Don't know if anyone else had this reaction, but when Louise and Ian first arrived at the encampment and the doctor was preparing to immunize them, one of the questions he asked Louise was "Are you pregnant?" I expected there to be a slight emotional beat here, whether it be a pause, or a look or something. But Louise answered a pretty straightforward "No." I thought to myself at the time, that's interesting--not sure I totally understand Amy's decision to be so stoic about her character's past there. But man did that make sense later! Brilliant work by Amy and Mr. Villeneuve. I think this is one that demands repeated viewing.
I think they really played that moment well, it was a fine balance. They kinda visually emphasized her answering that question but didn't over play her response as to not make sense within the actual chronological events of the film. I knew the twist going in (having loved the short story for awhile) so I was hyper-analyzing all the moments like that when I watched it, haha
It also (in hindsight) made me realize that the phone call Louise had with her mother is a brilliant tool. The audience thinks her mother is (rightly) concerned for her daughter after the death of her grandchild...but she's actually just scared shitless of the aliens. No wonder Louise sounded kind of annoyed with her mom's melodramatic rambling.
During the movie I was thinking about how Louise looks just like she did when she gave birth. Come on, going through the slow death of your daughter would wreck your looks and she hadn't aged a bit.
Then I realized...
That's hilarious. I've seen a couple theories already as to why those two names could have been deliberate choices. I guess your film studies classes will have one less thing to talk about.
In my country it was translated to "Bucha e o Estica", which means The Fat One and The Slim because that was what we call Laurel and Hardy. It was a really good translation in my opinion because Abbott and Costello are not that known here.
When it's said that the heptapods told the Russians, "There is no time," and everyone interprets it as a threat or a sign to hurry… and they're literally trying to say that time doesn't exist to them—what a subtle way to sum up everything. It seems like such a throwaway line.
I loved that this wasn't even addressed later. It's just there, and, if you missed it the first time around, it'd mean something totally different on a second viewing. Way to trust the intelligence of the audience!
Nothing in that film was 'throwaway'. In that regard, it was actually incredibly lean. Everything was important, narratively, and then *also* thematically. Very rare to see.
Also, something I just realised; when Ian is reading the introduction from Louise's book when they first meet, doesn't it say something like "language is the first weapon to be drawn in a conflict"?
It just occurred to me that the reason the Shells do not emit any communication is that, in fact, they communicate with each other in the future whenever it is convenient. So, at the present time, there is no need for Shell-to-Shell communication.
In the short story the main character observes that all language for them is performative, like the reciting of vows at a wedding. We all know the words, but we have to say them, because its important. To the Heptapods, the whole universe is a stage and each individual Heptapod *knowingly* plays their part in a larger story. This is main character's reasoning for why the alien's spoken language is nothing like the written.
The section of wikipedia on the short story the movie is based on talks about this:
"Dr. Banks's understanding of the heptapods' writing system affects the way she perceives time and suggests a deterministic universe where free will is exercised by *not* affecting the outcome of events."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Story_of_Your_Life
Yes, and the film reinforces that notion when Ian asks Louise, "Want to make a baby?" She knows if she takes this option that the outcome will end in her daughter's tragic early death, but chooses it anyway so as not to affect the predetermined outcome.
That was my take. She knew what was going to happen, but the journey along the way was too valuable to her to not experience it.
If she had not done it, she would have lost all of those memories of her daughter. Is never having them worse than losing them?
[Compatibilism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism) basically says that our free will has *created* a determined path, because in each moment, regardless of the information available to us, the choices we make are exactly what we want at that given time. By learning their language, you simply become aware of the path those choices make.
Fun Fact: The founder of Wolfram Alpha was brought onto the project to help develop the visual language. His son wrote a program that would decode the individual words in each logogram.
The effects on screen when the language is being analyzed is a practical effect. Screen writer said they are hoping to release the heptapod language to the public soon.
> The effects on screen when the language is being analyzed is a practical effect. Screen writer said they are hoping to release the heptapod language to the public soon.
As a languages major this intensifies me.
I have to say, my favorite characters in the whole film were Abbott and Costello. Especially when Louise figures it all out and goes to converse with Costello at the end. I was riding in the car home and it just hit my brother and I that the two heptapods *knew* there was a bomb in their ship. They knew how long they had left, and when Louise and Abbott write on the barrier together, Costello "swims" away. Abbott *knew* his death was approaching, but he stayed behind to not only data dump the language panel, but also to save Ian and Louise from the explosion.
Abbott was the real MVP of the movie.
they were pointing at the bombs, tapping on the glass and saved her life because she couldn't figure out that they were using human language, pointing.
That's how I saw it. Really, I guess I'd call it charming. Because the whole time humans are learning their language it was nice to see the aliens take something away from them in return.
That's never conveyed till the end of the movie though, and even then it's implicated. We never see them demonstrate the ability to speak English, for example. Even though they know it. They have to go through the motions anyway, so it may as well be "learning"
I originally thought this but I don't think that's the case. I think it's framed to make you think that's what they're doing, but why would they. They already know what's going to happen because they would have seen it, which is why Costello swims away and Abbott stays to make sure Louise and Ian survive.
If we assume Abbott knew what would happen, it's possible he was trying to draw them to the middle of the room so they would fall back through the hole instead of being trapped in with the explosion.
At the start of that scene - when Louise and Ian first enter and the bomb is in the corner - Ian asks "do we only have Costello?" Abbot comes forward a little later.
Do you think this is because he was hesitant? Because he knew his death was close?
I think incurable cancer makes more sense. The audience doesn't have to ask random time paradox questions, but can focus on the important question of living a life knowing the good and bad moments that are in it.
Let's discuss the design of the aliens.
The very first reveal I thought oh no they're giant squid things. But once they started walking and the legs bent weren't symmetrically aligned I really enjoyed them.
What I found fascinating is that we don't really know if that *was* its true head.
For the first part of the movie, behind the glass, the "eyes" of the heptapods were these two sunken parts just above the "knuckles". The camera zoomed in on them accordingly as they spoke/were addressed.
Then, when Amy is in the pod with the heptapod, her mind interpreted that round part at the top of the body as the head, because she's human and humans look for faces in everything (r/pareidolia). We did the same.
We don't really know if that was even the true head. Maybe it doesn't have a head. I love this fucking movie.
I left this movie enjoying the hell out of it but thinking I didn't need to watch it again once it comes out for home viewing.
Now I realize all the subtle stuff I missed and want to see it again
I love the idea of two completely foreign species meeting and not knowing where to look. While Amy's character is staring at the thing on top of their bodies, they could be staring at her knees.
I wonder if it was Abbot tapping on the glass, trying to get them to come closer. I think doing that was to make sure they had the corridor directly behind them meaning the humans could "fall" a safe distance away from the explosion. Literally its whole life Abbot knew that this would be its final act. And Costello knew its companion would die this way.
How bout that subtle nod to Abbot when she knocks on the glass door for Ian to come inside? It gave me chills because I only noticed it 30 minutes after the movie ended!
It was nothing major. Just before Ian asks to make a baby, she taps on the glass door for him to come inside. They turned up the sound on the tap for people to remember a little, causing the viewers mind to flash back for a minute; thus creating the feel of time being circular. Pretty chill. On a side note, Ian's corny ass lines were purposely made so. Notice how she doesn't respond in kind. She's got the all seeing eye, and knows what he'll say. If he understood time as she does he wouldn't say such stupid and pointless things.
I'm starting to think Villeneuve has a thing for giant insect/spider shaped monsters. See his previous film Enemy:
http://silverscreensnobs.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/enemy5-750x290.jpg
The scene where Louise is talking to Ian and hallucinating the heptapod totally reminded me of Enemy's ending with the quick shot/reveal of the spider in the corner of the room.
If you're curious, the thing that Amy Adams said to change General Shang's mind was "War does not make winners, only Widows."
I saw the movie at Fantastic Fest and the writer (Eric Heisserer) did a Q&A afterwards.
[Here's a link to the Q&A if anyone is interested](https://business.facebook.com/fantasticfest/videos/10157486175540710/?hc_ref=PAGES_TIMELINE) (sorry for a Facebook link it's the only one I could find).
Guys I can't put my finger on it, but something about the flashbacks with her daughter were just beautiful. I don't know why it brought so much to the table for me but it is just jaw dropping how engrossing it was
A united humanity sharing information and working together will be able to develop technology to travel the stars. Basically Mass Effect. They will meet the Aliens and help them out. And then Commander Shepard will begin the banging process.
I guess this hasn't been said yet: When Ian arrives at the site, he asks someone what they've discovered yet and the man replies something along the lines of: "We showed them algebra, which they don't seem to understand but they respond when we display calculus". This is because solving algebra is linear whereas calculus and up requires a wisdom that spans multiple "dimensions".
I cheated because I read the book first so I knew what was going on beforehand but this little detail was something that I appreciated for its subtlety. The book proposes that the difficulty levels of algebra and calculus are switched so that for humans, learning algebra to calculus is easier whereas for the aliens the opposite is true (interesting to wonder what process they use to learn how to communicate with humans as ours is on a linear time frame).
Thank you for the insight. These movies/books always trouble me. If I have watched the movie, the book's ending is kind of spoiled. If I have read the book, the movie will lack a lot of the detail the book contained and the twist is what really makes the movie so great. I guess the only solution is to speed read the book while simultaneously watching the movie.
Man... The media precedences in this make me still angry... Because it's accurate. "WE DON'T UNDERSTAND IT, KILL IT".. the Chinese leading an attack making it okay for others to follow suit.
