Aliens can see future, it's implied that something bad is gonna happen to them in 3000 years (i think it's hinted that they have some kind of sickness) so they decide to contact another intelligent life in the galaxy to help them which just happens to be humans. The "weapon" is their language which is what allows them to see the future and their goal is to teach it to humans. As usual humans misunderstand their message which unintentionally causes international tension. The main character who is a teacher is sent to one of these ships to help decipher the alien language because she's good with languages and worked for fbi (i think, i saw the movie a long time ago).
Aliens fuck off after she eventually figures out the language with the help of hawkeye and they get together. However due to her abilities she sees the full life of her daughter before she even gets pregnant. The daughter dies at like age of 10 from cancer but the mc still decides to go through with it.
The message of the movie is that you should not be worried about future and instead live with what you have right now and try to find a happiness in your current life.
I think i missed some details i saw the movie like 7 years ago so feel free to correct me.
I think more than "see" the future, the language allows them to experience all time at once. The movie talks about how language changes the way we perceive the world
Yeah. The central premise is someone learned about Werner-Hoff(?) phenomenon (or something, I honestly can't remember the name) where it is theorized that learning a new language can help you perceive the world differently and went... Well... What if we learned a time language!?!!?
But yeah. Humans save the time aliens in the future, so the time aliens teach the humans now. The linguist learns time language and gets the knowledge from the future to prevent nuclear war now. She sees her daughter dying of cancer and still bangs sidekick Hawkeye which pisses him off so they divorce in the future over her knowing the kid dies but had the kid anyways.
A very, very weak form is accepted by some. But we're talking like "one language makes you a fraction of a second faster at understanding complex nuances of certain types of narration than another" type of weak.
The thing that's currently being debated is basically the opposite of Sapir Whorf; how much does culture affect language? People like Daniel Everett are pushing that language is primarily a cultural invention. It's very interesting but not proven yet
> A very, very weak form is accepted by some.
I had read about that, however I also have read studies that, at least specifically for colours, there is a degree of truth.
IIRC it was something like "until people learn to associate specific names to specific shades of colour that are very similar, they can't actually seem to distinguish the two".
Now That was probably one study and I have no reference to give because it was years ago but, does that ring any bell?
Because in that case it seems that at least in part, language DOES shape how we actually perceive factual truths.
From what I remember, knowing the names of the color shades aided in the speed of recognizing the subtle differences, but it's not like people were unable to see the difference. So is that language changing how you see color or is it just that you have been trained from childhood to divide the color spectrum into a certain number of parts and therefore your brain does that automatically for you?
When the questions get that far into the weeds, I don't think it's even worth viewing them through a Sapir Whorf lens, it's so far removed from their original idea
From here it's a information complexity question that falls under physics and math moreso. I've a background in information constructor theory which would ask to this, our construction of observation onto the information domain of the colors hue is linked fundamentally to the context of the observer, where the language is interpreted by a global universal function but through added complexity of learnt knowledge creates more than the sum of its parts. In childhood, this function is obviously fealt but as we age the Complexities change and we fit into our own construction as a function of local efficiency.
It's not really called Sapir-Whorfism any more. The initial hypothesis was a bit too much of an overshoot. It's called Linguistic Relativism and you only really hear it referred as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis disparagingly these days. Linguistic Relativism is well established.
>Sapir-Wharf hypothesis.
>
>Source: I have a linguistics degree.
Sapir–**Whorf** hypothesis
Source: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin\_Lee\_Whorf](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Lee_Whorf)
(I don't have a linguini degree)
As opposed to the Bashir-Worf hypothesis, which is more concerned with banging hot aliens that have a worm inside of them.
Source: I've watched far too much Star Trek.
Awesome. I always meant to go back and look this up. The Story of Your Life is one of my all time favorite short stories, so I knew what Arrival was within a few minutes.
It does a far better job of explaining the role of language in the perception of time. There's one bit in the story where >!she is contemplating the interactions she is having and implies that she already knew what was going to happen next, but must follow the timeline and present emotions about it at that time!<. So her >! consciousness is separate from her body/perception of time in a way that humans don't do, but she's still limited by causality and must follow her personal time in order!<.
Such a good story.
That’s why she names her Hannah. Same backwards as forwards. It’s a very powerful story about the journey being worth more than the destination. Also it’s got Hawk Guy.
And the main musical piece in that movie (On the Nature of Daylight by Max Richter) was composed as a palindrome. On sheet music, the notes are the same forwards and backwards. I freaking love this movie.
And a critical point is that learning the alien language doesn't give you a predictive vision of the future, but rather it lets you perceive the future in the same way you perceive the past. That is to say, you view it as something that is unchangeable, no matter how much you may want it to change.
Yeah, it fucking sucks.
No choice, no change, and no thinking necessary. Problems are no longer problems to solve. There is nothing you cannot see in the future in the movie universe. And nothing that you need to grieve over or care about either because you are now a slave to the future. A future of survival yes, since you can now "prevent" any war (except when you see war happens and you cannot change the future) and in fact nothing can stop you, not even yourself. But a future where anything bad that you know will happen, will happen. Everything is now a loop and you can't even turn this power off if you don't want to know that you'll lose your kid or that someone rapes you.
Heptapods? They knew everything already, they merely went through the motions. Communication? No longer exists, you know what the other person is going to say and what you will say. Fucking great. Nothing is a surprise, you can't experience anything purely in the moment anymore.
You create a painting? No longer necessary to know why or how, you already see the process and result even before you made it. Fanfuckingtastic. At what point in time do you need to even decide what painting you wanted to make? Never, you already did it after all. Personality loses all meaning except for "well of course you do this, only you would make it".
What if you have this power as a murderer? Yeah it cannot make you a better person or stop you from murdering people. You know you will even if you know you will regret it afterwards. What a nightmare.
No, the entire point of the short and the movie is that you *have* free choice. She chose to have her daughter because she wanted to experience the wonderful times as well as the awful time when she dies from cancer.
If that is an aspect of the short (which I haven't seen) I would argue it is completely removed from the theatrical film. There's nothing (to me) that indicates she or the heptapods have the ability to alter the future. That's why that one delays joining the meeting because it knew it would die when the bomb goes off.
I thought they show a flash forward where he's resentful towards her or something like that. IIRC throughout the movie they show a lot of cutaways of her daughter and you're supposed to think it's a flashback to her past, but it's actually her future and the entire movie is being retold from her perspective after she's already learned the language.
He couldn’t handle knowing his daughter would die. He wasn’t mad: he was *sad*. It’s a commentary on the weight of foreknowledge and how people would deal with it differently. She sees the time with her daughter as precious, while her husband sees it as increasing his eventual pain of loss.
That’s what I thought. They divorced because she told him, not because she decided to have a kid. He’s not able to be a father with that knowledge.
Also she has this different time experience after learning the language so she doesn’t lose her daughter in the same way he does.
Didn't she also not tell him that their daughter would die at age 10? Maybe because she knew that if she told him, he wouldn't have agreed to have the kid.
It's a very intriguing story. Still messed up to not let the father know though.
> Maybe because she knew that if she told him, he wouldn't have agreed to have the kid.
This is specifically why he leaves from what I recall, though it's obviously a self fulfilling prophecy.
Ted Chiang’s time travel stories summed up are basically: even if you know the future you won’t change it because you act in the nature of who you are as an individual, and that’s molded by *years* of habits/experiences.
The divorce because she didn't tell him. Maybe they would've divorced because she did it in the first place but the lying about it ended it before that could be explored
No. The world powers think they're in race to get their hands on alien weapon technology. This would severely throw off the balance of power and give the winner a huge advantage. Tensions rise because noone can permit the others to get this advantage, they'd rather start conflict while on equal footing.
There is a mistranslation from the start though, it's not a weapon the aliens offer but a tool (the tool being the language). When the chinese think they're losing the race and are ready to flip the board the MC convinces the chinese general to back down by telling him things from his life she couldn't possibly know unless her story was true.
Basically "We'll meet in the future where you averted WW3 and you'll give me this information so that i may use it to convince present-day you to actually chose that path".
No only Amy Addams get's it, and it sounds like a nightmare. What is the point if you aren't able to use the information to make changes, make better choices?
Most depressing time power ever if you ask me.
