Timeline novel.
This makes a lot more sense.
I think the concepts would have worked better if they didn't use short-term memory as the "gateway" into the past, since there's no way someone could remember all the details, or things they didn't even perceive (like what's in the suitcase, or where the bomb is). They could have explained that humans focus and amplify huge amounts of information, almost all of which they don't even perceive, yet this still has quantum-level effects on the matter making up their bodies (not just synapses), and then Source Code recovers this in order to tap back into that time. The 8-minute limit would be the natural limitation of the information capacity of the matter (here we're talking absolute information capacity, not just the paltry amount we can currently store in things). This is sort of like a hologram, which captures a huge amount of information from all the photons arriving and causing constructive and destructive interference patterns. This way, they really could know what was in the suitcase, or where the bomb was, since these would have minute effects at that level (gravity, some photons getting through materials, etc.). The explanation for needing a human would be that the computers aren't able to decipher the information.
Then from this way of explaining Source Code, the designers think they're just accessing the remnant information, while they're really accessing that moment in time and following a different timeline (which of course they'll never know since it doesn't affect their own). The idea that a computer simulation is affecting another timeline is a big leap, but the idea that having a human interact with this "quantum recording" and affecting things is more believable (quantum entanglement of the matter of the "recording" with the original situation could be used as an explanation, even though it doesn't technically work like that).
I have to comment on the term "dimension" though. For however many dimensions the universe has, we're in all of them. If I go to a different room (or planet), I'm still in all three spatial dimensions; no new one is needed to cover new places. So here, the end of the movie follows a different timeline (among the dimension of all timelines). Every timeline is in this same dimension, just different "locations" along it. This term is so abused in science fiction, and it bothers me every time I hear it, so nothing personal :)
sean fentriss prolly keeps on with his business on another universe while he's dead in ours (or colter's for that matter).
there're countless counterparts of every one of us in an endless amount of universes. keep on looping.
..::.. jah dread ..::..
I was thinking what you said in your first paragraph (less articulately, with creative distinctions, for sure). Except after that my explanation of the movie diverges from yours. Like you said, there has to be some explanation regarding the amplification of information because that was really implausible. In addition, I retain the movie's explanation that the 8 minute limit is the duration of postmortem brain activity. But after that, there's no need for a multiple universe/alternate timeline explanation. Because all the supercomputer did was help enhance existing information and make it repeatedly accessible to Colter's mind.
Instead, the final timeline where the train bombing is avoided, Colter is shown to live forever as Sean, and in which Goodwin also gets his text message, is imaginary: it is a product of the imagination of Colter's dying brain.
I don't know why I choose to believe this explanation rather than the multiple timelines one, because I really wanted to root for a true long life for Colter... maybe because I believe in the power of subjective, individual truths: Colter gets to have his (imagined) happy ending and also objectively to live forever as a hero, at least in the mind of Goodwin (since the rest of the world thinks he's conventionally dead), which is more romantic (in the epic sense) than just finding love and settling down.
The 8 minutes before death was a lame attempt to explain the complexities of multiple universes. The doctor didn't want him believing that he could save those people, which he could in their universe, but was selfish in only wanting enough information to save those in the original universe.
sharethis parallel world only exists in jake Gylenhals mind as he is dying, or in his "heaven"/afterlife. He saves the train, alters the timeline, and lives happily ever after. The mission commander girl pulls the plug on JG. that is the reality. everything after that occurs in JG's mind.
I'm afraid I could not disagree more. This is not a "Happens in his/her mind" kind of movie. The concept is about alternate dimentions in the universes, or to be technically more exact, different timelines in the dimensions of universe. shayg and Panpl's replies are the most sensible ones IMO.
If you liked this movie, Or interested in movies with similar concepts, I suggest you watch "Deja Vu" too.
I'm afraid I could not disagree more. This is not a "Happens in his/her mind" kind of movie. The concept is about alternate dimentions in the universes, or to be technically more exact, different timelines in the dimensions of universe. shayg and Panpl's replies are the most sensible ones IMO.