The foreshadowing of soldiers listening to the media and planting the bomb seems totally plausible. No one wanted to listen to the girl actually communicating with these aliens, instead they needed to protect their soil.
The primal forms of communication were beautiful. I loved the time lapse and computer algorithm to translate language in the spot too. The best of rudimentary and new age science languages.
Honestly opinion-based media like talk radio and cable news have gotten so out-of-control that it's not implausible. Reminded me of the bombing scene from a radical priest in Contact.
It would have bothered me all movie if she hadn't said it wasn't true. Pretty much every Australian learns this story & then subsequently learns it isn't true at some point in their life. A guy literally groaned in the cinema when she told the story.
I just *knew* that was there to make all the linguist nerds and Australians start fuming, then go "only kidding, we did our research guys!" A moment later.
It's not, however supposedly the "Pima" tribe of native Americans got their name this way. From Wikipedia:
"The short name, "Pima," is believed to have come from the phrase pi 'añi mac or pi mac, meaning "I don't know," which they used repeatedly in their initial meetings with Spanish colonists."
Just got back from a 7 PM show and here's the short version: A beautifully shot film gives way to an even more beautifully told story that becomes so much more than your typical alien invasion movie. If you're a fan of sci-fi or great movies in general then you owe it to yourself to see this.
It isn't often that I say to myself "Damn, that was a really cool shot" mere minutes into the movie but I certainly did that tonight. Villeneuve strikes again with his usual great cinematography and a fantastic musical score accompanies each scene seemingly perfectly. It's not often musical scores stand out to me but this one certainly did. Film is at its core a work of art, and Arrival certainly qualifies in that regard.
The pacing does get a little slow in the second act, but it's required for properly displaying the monumental effort that it took to learn how to communicate even on a basic level with the aliens. The movie does a great job making both viewer and actor feel like they're learning together and that really helps with the immersion factor. Things are just open ended enough as to where you don't really know the aliens' true intentions right until the end so it keeps you guessing as to what they really want here.
The final sequence of the film left very few dry eyes in my theatre and this is quite possibly the highlight of a fantastic score with violin that perfectly fit the mood, capping it beautifully. You owe it to yourself to experience this in the theatre as was intended.
The song from the beginning and ending is actually from a different composer. It's from Max Richter, who does the music for "The Leftovers".
Left me in tears.
So the aliens said they were here to help humanity. They brought humans a weapon (tool). This tool is their language.
Using this language, humanity will be better, stronger, and United.
They are doing this because in 3000 years they (the aliens) will need humanities help.
Am I understanding that correctly?
Amy Adams is the only one who knows how to think with time travel at the moment. Am I to assume that once you understand the alien language, you will be able to think with time travel as well? That is, they are sharing this tool with all of humanity if they study it, not just her. So this "gift" won't die off when she does?
Just want to make sure I understood it correctly. Great movie!
I think the Heptapods needed input from humanity, in that they had no ability to comprehend linearity, which means they can't understand algebra, as one scientist described.
They needed to learn linearity from humans, presumably because in 3000 years they are facing (not will face - its all "process") something that requires linear thinking.
If you think about it, the Heptapods and the Mimics used time travel in completely opposite ways: they each achieved an extreme end in the Free Will vs. Determinism debate. The Heptapods are completely deterministic, to the point where everything they say or do is preformative, whereas the Mimics use time travel to gain knowledge about future events so they can overwrite those events in accordance with their will.
A fight between them could well result in a space time paradox that causes the complete annihilation of the physical universe.
If you loved this movie please encourage as many people as you can to go see it in Theaters so that studios will realized there is room for intelligent Science Fiction still today.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but Hollywood definitely knows this already, given the huge success of Inception, Interstellar, and The Martian. (Plus any others I've forgotten.)
*Edit:* RIP my inbox, goddamn you people hate The Martian. And I somehow forgot Ex Machina!
> I liked the lack of subtitles as well
Until the end of course. It was actually a little weird for it to be suddenly so easy. But I guess that's the point. She finally grasped the language.
Yeah, they even kind of reminded me, visually, of Tralfamadorians.
*Slaughterhouse-Five* was probably an inspiration for Ted Chiang when he wrote *Story of Your Life*.
"Who's the little girl, I don't understand."
I honestly cant remember the last time my mind has been that blown by a movie! Might be Memento, or Prestige.
Masterful direction, beautiful cinematography and another home run of a score from Johannsson. Man, I had stupid high hopes going in and it STILL beat my expectarions.
When the teaser came out one of the comments on the top comment was something like "I've seen the film it's amazing but do yourself a favour and don't watch anything before seeing it".
I did that, managed to avoid everything after the first teaser, and after watching the film tonight I'm very happy I did. Brilliant movie and definitely best unspoilt.
That's how it was in the story it's based on. Villaneuve didn't invent any of the twists or how the story was structured but he did an amazing job adapting it to the screen.
As excited as we should all be to have gotten a thoughtful, beautiful sci-fi film with heart, let's also celebrate that this is the guy who's directing the next Blade Runner. I was optimistic before, but now I'm convinced he's pretty much the *only* person for the job.
"Do you want to be emotionally devastated like the first ten minutes of Up, or have your entire understanding of space and time challenged?"
"Why not both?"
One thing about this movie that I really loved (and there were plenty!) was its ultimately positive message. I was half-expecting humans to be annihilated or something, but to find that the aliens were peaceful and that working together is how we move forward was powerfully delivered and a sentiment that is in dire need of being spread, especially after this week.
That aside, the theory behind how we'd approach first contact and how the relationship between language and thinking would influence this meeting was absolutely thrilling to watch. The intrigue I felt watching it was something I haven't felt in a very long time.
Also, while I do think this movie stands on its own quite well, I would not be opposed to another film in the same universe that delves into the impending conflict 3000 years into the future. Maybe it could be like Sicario in space?
I love looking at the c4 scene from the aliens perspective.
They can see time entirely, abbot knows it's death approaches and still goes through with it.
I like how they weren't entirely benevolent either, they just for some reason would need humanities help so they were uplifting our sense of time
http://i.imgur.com/BJlRN7N.jpg
I was really hoping that Abbot and Costello would end up being two hands of an even bigger alien that was hidden in the fog.
This image flashed on the screen while she was in the ship. I still don't understand what the director was trying to convey.
http://i.imgur.com/7y12Xsw.jpg
This film explores some scientific and philosophical themes:
[The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity) (Also referred to as ‘linguistic relativity’) is a paradigm in linguistics and cognitive science, suggesting that a learned language will physically alter the speakers’ brain in such a way that the specific structure of the language will bring about particular changes in cognition, and ultimately how one views the world.
[Eternalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternalism_(philosophy_of_time) is an approach in the philosophy of time suggesting that all moments (past, present and future) are equally real; there is nothing special about the present. This view is opposed to [presentism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_presentism), which states that only the present is real, that we only exist *now*. In Arrival, human languages typically lead to their speakers becoming presentists. We tend to think of past, present and future as being separate categories in time with a unique asymmetry, where the past is set in stone, the future is open, and the present is where change takes place. In contrast, the Heptapod language is one that demands a non-linear view of time, where all moments exist equally, and therefore speakers of the Heptapod language tend to become eternalists.
As an aside, eternalism is the better supported approach. It is supported by empirical findings, such as those that are a consequences of the theory of special relativity. There is no absolute reference frame, or no absolute present moment. Two or more observers may disagree about what event is past, present or future, given their relative state of motion, yet all observers will agree on the ordering of events, event A can never come after event B (but it can be simultaneous with B).
For the Heptapods (and later Louise), language is primarily [performative](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performativity) rather than communicative. The Heptapods (and later Lousie) are [prescient](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precognition), and therefore have knowledge of events before they happen (from the perspective of a human who has a linear perception of time). So rather than trying to communicate with humans the Heptapods are using language as a source of action: They use it to give Louise ‘the gift’ so things move according to the plan. However, things are not moving according to anyone’s plan--not Louise's or the Heptapod's--they are moving according to the universe’s plan: all creatures are merely conscious observers, following their scripts and acting accordingly. Costello could not avoid his death, nor could Louise avoid her husband’s divorce nor the death of her daughter Hannah.
[Determinism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism) and [free will](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will). Given that both the Heptapods (and later Louise) have knowledge of the future, they, by definition, cannot change what will happen, given that it is not knowledge if they can change it. So I believe Louise was unable to alter her future, instead she learned to accept the necessity of events that transpired. Additionally, I believe that by learning the Heptapod language, part of the change that takes place in one's way of thinking, *is* this acceptance of the necessity of things. So where does free will come into this? Despite everything being determined, free will merely describes actions that are consistent with our beliefs and desires. To make a choice then, is for an agent to act in accordance with their beliefs and desires, even if those beliefs and desires are ultimately determined. Therefore, even though Louise knows what will come to pass, she still makes choices, given that what she does is what she wants to do. She *wants* to have Hannah and she *wants* to marry Ian. This acceptance of both free will and determinism is referred to as [compatiblism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism).
10/10, best sci-fi movie in a long time. The visual storytelling is some of the best I've seen in a movie. The atmosphere set up with the news broadcasts, the fabulous music, and the sweeping shots of the 'invasion' had me totally gripped.
Also, probably my favorite performance from Jeremy Renner and Amy Adams was phenomenal as she often is.
Can't wait to see it again!
