The spouse’s company had a screening of “Arrival” last night so we went.
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Spoiler space, but feel free to post open spoilers.
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I really enjoyed it. Good, smart sci-fi. It’s not an action movie - it’s a bit slow, cerebral, almost claustrophobic, but the issues are intriguing and got more so as the film progressed. I found it to be a nice combination of thinking person’s Independence Day with a bit of Doctor Who thrown in (the whole bit about “I know this will work because I’ve already done it.”)
I thought the way they portrayed the different areas’ response to the Heptapods, including the growing unease and eventual shutdown, but I also liked how General Shiang, the most hard-line of the leaders dealing with the situation, was able to change his mind when confronted with facts. That was refreshing, and not the way I expected the ending to go.
I’d like to have learned more about the Heptapods - what they wanted us to help them with in 3,000 years, where they came from, why they chose Earth and the specific places they chose to show up - but I recognize that wasn’t the point of the film.
I hope it does well–we need more smart movies to go with our superhero flicks.
I think having read the book before, the movie was spoiled for me. I knew about the twist ending from the start and I spent most of the time analyzing the differences between the book and the movie rather than being immersed in it.
It was a very moody piece and Villeneuve is a master at tone but it was hard for me to see how it hung together as a movie.
An entire physics based plot was cut which made Renner’s character feel kind of redundant in the movie. He never really contributes much of note and just feels kind of superfluous. But I had the same feeling about the Contact book -> movie adaptation too where all of the “mathy” stuff worked so much better on the page but was cut from the movie because it was untranslatable.
If you’d told me that there’d be a mass-market linguistics science fiction movie, I’d likely not have believed you. I don’t really buy into Sapir Whorf in any way beyond trivialities but that’s fine.
Loved the pacing, the focus on what we knew.
As always, when time is involved there are some causality paradoxes that are hard to think about, but nothing that screamed at me as bogus within the framework the movie established. One spot I wondered about:
Amy Adams knew to call the Chinese general because she remembered their encounter in the future. But why, in that future encounter would she not remember having called him in the past?
The one bit of information that I wish the movie had revealed and didn’t is why, if Adams doesn’t tell Renner immediately about her future knowledge, what happened that when the kid is about 6 she decides then is the time to do so (especially compounded by the fact that when she does it, she knows what will happen).
I really enjoyed it and the ending made the entire things work beautiful for me but I have to admit even though I am a patient movie watcher the pacing in the beginning came just short of frustrating me. Not sure we needed so many scenes of the load lifter in that first boarding scene.
The time line with the daughter completely got me. It did not even occur to me that those weren’t flashbacks but once it was revealed it just all came together. Smartest Science Fiction film I have seen since Contagion.
My interpretation is that if she had told him before, he wouldn’t have had the baby with her. A big part of the gift that the heptapods gave her is not only knowledge and understanding of the future, but also an acceptance of future events.
She has so many memories of her child and the time they spent together. If she had tried to alter the future in any way, those memories would have never materialized in real life for her. She had to tell him at the exact same time she told him in the original timeline so her daughter’s life would be preserved the way it happened for her.
Yeah she decided (rightly, IMO) that the brief time she would have with her daughter was worth the tragedy but apparently he could not see it that way (regretful but forgivable).
My wife and I think that she and Renner reconciled their marriage at the end of the movie- when he asked “Do you want to make a baby?”, we recall that she was looking at the picture their daughter had drawn of the two of them with the canary- so therefore they’d gotten back together and were discussing having a *second *child. Did we misinterpret that?
My 15-year-old daughter and I just went to see it and we both loved it. HOWEVER, there was one part (being a long-time 'doper) that threatened to take me out of the movie altogether.
The Kangaroo story…
But then it turned around and immediately redeemed itself… thank goodness. I mean, how could an expert linguist not know that story was untrue…
Man, I don’t know. The idea that learning a non-linear language would enable you to see/remember the future or see time non-linearly really took me out of the movie. I mean, they tried to cover it by the exchange about how learning a new language can re-wire your brain, but I really felt they left the science behind at that point. Kind of spoiled to movie for me, not unlike the “love” speech tainted Interstellar.
Our showing was incredibly dark to the point that it hurt my enjoyment of the movie. I appreciate the popularity of the movie but it didn’t work for me. I realized by 1/2 way through that JR was the ex husband and that the daughter was the rr
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Yes, I think you did. All of the scenes with the daughter during the movie were not flashbacks. They were Louise “remembering” the future. She was single and never married / no kids when the aliens landed. When she started dealing with the aliens, she started living her life non-linearly. All of the scenes of her and the kid were of the kid in the future. So the kid didn’t exist until later, when Louise and Ian got married. (Also remember in her last session with the aliens, she said something about “who is that little girl?”)
Similarly, the sat-phone call at the end of the movie was the same type of situation. She “remembered” from the future (at the formal gathering where General Shang was) that she called Shang. So in her present, (at the time the alien ship was leaving) she called him on the sat-phone, not knowing what she was going to say. As the phone was ringing, she “remembered” from the future him telling her exactly what she said to him – which she then told him.
Ian did leave her when the girl was young. It was implied that she knew Hannah was going to die, but she didn’t tell Ian until the girl was 6 or so (as stated in a previous reply). Presumably he left because he was angry with Louise for withholding that information. Also, remember Hannah says “daddy doesn’t look at me like that anymore”. Now, he knows that she is going to die and he can’t do anything about it.
Even though you have to figure out at what time each event actually happened, I found this to be one of the most interesting features of this film.
For those who did not like it, you aren’t alone. The muttering I heard as people left the theater I was in was mostly negative. I think people were expecting Independence Day.
More fools them. I thought it was smart, understated (and quite well-done in that style) and portrayed a race that was truly Alien trying to communicate with us. And while I figured out where we were going with the plot around 2/3 of the way through, I still was riveted to my seat right to the end. Liked it a lot.
I did have a moment of thinking it would be funny if it turned out the aliens were trying to talk to the canary the whole time.
Another minor backstory question I have is how is it Amy Adams was a rich linguistics professor (based on her home)? Not vital to the movie in any way, was just curious about it.