Arrival. It's a movie. And it's rad. [OPEN SPOILERS]

ElJeffe

What the hell is Arrival?

It's a movie!

That's not terribly informative.

Your face isn't terribly informative.

Seriously, give me something, dude.

Fine, fine. Arrival is a scifi movie starring Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner.

Oh, I love Amy Adams!

That is because she is a goddess who is loved by all right-thinking people.

Still, can you give me anything else to go on? I'm dying here.

Arrival is a movie in which aliens land in giant, mysterious ships all over the Earth. Nobody knows why. Amy Adams is tasked with figuring out how to communicate with them. And that's all I'm telling you; this is one of those movies where the less you know, the better it works.

Okay, I respect that. So it's good?

It's fucking amazeballs, dude. Imagine if someone mixed Independence Day and Inception and 2001 and The Martian together. It's like that.

I... I think you're just naming a bunch of random sci-fi movies. Those things don't go together.

...and Moon and Enchanted and Breakfast Club and...

Okay, fine, I'll go see the fucking movie, chill.

...and Fifth Element and Primer and Little Shop of Horrors and a foot massage and a bowl of Junior Mints and...

Wait a minute. Do we need to tag spoilers in here?

Nope! Open season on spoilers, WOOOOOOO.

Them why are you pitching the movie, if ostensibly the only people in here have already seen it?

Your face has already--

I'm leaving now. If you follow me, I'm crying stranger-danger.

Alphagaia

I had this theory about why the aliens are here:

Edit: huge spoilers, I strongly recommend watching the movie before opening this:

I think the aliens are sick and have the same rare decease as the dying child. The one alien not showing up was not because of the explosion killing him, but because he was sick. The other alien explained the sick one was dying. The sick alien was late or acting weird before this scene as well and they remark on him being late.
I don't think she saw the definite future, but she did saw a possible one. Now she knows the child is sick (probably because her mother was exposed to it) she will look to find a cure in time, which will in turn give the aliens a cure. This is the win-win situation the aliens were looking for, and as a thanks for the cure they gave us world peace.

ElJeffe

Anyway, let's talk about Arrival. Open season on spoilers, so if you haven't seen this yet, get out now.

ElJeffe

I feel that the future has to be set in stone, or else the movie loses its punch. The point was that she will have this baby knowing for a fact that she will get sick and die early.

But the aliens being sick and wanting us to help them find a cure is plausible. Presumably not the same illness, because an alien race having the same genetic disorder as humans sounds kinda silly.

ElJeffe

Also, I think this is one of the most well orchestrated twists in the last decade. It was entirely fair, all of the scenes that had made sense before were suddenly recontextualized, it hit hard, and it was super poignant.

I really, really loved this movie.

I also liked that the movie had some heavy themes going on, but was simple to follow. My 12 and 9 year old kids saw this, and both of them followed along.

Alphagaia

Well, the movie does include the question if you know beforehand how your life is going to be, would you change any of it, with the scientist responding he would be more vocal, indicating he would change his path.

Regarding the unknown sickness it depends completely what kind of Illness it is and how it attacks a non lineair carbon based lifeform, which they seemed to be, just as she has become, but I honestly don't know how that would work at all.

Also, the glass seems not intended for atmosphere, as it is later revealed Louise can breath in their environment, hinting the glass might be intended to prevent the others from being infected.

Spawnbroker

This movie was incredible. One of the best science fiction movies I've ever seen.

As for the question of "Does Louise have a choice?", My answer is no. She might think she has a choice, but she never tries to change it anyways. To attempt to change the future would invalidate her past experiences, which would be a huge plot hole. She is experiencing time non-linearly, so there is no more agency; she either goes with the outcome, or it's a huge plot hole. Because if she changes her future significantly, she won't be able to experience any of the things that were necessary to experience in order to prevent the war from happening. It would have changed.

Alphagaia

Which is why I think she saw a possibility of the future, like a multiverse of decisions, but there is no proof it could go either way and free will is still a thing.

We do however see Hannah die in the beginning of the movie, but not in the ending.

Crazy notion: what if the 12 ships are somehow the same two aliens time traveling, as we see them disappear instead leaving into space.

