Warning: This story contains SPOILERS for the end of Source Code. If you don’t want to know, please stop reading now!
If you checked out Source Code this week, you may be a bit confused by the ending of the film.
If so, you’re not alone. Actress Vera Farmiga says that she’s a bit confused by how the film ends as well.
She tells Movieline she has asked director Duncan Jones on several occasions to reveal the ultimate fate of Jake Gyllenhaal’s soldier Colter Stevens, who enters alternate realities in order to uncover the identity of a terrorist on a commuter train.
“[Duncan] says that it’s a Choose Your Own Adventure novel, of sorts, is the way I’ve been expressing it. That’s certainly what drew me. I feel like every reality is a viable reality and it’s basically which one you choose – whichever ending you think is most fulfilling for yourself, ” she says. “It is ambiguous, but pointedly so, I think. Because it’s all theory and philosophy and if anything was absolute then we would have a tidy answer But I think the ambiguity works. Duncan will say that all the realities that he’s been in are true.”
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Hopefully that’s enough.
Really? It was all explained in the film. Each time he went in it created a new parallel universe. Both are true. His last time on the train was an entirely new reality. One where je fixed the problem, stopped he baddies and gotthe girl. Meanwhile, is the original verse, the plug was pulled.
I agree with Kurt, that’s what I got out of it but I don’t think it was explained well and it bugged me that the ending and much of the story was so predictable.
Sigh. I hate typing on my itouch. (Lousy fat fingers!) 😀
Hmm. Just to get this clear: if Stevens becomes Sean (in the new parallel world created after Goodwin turns Stevens’ life support off) something bad must have happened to Sean in that parallel world. In that (final) parallel world, Stevens himself was still killed in action two months earlier, so in effect he’s come back to life in Sean’s body in the parallel universe (but with his own deformed body – and presumably another, duplicate mind? – also waiting for a mission in the alternate reality’s lab).
But why isn’t Sean in the parallel world too, as himself? Maybe he’s effectively been erased by quantum physics (you can’t have two ‘particles’ in the same quantum state – Pauli Exclusion Principle) or something like that? In the ‘real’ world, Sean, Christina and all the others die (on the real train); so, in this parallel world, where the train doesn’t blow up, Sean should be there too, surely – and not just as a body? The only explanation that works is that Sean’s consciousness gets ‘erased’ from all the parallel universes because he’s been ‘occupied’ or ‘displaced’ by Stevens. Which is, don’t you think, kind of creepy?
I originally thought the film-makers had just glossed over this loose end, or maybe even overlooked it; but Jones’ own comments contradict that – there’s MEANT to be this moral ambiguity in the film: i.e. by occupying Sean, does Stevens become the first multi-dimensional murderer? I don’t think most viewers will work that out, or care too much, especially at one viewing? But we have to remember one thing here: if Stevens DOESN’T save the train in the alternate reality, Sean dies there anyway. So it’s not quite murder, is it?
My problems come from other quarters… For instance, the basic premise is weak: replaying memories in one brain by hooking it up to another brain is a bit like playing a video tape or DVD – you can’t create NEW information from it, or explore things that Sean wouldn’t know. They’re memories, not ‘a world’. The notion that you enter some parallel dimension…. that’s a pretty big leap, even for science fiction – though no more so than time machines, I suppose. So, all told, maybe that’s fair enough after all.
The bigger flaw is that if Stevens only has half a brain, he wouldn’t be all that sharp, would he, in reality or in alternate reality? He’d be rather dribbly and confused, and pretty slow on the uptake to say the least… Also, the research guys in the ‘real’ world do seem to know a lot about the alternate world of the Source Code even though it hasn’t been used (i.e. no one has ever been ‘sent’ there before) … or maybe they HAVE used it?
Okay, it’s just a film… but actually, for me, a ‘logical’ or internally consistent interpretation (if that’s what you want) is that what we see is a crazed hallucination in the (pretty much fully functional) brain of a war casualty being kept alive in a special ops facility. Stevens is wired up to Sean, yes, but uses the memories of the train-dead Sean to create a complex fantasy, the ‘alternate reality’ we witness in the film, where he can make up with his dad and fall in love, be a hero, and live happily ever after… Well, wouldn’t you?
My point of view.
1. Goodwin unplug Stevens but his brain still living as the Dr. explain that we are not imediately death and Stevens making happy endings before really die.
2. Stevens find way to solve riddle and he find channels to connect from parallel world to real world ” Illy has a red robe. In hands she has 5 cards” this is simullation to connect two world. He rechange time because see last scene didn’t start from same position he start more minutes before. Et the and Steven is still in castle and Christina and Forest in real world still live. They are watching how big instalation of paralel world.
well…i think the director didn’t spend much time to take into depth of these source code. the concept is there but not much detail that can comprehend by human thinking. take example inception starred by leonardo…that movie is so great that i watched for 4 times just to make sure that i understands the concept…the logic is there… source code doesn’t have a strong ground. source code should be a memory of a person. then a super computer replicates the memories to be a virtual world.but how far could the super computer replicate. for sure there is a dead end…so the computer only can play around for the 8 minutes right?so the ending is a bit of fantasy to me.coz there is not a logic explaination to gulp all these. or maybe the director put some fantasy elements. we never know maybe someday these could happen. someone need to start something…all in all, i’ll say its a good movie just want more to see more stevens investigation. 8 minutes is just too short for him….