Duncan Jones’ high concept sci-fi thriller, Source Code, is built on the idea of payback. A wounded soldier (Jake Gyllenhaal) is forced to relive the last eight minutes of a terror victim’s life on a bomb-laden train. By inhabiting the stranger’s body, he’s expected to figure out who made everything go boom—and nail the mastermind behind the disaster. “He learns each time. He acquires knowledge with each pass,” Jones says. “I’m a gamer. So the idea of do-overs comes very naturally.”

As it happens, the director has gotten a few do-overs in his own life. The son of rock legend David Bowie, Jones started out doing industry grunt work: Building puppets for Jim Henson, he’d get covered in liquid latex and leave work smelling like a condom. Then there was the gig directing cinematics for a half-baked videogame about eastern European politics. “Bless them, they tried so hard,” he says, laughing.

The game company let him play with a camera, though, and he saw opportunity, shooting music videos and then commercials. In 2009, he lit up the indie circuit with a low-budget sci-fi film called Moon. The unnerving futuristic flick chronicled an astronaut (Sam Rockwell) on a solo mission to a lunar mining facility with only a HAL-like computer (voiced by Kevin Spacey) to keep him company. The result was a space travel film that felt moving and Kubrickean—instead of like CG-addled Hollywood kitsch—and Jones’ moviemaking career is now a standout. So how does it feel, after a decade of soul-crushing work as a nobody in the entertainment industry, to get revenge as a sought-after director, heralded by fanboys, film critics, and A-listers alike? “I’ve certainly felt out of place everywhere,” Jones says. “It’s taken me a long time to find something right for me.” For legions of discerning sci-fi fans, it’s been well worth the wait.