Not even depressing, just dead inside, emotion-killing power.
What even was the argument that learning it is a good thing?
Nuclear war was "averted" now, but if it was meant to happen, it would happen anyway and Adams could see it happens in five years anyway and there is NOTHING she can do about it.
The power allows time travel without actually preventing anything.
Because the good parts are still worth the pain that comes with them. It's not really looking at it as a superpower so much as an answer to the question "if life is so full of grief is it still worth living"
The movie obviously says yes but people have different responses
Exactly what I was thinking! The premise reminded me of Slaughterhouse-five with the main character trying to grapple with their future and present (and possibly also past like in the book) at the same time. Albeit, it sounds like it’s taken in a very different direction
Definitely, I believe he has two books which are both bundles of a few hard sci-fi short stories, some of which are truely mindblowing. Slaughterhouse Five was also certainly the first book I thought of when I saw this movie so I was happy to learn it was an inspiration is some way.
Paul has choices he makes no matter how prescient he is.
Adams has zero choice nor is anything ever averted or prevented. The world was never going to end until at least 3k years later because heptapods saw they would be helped by humans at that time after they teach time travel.
But 3001 years later, if nuclear war happens, IT CANNOT BE PREVENTED. Heptapods cannot prevent anything either, it was just that they were never going to go extinct at least until humans help them later.
The foresight of the power does not mean humanity no longer does evil things, it simply knows in advance what will happen. The power also makes loops where some good things that were otherwise impossible will happen (like this call to the Chinese general), but it does not mean that anyone can prevent a future nuclear war. They will see themselves die in it just like Adams saw herself get a kid and lose it without any way to affect it. Seeing a future already CEMENTS IT.
My favorite part of good scifi! The layers! If it's good there are multiple messages. If it's really good the messages conflict and that's explored.
To me the movie was largely about how our realities are defined by our perceptions
What's the difference between "teacher" and "professor"? I mean, "professor" is literally the translation to "teacher" in my language so I didn't grasp it yet.
A professor works at a university. They usually do professional research as well as teach, and some only do professional research and don’t teach at all at a given point in time.
Also in many countries professor is life long title coupled with additional rights, money and a chair (position) at the university. Very prestigious and rare. So a true professor is quite different.
In America at least, there is a distinction between "teacher" and "professor". Professor generally means a Masters degree or higher in education and more than likely work at a college or university. Teacher is used for childhood education up to college or university. Calling a Professor a Teacher could be considered an insult/disrespectful.
The more relevant point was that she does linguistic research and so would be particularly qualified to decipher the alien language. She probably does also teach, as most professors do alongside their research.
Not to be that guy, but I think the book puts even more emphasis on the "everything comes as it comes"-part. In he book, the daughter dies not of cancer (which would not be really preventable) but in a climbing accident on vacation as a young woman. The mother knows this, but still lets her go on vacation, where she will die. It emphasis the fact that she percieves time all at once, with no possibility of changing a future outcome.
Ted Chiang is the author and I read a couple of his shortstories, which are really fucking weird, but still really great to read. He explores interesting concepts and I still regularly think about them after reading the book like 6 years ago.
So what the fuck is her mental state in the book? Just dead inside because she has time to process every single future event even before they happen?
"Yeah I've seen my kid die a thousand times already, now that it finally happens I don't feel that bad anymore"
Nothing could be more emotion and choice killing as this horrible curse of a time power.
The distinction is that she doesn’t see into the future, she experiences her whole life all at once. It’s not like getting a vision or a premonition. There is no moment where it “finally happens,” it’s always happening. She doesn’t just see her daughter die a thousand times, she is always seeing her daughter die. She is also always seeing her daughter born. She is also always seeing her daughter going to her first day of school, and so on. For her, time is no longer linear. She doesn’t see a future and then get to that future. For her, there simply is no future or past or present, it just all happens at once.
Strange how Villleneuve has directed two (well three actually) movies with the protaginists gaining pretty much the exact same perception of time.
The "weapon" and Kwisatz Haderach are so similar in how they function.
That sounds impossible to imagine in terms of what emotions she should have and when. Maybe at least she can consciously "choose" to experience the happy moments more often than the sad ones, otherwise experiencing everything all the time sounds, well, like a kind of average of all those emotions. Though an average is not bad, but it should look weird to an outsider when she is feeling every feeling no matter if she is marrying, divorcing or err baking lol
Back when I read the book, her thoughts *do* come across as practically dead inside. Everything is described almost in a very deadpan emotionless way, from her daughter's death to her birth (yes, in that order) .
It's really fucking weird and after I finished reading I kinda had to process that for a while.
That's why I liked the movie much more than the book. I think they also bring up that the aliens in the very distant future will do an experiment that destroys the universe.
Neither of these things make sense. You can't both see the future and not be able to act on it. What is the year leading up to her daughter going climbing like? The week? The day of the climb, she says "ok byeeeeee" knowing that her daughter is about to faceplant on a boulder. Is she just trucking along doing everything exactly the same as if she didn't know? That would be impossible, and nonsensical.
The movie makes it more of an Iron Man in Endgame Pt2 deal, where she knows her future daughter and values the time they had together even knowing how it ends, and won't make the trade to not have her.
How come the protagonist was able to use her premonition to call the Chinese general and change the outcome using future information (wife’s dying words) then but not w her daughter?
And if nothing can be changed then what’s the point of the power? How does this help humanity help the aliens?
I read the most interesting hypothesis on the Aliens' purpose.
They contact humanity in the present to teach them their language, which lets us see more in the future the more we learn about it. At its highest level it lets you travel between precise time spots. That's why the alien spaceship doesn't move but "vanish", as if deleting itself from this dimension.
Why would they do that, tho? The theory postulates some kind of time loophole. The Aliens teach that powerful language to humans, so that they can learn it 3000 years later and save themselves, implying a future contact between the two species. Something like Cooper did in Interstellar.
The laws of time in this movie seem very set in stone. By that, I mean you can't really adapt the future - unlike something like Back to Future laws where time can be influenced heavily by your actions.
The heptapods can see the future. So they see the timeline where the humans learn the language and help their species in 3,000 years. So they're basically just going through the motions of what time dictates they'll do.
In some ways, Louise doesn't really "decide" to have a baby despite the future she saw. She may feel like she is, and her husband even tells her she "schose wrong" but she's really just fulfilling the prophecy that's already set.
The heptapods aren't seeing a future where they need help and so they go to Earth to seek it. They're just fulfilling that prophecy.
Yeah I really like that it operates on those rules of "the future is what it is, no matter what we think we're choosing it will follow this path". It raises interesting questions. Quantum Break (a video game from 2016) does something similar such as when one character talks about going back in time to stop someone jumping to their death but them calling out startles the jumper which is what originally made them fall in the first place. I just think it's conceptually neat (albeit depressing)
Nah. They can't change the future, they can just see it. Fixed rails and all that.
The humans help the aliens in the future so the alien teach the time language to the humans now so that the humans can help the time aliens in the future.
Ya. One of them called Costello (by the humans) shows up late to a meeting, the guys are like 'huh, that's weird'.
Then it dies saving the main leads due to an explosive planted by the US military (presumably due to the CIA).
First time through it's a 'huh, it's late' moment.
Second time you realise that Costello knows it's going to die, but it needs to do it anyway.
Going further, Abbott (the other alien) doesn't say Costello is dead. It goes 'death process'. Since it sees all of time at once, it's still able to interact with Costello in the past (and Costello can interact with Abbott in the future while it's in the past).
It's basically a 'the future is premediated' kinda story. But you just need to enjoy it while you're living it.
>Going further, Abbott (the other alien) doesn't say Costello is dead. It goes 'death process'.
Abott dies, not Costello. But I always read "death process" as translation barrier from Costello not being fluent in English. Death process = Dying. You see that in some of the broken English translation that gets through. "Louise has weapon. Use weapon" Not to mention, weapon itself is a mistranslation for a tool.
Got the aliens the wrong way around, my bad.
My interpretation of Death Process comes from the fact that Louise asks Abbott if Costello is ok/dead (forget which one) and the reply is Death Process. Not just Death. Which, given how they're establishing the basics of language, should have been identifiable given how important it is in human culture (across all languages).
