It is a plot point. The bomber used the train as a message, and made his intention of detonating a far bigger bomb in downtown Chicago (hence the TV footage of cars evacuating the city). Because there was only a matter of hours before the bomb was set to go off, they had to discover who the bomber was using the Source Code-machine so they could track him down in real-life before he detonates the second bomb.
He sent a different Goodwin the email–the Colter in the same alternate universe he was in when on the train. He sent the message from the phone he borrowed.
[spoiler] No, the whole point is that they CAN’T change the past. They are sending Colter to an alternate reality to find the identity of the bomber. His actions do not affect their reality. As they say, the clock is still ticking on their side. And Goodwin did kill Colter at the end, at least on her side. She promised him she would let him try one more time to save the train before she killed him, which is why she stalled Rutledge. She was keeping her word.
So at the end of the movie, we now have two parallel worlds.
In World A, the train blew, but thanks to the actions of Colter in the Source Code, they stopped the bomber before he blew up the dirty bomb. Goodwin kills Colter, and he no longer exists in this world.
In World B, Colter (in Sean’s body) stops the train bomb, and gets the bomber arrested. Goodwin gets the message that basically this entire universe was created by the Source Code. So, there are basically two Colters in this universe. One inside Sean’s body, and the half dead one at the Source Code facility. [/spoiler]
Question… Was it just for the viewer’s benefit that Colter had his own face but saw the teacher’s face in the mirror? What if he rubbed his beard, would he not feel it? Why didn’t he just have the other guy’s face, and that would give him one more thing to freak out about at the beginning? I’m guessing it’s because the audience might not react as well to two different guys playing the hero, one on the train and one in the capsule/box?
Definitely for the viewer’s benefit. And as Duncan Jones alludes in the link above, that’s very much a Quantum Leap convention: hero looks in the mirror to see what the hell he looks like this week.
Saw it today and liked it pretty well. I don’t have too much substantive to add except the group I was with decided it was basically 12 Monkeys, only not.
I don’t really have a desire to argue about it, but I liked it. It’s true the whole technology is basically magic, but that didn’t bother me. I thought the relation between Colter and his controller (Goodwin, is that right? The one played by Vera Farmiga) was the best part of the movie. I really like Vera as an actress, and she’s not bad looking either, in a world weary way. I thought it avoided a couple of bad twists, like the bomber turning out to be Colter himself, as in so many Outer Limits episodes. And I liked the life-affirming ending, though I would have been ok if it had ended on the freeze frame. It was a good movie for a rainy Friday afternoon when I wasn’t feeling well.
I saw it today based on the OP and I absolutely loved it. I didn’t have any issues with the plot. I did almost get a little teary-eyed when he called his dad
Ok, I have a question that’s been rumbling around in my head the last few days.
Are there now an infinite number of alternate universes then because of the source code? Because if every universe the captain jumps in to that means there’s another source code project about to be used (as seen at the end of the film). So in the first failure’s universe Captain Beta will be sent into another universe in order to prevent that explosion, and so on and so on
Since it is unlikely that you’d ever hit a spawned sequence where he got it right on the first try, if they continue after he’s out (no reason to assume otherwise, but it could be his departure destroys it just as his arrival creates it) then yes, it would mean that.
Just saw it today and like it too. Here are my points of view
Source code cannot work by “re-life the last 8 minutes of someone’s live”. The original Sean can only remember what he can see or touch in those last 8 minutes. How on earth can Stevens see the rest of the train and know how would other passengers react to him, just from Sean’s limited perspective and data? So my take is that he was sent to an alternate universe. The scientist has no idea what he has accomplished. How would the Internet and Google and telephone services work so accurately if it’s based on the incomplete data from just one person’s memories? Even if Source Code somehow accumulate the memories of all the dead on the train, this doesn’t explain what happens outside of the train, and how Stevens get the license plate of the bomber. Those outside of the train are still alive and therefore shouldn’t be part of the source code, right?
It is possible that source code itself does not generate the alternate universes; they were all there, and source code allows Stevens to jump across reality.
As for the ending, if we follow that Stevens did jump across reality, then maybe we can argue that pulling the plug on him in his original world allows him to stay in the new reality. That the alternate-Godwin receives an email from Sean confirms that it is a valid, existing reality by its own.
The uncomfortable, unspoken implication is what happened to the real Sean? Is this identity theft? Assimilation?
This. We just saw it this weekend and enjoyed it. I do like reading all these analyses after the fact, but we never let most people’s opinions influence what we watch. There are a couple of critics who seem to have remarkably similar tastes to ours, so if we pay attention to anyone it’s them.
