comments on Source Code
Apr. 3rd, 2011 02:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishSource Code is, in a lot of ways, Moon with a) explosions and b) a cast larger than "Sam Rockwell, the voice of Kevin Spacey, and a guy with an uncanny resemblance to Sam Rockwell." This is by no means a bad thing: Moon was one of the best SF movies of the last N years. Great twisty story, excellent acting, fun times. Basically, if you like smart SFnal movies, go see this one. (Someone, I forget who, described it as "a film version of Spider And Web," which is not wholly inaccurate either.)
I've seen several people online complaining about the science of the happy ending, though. These complaints mostly strike me as unfounded. (Complaints about the plausibility of the happy ending, sure: but it is consistent with the movieverse.)
Okay, so, the basic point of the movie is that the "source code" process involves hooking up a person (Captain Colter Stevens, in this case) to relive the last eight minutes of another person's life (Sean Fentriss). During the process Stevens can do things differently than Fentriss did, but this doesn't change anything in the real world. It's essentially a very limited read-only form of time travel. It reminded me of the ESPER device in Blade Runner, where Deckard could pan around in a photograph and get information that wasn't visible in the print itself.
The supporting cast are deliberately vague about how this works. (They use the word "quantum" a lot.) They're clear about one thing, though: what happens in source code isn't real. Stevens can't have any effect on the real world's past.
Stevens, of course, gets rather attached to all the people he meets in the course of repeatedly reliving the eight minutes before a terrorist bomb takes out a passenger train and trying to find the bomber so he can be prevented from carrying out a larger attack in a few hours. At the end of the movie he gets himself sent back into "source code," prevents the terrorist attacks, and rides off into the sunset with a woman on the train who'd had a crush on Fentriss. In the middle of this, the source code gets shut off, but Stevens's new life carries on anyway.
The complaints I've seen (and objected to) are mostly about how that undermines the whole "source code isn't real" premise.
From the perspective of the supporting cast, source code is a simulation. Stevens's actions in source code can't affect the world, and so they don't matter. From Stevens's perspective, of course they matter. He's changing history for the universe he's in at the time.
The movie subscribes to the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. Very briefly: every choice made creates a new universe where the choice was made differently. So, when Stevens enters the source code and stops a woman from spilling her coffee, he's inhabiting a universe where Fentriss stopped the woman from spilling her coffee.
(This explanation fails to account for the sequence where Christina's face is breaking up. Maybe that was just an incomplete insertion into source code? I'd have to watch it again to be able to handwave a convincing explanation.)
It's worth noting that Stevens doesn't automatically get pulled back when his eight minutes are up. On two separate insertions he gets off the train before it blows up, and stays around long enough to watch the explosion from outside. In both cases he doesn't snap back until Fentriss dies. To me it looks like he gets to stay in the source code universe until his consciousness is terminated.
Which is what happens at the end of the movie: they shut off the final source code run, but Stevens (now Fentriss) gets to keep his happily ever after ending, because he's no longer in the original universe anyway.
(Of course there are problems. First, what happened to the original Sean Fentriss in the happily-ever-after-verse? Yeah, he would have died anyway, but still. More importantly, Stevens doesn't know anything about Fentriss: address, bank account, history, anything-- he's just hooked up with a woman who had a crush on Fentriss. There is no way this ends happily. But the movie is so bloody cheerful about the whole ending that it's difficult to keep in mind how much of a trainwreck [see what i did there?] it's going to turn out to be.)
I've seen several people online complaining about the science of the happy ending, though. These complaints mostly strike me as unfounded. (Complaints about the plausibility of the happy ending, sure: but it is consistent with the movieverse.)
Okay, so, the basic point of the movie is that the "source code" process involves hooking up a person (Captain Colter Stevens, in this case) to relive the last eight minutes of another person's life (Sean Fentriss). During the process Stevens can do things differently than Fentriss did, but this doesn't change anything in the real world. It's essentially a very limited read-only form of time travel. It reminded me of the ESPER device in Blade Runner, where Deckard could pan around in a photograph and get information that wasn't visible in the print itself.
The supporting cast are deliberately vague about how this works. (They use the word "quantum" a lot.) They're clear about one thing, though: what happens in source code isn't real. Stevens can't have any effect on the real world's past.
Stevens, of course, gets rather attached to all the people he meets in the course of repeatedly reliving the eight minutes before a terrorist bomb takes out a passenger train and trying to find the bomber so he can be prevented from carrying out a larger attack in a few hours. At the end of the movie he gets himself sent back into "source code," prevents the terrorist attacks, and rides off into the sunset with a woman on the train who'd had a crush on Fentriss. In the middle of this, the source code gets shut off, but Stevens's new life carries on anyway.
The complaints I've seen (and objected to) are mostly about how that undermines the whole "source code isn't real" premise.
From the perspective of the supporting cast, source code is a simulation. Stevens's actions in source code can't affect the world, and so they don't matter. From Stevens's perspective, of course they matter. He's changing history for the universe he's in at the time.
The movie subscribes to the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. Very briefly: every choice made creates a new universe where the choice was made differently. So, when Stevens enters the source code and stops a woman from spilling her coffee, he's inhabiting a universe where Fentriss stopped the woman from spilling her coffee.
(This explanation fails to account for the sequence where Christina's face is breaking up. Maybe that was just an incomplete insertion into source code? I'd have to watch it again to be able to handwave a convincing explanation.)
It's worth noting that Stevens doesn't automatically get pulled back when his eight minutes are up. On two separate insertions he gets off the train before it blows up, and stays around long enough to watch the explosion from outside. In both cases he doesn't snap back until Fentriss dies. To me it looks like he gets to stay in the source code universe until his consciousness is terminated.
Which is what happens at the end of the movie: they shut off the final source code run, but Stevens (now Fentriss) gets to keep his happily ever after ending, because he's no longer in the original universe anyway.
(Of course there are problems. First, what happened to the original Sean Fentriss in the happily-ever-after-verse? Yeah, he would have died anyway, but still. More importantly, Stevens doesn't know anything about Fentriss: address, bank account, history, anything-- he's just hooked up with a woman who had a crush on Fentriss. There is no way this ends happily. But the movie is so bloody cheerful about the whole ending that it's difficult to keep in mind how much of a trainwreck [see what i did there?] it's going to turn out to be.)
no subject
Date: 2011-04-03 07:02 pm (UTC)I just saw it and I must more or less agree with you.
Date: 2011-04-03 09:56 pm (UTC)Re: I just saw it and I must more or less agree with you.
From:no subject
Date: 2011-04-15 05:17 pm (UTC)And, in fact, since Stevens sends Goodwin the text basically saying "keep the other me over there alive and working", he's going to *keep* doing this... as time moves forward, he'll keep making new universes that have even more Stevens in them, since there's no reason to believe he's going to stop getting attached to his missions or the people in them.