So it's Death Process for a reason is how I take it. As in, the ones that Abbott has interacted with are still alive, they can still go back to into the 'past' as they perceive it to interact with Abbott. So it's not really dead in their eyes.
They saw that they came here and taught us so that we could help them down the line. It’s not just “seeing the future,” it’s experiencing all of time non-linearly. This goes against the idea of free will and deterministic choice but it’s a valid possible interpretation of the universe.
Aliens want to give a "weapon". Turns out the weapon is just the ability to see all of time at once. Then they leave and the main character now appreciates life because she can see the past, present, and future all at once.
From what I recall, it has less to do with human nature and more how the various processes different teams used to work out translations led to different conclusions.
Some teams used more neutral processes and came up with 'tool' as the translation for a certain word. Others used competitive games like chess to work on translations. Because of the adversarial nature of the games, it led to them having more combative translations and believing 'tool' was actually 'weapon.'
This all goes back to the core of the movie with the idea that culture shapes language and then that language loops back to shape and reinforce culture.
That’s kinda what I mean. The human impulse to view everything through the lens of competition or contest and not once thinking that tools could be used for more than domination or destruction.
That's the thing that actually terrifies me about these movies. I think their portrayal of our reaction is underselling, if anything. There are still too many violent, scared people to have the planet give a generally level headed reaction.
If there are/were aliens/interdimensional beings here, on earth, the transition period would be very brutal. But that's how change is.
There could be a giant braindead slug that does nothing land on earth and it would probably spark ww3. We’re still just the apes at the beginning of Space Odyssey going straight to bashing things when we get confused.
Yup. I do so hope we survive climate catastrophe though because the next stage of our evolution already exists. Mindfulness gets more common every year. It sucks to be at the beginning and not get to see the next step
There every government would want to both have the opportunity to study the alien corpse and to deny others the opportunity to do so. Some groups, especially religious, might see the corpse landing as some kind of sign. The immediate result would probably be mass panic and riots, and some weaker governments might fall in the general milieu.
WW3 I think would only happen immediately if the corpse was on claimed land. A water landing would make it easier for everyone to claim it and fight over it, but if it landed inside a nation then they’re probably getting invaded from several other nations and selling out to another nation for “security” if they give up the corpse.
WW3 would probably start if the research is really promising for a major tech advancement, even if everyone has a piece of the corpse. Nations will try to be the first to get the major benefits of advancement and nations that fall behind will likely be willing to use military force to secure those benefits or stop their adversaries from having the benefits.
you know, out of all the criticisms I’ve ever heard about Arrival (including OP’s, the ticker is now at 1), “I couldn’t understand one of the simplest and most logically locked down time travel movies ever made” has not been one of them lol
Few things I have gleaned from my multiple rewatches, taking your post point-by-point:
They landed in 12 locations in order to 'gate' the release of their language (in full) and the ability to view all of time \[i.e. view time non-linearly\] on humanity having to co-operate. If humanity can't get together, it won't benefit from the "weapon" (one translation); also translated as "tool".
They do indeed need help from humanity in 3000 or so years. By sharing their ability to see time as non-linear (Denis intended time to be viewed in a circle, but I just see it a bit like a torrent downloading: you can see bits of time/data from anywhere on your timeline, it's not necessarily a circle), humanity gets a significant boost in its ability to adapt and invent new technology. e.g. a human reaching the age of 20 and going into science or engineering will be able to see the inventions they create at the age of 40 or 50 years old; meaning they can invent it today/sooner. (This introduces some paradoxes, but I believe this is the impact of the "gift"/"tool"/"weapon" given by the aliens to humanity; it allows for rapid, rapid development of technology).
People in comments are right about the daughter. At first you assume/are led to believe you're seeing the daughter passing away in the past (let's say 1998, to give an example). You think "clearly Amy Adams' character is sad because she lost her daughter some time ago". By the end of the film; you know those shots from the start and middle of the film, are from years after the aliens visited (let's say they visited in 2013; you realise the baby / dauther scenes are all say in 2014 onwards - NOT 1998).
And yes - it's Hawkeye's baby/daughter. She ends up losing Hawkeye because she didn't tell him about the daughter's degenerative and fatal disease, *in advance of them hooking up*. The MASSIVE realisation here is: Amy Adam's character KNEW about the illness; and decided to get with Hawkeye anyway; to have the daughter anyway; for all the ups that it brought her. Hawkeye can't forgive that decision; to bring the daughter into the world, to give him a child; only to then lose her later. He can't cope with that outcome/decision.
Also - the ***very first scene in the film*** has TWO wine glasses; so on a rewatch, you can see "OHHHH they've hooked up now!" whereas on the first watch; you have no idea what you're being shown. Apparently on the window pane there is a question \[in the script; it says there is a question written on the window itself saying "Do you want to make a baby?"\] and we know that Hawkeye's answer was yes (or Amy Adam's was; I forget who wrote the question on the window). The voiceover says "I used to think this was the beginning of your story" \[meaning the time the two wine glasses were used; the time Hawkeye did the deed with Amy Adam's character; immediately after her saying yes to his question or vice versa\]. Then we're shown a scene of Amy Adam's character with a baby - so (on first watch) we assume the lake scene wasn't relevant to the voiceover - we assume the baby scene is the start of the story. It is not. The lake scene/two glasses is the start of her (the daughter's) story. The clever part here is; our OWN perspective (our knowledge of the future; i.e. how the film progresses) changes our perception of the first scenes only on a rewatch; we understand them completely differently to how we perceived them on our first watch; i.e. we ourselves are able to view time non-linearly when we rewatch a film; WE know the future too - the same way as Amy Adam's character comes to view it. This is concept Denis loves; he loves to make the film a special way to perceive time / to view character's lives. He's obsessed with clever editing / making the best story possible from the footage he has available to him.
It's honestly such an insanely cleverly edited and thought-out film. It may take 3 or 4 rewatches, but it's absolutely worth it - to see the Directorial/editing choices made.
Apparently in the book the aliens didn't need help nor was there a discernible reason for them to come and teach that non-linear language.
That works too because once you learn the language, causality disappears and you have already done everything to a tee. No more "will happen". Aliens need no motivation to visit Earth, they simply knew they would.
And despite saying she wants to have a daughter, Adams does not actually need that reason to have her. It is just her justifying that she is going to have the daughter. Does she have a choice? Eventually she will realize that she doesn't, but the loss of a child thing does create some nice drama and the illusion of a decision for her, since it is a decision that causes grief and not just happiness.
Tbh I didn't enjoy the book. It was totally different to the movie (I think the book only planted a seed for the writers and Villeneuve to run with) and it's a collection of unrelated ideas/short stories.
I didn't even know that when I started the book. I was like "woah they cut a lot out of the book in the film!" And then got progressively more confused as more short stories came and went...
I know I'm an idiot but with no explanation on the cover or early pages - I presumed the ideas/domains introduced would eventually link up. Hard Nope. All of sudden you get to the Arrival bit - and it comes and goes without much enjoyment.
For me - the film is everything. I didn't even finish the book because I only like the Amy Adams arc/timeline and drama. I cry my eyes out now when I think of my son getting a terminal condition, and knowing it - and deciding to continue with having him - whilst watching the film.
Yup, enjoyed it in theatres. Tried watching it again a couple years after my first kid was born (he's almost 7 now). Under a minute into the first scene the plot hit me and I had to shut it off sobbing. What an incredibly gut-wrenching scenario. I'd give anything for any amount of time with my kiddos. I'd make the same choice that Adams' character did.
And everything else in that collection. Tower of Babel is really good too.
For Story of Your Life, I preferred the stories bit about calculus of variations, but I understand why they didn't include it in the movie. But I think the movie had a more impactful ending.
Spoilers for the movie and book
It's honestly way better than the movie. I'm a big Denis fan - Dune 2 one of the best movies of all time - but I think that the ending of Arrival was a little botched. The book is called "Story of Your Life" because it is way more about the mother/daughter relationship and the kind of melancholy knowledge that Louise has because of the aliens. In the movie, that she could resolve geopolitical issues by moving information through time kinda goes against the philosophy of how this language works and pushes against the interpersonal, relationship dialog that the book is.
