Sounds more than a little too depressing for me right now…
I just reread the 1998 short story that it’s based on, which is “Story of Your Life and Others” by Ted Chiang. You can find it in his 2002 collection called Stories of Your Life and Others, which is now being reissued in a movie tie-in edition. If you want to understand the ideas of the film better, you might want to read the story. There are ideas in the story that aren’t included in the movie and some things in the movie which aren’t from the story. Ted Chiang is an interesting writer. Since 1990, he’s been turning out less than one short story per year on average, and every one of them is brilliant.
About 12 minutes in, I suddenly realized “OMG IT’S THE HEPTAPOD STORY IN A FEATURE LENGTH MOVIE.” Haven’t been that happy in a long time. That’s the only Ted Chiang story I know. I’ll have to dig up some others.
Well she’s a Professor, presumably an author and gets government contracts. All of those things could make her pretty well off i think.
It occurred to me that there’s a trivia question here:
Q: What do the films Arrival and Still Alice have in common?
A:They both have American female linguistics professors as their main character.
First thing I thought when I saw the aliens was “tholians !” …
Her house, at that point in her timeline, was after she sold her book, became the only expert on Heptopodiasm (or whatever). She was rich, but alone. MUH! I cried at the beginning, middle and end of this, which may have been the end, beginning and middle.
I was so surprised to know she knew this was happening, especially when she explained to her daughter why daddy doesn’t see her like he used to. Then I bawled when she asked the heptopods who the little girl was.
Fuck this movie broke my heart. I have no idea if I could keep the same timeline. In hearsay, Daddy Ian said, “You made the wrong choice”, I didn’t know how sad I should feel. 10/10.
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.
Well, maybe she remembered from the future who won the Superbowl for 10 years in a row and bet big. Duh!
Really, movie and TV people always have great homes, it’s just not something to bother thinking about. It’s just a trope.
Maybe she had rich parents who died and left her the house. It happens.
I was underwhelmed, but that certainly wasn’t the reason. I did like a number of aspects of it.
In terms of the science, the leap I couldn’t make was alien language giving you the ability to know the future and, apparently, breathe in the alien’s atmosphere. Among all the people on the project, was she the only person who learned the language?
But I did think the aliens were cool and alien-y. I liked that they seemed similar to earth’s cephalopods which are also very intelligent. I imagine them to be from a world where bony, seven-limbed octopuses dominated the planet.
Regarding the atmosphere - maybe it was breathable to humans all along. We’re assuming it wasn’t because the aliens themselves decided to stay inside an aquarium, for their own reasons.
Regarding the language - other people on the project may have understood it, to one degree or another, but she - being the genius linguist and all - was the only one who was *fluent *in it, which is what supposedly altered her brain’s configuration and allowed her to see into the fourth dimension. There’s a difference between being able to translate a language and being able to think in it.
It seems evident that Ian could understand Heptapod script to some extent. Also, General Xiang could (or, more likely, he knew somebody who could). Somebody on the Chinese side independently figured out what sort of exchange needed to happen at the cocktail party.
To my mind, that was twisting the plot a little too hard, but it held together.
I’m not going to read the thread because I don’t want to be spoiled, but I just want to vent that I’m so frustrated that this is not playing in my city! We have one 8-plex in town, and I have certainly learned not to hope for the kind of foreign and indie movies I would ideally love to go see (I just wait for those to come on Blu-ray or streaming). But why would they not bring a major studio sci-fi movie starring familiar faces for 8-plex goers (“Hawkeye” and “Lois Lane”). I know this is supposed to be smarter than your average sci-fi film (which is why I’m dying to see it), but come on. Couldn’t they ditch, I dunno, Rules Don’t Apply?
Sorry to post and run, but if anyone wants to express their sympathy without spoiling me, feel free to PM I guess. 
Thank you for that. I walked out of the theater yesterday thinking that Ian was her ex-husband the whole time they were working in Montana and wondering why they never mentioned knowing each other. But, yes, it makes more sense that the scenes with Hannah are “memories of the future” and that she and Ian get together after the events with the aliens. (BTW, did Ian appear at that gala event where she talked to the Chinese general?)
It was an interesting movie and I liked it. And I liked that the aliens were shown as being completely different from humans. So many movies and shows (Star Trek especially) have humanoid aliens. (The early scenes where we never fully saw the aliens reminded me somewhat of the third series of Torchwood (Children of Earth), in which the aliens were never fully shown, and it made them more terrifying.)
I liked it, BUT
Aliens think of time nonlinearly - OK (mostly) so far
So that means that they remember the future – umm, no it doesn’t
So did they fight because Louise did not tell Ian their daughter was going to die?
So the aliens are going to be in trouble in 3000 years and humans will help?
Despite my issues I applaud a thoughtful movie
Brian
I think you did - didn’t she say Renner left her because he was angry at a choice she’d made? I figure that choice was her saying “yes” to his suggestion they have a child, and he would eventually become angry because he’d realize that she knew at the moment that their daughter would eventually die and said “yes” anyway.
By that point in the movie, the timelines were getting sufficiently screwed up that even if in the scene where Renner asks, the crayon drawing was visible, it’s not necessarily a deal-breaker, more like artistic license, representing as it does Adams’ perception of all the events of her life, as opposed to something like Doctor Manhattan or “unstuck in time” Billy Pilgrim, who bounce around in their timelines in a manner more than just mental.
What I found mildly amusing was a few passing news reports about how stock markets had collapsed because of the chaos of the aliens’ arrival. As soon as the “universal language” catches on and humans start being able to see all their futures and pasts, stock markets will become utterly irrelevant.
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. Also, is Adams now trapped in her timeline? She asks Renner if he would change anything about his life, can she change anything about hers, or is she now just a puppet who can see the strings? With ~13 years warning, she can’t do anything about whatever disease kills their daughter? I could understand if all she could do was avoid any chains of events in which her daughter dies before Adams herself does, but if she makes a conscious decision to let events take this particular course, it kind of undercuts how sad she feels when her daughter dies.
I got the idea that she was the only one who could see her future, because of the amount of time she spent with the aliens. I don’t think it was entirely clear what benefit the alien knowledge gave to humanity but it was necessary to combine the messages from the twelve sites to understand the message.
And that’d very fine, except we her unpacking a box of books titled “The Universal Language”, which I gathered was written by her to spread the knowledge, apparently successfully since she was being honored at that later event where she met General Chang.
I was pretty underwhelmed. I thought it was fine and well acted, but I never felt any tension and I don’t really think the twist was all that clever. I didn’t see it coming, but just didn’t find it that cool of an idea. 6/10 for me.