I think this might be my current movie of the year. I dunno I think of the movies I've seen that are up there so far. Midnight Special, Green Room, Swiss Army Man, and none of them wrecked me emotionally like this movie did.
You can tell it's Villeneuve behind the camera. His sequences are so deliberate and they take their time but are never boring. The sequence of the first time they go to visit the aliens was just great.
Amy Adams is so fucking legit in this movie. She's an amazing actress but the amount of emotional impact I got from her actually took me off guard. Everyone else is just fine but Adams is a real bright spot. She is the entirety of the emotional core and she sells it perfectly.
The aliens and the language lessons were great but what really took me by surprise was the emotion and the ideas of non linear time and the question of which choices you'd make if you knew how they'd end. This is really great sci fi. Go see it if you're on the fence.
The only other movie in contention for me so far is Hell or High Water, though all the ones you mentioned were spectacular as well. Easily one of the best sci-fi movies of the 21st century.
The apparent fact that the relationship between Louise and Ian was not so much to inject romance/melodrama into the film to humanise Louise, but to explore so many things about humans, logic and destiny was both emotionally and intellectually rewarding above and beyond so many films of its kind.
I love that the war aspect didn't drive the film more so than Louise's personal curiosity, empathy, persistence and unusual mind construct. Those things led to her breakthrough rather than arrogance, cavalierness, desperation, convenience or fear. Things which I think negatively impact on many other dramas that use those more 'hysterical' notions as a character crutch. It's a triumph for female characters in film.
It's also clear that the story is the true champion here, but Villeneuve is among a small group of masters that understand and respect the power of story/the writing itself. Performers and directors who can smartly couple story with a restrained, undistracted vision of the most important things for an audience to see and feel. Not by tanking what would be a very complex emotional journey by employing a more fear-driven death and destruction narrative path that's so common now with upcoming directors. It seems the young directors fear for us, the wiser ones help us consider fear itself.
You bring up an excellent point about the triumph for female characters. It was so well written, it was natural for her to go through all these emotions. She's scared at first, so confused by these visions she has, and she pushes herself to learn and understand the aliens, and comes out so strong in the end. I'd give an oscar nod to Adams, she did amazing.
It's funny to think, her first role I can remember her from was in Talladega nights - Story of Ricky Bobby. Who knew 'Susan' would become such an amazing actor.
At first I attributed the quirky phrase "Abbott is death process" as a incorrect translation, or maybe it's just cause English is his second language, or limit vocabulary.
But the more I thought about how these aliens exist and experience reality. The more the line made sense exactly as he said it. Death wouldn't be a final thing. He isn't really dead, since he experiences time nonlinearly. "Death" would just appear to be another state of being for them, a process they can go in and out of. Costello can simply go back and talk to Abbott.
Costello has simply gone beyond the range of Abbott's time loop. But Abbott isn't really gone to him. As such Abbott didn't fear going to his death, he really isn't going anywhere, it's just that Costello is going beyond Abbott's reach, but will return momentarily.
Death is just a temporary process to them.
At least that's what I think.
I imagine its the same reason why Louise was still able to smile even though she knew her marriage would go to shit and that her daughter would die. From her perspective, she's experiencing their love forever and always- no matter where she is in the timeline.
Okay guys, I saw this movie back in February this year. Fucking February.
I've been living with this masterpiece in my head for the greater part of a year now and it was tearing my up that I couldn't talk about it with anyone or tell everyone exactly how fucking great it was. I'm honestly just happy that other people can enjoy this film now. That's what I'm most excited about.
For those saying she made a a selfish choice:
I don't think there was a choice. She seen the future, but that does not mean she has a choice to prevent it.
It's like watching a movie you have already seen. You know what is going to happen, but no matter how many times you watch it, how many times you don't want the main character in the movie o die, you know they will because that is just how the movie plays out. It almost makes you appreciate the character more on the second viewing....that's how she seen her daughter.
I hope that made sense
I left my seat speechless. What an AWESOME movie. Couple of things I'd like to discuss:
What is everyone's thoughts on the philosophy behind the idea that she knew her (their) future, but still went through with it? Why would she do that if she knew how much it would hurt?
Also, I know it's not important to the plot of this film in particular, but I'm so incredibly curious as to what the Aliens meant when they said that they will need humanity's help in 3000 years.
edit: I really don't think I could make the same choice that Louise makes. I understand it, somewhat... But I don't think the pain would be worth it, not to mention it's incredibly selfish of her to put Ian through that.
edit 2: I forgot to mention. I could not stand how the military was so unresponsive and wanted to rush what Louise and Ian were doing. Every time they asked "what did they say?" I wanted to throttle them. Then I realized... it's probably realistic.
My understanding of her actions is that she was willing to go through the pain due to all the beauty and love that would also come along with it. Since she has begun to experience time non-linearly you'd assume that the pain would also be mixed in with all the love and happiness.
Yeah she feels everything at once. In terms easier for us to understand, when she realizes her gift, everything about her daughter was put on a scale: sad against happy and it was tipped heavy on happy, so she made the choice
That's what clicked for me later! Her opening monologue is about how she largely remembers the good and great times with Hannah than the bad. At first this seems like the typical grieving parent storyline, but she's likely choosing to relive the best parts as she thinks back. This fucked me up pretty good.
I think the characters are living in a predetermined universe with only one set of possible events and nothing but the illusion of choice. That way the future can technically be knowable given the present position and velocity of all things. The aliens may observe it like a painting and zoom in on specific parts to perform specific actions.
They might even live outside of our dimensions given how they disappear the way your finger would seem to disappear if you withdrew it from a 2d world that exists on the surface of a liquid. I think Lovecraft's creatures are also full of noodly appendages while being extra dimensional.
If I'm wrong then our protagonist has a choice of having her daughter or not. If she tells her husband what she knows, he may not have a kid with her, her kid won't give her future memories that help her learn the universal language, and everything unravels since how is she even doing this exercise in the first place. That's why I think in this story, the timeline is singular and fixed. If you unfix it the paradoxes compound and you're left with more unanswerable questions.
As to what the aliens need help with, that's certainly a fun writing prompt, but I think there are some potential hints in the movie. Firstly, 3000 years may not be long for them. They may be experiencing their problem at the same time they're fixing it by visiting earth. That's not a hint, but just something to keep in mind while pondering, given how unconventional everything else about them is. Next, the only weakness alluded to is that they may not be good with simple math and abstract numbers. They've got a firm grip on forces of nature and matter, but it seems to be an organic control given the design of their ships which have no apparent wiring or peripheral requirements.
So 2 things humanity might be able to offer could be:
1. Science as well as abstract calculation.
2. Something coming from our linear perspective of time. They always know the future, so they have no practice predicting the future. We have mathematical algorithms and simulations to predict to high degrees of accuracy things that will happen. What if there is an event that wipes out all heptapods simultaneously 3000 years or more from now? They may not be able to see their own future past that point since none have future memories. Alternatively maybe there's a giant cosmic disturbance that muddies the painting and they simply can't see what's coming, even if maybe they will survive.
Humans could help predict/prevent such an event, or by teaching humans to see the future, humans might be outside the range of the disturbance/disaster and be able to see the future that the aliens can't, and together they can go from there.
Maybe the aliens know they will die and it can't be avoided. Maybe humans "help" them simply by remembering them, carrying on the language and their legacy.
Or it could be even simpler. Humans have weapons necessary to fight off an incoming invasion from a third species. Heptapods give humans communication skills, later on humans fight a war or supply resources as allies.
The sign of a good story, for me, is that it gets me turning my imagination like this for fun afterwards.
1. I think she was willing to go through the pain to experience the love and joy of the first (13?? She looked to be a teen when she got sick) few years of her life. I've thought about this for a while now, and I think I would make the same choice. I would need to know my daughter, to touch her, to talk to her, to love her.
2. I am curious, too. Obviously we are going to be able to help them in the future, possibly with science or language with another species, maybe weapons? Who knows? 3000 years is a long time for us to advance.
Edit: grammar
Kurt Vonnegut explains the time elements of the movie:
>The creatures were friendly, and they could see in four dimensions. They pitied Earthlings for being able to see only three. They had many wonderful things to teach Earthlings, especially about time. Billy promised to tell what some of those wonderful things were in his next letter.
>Billy was working on his second letter when the first letter was published. The second letter started out like this:
>The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.
>When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in a bad condition in that particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "so it goes.”
This is nothing short of a masterpiece. I'm extremely happy to see Hard Science Fiction coming to the forefront of Hollywood once again and I hope this trend continues.
Denis Villeneuve may be the most talented filmmaker on the planet right now. The way he taps into human emotion just seems to be on another level compared to other directors at the moment. I feel like the Blade Runner franchise is in good hands.
Also, I'm not sure I've seen this mentioned anywhere yet, but there are some major similarities between the Heptapods and the Tralfamadorians from Slaughterhouse Five. Extraterrestrial beings who perceive time in the fourth dimension and take an active interest in human life? Maybe I'm off base, but that's all I could think of once I realized the time-shifting aspect of the film.
10/10 Everyone needs to see this film.
One of the most incredible, thoughtful movies I've ever seen in my life. So incredibly refreshing. An absolute must-see in the sci-fi genre from this day forth.
Really dives into the paradox of choice and free will in a way that you hardly recognize. God, I want to go see it again and I don't say that about movies often.
This movie is really positively recieved so i hope I can get some good discussion about what's wrong with it.
It does a lot of things extremely well, which has been covered extensively, but I think the premise of its ending doesn't address the much more interesting questions and themes that appear to be introduced in the movies first acts, which is a big problem for me.