Echo

Haven't seen the movie yet but I've read the source and whatever.

Spawnbroker wrote: »

As for the question of "Does Louise have a choice?", My answer is no. She might think she has a choice, but she never tries to change it anyways. To attempt to change the future would invalidate her past experiences, which would be a huge plot hole. She is experiencing time non-linearly, so there is no more agency; she either goes with the outcome, or it's a huge plot hole. Because if she changes her future significantly, she won't be able to experience any of the things that were necessary to experience in order to prevent the war from happening. It would have changed.

It's the Golden Path from the Dune books: you can see the future, but only if you do exactly what will happen, otherwise you leave the path and what you saw won't happen. Always loved that interpretation.

edit: Same thing Dr. Manhattan does in Watchmen.

Shadowhope

Spawnbroker wrote: »

This movie was incredible. One of the best science fiction movies I've ever seen.

As for the question of "Does Louise have a choice?", My answer is no. She might think she has a choice, but she never tries to change it anyways. To attempt to change the future would invalidate her past experiences, which would be a huge plot hole. She is experiencing time non-linearly, so there is no more agency; she either goes with the outcome, or it's a huge plot hole. Because if she changes her future significantly, she won't be able to experience any of the things that were necessary to experience in order to prevent the war from happening. It would have changed.

The lack of agency is why I was unhappy with the original short story, and why I won't be seeing the movie. I do not question the quality of the story - it's that it's a really well told story that bothers me a lot.

With that said, Stories of Your Life and Others is a fantastic collection, and every story in it is worth reading. Though the stories do have a tendency to deal with how people deal with hopeless situations.

Handgimp

So I went into this movie completely blind due to someone (Jeffe?) saying it was amazing in the movies thread, and I was already going to Dr Strange (movies are a 100+ mile trip for me, so it makes sense to try and see a couple at a time).

The opening hooked me and had me tearing up a bit, and it just got better from there. I watched the trailers afterward, and I'm very glad I didn't see them before.

Alphagaia

I have not read the short novel, but for me, it felt very open to interpretation if free will was still a factor or not. Depending if you hold any gravity to the answer of the scientist how he would be more vocal about his feelings if he could see his entire life in advance and the ending not showing/mirroring the death of Hannah, only the birth, while the start of the movie showed both.

So It Goes

This movie did what Interstellar was trying to do, only way better.

Hahnsoo1

All those weird mashups in the OP aside (sorry El Jeffe), I thought it was closer to Close Encounters of the Third Kind mashed up with a talky modern sci-fi drama like Inception or Interstellar. I would say Memento, due to the timey-wimey stuff, but this is definitely NOT a movie I would describe in those terms to someone who hasn't seen it. I could also say "It's like an M Night Sham. movie, but good", but again, that would give too much away. I think I would call it "A well-told modern Close Encounters" and preface it with the less you know, the better.

I probably would also trigger warning that the plot heavily involves the death of a child. I lost my wife recently and it was somewhat triggering for me. I soldiered through it, but my shields went up and I think I lost some of the emotional impact as a result.

I saw it with a language teacher, and he said that he liked the fact that language was the key for unlocking all the secrets of the universe. Validation!

I missed the sequence about the Sanskrit word for War. What did Ghost Dog say when he arrived via helicopter and what was Louise's response?

The theater was packed when I saw it, so we had to sit near the front. We noticed that there were a LOT of close-in facial shots, which made me a bit uncomfortable.

Good movie overall, but I wish Ian had a bit more character development. The rest of the characters other than Ian and Louise were cardboard, but that is to be expected.

Handgimp

I think it was something like other dude saying a disagreement, she said it was a desire for more cows.

flamebroiledchicken

We have no idea what it's like to perceive time non-linearly. I would imagine that it would turn the notion of free will into a farce (much like Slaughterhouse Five, which Arrival cribs some ideas from) but the film leaves it open to interpretation- Amy Adams explicitly asks Hawkeye if he would make different choices if he could see his future, which perhaps implies some degree of agency.

