Spoiler Alert!!!
This comment is for those who have already seen the movie, as my comments mainly pertain to the last scene.
It would seem that most viewers didn't get something I just automatically figured out during the course of the movie...and this thing has to do with the broken synchronicity. Earth 1 and Earth 2 didn't just automatically start to become different, something had to break synchronicity, and those differences would only occur with the two planets interaction and then have to domino or butterfly effect from there. When she was driving in her car, looking up to see the blue dot in the sky, her double was doing the same thing. But, the other planet was not a mirror image, it was a duplicate, so unlike in a mirror, where when you raise your right hand you see your reflection raising its left hand, what she saw was more like looking into a rorrim, which is a type of mirror where things are not reversed, so you actually see things as others would be looking at you and seeing things...the print of a book you are holding up to a rorrim isn't reversed and you can still easily read it, and so on. When the blue dot was first noticed and the disc jockey was announcing it she looked up into the sky and her body double was also looking up, but exactly where that blue dot was in the sky was different for the two of them. So, given her body double's different positioning of her head, her different angle of viewing, she noticed the other car in time to brake or swerve and miss it. Similarly, when Dr. Joan Tallis was on live TV making live radio contact, at first she thought she was getting feedback, because in reply to anything she said, she was hearing the other Joan Tallis who was broadcasting the exact same radio message to her. This was a frustration for her, until something different about the radio waves traveling through space meant that one of them would hear something differently, and respond differently, so that instead of just saying the same thing to each other at the same time, back and forth, one of them somehow responded differently, "Hello? Hello?" as they undoubtedly had heard something different, or failed to hear something because it was blocked by interference. Then their synchronicity was broken enough in that small way for the two of them to actually have a conversation, and undoubtedly, television viewers on Earth 2 might have experienced a small break in synchronicity, as their Joan Tallis was answering the question about what she bought at the space store in Cape Canaveral, so the viewers on Earth 2 didn't have their Joan Tallis holding up the words "space strawberries," on her yellow pad to possibly provoke the obvious reaction that Rhonda's brother on Earth 1 was having. (And obviously, Rhonda 2's brother didn't have a sister who went to prison, so very likely in that family's life, along with Rhonda 2's friends at MIT, quite a bit of synchronicity had been broken by then.) So, the Rhonda 2 didn't crash, did go to MIT, did study astronomy or astrophysics, which was her area of interest, and won the contest for other reasons, probably just for being a motivated MIT graduate student specializing in space and astronomy. She had nobody to consider giving up her space flight to, since she didn't kill anybody's family. John Burroughs undoubtedly joined his family, now having two fathers, only one being slightly banged up and with minor head injury issues. This was already a question in my mind and in other viewers' minds, whether by looking up at the sky at different angles the two Rhondas had broken synchronicity enough to where one of them had swerved and missed hitting the other car. The final scene didn't raise any questions at all, rather, it quickly and refreshingly answered the really biggest question that viewers who got it were already asking themselves and wondering about. For me, that final scene was a magical and beautiful moment, but not wonderful at all, as it replied to all the wonder by answering every question and tying-up all the loose ends of the story very well, at least as far as the story line was dealing with. (Of course to follow the story one had to at least suspend belief enough to not stray from the story, wondering about things like whether the two planets would be experiencing tsunami tides because of their gravitational pulls and such, etc.)
There was no moral difference between the two Rhondas, it's not that one of them decided to go the party and drink while the other didn't, they were the same person, they were the same drunk, just one was a drunk trying to look at a blue dot in the sky over here, while the other was a drunk trying to look at a blue dot in the sky over there. Face to face, they should realize that were the same person until then, only one, like most drunk drivers, just didn't end up in an accident by mere chance, just dumb luck and nothing else.
I just thought it was a wonderful movie and the final scene answered that wonderful with a terrific happy ending. The two Rhonda's certainly have a lot of catching up to do, and undoubtedly, John and Rhonda are the only people who ended up on the same planet as their other selves, and the other shuttle passengers certainly arrived to notice little or no difference with the planet they left, probably feeling more like returning astronauts than true space explorers. The Rhonda 1 and John 1 switch proved to be an additional but major break in synchronicity for the two Earths.