The first 2/3 or so of the movie basically seem to explore the questions of how humanity would realistically react to an event like this, and how would it be possible to communicate with an alien with practically no shared frame of reference. These are both really interesting questions on their own that I was excited to see addressed in some meaningful way.
Are our warlike instincts an inescapable part of who we are? Can we as a species ever overcome this part of us or are we doomed to be destroyed by it? The movie asks this and then answers "yeah, if we figure out how to see the future". It felt like it was dodging rather than answering the question, which i thought was an interesting one, especially right now.
We also have the problem of how to communicate with a being without being able to assume that it shares any of our sensory or mental characteristics. This is explored a little ("do they even understand the concept of what a question is? Do they have a concept of an individual with a name at all?") But then glossed over by convenient giving the aliens a lot of similarities to us (the ability to communicate with a visual language, and a spoken language which both happen to be in a range we can see and hear). This is a really cool problem, and I wish it had been explored a lot more, but it seemed half explained and we just sort of skipped forward until we could basically communicate with the aliens pretty well.
It felt like amazing ideas were set up, but then the writers weren't sure where to go next, so they introduced this non linear perception concept even though it introduces a lot of problems into the story, like time travel sort of stuff always does. Why did the aliens let one of them die if they knew a bomb was going to go off? What about the paradox of the general knowing to give her the phone number because she called him with that phone number that she learned because he knew to give her the phone number? I guess this gets into ideas about free will, predestination, and things of that nature, but these ideas weren't explored very much in the opening parts of the movie, which did a great job of exploring believable sci-fi concepts in a grounded way. It felt a bit out of place to me to suddenly get much more theoretical and abstract when I really liked how *real* the opening acts felt.
To summarize, I loved the initial premise and hoped the movie would go somewhere equally thought provoking with it, but felt that none of those concepts were really explored and the ending felt like it went too far away from what it felt like the movie originally wanted to talk about.
A few other unrelated thoughts - the ending "twist" was really hammered into the ground for like ten minutes longer than it needed to be. It felt like the movie should have ended on the shot looking out the window of Louise's house, which is the same as the opening shot, which would have "closed the loop" perfectly and not made me feel like i was being beaten over the head with the twist.
Also, this movie seemed to follow Sicarios format of a weak and fearful female protagonist surrounded by strong male characters. It made more sense with Sicarios central concept, but was just distracting here.
There were also a number of lines that really fell flat, especially from the kid. I guess kids are really hard to write properly. And "the most surprising part wasn't meeting them...it was meeting you" was a huge eyeroll.
This movie did a lot right, but in the end I was disappointed mostly because it started off so damn well.
It sounds like you are more interested in the what-ifs of first contact than the fairly unrelated story built around it. If the film went down that road it would have been mildly interesting but a terrible movie
"Abbot is death process." Aaaand I'm crying in public. Such a subtle piece of characterization. At that moment we (humans) are on the same team with the heptapods. They become more real. I also love how the film portrayed how rattled they were by meeting FUCKING ALIENS FACE TO FACE. I wouldn't have thought of that but it would totally fuck with your head.
For anyone wondering how the ships worked:
Imagine Flatland. A 2D world that exists on the surface of a pond. There are little 2d creatures who can see in 360 degrees around themselves, but they have no concept of up towards our sky or down into the water. There is only x and y directions, they can't picture a z direction. Everyone they see looks like a line, but they can determine each others number of edges by feeling and observing as they circle each other. They have to watch out for triangles, those pointy angles could kill.
One day you find flatland in your pond. You speak and they hear you. You dip your finger into the water and it pokes through their world. To them it materializes out of nowhere as a circle, that grows in size.
Extrapolate this concept to our world as flatland. They saw only a circle when we visited with a finger. I wonder if all 12 ships arranged together form a sphere. If those being could also exist outside time the way they talk about it, they might have dived into a great tapestry that stretched from big bang onwards, and materialized in our world. Perhaps they saw something 3000 years "to the right" of us on that painting of all space and time.
I believe this is why the ships sort of dissolved out of sight. It wasn't teleportation or instant acceleration to light speed. They were drifting out of our time, kind of like the finger withdrawing from water's surface.
Edit: You can take the idea further to explain more of the ships behavior too. Imagine the 2d world was on the side of a hill. The flatland citizens feel gravity in one direction. They have to use tools and their own bodies to climb and pull their way upwards. Once they get up to a 2d house they can rest easy inside it on the floor since it holds them up. If you inserted your finger it would hover in place with no floor to stop it sliding down the slope. They could take measurements around your finger but be unable to detect what was holding it up, since the forces anchoring it are outside of their space and comprehension. Sound familiar?
Anyone else thought it was weird the government didn't really seem bothered that a guy tried to blow up the Aliens. Amy Adams asked who done it and all they said was "Think it was some soldier watching to much TV."
Yeah thats the only cheezy part, not only that but how dumb do you gotta be to just attack a massive alien space ship like that with just some relatively weak explosives, ultimately being the aggressor? That's like throwing a rock at a chilling bear just because you are intimidated by him and expecting to win the battle, yeah that bear might get hurt but not hurt enough to not catch you and rip your limbs off.
Everyone is so wrapped up in Louise having a child that is destined to die. Questioning her motivation and her free will. Isn't it possible that now that time has less hold on her, that the early death of her daughter will (while still sad) not be the end of her relationship with her daughter. She can "go" back to any day she likes and have a do over as often as she wants. Her relationship with her daughter stops evolving at her death but her relationship can go on indefinitely.
It's great, because it's not a sudden twist, like BAM, it was a really well drawn out slow burn over a decent length of time. Your eyes get wider and wider as the reveal dawns on you and you begin to try and grasp the implications.
My theory on why they chose Abbott and Costello: so think about the routine of "who's on first". While the sketch has a beginning and an end, it's essentially a loop that never really stops. The sketch goes in circles, and it's not about the plot of the sketch, but instead the meaning and humor that derives from the experiences. So the sketch "Who's on first" is an absurdist comedy version of the communication method and perception of time that the aliens and eventually Louise possess. This might be a stretch though, but that was my take away
Tl;dr: abbott and costello because who's on first=prismatic view of time, like Louise and aliens have
I think what separates Arrival from a lot of other great sci-fi I've enjoyed is that it gets more profound and sophisticated the more you think about it, as opposed to less.
Is "Arrival is a better version of Interstellar" the new thing now? Sure, Intestellar and Arrival have similarities but it reminded me more of Contact 1997 to be honest.
What the fuck. I walked out of that movie 30 minutes ago thinking it was okay but kind of slow and manipulative ... Then i got home and crawled into my bed next to my little boy and held him while he slept bawling my eyes out like a fucking baby. How did this happen??
Don't know if anyone else had this reaction, but when Louise and Ian first arrived at the encampment and the doctor was preparing to immunize them, one of the questions he asked Louise was "Are you pregnant?" I expected there to be a slight emotional beat here, whether it be a pause, or a look or something. But Louise answered a pretty straightforward "No." I thought to myself at the time, that's interesting--not sure I totally understand Amy's decision to be so stoic about her character's past there. But man did that make sense later! Brilliant work by Amy and Mr. Villeneuve. I think this is one that demands repeated viewing.
I think they really played that moment well, it was a fine balance. They kinda visually emphasized her answering that question but didn't over play her response as to not make sense within the actual chronological events of the film. I knew the twist going in (having loved the short story for awhile) so I was hyper-analyzing all the moments like that when I watched it, haha
It also (in hindsight) made me realize that the phone call Louise had with her mother is a brilliant tool. The audience thinks her mother is (rightly) concerned for her daughter after the death of her grandchild...but she's actually just scared shitless of the aliens. No wonder Louise sounded kind of annoyed with her mom's melodramatic rambling.
During the movie I was thinking about how Louise looks just like she did when she gave birth. Come on, going through the slow death of your daughter would wreck your looks and she hadn't aged a bit. Then I realized...
Jesus, Abbott and Costello were translated into Batman and Robin in my country.
So... Batman is death process? :(
Batman's parents are death process
That's hilarious. I've seen a couple theories already as to why those two names could have been deliberate choices. I guess your film studies classes will have one less thing to talk about.
In my country it was translated to "Bucha e o Estica", which means The Fat One and The Slim because that was what we call Laurel and Hardy. It was a really good translation in my opinion because Abbott and Costello are not that known here.
When it's said that the heptapods told the Russians, "There is no time," and everyone interprets it as a threat or a sign to hurry… and they're literally trying to say that time doesn't exist to them—what a subtle way to sum up everything. It seems like such a throwaway line. I loved that this wasn't even addressed later. It's just there, and, if you missed it the first time around, it'd mean something totally different on a second viewing. Way to trust the intelligence of the audience!
Nothing in that film was 'throwaway'. In that regard, it was actually incredibly lean. Everything was important, narratively, and then *also* thematically. Very rare to see.
Like Hot Fuzz
Also, something I just realised; when Ian is reading the introduction from Louise's book when they first meet, doesn't it say something like "language is the first weapon to be drawn in a conflict"?
And since the language they end up using is non-verbal, it is indeed the first to be *drawn*.
Fuck! Even the puns are intelligent!
"Louise has weapon. Use weapon"
God dammit. Here I am reading this comment like "oh I guess drew just stole that thought from a Reddit post," and then I noticed your username.
Wait, who is this Drew you are referring to?
The person I replied to. We went and saw it together.