Question is, does Hawkeye not learn the heptapod language? Does everyone who learns it begin to experience time non-linearly, or only some? Presumably knowledge of the language has to propagate in order to be useful 3000 years down the line, that whole aspect of it seemed a bit handwavey to me.

madparrot

General Chang appeared to have learned it, otherwise he wouldn't have known what he needed to do at the benefit. He could see that passing his phone number to her would successfully transmit that information to her past-self so that she could use it to talk down his past-self.

It's not explicitly stated at all by the film, but it's likely that she has kicked of a profound evolution of human society just by spreading this language around, causing more and more people to be able to see the future.

Zilla360

Trudged through the rain for miles to see this, and I was not disappointed. A wonderful, wonderful movie. I can't think of much to add right now, I'm still mentally chewing on it.

And it really cheered me up after such a heck of a week. Like as if the stars aligned, this movie is here right when I needed it, going into it knowing very little.

Just so glad that their are daring directors out there willing to make a real meaty, thinking persons sci-fi blockbuster. Very noisy leaving the theatre, so much explaining going on, and following the stunned silences of so many scenes. 8-)

flamebroiledchicken

I really wish the trailers hadn't ruined the "proper introduction" moment.

Zilla360

Here's an interesting article about some of the consulting work that went on behind the scenes.

21stCentury

i love Denis Villeneuve and i love that it didn't take him long at all for him to build enough clout to do pretty much anything he wants in Hollywood. I think the guy's been on the record a few times about really wanting to do Sci-Fi and there he is, rocking it.

(If you want an emotionally draining movie that could wreck you, check out Incendies.... Not Sci-Fi, but a film showing what Denis Villeneuve could do earlier in his career.)

Snowbear

Hey all, Saw this last week and really liked it in the theater, but lady friend and I spent the drive home discussing free will and time paradoxes and I was trying so hard to accept the rules the movie lays out without overthinking them. But I felt that once she meet the General in the future that it sucks all the tension out of the climax of the movie. We already know she saves the world because she has seen a future where she already saved it. I found it really hard to take the drama of "will she make the phone call in time? Will the guards shoot her?" Conversely I Loved the scene with the bomb because all the stakes are still in play.

Johnny Chopsocky

After seeing this, I'm really looking forward to seeing what Denis Villeneuve does with Blade Runner.

I love that there was an action scene going on and the movie couldn't be bothered to show it because "MOTHERFUCKER DISCOVERY IS HAPPENING HOW HYPE IS THAT?!"

HamHamJ

I'm gonna have to disagree with this whole thread. This was stupid. I blame Arthur C. Clarke for this whole genre of supposedly hard science fiction that devolves into metaphysical nonsense. Like, this isn't a mashup of anything. It's just Contact, with Magical Space Dad replaced by Magical Space Futuresight.

Time travel never works, except as a plot device. It is by definition incoherent. You cannot tell a profound message where the punch line is "Timey Wimey!" God this was a waste of 3 hours. I wish I had magical Space Octopus Visions of the Future so I would have know not to bother seeing this.

EDIT: Like, the premise of this movie makes as much sense as the "multiple personality disorder lets you turn into a werewolf" movie there was a trailer for before it.

So It Goes

HamHamJ wrote: »

I'm gonna have to disagree with this whole thread. This was stupid. I blame Arthur C. Clarke for this whole genre of supposedly hard science fiction that devolves into metaphysical nonsense. Like, this isn't a mashup of anything. It's just Contact, with Magical Space Dad replaced by Magical Space Futuresight.

Time travel never works, except as a plot device. It is by definition incoherent. You cannot tell a profound message where the punch line is "Timey Wimey!" God this was a waste of 3 hours. I wish I had magical Space Octopus Visions of the Future so I would have know not to bother seeing this.

I'm gonna have to disagree with your whole post.

flamebroiledchicken

There is no time travel in this movie.

HamHamJ

flamebroiledchicken wrote: »

There is no time travel in this movie.

Your consciousness time traveling is pretty much no different than physically doing so in terms of stupid time travel paradoxes.

OremLK

Although I liked the movie a lot, I agree with HamHam about time travel. I'm sick of it and I wish it wasn't in so many SF films these days. It usually doesn't work for me anymore. And I also thought the movie would've been stronger with a better, more hard SF revelation at its core.

