Good questions. I agree with the philosophers that libertarian free will is a myth (although that kind of bums me out). I do think it’s possible that not even a theoretical Oracle could predict the future, because there may be some randomization mixed in there. But that is still not libertarian free will.
My beef is with the idea that someone could know what the future holds, yet not be able to change it. Sounds like a version of locked-in syndrome, a horrible fate. It also reminds me of a scene in *Westworld *(those who have seen it probably know which one I mean).
That is a tough nut to crack. It’s explored a lot in science fiction but of course since there has never been a confirmed case of someone knowing what the future is, we can’t test this. I think an interesting sci fi story would show someone who can see the future and tries to change it. No matter what they do, the future still turns out the same way. (Actually one plot element of Minority Report kind of works like this, although there are also elements that are exactly the opposite. Spoiler below.) My concept would be more of a Groundhog Day scenario where the character repeatedly tries and fails to change the future, the underlying idea being that the future is cast in stone.
One concept of time is that time is fixed and we move through it, rather than time being something that flows past us. In that model you can’t change the future any more than you can change the past. In the book Flatland, the author imagines what it would be like for us 3D beings to view a 2D world. We would be like gods to them. Now imagine the same thing with time, instead of a spacial dimension. If we could step out into another dimension and see the universe at all points in time, laid out in front of us, the concept of past and future becomes meaningless. If this is really the way time is, there is causality but no free will.
Minority ReportThe concept is that in the future, a group of gifted (mutant) people can foresee the future and are enlisted to do so for the purpose of crime prevention. When they foresee murders, the police arrest the murderers before the crimes are committed. This has completely eliminated murders in Washington, D.C. (Proof that you can change the future if you know it.) Then they predict that the head of the police unit will commit a murder, and the police are after one of their own. Then the rest of the movie plays out, with him convinced that he can prevent himself from committing a murder. Finally he comes to the moment where the murder is supposed to happen, and in fact the events happen exactly as foretold although it turns out it wasn’t exactly a murder–he was set up. Proof that you cannot change the future if you know it.
If you only know certain generalities about what will happen, that’s one thing. If you know every last detail, and can’t even make yourself swap a pronoun for a given name or vice versa, that’s the locked-in nightmare.
Kurt Vonnegut published Timequake in 1997 exactly as you describe, but of course the general concept is classical. Now, knowing the future, time travel, etc. is a silly and absurd concept if you think about it too hard; where it can work is as a literary device. As in the movie.
I’m a bit late to the party but I finally saw this last night and…meh.
Rather disappointing all round. I’m a bit of a sci-fi buff and I’d heard a bit about its hard sci-fi credentials, and I really enjoyed Sicario by the same director so I should have been predisposed to like it but it left me cold.
Time travelling and pre-knowledge was handled with greater emotional punch in “12 Monkeys”, The arrival of and meeting with the aliens was done far better in “Close Encounters”, The establishing of communications was done far better in “Contact”.
Amy Adams was great, no doubt of that. Everyone else was utterly forgettable. There was certainly no charisma between the two leads. You could have sliced any other character from that film and it remained essentially the same. The US army behaved in stereotypical “blow it up first, ask questions later” mode and the boxes were neatly ticked for Chinese and Russian unthinking aggression.
Ultimately, I just don’t think it felt like a coherent whole, It tried to do far too much and there was far too much left unexplored or hand waved away. The teaching of a language that helps you see into the future? That has potential as a story but the uncovering of it didn’t ring true to me. I’m no wiser now about how it was decoded than I was at the start of the movie.
The story about the daughter didn’t resonate with me at all. I do have kids myself and the question it posed and the course of action Louise took seems like a no-brainer to me and the deeper philosophical implications of it were criminally skipped over. It didn’t make me think to the same extent that the other movies I mentioned have done.
(and having the ships disappear into a puff of cloud seemed lazy).
If it is a film on linguistics and how language affects perception…do that. If it is a film on how humans handle first contact…do that, if it is a film on free will, fate and choice…do that. I think this film was ambitious and tried to do them all but ended up not skewering any of those themes satisfactorily. Perhaps…and I don’t say this lightly…it should have been much longer. The Hobbit could have made do with single 2 hour movie, “Arrival” has a subject matter that needs a good three hours to do justice to.
> . . . Time travelling and pre-knowledge was handled with greater emotional punch in
> “12 Monkeys” . . .
It was handled even better in the 1962 short French film La Jetée that 12 Monkeys is based on. In fact, I consider La Jetée to be one of the best films ever made. I consider Arrival to be a very good but not great film. I consider 12 Monkeys to be pretty good but not as good as Arrival. And I’m not alone in thinking La Jetée to be great:
Just watched it a few days ago. I LURVE time travel stories. I focused on the emergence of the Big Spoil in this film and was stunned by the end. I don’t go looking for clues. What the hell- the pleasure is in the reveal.
To my way of thinking, the very idea that all time is happening concurrently is incredibly appealing, fiction-wise. I don’t care what Einstein has to say on the matter. ( pun intended )
The complaints about stereotyping Chinese and Russians, the cardboard cut-out military representation? Blah blah. It’s a movie. They have to get from point A to point B. Many movies fail on many detailed levels yet work thematically and/ or emotionally. If I want to commit to dissecting every movie as I watch it for accuracy and believability, I’ll stop being a lover of cinema and get hired as a film critic.
This one worked for me emotionally.
The early montage where We learn of the life arc of the daughter Hannah seemed rushed, painful, dream-like in terms of lighting and cinematography and editing.
Dreamlike. How perfect. The time travel we all experience during our waking and sleeping lives in the space between our ears is so very much like that montage. Well done, well done.