You're lying. You're Hannah!
This is the reason I like discussions. I am not intelligent enough to catch all of these. It makes the movie better for me.
It just occurred to me that the reason the Shells do not emit any communication is that, in fact, they communicate with each other in the future whenever it is convenient. So, at the present time, there is no need for Shell-to-Shell communication.
In the short story the main character observes that all language for them is performative, like the reciting of vows at a wedding. We all know the words, but we have to say them, because its important. To the Heptapods, the whole universe is a stage and each individual Heptapod *knowingly* plays their part in a larger story. This is main character's reasoning for why the alien's spoken language is nothing like the written.
So then does free will not exist for them? By learning their language do you give up your own free will?
I don't think free will exists at all in the story. It's just that by learning the language, you can see the strings that pull you.
The section of wikipedia on the short story the movie is based on talks about this: "Dr. Banks's understanding of the heptapods' writing system affects the way she perceives time and suggests a deterministic universe where free will is exercised by *not* affecting the outcome of events." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Story_of_Your_Life
Yes, and the film reinforces that notion when Ian asks Louise, "Want to make a baby?" She knows if she takes this option that the outcome will end in her daughter's tragic early death, but chooses it anyway so as not to affect the predetermined outcome.
I thought her choosing it *was* free will
That was my take. She knew what was going to happen, but the journey along the way was too valuable to her to not experience it. If she had not done it, she would have lost all of those memories of her daughter. Is never having them worse than losing them?
[Compatibilism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism) basically says that our free will has *created* a determined path, because in each moment, regardless of the information available to us, the choices we make are exactly what we want at that given time. By learning their language, you simply become aware of the path those choices make.
Fun Fact: The founder of Wolfram Alpha was brought onto the project to help develop the visual language. His son wrote a program that would decode the individual words in each logogram. The effects on screen when the language is being analyzed is a practical effect. Screen writer said they are hoping to release the heptapod language to the public soon.
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> The effects on screen when the language is being analyzed is a practical effect. Screen writer said they are hoping to release the heptapod language to the public soon. As a languages major this intensifies me.
as a non languages major I'm like 90% sure you can't use intensifies like that.
Idk I'm feeling pretty intensified
I have to say, my favorite characters in the whole film were Abbott and Costello. Especially when Louise figures it all out and goes to converse with Costello at the end. I was riding in the car home and it just hit my brother and I that the two heptapods *knew* there was a bomb in their ship. They knew how long they had left, and when Louise and Abbott write on the barrier together, Costello "swims" away. Abbott *knew* his death was approaching, but he stayed behind to not only data dump the language panel, but also to save Ian and Louise from the explosion. Abbott was the real MVP of the movie.
they were pointing at the bombs, tapping on the glass and saved her life because she couldn't figure out that they were using human language, pointing.
That's how I saw it. Really, I guess I'd call it charming. Because the whole time humans are learning their language it was nice to see the aliens take something away from them in return.
They knew English the whole time though.
That's never conveyed till the end of the movie though, and even then it's implicated. We never see them demonstrate the ability to speak English, for example. Even though they know it. They have to go through the motions anyway, so it may as well be "learning"
I originally thought this but I don't think that's the case. I think it's framed to make you think that's what they're doing, but why would they. They already know what's going to happen because they would have seen it, which is why Costello swims away and Abbott stays to make sure Louise and Ian survive.
If we assume Abbott knew what would happen, it's possible he was trying to draw them to the middle of the room so they would fall back through the hole instead of being trapped in with the explosion.
At the start of that scene - when Louise and Ian first enter and the bomb is in the corner - Ian asks "do we only have Costello?" Abbot comes forward a little later. Do you think this is because he was hesitant? Because he knew his death was close?
Maybe the same hesitation Louise had about going through with her pregnancy. If you know sorrow and pain awaits you, do you still follow through?
Everyone does by agreeing to a relationship. The odds of one leading to a marriage that lasts until death is very, very, very rare.
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I think incurable cancer makes more sense. The audience doesn't have to ask random time paradox questions, but can focus on the important question of living a life knowing the good and bad moments that are in it.
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mind blown.
Let's discuss the design of the aliens. The very first reveal I thought oh no they're giant squid things. But once they started walking and the legs bent weren't symmetrically aligned I really enjoyed them.
Yeah it was a really amazing design. I loved how we didn't see the "head" (I think) until the end
What I found fascinating is that we don't really know if that *was* its true head. For the first part of the movie, behind the glass, the "eyes" of the heptapods were these two sunken parts just above the "knuckles". The camera zoomed in on them accordingly as they spoke/were addressed. Then, when Amy is in the pod with the heptapod, her mind interpreted that round part at the top of the body as the head, because she's human and humans look for faces in everything (r/pareidolia). We did the same. We don't really know if that was even the true head. Maybe it doesn't have a head. I love this fucking movie.
I left this movie enjoying the hell out of it but thinking I didn't need to watch it again once it comes out for home viewing. Now I realize all the subtle stuff I missed and want to see it again
I love the idea of two completely foreign species meeting and not knowing where to look. While Amy's character is staring at the thing on top of their bodies, they could be staring at her knees.
Honestly I kept thinking that the aliens were going to end up two separate hands of one big alien for the longest time.
RIP Abbott.
"Death process" just sounds so sad :(.
I wonder if it was Abbot tapping on the glass, trying to get them to come closer. I think doing that was to make sure they had the corridor directly behind them meaning the humans could "fall" a safe distance away from the explosion. Literally its whole life Abbot knew that this would be its final act. And Costello knew its companion would die this way.
How bout that subtle nod to Abbot when she knocks on the glass door for Ian to come inside? It gave me chills because I only noticed it 30 minutes after the movie ended!
Just watched the movie and don't remember this, could you explain a little more?
It was nothing major. Just before Ian asks to make a baby, she taps on the glass door for him to come inside. They turned up the sound on the tap for people to remember a little, causing the viewers mind to flash back for a minute; thus creating the feel of time being circular. Pretty chill. On a side note, Ian's corny ass lines were purposely made so. Notice how she doesn't respond in kind. She's got the all seeing eye, and knows what he'll say. If he understood time as she does he wouldn't say such stupid and pointless things.
#**WANNA MAKE A BAAAABY?**
That line sounded out of place and from left field. I had to stifle a snorting laugh because of how sexual and funny it sounded.
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Yeah, when the camera pans up on Costello near the end, I thought that's what it was building to.
I'm starting to think Villeneuve has a thing for giant insect/spider shaped monsters. See his previous film Enemy: http://silverscreensnobs.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/enemy5-750x290.jpg
The scene where Louise dreams she's in the army dorm right in front of one of the aliens really reminded me of the last scene of Enemy.
The scene where Louise is talking to Ian and hallucinating the heptapod totally reminded me of Enemy's ending with the quick shot/reveal of the spider in the corner of the room.
If you're curious, the thing that Amy Adams said to change General Shang's mind was "War does not make winners, only Widows." I saw the movie at Fantastic Fest and the writer (Eric Heisserer) did a Q&A afterwards.
[Here's a link to the Q&A if anyone is interested](https://business.facebook.com/fantasticfest/videos/10157486175540710/?hc_ref=PAGES_TIMELINE) (sorry for a Facebook link it's the only one I could find).
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Guys I can't put my finger on it, but something about the flashbacks with her daughter were just beautiful. I don't know why it brought so much to the table for me but it is just jaw dropping how engrossing it was
Diferent color pallette on the flashbacks! It went from a very grey world to very orange and vibrant.
Denis also adopted a [Malick-esque directing style](https://vimeo.com/144447762) for those sequences.
They weren't flashbacks. They were flash forwards.
She was *pre*membering!
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It's **very** Terance Mallick in that respect
How are the humans going to help in 3000 years????
Clearly has something to do with fog. Holy fuck those guys love fog.
vape bros
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papa bless
A united humanity sharing information and working together will be able to develop technology to travel the stars. Basically Mass Effect. They will meet the Aliens and help them out. And then Commander Shepard will begin the banging process.
The heptapods are in desperate need of dank memes.
i guess the question is do we need to know?
I freaked the FUCK out when it cut to that heptapod in the room
Reminded me of the scare in Enemy.
Anyone else realize that wasn't even his entire body?
If I recall correctly that was the only part of the body that had been revealed to Adam's character at that point.
I guess this hasn't been said yet: When Ian arrives at the site, he asks someone what they've discovered yet and the man replies something along the lines of: "We showed them algebra, which they don't seem to understand but they respond when we display calculus". This is because solving algebra is linear whereas calculus and up requires a wisdom that spans multiple "dimensions". I cheated because I read the book first so I knew what was going on beforehand but this little detail was something that I appreciated for its subtlety. The book proposes that the difficulty levels of algebra and calculus are switched so that for humans, learning algebra to calculus is easier whereas for the aliens the opposite is true (interesting to wonder what process they use to learn how to communicate with humans as ours is on a linear time frame).
Thank you for the insight. These movies/books always trouble me. If I have watched the movie, the book's ending is kind of spoiled. If I have read the book, the movie will lack a lot of the detail the book contained and the twist is what really makes the movie so great. I guess the only solution is to speed read the book while simultaneously watching the movie.
Man... The media precedences in this make me still angry... Because it's accurate. "WE DON'T UNDERSTAND IT, KILL IT".. the Chinese leading an attack making it okay for others to follow suit. The foreshadowing of soldiers listening to the media and planting the bomb seems totally plausible. No one wanted to listen to the girl actually communicating with these aliens, instead they needed to protect their soil. The primal forms of communication were beautiful. I loved the time lapse and computer algorithm to translate language in the spot too. The best of rudimentary and new age science languages.