As it stands, most of the film plays out like hard SF, but then the big twist makes the ending feel more like magical realism, where the emotions are what matters and the speculative elements are only used to push a philosophical theme.

This works, but at least for me... it doesn't work 100 percent. The emotional part is good. The themes are interesting. I even kind of like the basic idea of language rewiring your brain to let you do magic, but it feels like it belongs more in fantasy, and again the time travel aspects annoy me.

It's just, I don't know. The coolest part of the movie was the rigorous work of trying to communicate with alien beings. It felt like it deserved an equally rigorous conclusion, one which fires on all cylinders rationally, not just emotionally.

Anarchy Rules!

I really enjoyed the film (my girlfriend on the other hand found it too slow).

Vis a vis the time travelling aspect - I think I would have been happier if the time travelling nature was kept to her knowing the future about her daughter etc. It being important to the communication with the Chinese general sat a bit unhappily, but it hardly ruined the film.

GreasyKidsStuff

I loved this movie to bits but as soon as it was over, I told my friend that it had one of those endings that people would pick at and obsess over to no end like Inception or Interstellar or whatever other examples you can think of. Lo and behold! I've also been listening to the score all day, and it's a treat. Very understated except when it needs to go big like when they first enter the session room.

My friend considered it very feminist, and I certainly agree. This film subverts a lot of typical 'first encounter' narrative tropes, and the focus on Louise and how she carries herself really support that reading. Read some other article talking about how Ian plays the role that most female scientists usually have in these films, ie. the support to the main character who doesn't actually get any glory themselves (except Ian does get his moments to shine and does have a tangible contribution). It's nice! Really refreshing, and I hope this can be an example of how big productions like this can benefit from having a female lead.

flamebroiledchicken

OremLK wrote: »

Although I liked the movie a lot, I agree with HamHam about time travel. I'm sick of it and I wish it wasn't in so many SF films these days. It usually doesn't work for me anymore. And I also thought the movie would've been stronger with a better, more hard SF revelation at its core.

As it stands, most of the film plays out like hard SF, but then the big twist makes the ending feel more like magical realism, where the emotions are what matters and the speculative elements are only used to push a philosophical theme.

This works, but at least for me... it doesn't work 100 percent. The emotional part is good. The themes are interesting. I even kind of like the basic idea of language rewiring your brain to let you do magic, but it feels like it belongs more in fantasy, and again the time travel aspects annoy me.

It's just, I don't know. The coolest part of the movie was the rigorous work of trying to communicate with alien beings. It felt like it deserved an equally rigorous conclusion, one which fires on all cylinders rationally, not just emotionally.

I would argue that the speculative/hard-sci-fi aspect of the story concludes with Amy Adams saving the day because she is good at her job and figures out how to use the heptapod language to convince China to stand down and share their intel. The emotional stuff with the kid is really more like an epilogue. It's not like Interstellar where the power of love saves the day.

GONG-00

I like the idea of the audience learning along with the protagonist an alien way of thinking. Unfortunately, my linear mind could not ascend to the protagonist's expanded perception in the same way when the movie ended.

GreasyKidsStuff

I read another article that said the film plays with the audience's own understanding of film language to make the reveal at the end sort of work, which I took to be referring to how the film starts with the birth, and is shot in a very flashback-esque way, and then splices in the flash forwards throughout the film in a way that other films would do flashbacks... kinda? I lost the plot there a bit.

Trying to represent the nature of heptapod's language is a fucking daunting challenge though, obviously.

RT800

It's a pretty formulaic "first contact" movie. Aliens arrive, governments cordon off their ships, experts are called in, and the rest of humanity collectively loses its shit. The scientists and doctors make peaceful or inquisitive overtures while the military glowers over their shoulder and grumbles about weapons and hostile intent. Inevitably somebody does something stupid to punch up the tension and humanity prepares for war. Then at the last minute the scientist figures out the thing and the aliens depart, leaving humanity forever changed. Throw in some personal drama for the scientist protagonist and some themes about human unity so the audience can relate, and voila – a first-contact movie.

The only unique angle this story has going for it is the timey-wimey aspect, which was well executed but not particularly coherent. Time-shenanigans are almost always confusing.