This comment is for those who have already seen the movie, as my comments mainly pertain to the last scene.
It would seem that most viewers didn't get something I just automatically figured out during the course of the movie...and this thing has to do with the broken synchronicity. Earth 1 and Earth 2 didn't just automatically start to become different, something had to break synchronicity, and those differences would only occur with the two planets interaction and then have to domino or butterfly effect from there. When she was driving in her car, looking up to see the blue dot in the sky, her double was doing the same thing. But, the other planet was not a mirror image, it was a duplicate, so unlike in a mirror, where when you raise your right hand you see your reflection raising its left hand, what she saw was more like looking into a rorrim, which is a type of mirror where things are not reversed, so you actually see things as others would be looking at you and seeing things...the print of a book you are holding up to a rorrim isn't reversed and you can still easily read it, and so on. When the blue dot was first noticed and the disc jockey was announcing it she looked up into the sky and her body double was also looking up, but exactly where that blue dot was in the sky was different for the two of them. So, given her body double's different positioning of her head, her different angle of viewing, she noticed the other car in time to brake or swerve and miss it. Similarly, when Dr. Joan Tallis was on live TV making live radio contact, at first she thought she was getting feedback, because in reply to anything she said, she was hearing the other Joan Tallis who was broadcasting the exact same radio message to her. This was a frustration for her, until something different about the radio waves traveling through space meant that one of them would hear something differently, and respond differently, so that instead of just saying the same thing to each other at the same time, back and forth, one of them somehow responded differently, "Hello? Hello?" as they undoubtedly had heard something different, or failed to hear something because it was blocked by interference. Then their synchronicity was broken enough in that small way for the two of them to actually have a conversation, and undoubtedly, television viewers on Earth 2 might have experienced a small break in synchronicity, as their Joan Tallis was answering the question about what she bought at the space store in Cape Canaveral, so the viewers on Earth 2 didn't have their Joan Tallis holding up the words "space strawberries," on her yellow pad to possibly provoke the obvious reaction that Rhonda's brother on Earth 1 was having. (And obviously, Rhonda 2's brother didn't have a sister who went to prison, so very likely in that family's life, along with Rhonda 2's friends at MIT, quite a bit of synchronicity had been broken by then.) So, the Rhonda 2 didn't crash, did go to MIT, did study astronomy or astrophysics, which was her area of interest, and won the contest for other reasons, probably just for being a motivated MIT graduate student specializing in space and astronomy. She had nobody to consider giving up her space flight to, since she didn't kill anybody's family. John Burroughs undoubtedly joined his family, now having two fathers, only one being slightly banged up and with minor head injury issues. This was already a question in my mind and in other viewers' minds, whether by looking up at the sky at different angles the two Rhondas had broken synchronicity enough to where one of them had swerved and missed hitting the other car. The final scene didn't raise any questions at all, rather, it quickly and refreshingly answered the really biggest question that viewers who got it were already asking themselves and wondering about. For me, that final scene was a magical and beautiful moment, but not wonderful at all, as it replied to all the wonder by answering every question and tying-up all the loose ends of the story very well, at least as far as the story line was dealing with. (Of course to follow the story one had to at least suspend belief enough to not stray from the story, wondering about things like whether the two planets would be experiencing tsunami tides because of their gravitational pulls and such, etc.)
There was no moral difference between the two Rhondas, it's not that one of them decided to go the party and drink while the other didn't, they were the same person, they were the same drunk, just one was a drunk trying to look at a blue dot in the sky over here, while the other was a drunk trying to look at a blue dot in the sky over there. Face to face, they should realize that were the same person until then, only one, like most drunk drivers, just didn't end up in an accident by mere chance, just dumb luck and nothing else.
I just thought it was a wonderful movie and the final scene answered that wonderful with a terrific happy ending. The two Rhonda's certainly have a lot of catching up to do, and undoubtedly, John and Rhonda are the only people who ended up on the same planet as their other selves, and the other shuttle passengers certainly arrived to notice little or no difference with the planet they left, probably feeling more like returning astronauts than true space explorers. The Rhonda 1 and John 1 switch proved to be an additional but major break in synchronicity for the two Earths.