After gaining a following and critical acclaim for his movie Moon, many were eager to see what material Duncan Jones would take on next. And then Source Code, a spec script written by Ben Ripley, fell into his hands and the rest is history. The film is currently having a run at the SXSW Film Festival and will be released nationally April 4th. Last Tuesday the first five minutes of the film were put online so the world could get a little taste of the things to come. However, the footage doesn’t deliver and leaves you wondering if Jones’ film is going to bomb at the box office. And here is why it just might…
In case you forgot what the movie is about here’s the trailer:
And here is the first five minutes of the film:
Here’s why the film has the potential to bomb at the box office: everything the film had going for it was destroyed by the trailer. I don’t mean to say that knowing the Jake Gyllenhaal character is constantly dying and “coming back” to life is what destroys the entire film, necessarily, but it is the simple fact that there seem to be no major stakes in it for the audience to enjoy. There are no risks! We know he’s going to be okay if he dies because we’ve seen it happen already. And this particular problem is similar to the one faced by Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, which starred Gyllenhaal as well.
And there seems to be a love story trying to force its way in there that simply isn’t enough to carry the movie. Source Code comes off looking like the sister-film to The Adjustment Bureau. It doesn’t help matters that these first five minutes of the film seem to be rushed. The suspense isn’t given enough time to develop so when that first explosion occurs, we already knew that it was going to happen.
Are you excited to see Source Code or did these first five minutes with the inclusion of the trailer turn you off to the entire thing? Leave us your thoughts below.
— Aaron Faulkner
The Filmsmith 