# Arrival (seen it - open spoilers) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 10, 2016, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arrival-seen-it-open-spoilers/771366 "2016-11-10T16:27:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Cayuga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/3e96dc/32.png) [@Cayuga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cayuga)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2016, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arrival-seen-it-open-spoilers/771366/61 "2016-11-22T14:52:38Z")
Liked it, but didn’t love it. I get the whole “She loved Hannah and chose to live what time she could with her even though she knew it would be cut short” thing. It’s sweet and touching. But, despite my having a daughter myself, it didn’t move me to tears or anything. Maybe I was just in a non-emotional mood. One thing that did bug me though: The heptapods managed to get Louise and Ian, as well as most of their equipment, out of harm’s way while keeping the bomb inside the chamber and closing a blast door to separate the humans from the explosion. Then the US government says, “They will interpret the bomb as an attack, so we must prepare for retaliation. Evacuate everyone.” Why weren’t Louise and Ian running around telling everyone, “They saved our lives. They took action to protect us. They’re not going to harm us.”? Even if they were ignored, you’d think they’d be telling people what happened. ---
**Author:** ![Cayuga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/3e96dc/32.png) [@Cayuga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cayuga)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2016, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arrival-seen-it-open-spoilers/771366/62 "2016-11-22T14:54:53Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Pulitzer’s worth $10 grand, that’s got to be good for at least a down payment in 1978 [del]New York[/del]Metropolis Even in 1978, that was a multimillion-dollar apartment. $10 grand, without income tax taken out, is less than 1% of that. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2016, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arrival-seen-it-open-spoilers/771366/63 "2016-11-23T02:19:08Z")
Here’s an interview with a professor of linguistics. She says that she doesn’t believe Amy Adams’s character could have afforded that house either. She talks some about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Incidentally, if you’d like to read a recent short book that shows why the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis isn’t really true, you should read _The Language Hoax_ by John H. McWhorter. And, please, read the original story by Ted Chiang, which you can get hold of easily now since there’s a movie tie-in edition: > **[How Realistic Is the Way Amy Adams’ Character Hacks the Alien Language In...](https://slate.com/culture/2016/11/a-linguist-on-arrival-s-alien-language.html)** > > Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival makes being a linguist look pretty cool—its hero Louise (Amy Adams) gets up close and personal with extraterrestrials and... ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2016, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arrival-seen-it-open-spoilers/771366/64 "2016-11-23T02:24:04Z")
Lisa: Wow. Now that I know all this, isn’t there any way to change the future? Fortune Teller: No…but try to look surprised. ---
**Author:** ![Lantern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d26b3c/32.png) [@Lantern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lantern)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2016, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arrival-seen-it-open-spoilers/771366/65 "2016-11-28T16:47:03Z")
I liked it a lot.Great science-fiction film and great use of non-linear storytelling IMO. Re: the very nice house. It doesn’t seem that hard to believe. Some possible combination of: a)She perhaps has rich parents who helped her financially b)She is a successful academic with perhaps significant side income from book writing and consulting c)She doesn’t have much of a life (this is before her child, remember) and spends most of her money on a nice house ---
**Author:** ![Quercus\_alba](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quercus_alba/32/4061_2.png) [@Quercus\_alba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quercus_alba)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2016, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arrival-seen-it-open-spoilers/771366/66 "2016-12-05T01:02:18Z")
> [@Cayuga](#): > > … > > One thing that did bug me though: The heptapods managed to get Louise and Ian, as well as most of their equipment, out of harm’s way while keeping the bomb inside the chamber and closing a blast door to separate the humans from the explosion. > > Then the US government says, “They will interpret the bomb as an attack, so we must prepare for retaliation. Evacuate everyone.” > > Why weren’t Louise and Ian running around telling everyone, “They saved our lives. They took action to protect us. They’re not going to harm us.”? Even if they were ignored, you’d think they’d be telling people what happened. They were concussed–so no memory of event? It could be interpreted that the blast and ejection were hostile actions by the aliens, not a plot by frightened soldiers (who may have died with their secret in the firefight below). ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2016, 8:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arrival-seen-it-open-spoilers/771366/67 "2016-12-05T08:32:21Z")