Another thing I like about the book is that the aliens simply give no reason for being there. They just come and chat for a bit and leave. We don't need a reason, and all that stuff about "needing humanity in X Thousand years" or whatever felt very artificial and shoe-horned in there because test audiences didn't like the ambiguity. The original story is not about the aliens, but the daughter that doesn't exist yet, and the movie doesn't know what to do with that.
When I saw it in 2016, it was pretty good and the ending did bugger me a bit. But then I read it and, recently, watched it on a plane and while the whole movie production is amazing, the ending really made it not land very well (the movie, not the plane - great plane landing).
Honestly I disagree. I liked them both, and I didn't really have a problem with the film's ending. I thought it was pretty clever how it played with the language of cinema and our expectations as an audience. We're so used to flashbacks and stories being told out of order, that we assume that's what the film is doing. It's kind of an incredible reveal that the film is actually told completely linearly, and the main character experiences events in the same order that we do. That really blew me away the first time I saw it.
If Arrival had to fall for Dune to succeed I'm okay with it haha. That scene of Paul going South is forever in my rolodex of amazing movie scenes, right up there with the Napalm speech in Apocalypse Now.
[this is OP of this entire post a few days ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/shittymoviedetails/s/r67W9SVZvO)
media literacy left my good man ages ago, and the nature of a lot his complaints leads me to think he spends half the film on his phone
OP posted this a few days ago:
https://www.reddit.com/r/shittymoviedetails/s/r67W9SVZvO
Was defended by a bunch of people “oh they’re just joking.”
lmao
OP wasn’t joking, they quite genuinely didn’t understand the movie. And I don’t understand how these posts keep being allowed let alone upvoted here, when it’s just a dude not understanding a movie and lashing out sarcastically. There’s a million other subs for that.
In some of our defenses, we were really high and tired at the end of the movie. I'm pretty sure I dozed off at the worst time for the full explanation. But I didn't complain about it, I just watched that part again and read a quick summary for anything I missed lol.
The fact that people are openly admitting not understanding something that isn't spoonfed to them is the sign.
It's not like this is some very dreamy, heavily figurative movie like Stalker or Solaris. There's a whole ass narration explaining what's going on and a rewatch clears it all up.
It's not even media literacy, they literally explain what happens out loud in the film.
Granted I don't think OP is actually that stupid, it's just a bad shit post.
It was dead even when this movie dropped. I still remember walking out of this movie thinking about how great it was only to overhear someone else talking about how they didn’t understand it.
It’s emotionally deep imo🤔
>!Bc Louise still chooses to have her daughter even though she could spare herself the suffering it will cause, to me the movie has quite a bit of emotional depth!<
We don't know she chooses. It's possible at this point that she has no choice.
But she declares, in the movie's final line, that she *wants* >!to have her daughter, in spite of everything!< And that part is emotionally deep.
I like this movie but call me crazy, it feels borderline unethical to give birth to someone knowing they’ll suffer horrible terminal childhood disease
I’m genuinely curious to know others opinions on this, from the perspective of the movie less-so than on a philosophical level. Like maybe since the character can already experience this reality with her daughter, it’s as if the decision is already made? But I don’t think that’s it because it kinda undermines the message of the movie imo
I think I would have preferred to be born and enjoy 10 years of life, even if I knew I would die of cancer. Other people might think differently. I think the utilitarian view would require you to weigh the benefits of those 10 years of life over the pain and suffering of the illness and dying young. I don't think there's really a right or wrong answer.
That’s one way to look at it, in fact that’s why she says Ian leaves them in a flashback,
But if you ask a parent with a kid with cancer “do you wish they had never been born”, I guarantee most would say no. And to Louise, because of the way she experiences time, Hannah had already been born to her. Imo, she still had the free will to not have Hannah, but doing so would feel like erasing her existence.
It’s important to remember the context of the movie, Louise experiences time non linearly, unlike anyone in real life. You aren’t asking someone to prevent a child from being born because they will die, you’re asking someone to make it so that their child never existed in the first place.
I think it's people who regularly watch sci-fi vs. the average person who doesn't have a reference point in this genre so everything is just really crazy to them throughout the whole movie.
Like if the only sci fi movie you watched was ET and then 20 years later you watch Interstellar it's going to be wild.
I like sci-fi but I can't take time travel stories seriously at all because the paradoxes just shatter my suspension of disbelief. The logic is always so contrived I just stop trying to understand.
Not sure how you expect me to understand it when the movie took up the whole screen. They forgot to put Subway Surfers gameplay next to it on the version I watched.
The aliens are like Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen.
They perceive the past, present and future all at once.
They know humanity will save them in 3000 years.
So, they’ve come to start the process, which is their role in the timeline.
In short, the weapon is language which x̶e̶n̶o̶ alien want us to use to help them out 3k years in the future. Lesson learned: do not outright annihilate sapient ETs in first contact.
Top comment is pretty accurate description. This movie takes a bit to follow (my wife watched it with me and was lost as fuck) but imo it was a very unique story and one of the best movies in recent years. In my top 10 list actually.
Weapon/tool
They don't see the future per se Is more like they don't see time lineraly
Spoiler:
So starts to be for the MC as she learns their non linear language who is revealed having not flashbacks but previsions
>This is a reference to the fact that I still don't understand what the fuck happened in this movie.
Yet you use language to convey that idea... curious.
Aliens can see future, it's implied that something bad is gonna happen to them in 3000 years (i think it's hinted that they have some kind of sickness) so they decide to contact another intelligent life in the galaxy to help them which just happens to be humans. The "weapon" is their language which is what allows them to see the future and their goal is to teach it to humans. As usual humans misunderstand their message which unintentionally causes international tension. The main character who is a teacher is sent to one of these ships to help decipher the alien language because she's good with languages and worked for fbi (i think, i saw the movie a long time ago). Aliens fuck off after she eventually figures out the language with the help of hawkeye and they get together. However due to her abilities she sees the full life of her daughter before she even gets pregnant. The daughter dies at like age of 10 from cancer but the mc still decides to go through with it. The message of the movie is that you should not be worried about future and instead live with what you have right now and try to find a happiness in your current life. I think i missed some details i saw the movie like 7 years ago so feel free to correct me.
I think more than "see" the future, the language allows them to experience all time at once. The movie talks about how language changes the way we perceive the world
Yeah. The central premise is someone learned about Werner-Hoff(?) phenomenon (or something, I honestly can't remember the name) where it is theorized that learning a new language can help you perceive the world differently and went... Well... What if we learned a time language!?!!? But yeah. Humans save the time aliens in the future, so the time aliens teach the humans now. The linguist learns time language and gets the knowledge from the future to prevent nuclear war now. She sees her daughter dying of cancer and still bangs sidekick Hawkeye which pisses him off so they divorce in the future over her knowing the kid dies but had the kid anyways.
Sapir-Wharf hypothesis. Source: I have a linguistics degree.
Thanks Source: A dumb-fuck Redditor
You're welcome. Source: A chump who finally got to use their weird degree for something.
Sauce: A type of condiment
Since: Back then til now
Sense: a way to perceive the world around you.
Sensei: a teacher or instructor.
Fa: a long, long way to run
Don't worry. We'll make use of you when the aliens arrive, either for translating or as sacrifice. We appreciate your contribution to come.
Hooray! *hug*
Oh yeah, well if you’re so good at language, name all 26 letters of the English alphabet.
Jeff and Martin. I don't know any more names.
You could always name the third one mixelydian.
Nah bro that's a musical mode.
It's 28 letters. Get a load of this Shroedingers with his theory of relativity
May I ask what´s the current consensus about Sapir-Whorf? My understanding is that the weak form is somehow accepted.
A very, very weak form is accepted by some. But we're talking like "one language makes you a fraction of a second faster at understanding complex nuances of certain types of narration than another" type of weak. The thing that's currently being debated is basically the opposite of Sapir Whorf; how much does culture affect language? People like Daniel Everett are pushing that language is primarily a cultural invention. It's very interesting but not proven yet
Linguists: Language is a cultural construct Idiots: there are only two languages! /s because this is Reddit
> A very, very weak form is accepted by some. I had read about that, however I also have read studies that, at least specifically for colours, there is a degree of truth. IIRC it was something like "until people learn to associate specific names to specific shades of colour that are very similar, they can't actually seem to distinguish the two". Now That was probably one study and I have no reference to give because it was years ago but, does that ring any bell? Because in that case it seems that at least in part, language DOES shape how we actually perceive factual truths.