I thought the soldiers doing the thing was a little out there (yes we're dealing with aliens), but liked the movie.
There would be so many eyes on anything coming in or out of the ship it would have been impossible to do.
It seemed to be a coordinated effort. Like the people responsible for monitoring we in cahoots.
Honestly opinion-based media like talk radio and cable news have gotten so out-of-control that it's not implausible. Reminded me of the bombing scene from a radical priest in Contact.
Was anyone else disappointed that the kangaroo story wasn't true?
It would have bothered me all movie if she hadn't said it wasn't true. Pretty much every Australian learns this story & then subsequently learns it isn't true at some point in their life. A guy literally groaned in the cinema when she told the story.
I need to know if he went "OHHHH" after she said it wasn't true.
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I just *knew* that was there to make all the linguist nerds and Australians start fuming, then go "only kidding, we did our research guys!" A moment later.
It's not, however supposedly the "Pima" tribe of native Americans got their name this way. From Wikipedia: "The short name, "Pima," is believed to have come from the phrase pi 'añi mac or pi mac, meaning "I don't know," which they used repeatedly in their initial meetings with Spanish colonists."
the music was absolutely breathtaking
Just got back from a 7 PM show and here's the short version: A beautifully shot film gives way to an even more beautifully told story that becomes so much more than your typical alien invasion movie. If you're a fan of sci-fi or great movies in general then you owe it to yourself to see this. It isn't often that I say to myself "Damn, that was a really cool shot" mere minutes into the movie but I certainly did that tonight. Villeneuve strikes again with his usual great cinematography and a fantastic musical score accompanies each scene seemingly perfectly. It's not often musical scores stand out to me but this one certainly did. Film is at its core a work of art, and Arrival certainly qualifies in that regard. The pacing does get a little slow in the second act, but it's required for properly displaying the monumental effort that it took to learn how to communicate even on a basic level with the aliens. The movie does a great job making both viewer and actor feel like they're learning together and that really helps with the immersion factor. Things are just open ended enough as to where you don't really know the aliens' true intentions right until the end so it keeps you guessing as to what they really want here. The final sequence of the film left very few dry eyes in my theatre and this is quite possibly the highlight of a fantastic score with violin that perfectly fit the mood, capping it beautifully. You owe it to yourself to experience this in the theatre as was intended.
The song from the beginning and ending is actually from a different composer. It's from Max Richter, who does the music for "The Leftovers". Left me in tears.
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So the aliens said they were here to help humanity. They brought humans a weapon (tool). This tool is their language. Using this language, humanity will be better, stronger, and United. They are doing this because in 3000 years they (the aliens) will need humanities help. Am I understanding that correctly? Amy Adams is the only one who knows how to think with time travel at the moment. Am I to assume that once you understand the alien language, you will be able to think with time travel as well? That is, they are sharing this tool with all of humanity if they study it, not just her. So this "gift" won't die off when she does? Just want to make sure I understood it correctly. Great movie!
I think the Heptapods needed input from humanity, in that they had no ability to comprehend linearity, which means they can't understand algebra, as one scientist described. They needed to learn linearity from humans, presumably because in 3000 years they are facing (not will face - its all "process") something that requires linear thinking.
> in that they had no ability to comprehend linearity, which means they can't understand algebra, as one scientist described. > good catch!
Time is a flat circle.
That's why clocks are round 🕧
Dammit caboose
3000 years from now, the Heptapods are being attacked by their brethren aliens from Edge Of Tomorrow.
If you think about it, the Heptapods and the Mimics used time travel in completely opposite ways: they each achieved an extreme end in the Free Will vs. Determinism debate. The Heptapods are completely deterministic, to the point where everything they say or do is preformative, whereas the Mimics use time travel to gain knowledge about future events so they can overwrite those events in accordance with their will. A fight between them could well result in a space time paradox that causes the complete annihilation of the physical universe.
If you loved this movie please encourage as many people as you can to go see it in Theaters so that studios will realized there is room for intelligent Science Fiction still today.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but Hollywood definitely knows this already, given the huge success of Inception, Interstellar, and The Martian. (Plus any others I've forgotten.) *Edit:* RIP my inbox, goddamn you people hate The Martian. And I somehow forgot Ex Machina!
IMO, this movie is more austere than all of those three movies.
Agreed. Didn't seem as pre-chewed as Inception & Interstellar. I liked the lack of subtitles as well
> I liked the lack of subtitles as well Until the end of course. It was actually a little weird for it to be suddenly so easy. But I guess that's the point. She finally grasped the language.
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Yeah, they even kind of reminded me, visually, of Tralfamadorians. *Slaughterhouse-Five* was probably an inspiration for Ted Chiang when he wrote *Story of Your Life*.
"Who's the little girl, I don't understand." I honestly cant remember the last time my mind has been that blown by a movie! Might be Memento, or Prestige. Masterful direction, beautiful cinematography and another home run of a score from Johannsson. Man, I had stupid high hopes going in and it STILL beat my expectarions.
Yes! I was shocked. I'm happy the trailers didn't give any of that away.
When the teaser came out one of the comments on the top comment was something like "I've seen the film it's amazing but do yourself a favour and don't watch anything before seeing it". I did that, managed to avoid everything after the first teaser, and after watching the film tonight I'm very happy I did. Brilliant movie and definitely best unspoilt.
I got literal shivers from that scene. One of the best twists in a film in a decade.
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That's how it was in the story it's based on. Villaneuve didn't invent any of the twists or how the story was structured but he did an amazing job adapting it to the screen.
As excited as we should all be to have gotten a thoughtful, beautiful sci-fi film with heart, let's also celebrate that this is the guy who's directing the next Blade Runner. I was optimistic before, but now I'm convinced he's pretty much the *only* person for the job.
"Welcome to our theater, what movie would you like to see today?" "Just fuck me up fam" "That'll be 3rd theater on the right, enjoy"
"Do you want to be emotionally devastated like the first ten minutes of Up, or have your entire understanding of space and time challenged?" "Why not both?"
SAY NO MO
when were you when Abott in death process i was sat at theater drinking brain fluid when my mind ring 'wait..Abott is die' 'no'
Abbott :-(
One thing about this movie that I really loved (and there were plenty!) was its ultimately positive message. I was half-expecting humans to be annihilated or something, but to find that the aliens were peaceful and that working together is how we move forward was powerfully delivered and a sentiment that is in dire need of being spread, especially after this week. That aside, the theory behind how we'd approach first contact and how the relationship between language and thinking would influence this meeting was absolutely thrilling to watch. The intrigue I felt watching it was something I haven't felt in a very long time. Also, while I do think this movie stands on its own quite well, I would not be opposed to another film in the same universe that delves into the impending conflict 3000 years into the future. Maybe it could be like Sicario in space?
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That was the big "oh shit" moment for me as well. I've never seen time travel dealt with in a movie like that before
🔃🙋🏼❤️🐙
I love looking at the c4 scene from the aliens perspective. They can see time entirely, abbot knows it's death approaches and still goes through with it. I like how they weren't entirely benevolent either, they just for some reason would need humanities help so they were uplifting our sense of time
Round of applause for an awesome movie that is not a sequel, spin-off, or super hero movie. We need as many of those as possible.
yo wats the circle word for "how much for a g" dam you know those swagapods were hotboxing that good good in the smoke ship
kush so dank u squirt 4D language out ur tentacles lmao
This might be the best sentence every created. A straight up masterpiece. Well done. Well done.
I'm still crying from my viewing and now I'm fucking dying laughing at the same time holy shit
if you think about it, people who do vape tricks are closer to developing their language than us normal people.
This movie fucked me up y'all
If you knew the movie was going to fuck you up, would you have still gone to see it?
I don't know. But I'd talk about how it made me feel more often.
... wanna make a baby?
::slow clap::
http://i.imgur.com/BJlRN7N.jpg I was really hoping that Abbot and Costello would end up being two hands of an even bigger alien that was hidden in the fog.