If you liked this movie, Or interested in movies with similar concepts, I suggest you watch "Deja Vu" too.
If he continues living in Seans body I guess he didnt turn up again for school
the next time, unless school was training pilots
Just to add, I disagree with your version. The version above is what occured.... queue source code two.... the female soldier operative now knows the scope of what's possible with the 'source code' project - in fact, they could now send him back in time to the war where he lost most of his torso and he could avert that from happeneing.
Thanks Panpl for sorting that out.
He would only be saving a different Stevens in a different universe. He wouldn't be saving himself in his original universe.
shareHa, this is exactly what I came here to post.
Sure, Sean would have died had the bomb plot not been thwarted, but the movie kind of elides the fact that in the end what happened is that Colter saved everyone on the train *except* Sean, who Colter basically killed. For Sean, it was like being in one of those plane wrecks where only one person dies.
There are of course a lot of other contrivances in this movie, but you can fanwank them away by saying "okay, it didn't actually have to do with memory but with tapping into an alternate reality". Dude still stole someone else's body though.
Unless it is one of those deals where the latest scenes in the movie were actually just his dying fantasy...kind of like in (spoiler alert!) An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. That is possible but it does not seem to be the most likely intent of the filmmakers.
Thanks dude, next time put a ................................... after spoiler alert - you just told me the ending of Owls Creek.
Darkness lies an inch ahead
You're mad because they gave a spoiler (with warnings) of a seven year old remake of a fifty year old movie of 120 year old story? Really?
I think you need to clean up your queue a little faster than that.
SPOILER ALERT !!!!!
THIS IS WHAT alankingsleythomas WROTE - Unless it is one of those deals where the latest scenes in the movie were actually just his dying fantasy...kind of like in (spoiler alert!) An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. That is possible but it does not seem to be the most likely intent of the filmmakers.
THIS IS WHAT I WROTE - Thanks dude, next time put a .............................. after spoiler alert - you just told me the ending of Owls Creek.
THIS IS WHAT YOU WROTE - You're mad because they gave a spoiler (with warnings) of a seven year old remake of a fifty year old movie of 120 year old story? Really?
Don't you think what you wrote was completely off the point ? No offence, but I don't understand how exactly your thought process works.
Darkness lies an inch ahead
that's called a Walk-In -and I was wondering the same thing myself
Don't you ever let a soul in the world tell you that you can't be exactly who you are. Lady Gaga
He goes and lives life in this parallel world still inhabiting the body of Sean.. How does Sean feel about all of this? At what point does Christina realise he's a completely different person?
Please say I'm missing something because it seems a gaping plot hole or just incredibly selfish.
i would agree with everything except the last bit. if it was other universes then in Universe 1 , the bomb did go off and they stopped the bomber from letting off the 2nd one just like they showed.
Only in the final universe did he save everyone. The Email he sent in that universe went to Goodwin in that universe. There is no reason to believe that the phone he used to send the email in that universe has the capabilities to send emails Inter-dimensionally
Yes. That's exactly it. Everyone on the train was dead. So they get a dead guy (Colter, the soldier) to plug into another dead guy (Sean, the teacher who was on the train), to retrieve knowledge about an upcoming bomb attack via exploiting an eight minute window of knowledge, and, we later learn, door to the past, that happens to dead guys and girls, apparently. Quantum mechanics and other terms are loosely tossed about to justify this.
So, Colter, having been given this door to the past, and having been given Sean's body, can then stop the bomb, save everyone on the train, and steal Sean's body. Thus he rids the world of another boring teacher and instead gives the lead actress and audience what we all want, a studly war hero as the main protagonist who gets the girl in the end.
It's a gripping tale of how the promising director of the very good movie Moon could sink to such tripe as this.