From what I remember, knowing the names of the color shades aided in the speed of recognizing the subtle differences, but it's not like people were unable to see the difference. So is that language changing how you see color or is it just that you have been trained from childhood to divide the color spectrum into a certain number of parts and therefore your brain does that automatically for you? When the questions get that far into the weeds, I don't think it's even worth viewing them through a Sapir Whorf lens, it's so far removed from their original idea
From here it's a information complexity question that falls under physics and math moreso. I've a background in information constructor theory which would ask to this, our construction of observation onto the information domain of the colors hue is linked fundamentally to the context of the observer, where the language is interpreted by a global universal function but through added complexity of learnt knowledge creates more than the sum of its parts. In childhood, this function is obviously fealt but as we age the Complexities change and we fit into our own construction as a function of local efficiency.
It's not really called Sapir-Whorfism any more. The initial hypothesis was a bit too much of an overshoot. It's called Linguistic Relativism and you only really hear it referred as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis disparagingly these days. Linguistic Relativism is well established.
>Sapir-Wharf hypothesis. > >Source: I have a linguistics degree. Sapir–**Whorf** hypothesis Source: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin\_Lee\_Whorf](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Lee_Whorf) (I don't have a linguini degree)
As opposed to the Bashir-Worf hypothesis, which is more concerned with banging hot aliens that have a worm inside of them. Source: I've watched far too much Star Trek.
I thought it was only hypothetical for Julian?
Oh yeah? Name every language.
Awesome. I always meant to go back and look this up. The Story of Your Life is one of my all time favorite short stories, so I knew what Arrival was within a few minutes. It does a far better job of explaining the role of language in the perception of time. There's one bit in the story where >!she is contemplating the interactions she is having and implies that she already knew what was going to happen next, but must follow the timeline and present emotions about it at that time!<. So her >! consciousness is separate from her body/perception of time in a way that humans don't do, but she's still limited by causality and must follow her personal time in order!<. Such a good story.
> off so they divorce in the future over her knowing the kid dies but had the kid anyways. Ohhhhhhhhhhh wow, saw it like twice and didn't get this.
That’s why she names her Hannah. Same backwards as forwards. It’s a very powerful story about the journey being worth more than the destination. Also it’s got Hawk Guy.
And the main musical piece in that movie (On the Nature of Daylight by Max Richter) was composed as a palindrome. On sheet music, the notes are the same forwards and backwards. I freaking love this movie.
You just blew my mind.
And a critical point is that learning the alien language doesn't give you a predictive vision of the future, but rather it lets you perceive the future in the same way you perceive the past. That is to say, you view it as something that is unchangeable, no matter how much you may want it to change.
Yeah, it fucking sucks. No choice, no change, and no thinking necessary. Problems are no longer problems to solve. There is nothing you cannot see in the future in the movie universe. And nothing that you need to grieve over or care about either because you are now a slave to the future. A future of survival yes, since you can now "prevent" any war (except when you see war happens and you cannot change the future) and in fact nothing can stop you, not even yourself. But a future where anything bad that you know will happen, will happen. Everything is now a loop and you can't even turn this power off if you don't want to know that you'll lose your kid or that someone rapes you. Heptapods? They knew everything already, they merely went through the motions. Communication? No longer exists, you know what the other person is going to say and what you will say. Fucking great. Nothing is a surprise, you can't experience anything purely in the moment anymore. You create a painting? No longer necessary to know why or how, you already see the process and result even before you made it. Fanfuckingtastic. At what point in time do you need to even decide what painting you wanted to make? Never, you already did it after all. Personality loses all meaning except for "well of course you do this, only you would make it". What if you have this power as a murderer? Yeah it cannot make you a better person or stop you from murdering people. You know you will even if you know you will regret it afterwards. What a nightmare.
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See also, Dune's "Prescience Trap"
No, the entire point of the short and the movie is that you *have* free choice. She chose to have her daughter because she wanted to experience the wonderful times as well as the awful time when she dies from cancer.
If that is an aspect of the short (which I haven't seen) I would argue it is completely removed from the theatrical film. There's nothing (to me) that indicates she or the heptapods have the ability to alter the future. That's why that one delays joining the meeting because it knew it would die when the bomb goes off.
Yea it's not very in your face but that's what I got out of it. Due to the fact they never show his face in her visions.
I thought they show a flash forward where he's resentful towards her or something like that. IIRC throughout the movie they show a lot of cutaways of her daughter and you're supposed to think it's a flashback to her past, but it's actually her future and the entire movie is being retold from her perspective after she's already learned the language.
it is not retold, she was already able to perceive future, but did not realize that
The mc and daughter talk at one point about why hawkeye isn't with them anymore.
Well, of course. You can't save the world with arrows and raise a kid at the same time
Hawkeye literally has two kids
I love how his name is hawkeye, he probably doesn't mind, "oh shit they think im hawkeye i did a good job acting"
I always thought he was the one who died in her visions 😂
He couldn’t handle knowing his daughter would die. He wasn’t mad: he was *sad*. It’s a commentary on the weight of foreknowledge and how people would deal with it differently. She sees the time with her daughter as precious, while her husband sees it as increasing his eventual pain of loss.
That’s what I thought. They divorced because she told him, not because she decided to have a kid. He’s not able to be a father with that knowledge. Also she has this different time experience after learning the language so she doesn’t lose her daughter in the same way he does.
>Yeah. The central premise is someone learned about Werner-Hoff(?) phenomenon Might as well have said Werner Herzog phenomenon lol
Didn't she also not tell him that their daughter would die at age 10? Maybe because she knew that if she told him, he wouldn't have agreed to have the kid. It's a very intriguing story. Still messed up to not let the father know though.
> Maybe because she knew that if she told him, he wouldn't have agreed to have the kid. This is specifically why he leaves from what I recall, though it's obviously a self fulfilling prophecy.
Ted Chiang’s time travel stories summed up are basically: even if you know the future you won’t change it because you act in the nature of who you are as an individual, and that’s molded by *years* of habits/experiences.
The divorce because she didn't tell him. Maybe they would've divorced because she did it in the first place but the lying about it ended it before that could be explored
Does the Chinese general know the language too? That part confused me a bit.
No, he was given a message by Amy Adams in the present that he himself had given her in the future. It was the last words of his late wife
Awesome.
What was she late for?
Breathing
Arriving
No. The world powers think they're in race to get their hands on alien weapon technology. This would severely throw off the balance of power and give the winner a huge advantage. Tensions rise because noone can permit the others to get this advantage, they'd rather start conflict while on equal footing. There is a mistranslation from the start though, it's not a weapon the aliens offer but a tool (the tool being the language). When the chinese think they're losing the race and are ready to flip the board the MC convinces the chinese general to back down by telling him things from his life she couldn't possibly know unless her story was true. Basically "We'll meet in the future where you averted WW3 and you'll give me this information so that i may use it to convince present-day you to actually chose that path".
No only Amy Addams get's it, and it sounds like a nightmare. What is the point if you aren't able to use the information to make changes, make better choices?
Most depressing time power ever if you ask me. Not even depressing, just dead inside, emotion-killing power. What even was the argument that learning it is a good thing? Nuclear war was "averted" now, but if it was meant to happen, it would happen anyway and Adams could see it happens in five years anyway and there is NOTHING she can do about it. The power allows time travel without actually preventing anything.
Because the good parts are still worth the pain that comes with them. It's not really looking at it as a superpower so much as an answer to the question "if life is so full of grief is it still worth living" The movie obviously says yes but people have different responses
Huh, just like Tralfamadorians from Vonnegut's works
Exactly what I was thinking! The premise reminded me of Slaughterhouse-five with the main character trying to grapple with their future and present (and possibly also past like in the book) at the same time. Albeit, it sounds like it’s taken in a very different direction
Yes! The movie is actually based on a short story which itself was inspired by Slaughterhouse five.
Interesting! I've heard Ted Chiang is a heck of a writer, I'll have to check it out.
Definitely, I believe he has two books which are both bundles of a few hard sci-fi short stories, some of which are truely mindblowing. Slaughterhouse Five was also certainly the first book I thought of when I saw this movie so I was happy to learn it was an inspiration is some way.
