I bought the DVD on Saturday, and the Spousal Unit and I watched it that evening. She hated it, but then she has problems following plots that aren’t fairy-tale simple, and this movie really engages the mind. You have to pay attention.
Contrary to reports above, the film is rated PG-13, “for brief strong language,” which is a single F-bomb spoken by Dr. Donnelly (Ian) at about the 0:30 mark as an amazed reaction to the conditions in the alien ship. Other than that, this movie is almost old-fashioned-Disney clean.
In terms of the characterization of the aliens, this is one of the more realistic First Contact movies that I have seen (not that I have seen them all). Unlike the aliens in Star Trek and a number of other popular series, these aliens are not stereotypical humanoids with putty on their noses and foreheads. (In my own novel, I went with the stereotype, because I wanted to keep things relatively simple.) These critters were definitely . . . alien, to the extent that they had to maintain a separate environment.
As regards the primary focus of the movie, which is how humans and really alien aliens learn how to communicate, I was a little disappointed. I was hoping for a “this means this, and that means that” exposition of the alien language, but really that was a bit of a stretch. The insights into the meanings of the aliens’ written symbols were all in Dr. Banks’ mind, without any direct correlation to specific details of the symbols (except for one or two). I can see why the producers did it that way; it was definitely the less expensive way to go. Otherwise, they would have had to hire someone like Marc Okrand or Dr. Paul Frommer, the developers of the Klingon and Pandoran languages, respectively. One detail that escaped me was how the Heptapod aliens managed to attain understanding of Dr. Banks’ spoken language, while she never learned to understand theirs.
(In my own novel, the human narrator-protagonist made a snap decision to use Esperanto rather than English, because of the simplicity of that language, in his attempt to establish communication with the aliens. The aliens’ mode of sound production was completely different from how we produce sounds, but one of the aliens was able to devise a way to encode human speech sounds into their system. Later on, the artificial intelligences used by the aliens provided simultaneous translation.)
The lack of bravado and mindless heroism among the main human characters was something with which I could identify. I believe that some of us, perhaps many of us, have it within us act heroically in very new and strange situations like those depicted, but we likely would wetting our pants while we do it.
This was definitely an actors’ movie, as opposed to a special-effects/CGI movie, and I appreciated that. I also appreciated that the movie was not intentionally anti-theistic (like Contact. It was non-theistic, in the sense that there was no mention or consideration of God, but I can tolerate that in a movie, as long as the main characters aren’t coming right out and saying, “There is no God!”
The bottom line from my point of view is that people who want to be mindlessly entertained will not like this movie. (Before you jump on me, I am NOT saying that not liking this movie means that you are someone who likes to be mindlessly entertained. Heck, I like to be mindlessly entertained from time to time.) But there is a mystery here to be understood and solved, and if you like that kind of thing, you might enjoy this movie. And the mystery actually doesn’t have anything to do with breaking the language code.
