Jodie Foster played it dumb when talking to the alien.
She knew she needed proof of this encounter, but didn’t get anything.
Why not say, “hey alien dude, everyone back home is going to mock me and not believe me. Can you tell me something that will happen 6 months from now that I can predict which will prove I was right? Or maybe some kind of formula that we haven’t discovered that will prove I was speaking to an ultra-intellient advanced lifeform?”
But, no, she clowned it. Stupid ending to an otherwise solid movie. (Minus the horrific and forced love-interest)
Well, that’s their story and they’re sticking to it. But the question in my OP is predicated on them really knowing there are aliens and that she did have the experience she claims based on the gap in the recording.
Maybe that’s the question I should be asking … is there in fact a hidden agenda, or do Woods and everyone else actually believe it’s a giant fraud. I assumed every thought what I did – that the trashing was an “official” response that they understood was bullshit.
IIRC, the machine isn’t under US control, so how would they stop more research with it?
I found that aspect intensely annoying - even if Hurt’s character somehow had the resources to develop something as vastly complicated as the Machine blueprint and keep it secret, how did he get the coded signal to originate from Vega? The source of the transmission is easily verifiable by triangulating the various radio dishes that were receiving it, so it’s not like it could be faked from a satellite or moon base that was sort-of in the direction of Vega, further assuming that Hurt’s character had the resources to launch such in secrecy as well.
Geez, I get that the science in the movie is supposed to be all gee-whizzy high-falutin’ dur-magic to us audience proles, but this is geometry we’re talking about…
The “over cooked ham” that was first in line was a dick too.
IIRC the alien she “meet” gave the impression (to me at least) that this first contact was IT. The first one, the only one, and the LAST one for a long time.
They could try again. For nothing compared to the cost of building two for twice the price. But subsequent attempts would not have worked.
I think they should have showed other attempts in the movie. Would have made the “belief” in science vs the “belief” in not science even more contrasty/ironic.
Or in other words they could call again but the aliens were not going to answer.
Look at the way we easily ignore facts about climate change, if it better suits us to pretend those facts don’t exist.
Facts–geometric or not–are amazingly easy to rationalize away. (“it was a measuring error/those who say the signal had to originate from Vega faked the data/it’s a conspiracy!”…etc.)
In the world of Contact, it could be that some in power really did understand that the contact had to be from actual, bona fide aliens–but they went along with the ‘data was faked’ people because they feared losing their power in a world that believed in genuine Advanced Aliens. (There would inevitably be upheavals of various kinds in such a world.)
It’s on HBO this month in case anyone wants to see it now.
I noticed the alien said “You have your mother’s hands.” But they said earlier her mother died in childbirth. So how did the alien know that since that info was not in Ellie’s memory? Or did he have some other way of knowing about her mother?
It wouldn’t just be “some in power”, though - there are hundreds of people who work at the major radioastronomy centers and literally any amateur enthusiast could point a dish at Vega to receive the signal and I’ve no doubt there are hundreds worldwide who would. That’d be one of those deals where the conspiracy would have to be so far-reaching that it’s actually more plausible that the billionaire managed to somehow send a transmitter to Vega.
Well, if the aliens could read her mind accurately enough to render a duplicate of her father, I can imagine them coming across some deep memory of hers in which her father told her she had her mother’s hands. Ellie herself might even have forgotten about this.
I saw a TV movie a while back where aliens also showed up as dead relatives based on reading memories. In that case the people believed they really were seeing dead relatives. However they figured out they were really aliens because one guy never knew his parents, the aliens were reading his fantasy of what he thought his parents were like.
My memory of the novel and the movie disagree with you - the signal was receivable on Earth for months if not years, long enough to get confirmation from multiple dishes from large professional ones to smaller amateur ones. Even if the latter lacked the sensitivity to decipher the signal (even superficially), it should be apparent that there is a signal, and where it’s coming from. Anyone who still believes it’s an Earth-originated fraud, well… screw 'em, they probably cling to fictions like Allah and Jesus, too.
The ending is just an unfortunate byproduct of dramatic fiction, I figure; without it, the story lacks that “Prometheus torn by vultures” martyrdom climax in which the truth-bringer is unjustly scorned. I’m a tad disappointed in Sagan for writing it that way, but I guess the alternative is “…and then the aliens exposed humanity to knowledge and technology so far in advance of what we had that we were changed forever as a species in ways that I, the author, cannot describe. The end.”
My version would have been along the lines of “… and then Ellie said ‘fuck all y’all and your stupid primitive religions. I’m staying with the aliens. Maybe I’ll come back to Earth in a few years and those among you who have realized that theism is bullshit can join me. Smell you later.’ The end.”
I’m not sure how many times, but it ran for hours and hours and perhaps for days. And it is noted in the movie that it is being picked up at multiple locations all over the world.
The signal ran for years - it contained the schematics for the machine, after all, and it only ended immediately when the Machine was activated and Eleanor was on her way.
This was one of the points used by the opposition to declare her a fraud, btw - “If the signal was coming from Vega, then why did it stop immediately when the Machine was started? How did the aliens know, X years to the second, when the machine would be activated? Since that is impossible, the signal must have been a fake!”
The opposition wasn’t all nuttery and religious, by the way, nor were all the supporters on the side of Reason. There were plenty of anti-Machine scientists and pro-Machine religious people.
Sounds to me that you may have missed the point, then (or just hated the direction Sagan took the novel, true). The novel was about Eleanor Arroway’s search for God and ended with her finding empirical proof of a Creator’s existence. The novel’s Eleanor could no more have said “fuck all y’all…” than she could have said “fuck me, Kitz.”
In the book, the signal stops when Ellie and the others go through the machine. Given the distances involved, the signal was a long planned event. “Contact” isn’t that Earth people discover other intelligences, it’s very much the other way around.