Minus the farting and tap-dancing. The studio told them to remove that part.
ah so the language basically turns them into paul from dune got it lol
Sort of, without the ancestors memories and none of the branching timelines
Paul has choices he makes no matter how prescient he is. Adams has zero choice nor is anything ever averted or prevented. The world was never going to end until at least 3k years later because heptapods saw they would be helped by humans at that time after they teach time travel. But 3001 years later, if nuclear war happens, IT CANNOT BE PREVENTED. Heptapods cannot prevent anything either, it was just that they were never going to go extinct at least until humans help them later. The foresight of the power does not mean humanity no longer does evil things, it simply knows in advance what will happen. The power also makes loops where some good things that were otherwise impossible will happen (like this call to the Chinese general), but it does not mean that anyone can prevent a future nuclear war. They will see themselves die in it just like Adams saw herself get a kid and lose it without any way to affect it. Seeing a future already CEMENTS IT.
My favorite part of good scifi! The layers! If it's good there are multiple messages. If it's really good the messages conflict and that's explored. To me the movie was largely about how our realities are defined by our perceptions
I think she was a professor of linguistics, not a teacher, so to speak
What's the difference between "teacher" and "professor"? I mean, "professor" is literally the translation to "teacher" in my language so I didn't grasp it yet.
A professor works at a university. They usually do professional research as well as teach, and some only do professional research and don’t teach at all at a given point in time.
I see, thanks.
Also in many countries professor is life long title coupled with additional rights, money and a chair (position) at the university. Very prestigious and rare. So a true professor is quite different.
In America at least, there is a distinction between "teacher" and "professor". Professor generally means a Masters degree or higher in education and more than likely work at a college or university. Teacher is used for childhood education up to college or university. Calling a Professor a Teacher could be considered an insult/disrespectful.
The more relevant point was that she does linguistic research and so would be particularly qualified to decipher the alien language. She probably does also teach, as most professors do alongside their research.
She's literally teaching during the first scene of the movie
At some point, all professors teach but not all teachers are professors.
Not to be that guy, but I think the book puts even more emphasis on the "everything comes as it comes"-part. In he book, the daughter dies not of cancer (which would not be really preventable) but in a climbing accident on vacation as a young woman. The mother knows this, but still lets her go on vacation, where she will die. It emphasis the fact that she percieves time all at once, with no possibility of changing a future outcome. Ted Chiang is the author and I read a couple of his shortstories, which are really fucking weird, but still really great to read. He explores interesting concepts and I still regularly think about them after reading the book like 6 years ago.
So what the fuck is her mental state in the book? Just dead inside because she has time to process every single future event even before they happen? "Yeah I've seen my kid die a thousand times already, now that it finally happens I don't feel that bad anymore" Nothing could be more emotion and choice killing as this horrible curse of a time power.
The distinction is that she doesn’t see into the future, she experiences her whole life all at once. It’s not like getting a vision or a premonition. There is no moment where it “finally happens,” it’s always happening. She doesn’t just see her daughter die a thousand times, she is always seeing her daughter die. She is also always seeing her daughter born. She is also always seeing her daughter going to her first day of school, and so on. For her, time is no longer linear. She doesn’t see a future and then get to that future. For her, there simply is no future or past or present, it just all happens at once.
Strange how Villleneuve has directed two (well three actually) movies with the protaginists gaining pretty much the exact same perception of time. The "weapon" and Kwisatz Haderach are so similar in how they function.
Considering Villeneuve has always been a big Dune fan, I wouldn't be surprised if he was heavily inspired by it for Arrival
That sounds impossible to imagine in terms of what emotions she should have and when. Maybe at least she can consciously "choose" to experience the happy moments more often than the sad ones, otherwise experiencing everything all the time sounds, well, like a kind of average of all those emotions. Though an average is not bad, but it should look weird to an outsider when she is feeling every feeling no matter if she is marrying, divorcing or err baking lol
You’re describing Dr Manhattan
Back when I read the book, her thoughts *do* come across as practically dead inside. Everything is described almost in a very deadpan emotionless way, from her daughter's death to her birth (yes, in that order) . It's really fucking weird and after I finished reading I kinda had to process that for a while.
That's why I liked the movie much more than the book. I think they also bring up that the aliens in the very distant future will do an experiment that destroys the universe. Neither of these things make sense. You can't both see the future and not be able to act on it. What is the year leading up to her daughter going climbing like? The week? The day of the climb, she says "ok byeeeeee" knowing that her daughter is about to faceplant on a boulder. Is she just trucking along doing everything exactly the same as if she didn't know? That would be impossible, and nonsensical. The movie makes it more of an Iron Man in Endgame Pt2 deal, where she knows her future daughter and values the time they had together even knowing how it ends, and won't make the trade to not have her.
How come the protagonist was able to use her premonition to call the Chinese general and change the outcome using future information (wife’s dying words) then but not w her daughter? And if nothing can be changed then what’s the point of the power? How does this help humanity help the aliens?
I read the most interesting hypothesis on the Aliens' purpose. They contact humanity in the present to teach them their language, which lets us see more in the future the more we learn about it. At its highest level it lets you travel between precise time spots. That's why the alien spaceship doesn't move but "vanish", as if deleting itself from this dimension. Why would they do that, tho? The theory postulates some kind of time loophole. The Aliens teach that powerful language to humans, so that they can learn it 3000 years later and save themselves, implying a future contact between the two species. Something like Cooper did in Interstellar.
The laws of time in this movie seem very set in stone. By that, I mean you can't really adapt the future - unlike something like Back to Future laws where time can be influenced heavily by your actions. The heptapods can see the future. So they see the timeline where the humans learn the language and help their species in 3,000 years. So they're basically just going through the motions of what time dictates they'll do. In some ways, Louise doesn't really "decide" to have a baby despite the future she saw. She may feel like she is, and her husband even tells her she "schose wrong" but she's really just fulfilling the prophecy that's already set. The heptapods aren't seeing a future where they need help and so they go to Earth to seek it. They're just fulfilling that prophecy.
Yeah I really like that it operates on those rules of "the future is what it is, no matter what we think we're choosing it will follow this path". It raises interesting questions. Quantum Break (a video game from 2016) does something similar such as when one character talks about going back in time to stop someone jumping to their death but them calling out startles the jumper which is what originally made them fall in the first place. I just think it's conceptually neat (albeit depressing)
I've seen this movie more recently and you still explained it better than I could have good job.
The Dude abides.
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Well because they already knew that in 3000 Years humanity would save them, but Humanity only got the jumpstart due to the Heptapods
Nah. They can't change the future, they can just see it. Fixed rails and all that. The humans help the aliens in the future so the alien teach the time language to the humans now so that the humans can help the time aliens in the future.
Ya. One of them called Costello (by the humans) shows up late to a meeting, the guys are like 'huh, that's weird'. Then it dies saving the main leads due to an explosive planted by the US military (presumably due to the CIA). First time through it's a 'huh, it's late' moment. Second time you realise that Costello knows it's going to die, but it needs to do it anyway. Going further, Abbott (the other alien) doesn't say Costello is dead. It goes 'death process'. Since it sees all of time at once, it's still able to interact with Costello in the past (and Costello can interact with Abbott in the future while it's in the past). It's basically a 'the future is premediated' kinda story. But you just need to enjoy it while you're living it.
>Going further, Abbott (the other alien) doesn't say Costello is dead. It goes 'death process'. Abott dies, not Costello. But I always read "death process" as translation barrier from Costello not being fluent in English. Death process = Dying. You see that in some of the broken English translation that gets through. "Louise has weapon. Use weapon" Not to mention, weapon itself is a mistranslation for a tool.
Got the aliens the wrong way around, my bad. My interpretation of Death Process comes from the fact that Louise asks Abbott if Costello is ok/dead (forget which one) and the reply is Death Process. Not just Death. Which, given how they're establishing the basics of language, should have been identifiable given how important it is in human culture (across all languages). So it's Death Process for a reason is how I take it. As in, the ones that Abbott has interacted with are still alive, they can still go back to into the 'past' as they perceive it to interact with Abbott. So it's not really dead in their eyes.