The movie ended up coming to my town after all! > [@Quimby](#): > > 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. This is fascinating to me, because you and I seem to have watched the movie in precisely the inverse fashion. That first boarding scene was a 10/10 for me, while the mushy-headed ending really fell flat IMO. > [@Skammer](#): > > 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_. > [@magnusblitz](#): > > A lot of people have been comparing this to Interstellar, and I agree for much the same reason. Both movies start out with a good sci-fi idea (exploring the galaxy for a new homeworld, how to communicate with aliens) and then in the last act leave it behind for a mashup of theoretical physics and philosophy. I wanted to know more about the aliens and less about Amy Adams’ cancer kid. Yes, great comparison by both of you. Although I was more disappointed in this case because with \*Interstellar \*I was already side-eyeing some of the “science” very early in the film (like the notion that a world that could build interstellar spacecraft would be helpless against crop “blight” and would soon be unable to produce food of any kind). So although some of the time dilation there was really cool (and legit scientifically), I didn’t have as far to fall when the hard science was jettisoned at the end (although that was still worse than I ever would have expected). > [@Shalmanese](#): > > If I remember correctly, the helicopter landed at that house to pick her up and take her to the alien site so it was before she got famous. But she was already kind of famous. She had at least one published book, and was apparently one of the top two contenders for “the best linguist in the U.S.”, ultimately winning a sort of rhetorical contest (the Sanskrit deal) against the guy she knew would be the other contender (a professor at Berkeley). So I am okay with this. Plus not every piece of land with a nice view like that is necessarily hugely expensive. I know some people in upstate Maine who have lakefront houses but are not millionaires. It comes down more to how expensive the actual house itself would be to build, and that I don’t know. Would those of you who are calling BS on this have felt the same way about the house if it had been in an ordinary, non-scenic neighborhood? > [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Personally, I would have preferred a straightforward “how to talk to aliens” story - the idea that understanding a concept gives you superpowers turns me off, abandons science-fiction and moves into pure fantasy, I figure. Yes! This is \*exactly \*how I felt. > [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Frankly, I was starting to lose patience with the dead-kid subplot, seeing it as a shoehorned-in personal drama just to pad out and distract from what was otherwise a fairly dry but interesting-to-nerds-such-as-myself effort at breaching a language barrier. That seals it. In contrast to **Quimby** , you and I seem to have had pretty much identical viewing experiences with this film. For most of the movie, I actually wondered if the “dead-kid subplot” might have actually been almost literally shoehorned in, as in added in after the rest of the movie had been made, at the insistence of movie executives–perhaps after doing some audience testing that found people weren’t finding the main character “relatable” enough, or just not finding enough emotion in the story generally. I felt like its inclusion might turn out to be the one element that would pull it down from a 10/10 to a 9/10. If, that is, they stuck the landing. They didn’t stick the landing. :smack: What actually happened, of course, was that this seemingly shoehorned-in subplot was a secret twist and in a way the backbone of the movie (although I suppose it’s \*just \*possible the movie could have originally had the General Chang thing as its only time-loopy element). So for those of us who prefer truly hard sci-fi, and get disappointed when a movie starts out seeming that way but then turns soft at the end: can you think of any hard sci-fi movies that did not disappoint you at any point? For me, there were a couple of recent ones that were pretty good in this respect: \*Gravity \*and _The Martian_. But both of those involved NASA in the near future (one nearer than the other), doing things we actually expect them to do without any “high concept” goings-on. Whereas in addition to this film, there are two others that come to mind that started out so strong and ended up disappointing me: \*2001 \*(awesome until the “psychedelic” last act) and \*Sunshine \*(tremendous until it turned into a ridiculous slasher movie halfway through). ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2016, 9:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arrival-seen-it-open-spoilers/771366/68 "2016-12-05T09:27:20Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > So for those of us who prefer truly hard sci-fi, and get disappointed when a movie starts out seeming that way but then turns soft at the end: can you think of any hard sci-fi movies that did not disappoint you at any point? In terms of “hardness”? _Europa Report_. Not a huge fan of the story overall, it was a bit of a downer, but it didn’t really veer into any woo or handwavy territory that I can recall. Also, _Iron Sky_ was a pretty realistic depiction of what could happen when the Moon Nazis do eventually decide to come back, but I’m not sure if we should rate that as SF or just contemporary action. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2016, 10:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arrival-seen-it-open-spoilers/771366/69 "2016-12-05T10:25:11Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > In terms of “hardness”? _Europa Report_. Not a huge fan of the story overall, it was a bit of a downer, but it didn’t really veer into any woo or handwavy territory that I can recall. > > Also, _Iron Sky_ was a pretty realistic depiction of what could happen when the Moon Nazis do eventually decide to come back, but I’m not sure if we should rate that as SF or just contemporary action. LOL on the second one…the first I will definitely check out! I never heard of that one, somehow. ETA: I was excited to find out _Europa Report_ was streaming on Netflix…then I saw that it was already on “My List”! So much for never having heard of it before. I don’t remember hearing about it or adding it, but now it is definitely bumped up the list in any case. ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2016, 12:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arrival-seen-it-open-spoilers/771366/70 "2016-12-05T12:46:44Z")
The real problem with wanting truly hard SF as explained by Randall Munroe: > **[Science Montage](https://xkcd.com/683/)** > > The rat's perturbed; it must sense nanobots! Code grey! We have a Helvetica scenario! Even Europa Report falls if you look at it through a ‘how plausible is this’ lens. Good movie, though. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2016, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arrival-seen-it-open-spoilers/771366/71 "2016-12-05T13:55:36Z")
SlackerInc, my memory is that Amy Adams’s character taught at Berkeley and the other professor they were considering taught at Stanford. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2016, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arrival-seen-it-open-spoilers/771366/72 "2016-12-05T16:00:34Z")
I’d be willing to bet otherwise, not that it ultimately mattets. ---
**Author:** ![BobArrgh](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bobarrgh/32/2881_2.png) [@BobArrgh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobArrgh)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2016, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arrival-seen-it-open-spoilers/771366/73 "2016-12-05T17:04:19Z")
I went to see the movie **precisely** because it was about linguistics and communicating with an unknown entity, so I thought it was good in that respect. I didn’t catch on that the scenes with the little girl were _flash-forwards_, until late in the movie, when she helps the girl spell her name. I don’t remember if the girl’s name was mentioned before, but the giveaway was when Louise figured out that the heptapods’ language had no beginning or end. As soon as she said, “Hannah”, I whispered to my wife, “Hannah is a palindrome … reads the same backwards and forwards”. I might be a little dense, but I didn’t realize until just now that her abilities to know the future was the actual gift imparted by the heptapods. In my defense, I have a hard time hearing dialog on a screen, and watch all our stuff at home with the closed caption on; thus, a large part of my brain was occupied with trying to figure out what the _humans_ were saying in the movie! I was a little thrown off with the noises every time they went into the gravity lift. I couldn’t figure out if the heptapods were trying to talk to them with sound, or if the noises were just part of the normal sounds of their vessel. All in all, it was a very intriguing movie, and I wouldn’t mind seeing it again. However, I will wait for it to come out on DVD so I can follow the dialog better with the captions on, and also to look for any of the foreshadowing clues. I’m definitely going to read the actual story. ---
**Author:** ![Quimby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/22d042/32.png) [@Quimby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quimby)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2016, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arrival-seen-it-open-spoilers/771366/74 "2016-12-05T17:28:45Z")
Honestly I think Amy Adams’ performance sold what could have easily been seen has corny and manipulative. She should get an Oscar nom for it but probably won’t. ---
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2016, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arrival-seen-it-open-spoilers/771366/75 "2016-12-05T23:20:30Z")
It wasn’t bad. Thoughts: 1. The aliens were fairly human. They can see and understand our writing and they have the psychology to understand pointing with limbs. As opposed to communicating via chemical scents, tactile stimulation, echolocation, magnetic fields, or some other sense we lack. Or ahem, just belting out Inception noises and making earthquake noises whenever they walk. 2. I’ve seen some interpretations of this as a Hollywood feminist movie where the nurturing mother shows the testosterone poisoned phallocentric military how not to get us all killed by using our words instead. Didn’t get that sense during the movie, but seems plausible enough. The alien ship is basically a big egg and the tentacle hand would’ve made Georgia O’Keeffe happy enough. 