Source Code (spoilers of course)

[Temis the Vorta]

I finally got around to seeing Source Code - cool movie.

So the upshot is that all those people Stevens was punching out when we thought they were computer programs, those were real people all along? Oopsie.

He did about a dozen or so of those eight minute trips. (I wasn't really counting.) Did he create a new reality every time? If so, countless billions owe him their existences. That more than compensates for punching out/scaring/messing up the stuff of a few innocent people.

The scenario reminds me of Star Trek in that folks are assuming he created new realities by visiting him. Isn't it also possible those realities already existed, and he was simply visiting them? This might synch up with Many Worlds theory, if the source code program sent him selectively only to parallel realities that are very similar to the one he was from.

Was there any particular reason why Stevens would be uniquely suited to the source code program? Would the person need to be dead or nearly dead? Or were those just plot conveniences to amp the drama and keep it focused on Stevens' plight?

 

[stj]

Jeffrey Wright's character was there to be unpleasant, because he sure had no idea what he was doing. Strictly speaking, the movie's premise is not just unlikely, but self-contradictory.

Any information extracted from the Fentress corpse's brain would not have any information about what's above the restroom ceiling, which the real Fentress did not visit. By what they said, they were not simulating the other people and the environment for the Colter brain. So, "source code" is somehow sending a mind back in time.

The first problem is that the stuff about the remnant field of information about the brain hasn't got a damn thing to do with time travel. Maybe you could make it sound like it does if you dragged in something like "source code" is science for soul, and the source code was essentially the address for a soul in that point of time. And you also add that the human soul is, as some of the wilder mysticisms say, essentially equivalent to God, so that visiting Fentress' soul back eight minutes before the train wreck was therefore equivalent to knowing the entire world. Which at least would "explain" how Stevens as Fentress could rearrange events.

The second problem is that any rationalization of how Fentress could act in that time via his brain doesn't seem to explain how Stevens' brain could do so. Maybe "source code" is some sort of Platonic form of that eight minutes, or the Word of God for that eight minutes. But what does that have to do with any human brains, either Fentress' or Stevens'?

Third of course is the good old temporal paradox. If there was no train accident, when did Stevens get the source code to change the past?

You can't really suspend disbelief for Source Code because you can't tell what premises to temporarily believe. Maybe in Hollywood it seems like a good idea to sacrifice sense so that the characters don't use too many big words.

I've not quite got the love for Duncan Jones. Moon's "clones" with the same ages and personalities had suspension of disbelief problems too, which is everyone has had experience of clones. They're called identical twins and everybody knows for a fact people aren't like that.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Yeah, Moon didn't make much sense when you analyse it, but then that applies to a lot of movies, whether sci-fi or other genre. The ride's pretty good while it lasts. I haven't seen Source Code but I don't feel particularly spoiled by reading this thread if the internal logic is as nonsensical as described. It's kind of fun to find plot holes and to devise elaborate contrivances to fill them in.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Jeffrey Wright played the role a bit too hammily, I thought. He could have reined it in a little.

the first problem is that the stuff about the remnant field of information about the brain hasn't got a damn thing to do with time travel.

I don't think time travel is involved. (Vera Farmiga's character had a line of dialogue that squelched that notion.) Somehow, hooking a dead guy up to a computer allowed the dead guy's mind to teleport itself to an alternate reality (or create an alternate reality - hey, nice trick, and a lot more significant than being able to predict terrorist acts) that was close enough to our own that it could be used to predict events in our reality.

Why the alternate reality is at a different point in its timeline vs the original is an open question. Could be nothing more than that, in that reality, the events that have occurred since the Big Bang have been "delayed" by eight minutes, or an hour, or a hundred years, why couldn't that happen? If Many Worlds theory holds that somewhere, every event that could happen, does happen, then it is mandatory that there be realities with timelines that are just like ours, but offset by x number of seconds, minutes, hours, centuries, millenia, or eons. And that's how you travel in time without time travel.

Then the real trick is finding your way to just the right reality out of an infinite cavalcade, and somehow be assured that the reality is offset by the right amount of time, yet still relevant to our reality, so that you can use it to simulate events accurately and not worry that some unknown confounding factor is present that makes it useless for prediction. Maybe it rains donuts or everyone has lizard tongues? You can't check every aspect of this reality out in eight minutes or in eight million years.

Being able to do that is the most amazing part of this whole scheme. Perhaps this project should be taken away from the Air Force - who, true to bureaucratic form, showed no signs of really understanding the incredible thing they had on their hands - and turned over to Google.

And I guess at this point, I don't need to worry about the logic of this movie anymore because it's nothing more than hand-waving magic.

 

[Admiral_Young]

There is a "Source Code" discussion thread here:

http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=139609&highlight=Source+Code

Some of what you bring up Temis is discussed in there, it's up to you if you wanna go through or not...but the original spec script which is how I first found out about this movie (I discovered the spec script before it was even sold or Duncan Jones came aboard) discusses and deals with the "science" regarding how the Source Code works a lot more cleanly than the film does. The film chooses instead to focus on the relationship between Colter and Christina along with his mission to find the bomb and disable it in time.

I believe it is the intent of the original script that Colter is going into an alternate universe each time that he enters the Source Code, for eight minutes. It's not a time traveling device at all but essentially somehow is supposed to open a "doorway" into "a repeating alternate universe" (my own term) if that makes any sense. The film proper kind of touches on this but I don't think it explains how the machine is supposed to work very well.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

You mean an alternate universe where time doesn't flow normally, but repeats like we saw, and that's a function of the universe itself?

Interesting notion, didn't even occur to me...

 

[Admiral_Young]

^ Yeah, exactly that. This is my own impression of what the Source Code is. This is how Colter is able to "leave" the machine at the end of the movie. He's literally stepping into one of the repeated alternate realities. Somehow though he's able to stop the "temporal casualty loop" (that's basically what it is after thinking about it) after he stops the bomb and assumes the identity of Sean. Christina essentially sees him as Sean but obviously he retains his own personality, etc.