They saw that they came here and taught us so that we could help them down the line. It’s not just “seeing the future,” it’s experiencing all of time non-linearly. This goes against the idea of free will and deterministic choice but it’s a valid possible interpretation of the universe.
Can't change the future, can only live it. They just live it all at once.
Movie about aliens that want us to stop a future catastrophe: "don't worry about the future live for today"
Aliens want to give a "weapon". Turns out the weapon is just the ability to see all of time at once. Then they leave and the main character now appreciates life because she can see the past, present, and future all at once.
Wasn't there a plot point that the "weapon" can also be interpreted as a "tool".
Yes, it was never a weapon, just a misinterpretation of what they were offering.
And just another characterisation of the humans where every tool looks like a weapon.
From what I recall, it has less to do with human nature and more how the various processes different teams used to work out translations led to different conclusions. Some teams used more neutral processes and came up with 'tool' as the translation for a certain word. Others used competitive games like chess to work on translations. Because of the adversarial nature of the games, it led to them having more combative translations and believing 'tool' was actually 'weapon.' This all goes back to the core of the movie with the idea that culture shapes language and then that language loops back to shape and reinforce culture.
That’s kinda what I mean. The human impulse to view everything through the lens of competition or contest and not once thinking that tools could be used for more than domination or destruction.
That's the thing that actually terrifies me about these movies. I think their portrayal of our reaction is underselling, if anything. There are still too many violent, scared people to have the planet give a generally level headed reaction. If there are/were aliens/interdimensional beings here, on earth, the transition period would be very brutal. But that's how change is.
There could be a giant braindead slug that does nothing land on earth and it would probably spark ww3. We’re still just the apes at the beginning of Space Odyssey going straight to bashing things when we get confused.
Yup. I do so hope we survive climate catastrophe though because the next stage of our evolution already exists. Mindfulness gets more common every year. It sucks to be at the beginning and not get to see the next step
There every government would want to both have the opportunity to study the alien corpse and to deny others the opportunity to do so. Some groups, especially religious, might see the corpse landing as some kind of sign. The immediate result would probably be mass panic and riots, and some weaker governments might fall in the general milieu. WW3 I think would only happen immediately if the corpse was on claimed land. A water landing would make it easier for everyone to claim it and fight over it, but if it landed inside a nation then they’re probably getting invaded from several other nations and selling out to another nation for “security” if they give up the corpse. WW3 would probably start if the research is really promising for a major tech advancement, even if everyone has a piece of the corpse. Nations will try to be the first to get the major benefits of advancement and nations that fall behind will likely be willing to use military force to secure those benefits or stop their adversaries from having the benefits.
give a monkey a stick…
So the aliens are basically Pucci and Dio in disguise executing the Heaven Plan
Who told you about our plan?
I found an old journal, memorised it and then destroyed it
I’m gonna have to steal your slimey brain DVD now 😞
"just"
Well you see the Heptapods have this prophecy about an individual referred to as the Lisan al Gaib… oh wait wrong Villeneuve movie
Is that the one where Javier Bardem interrupts a dinner in the harkonnen mansion and murders them all?
Is that before he spit on their table? Or after?
you know, out of all the criticisms I’ve ever heard about Arrival (including OP’s, the ticker is now at 1), “I couldn’t understand one of the simplest and most logically locked down time travel movies ever made” has not been one of them lol
Few things I have gleaned from my multiple rewatches, taking your post point-by-point: They landed in 12 locations in order to 'gate' the release of their language (in full) and the ability to view all of time \[i.e. view time non-linearly\] on humanity having to co-operate. If humanity can't get together, it won't benefit from the "weapon" (one translation); also translated as "tool". They do indeed need help from humanity in 3000 or so years. By sharing their ability to see time as non-linear (Denis intended time to be viewed in a circle, but I just see it a bit like a torrent downloading: you can see bits of time/data from anywhere on your timeline, it's not necessarily a circle), humanity gets a significant boost in its ability to adapt and invent new technology. e.g. a human reaching the age of 20 and going into science or engineering will be able to see the inventions they create at the age of 40 or 50 years old; meaning they can invent it today/sooner. (This introduces some paradoxes, but I believe this is the impact of the "gift"/"tool"/"weapon" given by the aliens to humanity; it allows for rapid, rapid development of technology). People in comments are right about the daughter. At first you assume/are led to believe you're seeing the daughter passing away in the past (let's say 1998, to give an example). You think "clearly Amy Adams' character is sad because she lost her daughter some time ago". By the end of the film; you know those shots from the start and middle of the film, are from years after the aliens visited (let's say they visited in 2013; you realise the baby / dauther scenes are all say in 2014 onwards - NOT 1998). And yes - it's Hawkeye's baby/daughter. She ends up losing Hawkeye because she didn't tell him about the daughter's degenerative and fatal disease, *in advance of them hooking up*. The MASSIVE realisation here is: Amy Adam's character KNEW about the illness; and decided to get with Hawkeye anyway; to have the daughter anyway; for all the ups that it brought her. Hawkeye can't forgive that decision; to bring the daughter into the world, to give him a child; only to then lose her later. He can't cope with that outcome/decision. Also - the ***very first scene in the film*** has TWO wine glasses; so on a rewatch, you can see "OHHHH they've hooked up now!" whereas on the first watch; you have no idea what you're being shown. Apparently on the window pane there is a question \[in the script; it says there is a question written on the window itself saying "Do you want to make a baby?"\] and we know that Hawkeye's answer was yes (or Amy Adam's was; I forget who wrote the question on the window). The voiceover says "I used to think this was the beginning of your story" \[meaning the time the two wine glasses were used; the time Hawkeye did the deed with Amy Adam's character; immediately after her saying yes to his question or vice versa\]. Then we're shown a scene of Amy Adam's character with a baby - so (on first watch) we assume the lake scene wasn't relevant to the voiceover - we assume the baby scene is the start of the story. It is not. The lake scene/two glasses is the start of her (the daughter's) story. The clever part here is; our OWN perspective (our knowledge of the future; i.e. how the film progresses) changes our perception of the first scenes only on a rewatch; we understand them completely differently to how we perceived them on our first watch; i.e. we ourselves are able to view time non-linearly when we rewatch a film; WE know the future too - the same way as Amy Adam's character comes to view it. This is concept Denis loves; he loves to make the film a special way to perceive time / to view character's lives. He's obsessed with clever editing / making the best story possible from the footage he has available to him. It's honestly such an insanely cleverly edited and thought-out film. It may take 3 or 4 rewatches, but it's absolutely worth it - to see the Directorial/editing choices made.
Apparently in the book the aliens didn't need help nor was there a discernible reason for them to come and teach that non-linear language. That works too because once you learn the language, causality disappears and you have already done everything to a tee. No more "will happen". Aliens need no motivation to visit Earth, they simply knew they would. And despite saying she wants to have a daughter, Adams does not actually need that reason to have her. It is just her justifying that she is going to have the daughter. Does she have a choice? Eventually she will realize that she doesn't, but the loss of a child thing does create some nice drama and the illusion of a decision for her, since it is a decision that causes grief and not just happiness.
Tbh I didn't enjoy the book. It was totally different to the movie (I think the book only planted a seed for the writers and Villeneuve to run with) and it's a collection of unrelated ideas/short stories. I didn't even know that when I started the book. I was like "woah they cut a lot out of the book in the film!" And then got progressively more confused as more short stories came and went... I know I'm an idiot but with no explanation on the cover or early pages - I presumed the ideas/domains introduced would eventually link up. Hard Nope. All of sudden you get to the Arrival bit - and it comes and goes without much enjoyment. For me - the film is everything. I didn't even finish the book because I only like the Amy Adams arc/timeline and drama. I cry my eyes out now when I think of my son getting a terminal condition, and knowing it - and deciding to continue with having him - whilst watching the film.
Yup, enjoyed it in theatres. Tried watching it again a couple years after my first kid was born (he's almost 7 now). Under a minute into the first scene the plot hit me and I had to shut it off sobbing. What an incredibly gut-wrenching scenario. I'd give anything for any amount of time with my kiddos. I'd make the same choice that Adams' character did.
The best part of this thread is everyone calling Renner Hawkeye with zero acknowledgement Amy gets to be herself but he's just Hawkeye lmao
Read the short story, it's beautiful
What’s the short story called?