3. I thought the idea was time was static. If the “gift” is you can see the future but not change anything it sounds more like a curse. I know there was a reference to a choice, but…otherwise you get involved with paradoxes. Or seeing endless futures depending on every action you take. Just thinking about something should change the future, unless the future is set in stone, just as the past is. Regardless, this is where the movie takes off the fig leaf of being remotely grounded in reality. Reminded me of Slaughterhouse Five. So it goes. 4. Was there a big twist moment when the audience is supposed to gasp and realize what’s going on? They foreshadowed the hell out of the concept of non-linear time, Sapir-Whorf, the circular alien language, the moment she asked who the little girl was (indicating she didn’t exist yet), Hannah as a palindrome, or Hannah talking about how mommy and daddy talked to animals. Can’t quite remember the exact time line of events there. Maybe I was primed to find the twist instantly because during the previews they were showing another M. Night movie. 5. Humans can’t even talk to dolphins. We have difficulty decoding some ancient human languages. Aliens? Forget it. I wish the movie had focused more on that and the alien’s psychology though, would’ve been interesting. Maybe a subject better for a book. 6. The portrayal of other countries as gung-ho war hawks ready to attack the aliens was silly. Guess they won’t be showing this one in China. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2016, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arrival-seen-it-open-spoilers/771366/76 "2016-12-06T00:12:10Z")
> [@marshmallow](#): > > 1. The portrayal of other countries as gung-ho war hawks ready to attack the aliens was silly. Guess they won’t be showing this one in China. I figured the intent was contrary - the Chinese general is shown as tough and aggressive but also wise enough to make the right decision at the crucial moment, and he gets a dramatic scene with Archer at the award dinner. That aspect strikes me as likely to have been written with appeal to the Chinese market in mind. ---
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2016, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arrival-seen-it-open-spoilers/771366/77 "2016-12-06T01:40:39Z")
One fun moment was how the grunts planted the bomb because they were inspired by right wing talk radio. Shouldn’t this be some sort of political controversy by now? Crooked liberal Hollywood, this is how Trump won, etc. > [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > I figured the intent was contrary - the Chinese general is shown as tough and aggressive but also wise enough to make the right decision at the crucial moment, and he gets a dramatic scene with Archer at the award dinner. That aspect strikes me as likely to have been written with appeal to the Chinese market in mind. I thought they don’t show movies that make China look bad. I’m not really sure though. The general seemed stupid to me. Yeah, let’s attack the aliens that have technology thousands, maybe millions of years more advanced that ours. Not because they’ve actually attacked us, or looked at us funny (which would be hard since they don’t have faces), but because of one murky message. What could go wrong? But oh, reciting his wife’s dying words. That changes everything. But I dunno, maybe they’d see it as China being badass enough to confront the no good aliens while wimpy America dithers all day. ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2016, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arrival-seen-it-open-spoilers/771366/78 "2016-12-06T03:19:43Z")
> [@Quimby](#): > > Honestly I think Amy Adams’ performance sold what could have easily been seen has corny and manipulative. She should get an Oscar nom for it but probably won’t. That was my thought. With this and ‘Nocturnal Creatures’ she’s making her run at some Oscar bait. She’s in her early 40s and never had that young ingenue phase. If she’s going to win one the time is now. Five noms and no wins. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2016, 8:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arrival-seen-it-open-spoilers/771366/79 "2016-12-06T08:06:48Z")
> [@Jonathan\_Chance](#): > > That was my thought. With this and ‘Nocturnal Creatures’ ‘Nocturnal Animals’, in case anyone wants to search for it. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2016, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arrival-seen-it-open-spoilers/771366/80 "2016-12-06T14:16:19Z")
> [@marshmallow](#): > > I thought they don’t show movies that make China look bad. I’m not really sure though. The general seemed stupid to me. Yeah, let’s attack the aliens that have technology thousands, maybe millions of years more advanced that ours. Not because they’ve actually attacked us, or looked at us funny (which would be hard since they don’t have faces), but because of one murky message. What could go wrong? But oh, reciting his wife’s dying words. That changes everything. But I dunno, maybe they’d see it as China being badass enough to confront the no good aliens while wimpy America dithers all day. Well, when the movie gets dubbed into Mandarin and Cantonese and such, who the hell knows how they’ll spin it to make the Chinese General a more positive character and the Americans look like dopes? It probably wouldn’t take very much the adjust the “tone” accordingly, make the alien message seem more overtly threatening so the Chinese look prudent and the Americans look spineless. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arrival-seen-it-open-spoilers/771366.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arrival-seen-it-open-spoilers/771366.md?page=5)