As far as i understood there were only 2 universes
The normal one, and the one created at the very end, when Goodwing deactivates Colters mind at the moment the Source Code ends, making his mind stay in this reality creating an alternate one.
The other times the realitys didn´t exist anywhere but in Colters brain.
So it ends up as an unreal unexplained sci fi thing in order to have a happy ending. But regardless i think it was a good movie with some really nice shots, and above average acting compared to other blockbusters.
Why would source code make an alternate universe only in the last time?
No, he visited upwards of 20 universes. Each of which continued without him, I. Whatever direction he left them off at. Mostly dead but I think one the girl survived.
He then goes to his final universe, #21, and finds a way to stay
[deleted]
Fair trade I say, He saved every one on the train and the chicago explosion, he also saved the victims of chicago explosion on the original universe. In return he need one body so he can continue living, sorry sean, you were compatible so he'll take your body.
shareI guess it really depends on how you look at it. Sean died, but he (and everyone else there) was "born" again when this new dimension was created. So in a way, he did steal someone's body.
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I came here because I had the same question after just finishing the movie. But after reading the above comments and thinking more about it the only conclusion I come up with is, "What does it matter?"
If there are potentially infinite universes happening simultaneously, with all the same people (ostensibly) and none of us knows about the other, then we're all just basically avatars of some cosmic video game, and what's the point? It's all meaningless. If one innocent (Sean) can be replaced with another guy (Colter) in Universe 1 (or is it 2?) and no one is the wiser, then who gives a crap? We're fish in a pond, mindlessly feeding and crapping and swimming around in circles.
Now that I think about it, this may be the most depressing movie I've seen since "Leaving Las Vegas."
Best not to think about it. The guy gets the girl. Happy ending.
One thing the movie did not clearly address. By putting his consciousness in Sean's dead body, does Sean cease to eXist (in that timeline)? This was the feeling that I got from the film. That in order for the "Source Code" to work, they had to insert Colter's consciousness into one of the dead people's bodies, so that he could interact with the other people who had "died". I mean does this seem like a fair assumption to make? By doing this, then all the people there are started on a new/different timeline, with Colter then responsible for the ultimate outcome of this timeline.
If this is the case, and they need to insert someone's consciousness into one of the bodies of the people who died, then the only way to save the group and to put them all on a different, parallel timeline is to lose one prior identity, in this case Sean. This is also a catch-22. They (and Sean) need a consciousness to be inserted into their group of dead people to set them back on a parallel universe, (instead of that whole timeline simply stopping for that group), but the only way they can be put back on a continued parallel path is by inserting the consciousness of another person into a body of one of the dead people, in this case Sean, thereby saving the rest but losing Sean.
I do feel for Sean. But Colter certainly didn't have anything to do with the decision to enter Sean's body and go on this "mission". If you ask me, he had more than done his duty in serving his country and his family had a right to know what had really happened to him. He decided to make the best of a bad situation presented to him, stepped up to the plate and decided (on his own) that he wanted to try and save all of the people involved in that accident. I don't blame him for wanting to be "done". He did enough. If not for what he suffered, all of the people he saved would have died miserably and horribly, and had their lives snuffed out. With his efforts, there was a net loss of one (Sean), which was not of his making.
Feel bad for Sean, but try to keep things in perspective. What are the other alternatives here?
To each their own...opinion
Yes, Sean ceased to exist, which would have happened anyways if Stevens didn't go into his body and save the train. See Sean was already dead, everyone was. So by saving everyone, Stevens lives on as Sean, who no matter what happened, was dead anyways.
shareThe entire movie was stupid, just like INCEPTION. Made absolutely no sense. I hate movies that lack even a little plausibility. A total POS
shareYes, OR it can be as simple as this: There is only one universe. They use 8 minutes of Seans memory witch is downloaded to a hard drive. And thats all there is. The captain is looking through that information. The captain-woman deleted everything in the end. The end of the movie is nothing. just Captain coltons afterlife-dream or someething.
share