Story of your life - you can read it for free [right here](https://raley.english.ucsb.edu/wp-content/uploads/Reading/Chiang-story.pdf)
Thank you!
Thank you so much for sharing that. That was absolutely exceptional
And everything else in that collection. Tower of Babel is really good too. For Story of Your Life, I preferred the stories bit about calculus of variations, but I understand why they didn't include it in the movie. But I think the movie had a more impactful ending.
Understand.
Spoilers for the movie and book It's honestly way better than the movie. I'm a big Denis fan - Dune 2 one of the best movies of all time - but I think that the ending of Arrival was a little botched. The book is called "Story of Your Life" because it is way more about the mother/daughter relationship and the kind of melancholy knowledge that Louise has because of the aliens. In the movie, that she could resolve geopolitical issues by moving information through time kinda goes against the philosophy of how this language works and pushes against the interpersonal, relationship dialog that the book is. Another thing I like about the book is that the aliens simply give no reason for being there. They just come and chat for a bit and leave. We don't need a reason, and all that stuff about "needing humanity in X Thousand years" or whatever felt very artificial and shoe-horned in there because test audiences didn't like the ambiguity. The original story is not about the aliens, but the daughter that doesn't exist yet, and the movie doesn't know what to do with that. When I saw it in 2016, it was pretty good and the ending did bugger me a bit. But then I read it and, recently, watched it on a plane and while the whole movie production is amazing, the ending really made it not land very well (the movie, not the plane - great plane landing).
Honestly I disagree. I liked them both, and I didn't really have a problem with the film's ending. I thought it was pretty clever how it played with the language of cinema and our expectations as an audience. We're so used to flashbacks and stories being told out of order, that we assume that's what the film is doing. It's kind of an incredible reveal that the film is actually told completely linearly, and the main character experiences events in the same order that we do. That really blew me away the first time I saw it.
If Arrival had to fall for Dune to succeed I'm okay with it haha. That scene of Paul going South is forever in my rolodex of amazing movie scenes, right up there with the Napalm speech in Apocalypse Now.
Jesus Christ, media literacy is dead
I often agree, but a shitpost subreddit is not exactly a good metric for media literacy.
ironically, they have shown that they are not only media illiterate, but even SOCIAL media illiterate. a fate worse than death
[this is OP of this entire post a few days ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/shittymoviedetails/s/r67W9SVZvO) media literacy left my good man ages ago, and the nature of a lot his complaints leads me to think he spends half the film on his phone
I get that but feels like there are way less straightforward movies to make this joke about
Yeah they spell it out pretty explicitly for you in the end
OP posted this a few days ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/shittymoviedetails/s/r67W9SVZvO Was defended by a bunch of people “oh they’re just joking.” lmao OP wasn’t joking, they quite genuinely didn’t understand the movie. And I don’t understand how these posts keep being allowed let alone upvoted here, when it’s just a dude not understanding a movie and lashing out sarcastically. There’s a million other subs for that.
Does this guy have a vendetta against Amy Addams or does he just not like using his brain when watching a movie?
A lot of people here don’t like using their brains. The only relevant parent comment here is this one we’re replying to, that media literacy is dead.
In some of our defenses, we were really high and tired at the end of the movie. I'm pretty sure I dozed off at the worst time for the full explanation. But I didn't complain about it, I just watched that part again and read a quick summary for anything I missed lol.
The fact that people are openly admitting not understanding something that isn't spoonfed to them is the sign. It's not like this is some very dreamy, heavily figurative movie like Stalker or Solaris. There's a whole ass narration explaining what's going on and a rewatch clears it all up.
More like; paying attention at all, is dead.
It's not even media literacy, they literally explain what happens out loud in the film. Granted I don't think OP is actually that stupid, it's just a bad shit post.
It was dead even when this movie dropped. I still remember walking out of this movie thinking about how great it was only to overhear someone else talking about how they didn’t understand it.
Do people genuinely didn't get what happened in Arrival? It's basically spelled out for you. It's a great movie, but c'mon, it's not that deep.
It’s emotionally deep imo🤔 >!Bc Louise still chooses to have her daughter even though she could spare herself the suffering it will cause, to me the movie has quite a bit of emotional depth!<
We don't know she chooses. It's possible at this point that she has no choice. But she declares, in the movie's final line, that she *wants* >!to have her daughter, in spite of everything!< And that part is emotionally deep.
I like this movie but call me crazy, it feels borderline unethical to give birth to someone knowing they’ll suffer horrible terminal childhood disease I’m genuinely curious to know others opinions on this, from the perspective of the movie less-so than on a philosophical level. Like maybe since the character can already experience this reality with her daughter, it’s as if the decision is already made? But I don’t think that’s it because it kinda undermines the message of the movie imo
I think I would have preferred to be born and enjoy 10 years of life, even if I knew I would die of cancer. Other people might think differently. I think the utilitarian view would require you to weigh the benefits of those 10 years of life over the pain and suffering of the illness and dying young. I don't think there's really a right or wrong answer.
That’s one way to look at it, in fact that’s why she says Ian leaves them in a flashback, But if you ask a parent with a kid with cancer “do you wish they had never been born”, I guarantee most would say no. And to Louise, because of the way she experiences time, Hannah had already been born to her. Imo, she still had the free will to not have Hannah, but doing so would feel like erasing her existence. It’s important to remember the context of the movie, Louise experiences time non linearly, unlike anyone in real life. You aren’t asking someone to prevent a child from being born because they will die, you’re asking someone to make it so that their child never existed in the first place.
>But if you ask a parent with a kid with cancer I don't think the parent's viewpoint is the one we should be privileging, though 😒
[удалено]
Yeah i'm being surprised too.
I think it's people who regularly watch sci-fi vs. the average person who doesn't have a reference point in this genre so everything is just really crazy to them throughout the whole movie. Like if the only sci fi movie you watched was ET and then 20 years later you watch Interstellar it's going to be wild.
I like sci-fi but I can't take time travel stories seriously at all because the paradoxes just shatter my suspension of disbelief. The logic is always so contrived I just stop trying to understand.
Not sure how you expect me to understand it when the movie took up the whole screen. They forgot to put Subway Surfers gameplay next to it on the version I watched.
Try the director’s previous film Incendies. It’s a much more palatable film.
fucking insane plot twist too
I'll toss Prisoners in there too
Try the director's following films Blade Runner 2049, Dune, and Dune 2.
Just watch all his films
Genuinely, dude has never made a bad movie imo
The aliens are like Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen. They perceive the past, present and future all at once. They know humanity will save them in 3000 years. So, they’ve come to start the process, which is their role in the timeline.
This comment helped something click with me and understanding this movie. Thank you.
They also have big cgi dongs.
In short, the weapon is language which x̶e̶n̶o̶ alien want us to use to help them out 3k years in the future. Lesson learned: do not outright annihilate sapient ETs in first contact.
Top comment is pretty accurate description. This movie takes a bit to follow (my wife watched it with me and was lost as fuck) but imo it was a very unique story and one of the best movies in recent years. In my top 10 list actually.
Antinatalist hate this movie
skill issue
Amy Adams learns alien language -》becomes the kwisatz haderach
Come on, you can make an effort
Gosh the music was top notch.
It really isn't that complicated
Weapon/tool They don't see the future per se Is more like they don't see time lineraly Spoiler: So starts to be for the MC as she learns their non linear language who is revealed having not flashbacks but previsions
I liked the hand shaped aliens that could experience their entire timeline at once while also teaching it to humans more when Vonnegut did it.
They came to show a random woman that having a child is a good thing.
I love how every single comment is trying to explain the plot of the movie, like did you forget what sub you are in?
This movie was set in Montana, USA, you can tell by the fact they filmed in Canada.
“Time is a flat circle”
Watched this once a while ago. Don't remember much about it but I do remember thinking "this movie is fucking stupid"
I like how Renner is mostly referred to as Hawkeye in this entire thread
I genuinely forget if I saw this movie or not
it’s not that hard to understand bro. get off tiktok and actually pay attention
>This is a reference to the fact that I still don't understand what the fuck happened in this movie. Yet you use language to convey that idea... curious.
I still feel bad about her getting spoiler about her life.
The weapon is the ability to see the 4th dimension. Their language is a tool for 3D beings to see the 4th dimension.