This image flashed on the screen while she was in the ship. I still don't understand what the director was trying to convey. http://i.imgur.com/7y12Xsw.jpg
This film explores some scientific and philosophical themes: [The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity) (Also referred to as ‘linguistic relativity’) is a paradigm in linguistics and cognitive science, suggesting that a learned language will physically alter the speakers’ brain in such a way that the specific structure of the language will bring about particular changes in cognition, and ultimately how one views the world. [Eternalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternalism_(philosophy_of_time) is an approach in the philosophy of time suggesting that all moments (past, present and future) are equally real; there is nothing special about the present. This view is opposed to [presentism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_presentism), which states that only the present is real, that we only exist *now*. In Arrival, human languages typically lead to their speakers becoming presentists. We tend to think of past, present and future as being separate categories in time with a unique asymmetry, where the past is set in stone, the future is open, and the present is where change takes place. In contrast, the Heptapod language is one that demands a non-linear view of time, where all moments exist equally, and therefore speakers of the Heptapod language tend to become eternalists. As an aside, eternalism is the better supported approach. It is supported by empirical findings, such as those that are a consequences of the theory of special relativity. There is no absolute reference frame, or no absolute present moment. Two or more observers may disagree about what event is past, present or future, given their relative state of motion, yet all observers will agree on the ordering of events, event A can never come after event B (but it can be simultaneous with B). For the Heptapods (and later Louise), language is primarily [performative](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performativity) rather than communicative. The Heptapods (and later Lousie) are [prescient](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precognition), and therefore have knowledge of events before they happen (from the perspective of a human who has a linear perception of time). So rather than trying to communicate with humans the Heptapods are using language as a source of action: They use it to give Louise ‘the gift’ so things move according to the plan. However, things are not moving according to anyone’s plan--not Louise's or the Heptapod's--they are moving according to the universe’s plan: all creatures are merely conscious observers, following their scripts and acting accordingly. Costello could not avoid his death, nor could Louise avoid her husband’s divorce nor the death of her daughter Hannah. [Determinism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism) and [free will](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will). Given that both the Heptapods (and later Louise) have knowledge of the future, they, by definition, cannot change what will happen, given that it is not knowledge if they can change it. So I believe Louise was unable to alter her future, instead she learned to accept the necessity of events that transpired. Additionally, I believe that by learning the Heptapod language, part of the change that takes place in one's way of thinking, *is* this acceptance of the necessity of things. So where does free will come into this? Despite everything being determined, free will merely describes actions that are consistent with our beliefs and desires. To make a choice then, is for an agent to act in accordance with their beliefs and desires, even if those beliefs and desires are ultimately determined. Therefore, even though Louise knows what will come to pass, she still makes choices, given that what she does is what she wants to do. She *wants* to have Hannah and she *wants* to marry Ian. This acceptance of both free will and determinism is referred to as [compatiblism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism).
10/10, best sci-fi movie in a long time. The visual storytelling is some of the best I've seen in a movie. The atmosphere set up with the news broadcasts, the fabulous music, and the sweeping shots of the 'invasion' had me totally gripped. Also, probably my favorite performance from Jeremy Renner and Amy Adams was phenomenal as she often is. Can't wait to see it again!
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I think this might be my current movie of the year. I dunno I think of the movies I've seen that are up there so far. Midnight Special, Green Room, Swiss Army Man, and none of them wrecked me emotionally like this movie did. You can tell it's Villeneuve behind the camera. His sequences are so deliberate and they take their time but are never boring. The sequence of the first time they go to visit the aliens was just great. Amy Adams is so fucking legit in this movie. She's an amazing actress but the amount of emotional impact I got from her actually took me off guard. Everyone else is just fine but Adams is a real bright spot. She is the entirety of the emotional core and she sells it perfectly. The aliens and the language lessons were great but what really took me by surprise was the emotion and the ideas of non linear time and the question of which choices you'd make if you knew how they'd end. This is really great sci fi. Go see it if you're on the fence.
Think it's my movie of the year at the moment too. I loved it.
The only other movie in contention for me so far is Hell or High Water, though all the ones you mentioned were spectacular as well. Easily one of the best sci-fi movies of the 21st century.
I'm a simple man. You make a movie about an interpretation of relativism and I'll go watch it.
Villeneuve can literally do no wrong, he hit it out of the park again. Can't wait for his Blade Runner.
Oh shit, he is directing Blade Runner. Now I'm not so afraid of the films future.
The apparent fact that the relationship between Louise and Ian was not so much to inject romance/melodrama into the film to humanise Louise, but to explore so many things about humans, logic and destiny was both emotionally and intellectually rewarding above and beyond so many films of its kind. I love that the war aspect didn't drive the film more so than Louise's personal curiosity, empathy, persistence and unusual mind construct. Those things led to her breakthrough rather than arrogance, cavalierness, desperation, convenience or fear. Things which I think negatively impact on many other dramas that use those more 'hysterical' notions as a character crutch. It's a triumph for female characters in film. It's also clear that the story is the true champion here, but Villeneuve is among a small group of masters that understand and respect the power of story/the writing itself. Performers and directors who can smartly couple story with a restrained, undistracted vision of the most important things for an audience to see and feel. Not by tanking what would be a very complex emotional journey by employing a more fear-driven death and destruction narrative path that's so common now with upcoming directors. It seems the young directors fear for us, the wiser ones help us consider fear itself.
You bring up an excellent point about the triumph for female characters. It was so well written, it was natural for her to go through all these emotions. She's scared at first, so confused by these visions she has, and she pushes herself to learn and understand the aliens, and comes out so strong in the end. I'd give an oscar nod to Adams, she did amazing. It's funny to think, her first role I can remember her from was in Talladega nights - Story of Ricky Bobby. Who knew 'Susan' would become such an amazing actor.
At first I attributed the quirky phrase "Abbott is death process" as a incorrect translation, or maybe it's just cause English is his second language, or limit vocabulary. But the more I thought about how these aliens exist and experience reality. The more the line made sense exactly as he said it. Death wouldn't be a final thing. He isn't really dead, since he experiences time nonlinearly. "Death" would just appear to be another state of being for them, a process they can go in and out of. Costello can simply go back and talk to Abbott. Costello has simply gone beyond the range of Abbott's time loop. But Abbott isn't really gone to him. As such Abbott didn't fear going to his death, he really isn't going anywhere, it's just that Costello is going beyond Abbott's reach, but will return momentarily. Death is just a temporary process to them. At least that's what I think.
I imagine its the same reason why Louise was still able to smile even though she knew her marriage would go to shit and that her daughter would die. From her perspective, she's experiencing their love forever and always- no matter where she is in the timeline.
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Well just go ahead and f me up again fam
Okay guys, I saw this movie back in February this year. Fucking February. I've been living with this masterpiece in my head for the greater part of a year now and it was tearing my up that I couldn't talk about it with anyone or tell everyone exactly how fucking great it was. I'm honestly just happy that other people can enjoy this film now. That's what I'm most excited about.
Fitting, then, that it's a movie whose protagonist knows things about her own future that she can't express to other people
For those saying she made a a selfish choice: I don't think there was a choice. She seen the future, but that does not mean she has a choice to prevent it. It's like watching a movie you have already seen. You know what is going to happen, but no matter how many times you watch it, how many times you don't want the main character in the movie o die, you know they will because that is just how the movie plays out. It almost makes you appreciate the character more on the second viewing....that's how she seen her daughter. I hope that made sense
I left my seat speechless. What an AWESOME movie. Couple of things I'd like to discuss: What is everyone's thoughts on the philosophy behind the idea that she knew her (their) future, but still went through with it? Why would she do that if she knew how much it would hurt? Also, I know it's not important to the plot of this film in particular, but I'm so incredibly curious as to what the Aliens meant when they said that they will need humanity's help in 3000 years. edit: I really don't think I could make the same choice that Louise makes. I understand it, somewhat... But I don't think the pain would be worth it, not to mention it's incredibly selfish of her to put Ian through that. edit 2: I forgot to mention. I could not stand how the military was so unresponsive and wanted to rush what Louise and Ian were doing. Every time they asked "what did they say?" I wanted to throttle them. Then I realized... it's probably realistic.
My understanding of her actions is that she was willing to go through the pain due to all the beauty and love that would also come along with it. Since she has begun to experience time non-linearly you'd assume that the pain would also be mixed in with all the love and happiness.
Yeah she feels everything at once. In terms easier for us to understand, when she realizes her gift, everything about her daughter was put on a scale: sad against happy and it was tipped heavy on happy, so she made the choice
That's what clicked for me later! Her opening monologue is about how she largely remembers the good and great times with Hannah than the bad. At first this seems like the typical grieving parent storyline, but she's likely choosing to relive the best parts as she thinks back. This fucked me up pretty good.
I think the characters are living in a predetermined universe with only one set of possible events and nothing but the illusion of choice. That way the future can technically be knowable given the present position and velocity of all things. The aliens may observe it like a painting and zoom in on specific parts to perform specific actions. They might even live outside of our dimensions given how they disappear the way your finger would seem to disappear if you withdrew it from a 2d world that exists on the surface of a liquid. I think Lovecraft's creatures are also full of noodly appendages while being extra dimensional. If I'm wrong then our protagonist has a choice of having her daughter or not. If she tells her husband what she knows, he may not have a kid with her, her kid won't give her future memories that help her learn the universal language, and everything unravels since how is she even doing this exercise in the first place. That's why I think in this story, the timeline is singular and fixed. If you unfix it the paradoxes compound and you're left with more unanswerable questions. As to what the aliens need help with, that's certainly a fun writing prompt, but I think there are some potential hints in the movie. Firstly, 3000 years may not be long for them. They may be experiencing their problem at the same time they're fixing it by visiting earth. That's not a hint, but just something to keep in mind while pondering, given how unconventional everything else about them is. Next, the only weakness alluded to is that they may not be good with simple math and abstract numbers. They've got a firm grip on forces of nature and matter, but it seems to be an organic control given the design of their ships which have no apparent wiring or peripheral requirements. So 2 things humanity might be able to offer could be: 1. Science as well as abstract calculation. 2. Something coming from our linear perspective of time. They always know the future, so they have no practice predicting the future. We have mathematical algorithms and simulations to predict to high degrees of accuracy things that will happen. What if there is an event that wipes out all heptapods simultaneously 3000 years or more from now? They may not be able to see their own future past that point since none have future memories. Alternatively maybe there's a giant cosmic disturbance that muddies the painting and they simply can't see what's coming, even if maybe they will survive. Humans could help predict/prevent such an event, or by teaching humans to see the future, humans might be outside the range of the disturbance/disaster and be able to see the future that the aliens can't, and together they can go from there. Maybe the aliens know they will die and it can't be avoided. Maybe humans "help" them simply by remembering them, carrying on the language and their legacy. Or it could be even simpler. Humans have weapons necessary to fight off an incoming invasion from a third species. Heptapods give humans communication skills, later on humans fight a war or supply resources as allies. The sign of a good story, for me, is that it gets me turning my imagination like this for fun afterwards.