But we enjoyed the movie a lot. The wife enjoyed it even more after realizing this was not time travel, which she’d still thought despite the on-screen explanations. I think many people over here are going to be a little confused about that, as this whole quantum-mechanics bit is brand new to them, while time travel is a fairly standard story arc these days.
I was fairly disappointed with this one, for more or less the same reasons that Dio discussed.
It just seemed like the big twist was, “You know that magic device we told you about earlier in the movie? Well, it’s even more magic than we originally thought! (or, at least, more magic than we originally told you)”
Actually, I would think the end makes the magic device less magic. Since what the people in charge of the program think is happening doesn’t make any sense whereas the ultimate reveal at least makes sense of how Jake G. can learn things outside the direct experience of the consciousness he’s occupying (even if it doesn’t explain how what is really happening happens.
My take on it is that the multiple realities cannot co-exist. That “pause” was the energy from Universe A (train blown up) being pulled into Universe 1 (crisis averted) to allow it to continue on. That would wrap it up nicely.
Also, since Universe A’s Jake is now in Sean and Universe 1’s Jake is still alive in a box, there could theoretically be hundreds of Jakes running around. Each one averting a crisis and pretending to live on as the host that died in the prior source code jump. Remember the universe at the end never used Jake because the incident they could have used him for was averted and they will have to wait for another one to try the Source Code system out.
I saw this movie this weekend and liked it. But since this thread seems devoted to listing problems with the film, here goes…
Fuck Sean! I mean, in the final happily-ever-after scene, there’s a guy named Sean Fentriss (?) who just had his body stolen and nobody gives a fuck. OK… well, I guess he wasn’t doing much with his life, so he didn’t deserve it - I mean, he couldn’t even be bothered to ask Katherine out, had to wait until Jake Gyllenhall took charge. So, get this: we get the possibly the first movie in history where a man was cock-blocked… with his own cock. How embarrassing. :o
Watching the movie it seemed that Katherine was more aware of what was going on at the end then she was at the beginning of the movie. As Jake was looking at passengers in the beginning, she was all “WTF? What the hell is wrong with you.” At the end of the movie, Jake defuses a bomb, grabs a gun and a pair of handcuffs from the locker/porter, apprehends the terrorist, chains him to the train, mocks him (again, this all happens in 8 minutes), and kisses the non-bewildered girl who then proposes a walk in the park with the promise of happy-sexy-funtime at the end. What happened to the “WTF?!? I thought you were a teacher, Sean?!?” moment?
Bit of a zombification here but I just saw the film tonight.
I thought it was alright. Not great, but I didn’t regret seeing it.
The thing that bothers most people didn’t bother me–I think people are misunderstanding something.
[spoiler]
The movie didn’t break it’s own rules. It broke the rules some characters believed were in effect. Some characters believed they were having Colter relive Sean’s last reel of short term memory, and nothing more. But it turned out they were wrong. And this wasn’t at all random or pulled out of left field–Colter’s experiences throughout the film don’t make sense if he’s only reliving Sean’s short term memories. He saw things Sean could never have experienced.
What I do have a problem with is the notion that the team in charge of Source Code wouldn’t have put this together quite early on.
Well… I start to imagine, I guess, that they tell themselves Colter is confabulating from hazy details in Sean’s memories to arrive at conclusions Sean himself never came to… But it’s odd that this problem isn’t addressed in the film. Well, not odd–the team is basically a stereotypical bunch of Science Baddies and this is stereotypical Science Baddie behavior.
What I did have a problem with is the fact that Colter, now that his eight minutes are over, is going to be completely unable to live Sean’s life. He doesn’t know Sean’s passwords, he doesn’t know how to teach history, etc. It’s probably going to be a disaster.
(It doesn’t bother me that he’s “stolen” Sean’s body, since Sean died on the train originally anyway. Sean could either die on the train in an explosion, or die eight minutes earlier when Colter takes him over.)
Anyway, I’d have been happy if the movie had ended at the freeze-frame scene. But I wasn’t unhappy that it didn’t.[/spoiler]
Just rented this, I agree with the general comments here, but there’s one thing that bugs me. In the “original” timeline, where Jake is able to get the message out of Source Code what the name of the bomber is, we then instantly cut to a scene of the white van being arrested, with voice over talking about a manhunt that’s been going on since this morning, and the news reports already have the name of the suspect and are already talking about how he’s been posting stuff on his website, etc.
To me, this very strongly implied an interesting twist, which was that the cops already knew who the bomber was, but they decided to use the incident as a proving ground for Source Code by sending him back anyhow to see if he could independently get the same information. Which would be interesting, and would make all the pathos he went through all the more ironic, but then later dialog in that same timeline seems to indicate that was not the case.
Anyone remember what I’m talking about? (Obviously a bit late in the game to be bringing up details like this…)