Tonally I found the movie to be pretty depressing. From the opening scene it had an air of tragedy about it, but then you learn that it's not even a hardship to be overcome – it's one that's on it's way. No happily ever-afters here.

It's not a bad movie and it has a very well executed twist, but I have trouble elevating it above “decent”. It feels like it's just a better version of “Contact”.

ph blake

RT800 wrote: »

It's a pretty formulaic "first contact" movie. Aliens arrive, governments cordon off their ships, experts are called in, and the rest of humanity collectively loses its shit. The scientists and doctors make peaceful or inquisitive overtures while the military glowers over their shoulder and grumbles about weapons and hostile intent. Inevitably somebody does something stupid to punch up the tension and humanity prepares for war. Then at the last minute the scientist figures out the thing and the aliens depart, leaving humanity forever changed. Throw in some personal drama for the scientist protagonist and some themes about human unity so the audience can relate, and voila – a first-contact movie.

The only unique angle this story has going for it is the timey-wimey aspect, which was well executed but not particularly coherent. Time-shenanigans are almost always confusing.

Tonally I found the movie to be pretty depressing. From the opening scene it had an air of tragedy about it, but then you learn that it's not even a hardship to be overcome – it's one that's on it's way. No happily ever-afters here.

It's not a bad movie and it has a very well executed twist, but I have trouble elevating it above “decent”. It feels like it's just a better version of “Contact”.

Huh, I kind of thought it was one of the most hopeful movies I've seen in a while.

RT800

Well, I guess there's the whole human-unity thing.

Good in the abstract, but overshadowed by Dr. Banks' personal tragedy.

I mean, I suppose you could speculate that "it all works out in the end" but the only thing the movie shows us is that her daughter dies young and her husband leaves her.

I can see how some people might be into the idea that "all the happy moments in-between" make up for it, but I guess I'm a pessimist.

Not to mention that I find the idea of knowing your entire life from start to finish ahead of time to be something akin to a curse.

ph blake

This movie asks "is life worth it when so much of it is mired in conflict and ends in tragedy?" and answers with a definitive yes.

Like, yes, her daughter dies, and her husband leaves, and there are some definite free will quagmires to work through, but the entire point of the movie's emotional through-line is that Louise sees the sum of the experience, all the moments good and bad, and decides that, yes, it's worth it.

GreasyKidsStuff

Another aspect I noticed was the recurring ring/circle imagery. When you first see Louise with her daughter, there's a shot of her hands with a focus on her wedding ring. And then there's the fact all of the heptapod's written language is based on circular symbols (though a lot/all of them aren't full circles which is interesting). And the part where the film, you know, circles back around on itself and shows you that the beginning was actually the end (which Louise even acknowledges when she says she doesn't believe in a beginning and an end anymore, or whatever it was).

Really, really cool stuff. I'm excited to read some of the criticism that'll come out of this once it's been allowed to bake for a while. I might have to see it again.

ph blake

Like, I definitely see some people hating this movie because it literally ends with a "Maybe the true Arrival is the friends we made along the way" moment, but damn if just about everything in this movie didn't work for me.

Except the dumb meathead soldier watching NotInfoWars; that entire camp would have been on a communications lockdown with no phones or internet at all, this was the only thing to take me out of the movie for an instant.

Alphagaia

I thought it was? Their own phones where confiscated and the government knew within seconds which phone was dialing to where. It all was very strictly monitored, and the head honcho's (one of which the stolen phone was from) had to have ways to communicate with the outer world ofcourse.

ElJeffe

Snowbear wrote: »

Hey all, Saw this last week and really liked it in the theater, but lady friend and I spent the drive home discussing free will and time paradoxes and I was trying so hard to accept the rules the movie lays out without overthinking them. But I felt that once she meet the General in the future that it sucks all the tension out of the climax of the movie. We already know she saves the world because she has seen a future where she already saved it. I found it really hard to take the drama of "will she make the phone call in time? Will the guards shoot her?" Conversely I Loved the scene with the bomb because all the stakes are still in play.

I didn't have a problem with removing the uncertainty from the climax, because right around that time you're finding out that her kid hasn't even been born yet, and the emotional gutpunch makes up for it.