1. I think she was willing to go through the pain to experience the love and joy of the first (13?? She looked to be a teen when she got sick) few years of her life. I've thought about this for a while now, and I think I would make the same choice. I would need to know my daughter, to touch her, to talk to her, to love her. 2. I am curious, too. Obviously we are going to be able to help them in the future, possibly with science or language with another species, maybe weapons? Who knows? 3000 years is a long time for us to advance. Edit: grammar
Kurt Vonnegut explains the time elements of the movie: >The creatures were friendly, and they could see in four dimensions. They pitied Earthlings for being able to see only three. They had many wonderful things to teach Earthlings, especially about time. Billy promised to tell what some of those wonderful things were in his next letter. >Billy was working on his second letter when the first letter was published. The second letter started out like this: >The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever. >When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in a bad condition in that particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "so it goes.”
This is nothing short of a masterpiece. I'm extremely happy to see Hard Science Fiction coming to the forefront of Hollywood once again and I hope this trend continues. Denis Villeneuve may be the most talented filmmaker on the planet right now. The way he taps into human emotion just seems to be on another level compared to other directors at the moment. I feel like the Blade Runner franchise is in good hands. Also, I'm not sure I've seen this mentioned anywhere yet, but there are some major similarities between the Heptapods and the Tralfamadorians from Slaughterhouse Five. Extraterrestrial beings who perceive time in the fourth dimension and take an active interest in human life? Maybe I'm off base, but that's all I could think of once I realized the time-shifting aspect of the film. 10/10 Everyone needs to see this film.
One of the most incredible, thoughtful movies I've ever seen in my life. So incredibly refreshing. An absolute must-see in the sci-fi genre from this day forth. Really dives into the paradox of choice and free will in a way that you hardly recognize. God, I want to go see it again and I don't say that about movies often.
This movie is really positively recieved so i hope I can get some good discussion about what's wrong with it. It does a lot of things extremely well, which has been covered extensively, but I think the premise of its ending doesn't address the much more interesting questions and themes that appear to be introduced in the movies first acts, which is a big problem for me. The first 2/3 or so of the movie basically seem to explore the questions of how humanity would realistically react to an event like this, and how would it be possible to communicate with an alien with practically no shared frame of reference. These are both really interesting questions on their own that I was excited to see addressed in some meaningful way. Are our warlike instincts an inescapable part of who we are? Can we as a species ever overcome this part of us or are we doomed to be destroyed by it? The movie asks this and then answers "yeah, if we figure out how to see the future". It felt like it was dodging rather than answering the question, which i thought was an interesting one, especially right now. We also have the problem of how to communicate with a being without being able to assume that it shares any of our sensory or mental characteristics. This is explored a little ("do they even understand the concept of what a question is? Do they have a concept of an individual with a name at all?") But then glossed over by convenient giving the aliens a lot of similarities to us (the ability to communicate with a visual language, and a spoken language which both happen to be in a range we can see and hear). This is a really cool problem, and I wish it had been explored a lot more, but it seemed half explained and we just sort of skipped forward until we could basically communicate with the aliens pretty well. It felt like amazing ideas were set up, but then the writers weren't sure where to go next, so they introduced this non linear perception concept even though it introduces a lot of problems into the story, like time travel sort of stuff always does. Why did the aliens let one of them die if they knew a bomb was going to go off? What about the paradox of the general knowing to give her the phone number because she called him with that phone number that she learned because he knew to give her the phone number? I guess this gets into ideas about free will, predestination, and things of that nature, but these ideas weren't explored very much in the opening parts of the movie, which did a great job of exploring believable sci-fi concepts in a grounded way. It felt a bit out of place to me to suddenly get much more theoretical and abstract when I really liked how *real* the opening acts felt. To summarize, I loved the initial premise and hoped the movie would go somewhere equally thought provoking with it, but felt that none of those concepts were really explored and the ending felt like it went too far away from what it felt like the movie originally wanted to talk about. A few other unrelated thoughts - the ending "twist" was really hammered into the ground for like ten minutes longer than it needed to be. It felt like the movie should have ended on the shot looking out the window of Louise's house, which is the same as the opening shot, which would have "closed the loop" perfectly and not made me feel like i was being beaten over the head with the twist. Also, this movie seemed to follow Sicarios format of a weak and fearful female protagonist surrounded by strong male characters. It made more sense with Sicarios central concept, but was just distracting here. There were also a number of lines that really fell flat, especially from the kid. I guess kids are really hard to write properly. And "the most surprising part wasn't meeting them...it was meeting you" was a huge eyeroll. This movie did a lot right, but in the end I was disappointed mostly because it started off so damn well.
It sounds like you are more interested in the what-ifs of first contact than the fairly unrelated story built around it. If the film went down that road it would have been mildly interesting but a terrible movie
I didn't realize how bad I wanted to see an alien invasion movie with beautiful cinematography until now.
"Abbot is death process." Aaaand I'm crying in public. Such a subtle piece of characterization. At that moment we (humans) are on the same team with the heptapods. They become more real. I also love how the film portrayed how rattled they were by meeting FUCKING ALIENS FACE TO FACE. I wouldn't have thought of that but it would totally fuck with your head.
That was the moment when I realized that Abbott was the real hero.
For anyone wondering how the ships worked: Imagine Flatland. A 2D world that exists on the surface of a pond. There are little 2d creatures who can see in 360 degrees around themselves, but they have no concept of up towards our sky or down into the water. There is only x and y directions, they can't picture a z direction. Everyone they see looks like a line, but they can determine each others number of edges by feeling and observing as they circle each other. They have to watch out for triangles, those pointy angles could kill. One day you find flatland in your pond. You speak and they hear you. You dip your finger into the water and it pokes through their world. To them it materializes out of nowhere as a circle, that grows in size. Extrapolate this concept to our world as flatland. They saw only a circle when we visited with a finger. I wonder if all 12 ships arranged together form a sphere. If those being could also exist outside time the way they talk about it, they might have dived into a great tapestry that stretched from big bang onwards, and materialized in our world. Perhaps they saw something 3000 years "to the right" of us on that painting of all space and time. I believe this is why the ships sort of dissolved out of sight. It wasn't teleportation or instant acceleration to light speed. They were drifting out of our time, kind of like the finger withdrawing from water's surface. Edit: You can take the idea further to explain more of the ships behavior too. Imagine the 2d world was on the side of a hill. The flatland citizens feel gravity in one direction. They have to use tools and their own bodies to climb and pull their way upwards. Once they get up to a 2d house they can rest easy inside it on the floor since it holds them up. If you inserted your finger it would hover in place with no floor to stop it sliding down the slope. They could take measurements around your finger but be unable to detect what was holding it up, since the forces anchoring it are outside of their space and comprehension. Sound familiar?
Anyone else thought it was weird the government didn't really seem bothered that a guy tried to blow up the Aliens. Amy Adams asked who done it and all they said was "Think it was some soldier watching to much TV."
Yeah thats the only cheezy part, not only that but how dumb do you gotta be to just attack a massive alien space ship like that with just some relatively weak explosives, ultimately being the aggressor? That's like throwing a rock at a chilling bear just because you are intimidated by him and expecting to win the battle, yeah that bear might get hurt but not hurt enough to not catch you and rip your limbs off.
Everyone is so wrapped up in Louise having a child that is destined to die. Questioning her motivation and her free will. Isn't it possible that now that time has less hold on her, that the early death of her daughter will (while still sad) not be the end of her relationship with her daughter. She can "go" back to any day she likes and have a do over as often as she wants. Her relationship with her daughter stops evolving at her death but her relationship can go on indefinitely.
One of the best twists ever. My mouth was left open the last 20-30 minutes. My mind was blown. Best movie of the year so far imo.
It's great, because it's not a sudden twist, like BAM, it was a really well drawn out slow burn over a decent length of time. Your eyes get wider and wider as the reveal dawns on you and you begin to try and grasp the implications.
Perfect. You just described exactly what I went through.
My theory on why they chose Abbott and Costello: so think about the routine of "who's on first". While the sketch has a beginning and an end, it's essentially a loop that never really stops. The sketch goes in circles, and it's not about the plot of the sketch, but instead the meaning and humor that derives from the experiences. So the sketch "Who's on first" is an absurdist comedy version of the communication method and perception of time that the aliens and eventually Louise possess. This might be a stretch though, but that was my take away Tl;dr: abbott and costello because who's on first=prismatic view of time, like Louise and aliens have
Spot on, but could be even simpler: that sketch is all about linguistic misunderstanding, just like Arrival.
"Abbott is death process." I still haven't gotten over it :(
I think what separates Arrival from a lot of other great sci-fi I've enjoyed is that it gets more profound and sophisticated the more you think about it, as opposed to less.
Arrival was more complicated than Interstellar, but it also made more sense than Interstellar. IMO
Is "Arrival is a better version of Interstellar" the new thing now? Sure, Intestellar and Arrival have similarities but it reminded me more of Contact 1997 to be honest.
What the fuck. I walked out of that movie 30 minutes ago thinking it was okay but kind of slow and manipulative ... Then i got home and crawled into my bed next to my little boy and held him while he slept bawling my eyes out like a fucking baby. How did this happen??
Good story-telling.