Movie "Arrival"

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DaveBj said:
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.
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👍 Thanks for the thoughtful review.
 
Yes thought it very good - seen it twice (cause my wife had not seen it when it)
 
mikekle said:
I was excited to see it, but found it disappointing. There was no sexual situations and I do not recall much language.

The idea that their language/time travel thing was their gift, was imo, kind of dumb, the more I thought about it, the main language expert should not have been surprised when they first showed up, she would have known about it prior, thanks to her being able to jump forward in time so to speak.

This was a different kind of ‘alien movie’ though, usually they involve them coming and invading in dramatic fashion and/or lots of CGI effects. The aliens in this movie were pretty basic and they never really showed a clear shot of one.

The acting was good though, and I like Jeremy Renner.
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“the main language expert should not have been surprised when they first showed up, she would have known about it prior, thanks to her being able to jump forward in time so to speak.”–
She might have, but she didn’t know what was happening to her. Logically, she wouldn’t have had those experiences until after she learned the language that changed her brain. That may be a plot hole.

“Pretty basic” aliens is funny. I wonder what aliens are really like, if they exist?Seems like they’d be mostly like us, since Jesus became man and that should influence the template for intelligent beings.

.
 
I watched it on my computer…didn’t cost me anything…which was a blessing…made no sense…totally boring
 
louisak said:
I’m intrigued by this movie, thinking about asking my 14-daughter if she wants to see it. The rating is PG-13, supposedly for language. Has anyone seen it, and if so did you consider it suitable for a teen viewer?

Please don’t give away the ending. I understand there is some kind of twist ending, please don’t spoil it.

Thanks.
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I saw this movie with friends and if I’m honest, it was the biggest load of rubbish I’ve seen in awhile. The story started off promising but then the movie began to lose its way and I started to lose interest. Just a weird movie.
 
Unlike most of you, I LOVED the movie and every bit of it. It’s very academic, which I love in a movie, and which is the reason why so many of you found it boring or dull or confusing, but it also it has a lot of heart in it that really touches your soul, and which lingers in you even days after you watched it. It weaves the two so perfectly. If you know the concepts of the movie and conventional science fiction tropes like time travel, you’ll appreciate this movie even more. One of the best films of 2016.
mikekle said:
The idea that their language/time travel thing was their gift, was imo, kind of dumb, the more I thought about it, the main language expert should not have been surprised when they first showed up, she would have known about it prior, thanks to her being able to jump forward in time so to speak.
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That only happened when she started learning the language, not before the aliens arrived. It’s based on a theory of linguistics which is mostly discredited among linguists today called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, in which the language we speak shapes our view of the world, and when we learn a language, we adopt the language’s world view into our heads. If I learn Spanish, I would, according to the theory, adopt the worldview of a Spaniard, for instance. It’s basically linguistic relativity - that is thankfully rejected by most people in linguistics. It’s not the same as philosophical relativity (which takes the form of ‘there is no objective truth’), but rather more similar to physics’ general relativity. No threat to one’s Catholic faith here.

SPOILER:
In the movie, the hypothesis is used to its extreme form, in that not only is your world view changed, you get the ability to see the past, present and the future at the same time - omniscience - once you learn the alien’s language. That’s why it’s confusing, because all of those flashbacks should be seen as flash forwards into her future. Their language was a gift because humanity would be able to see into the future and solve its problems. A bit problematic if you apply it to specific situations but just go with it, I guess.

If you guys want everything explained to you here’s a link:
screenrant.com/arrival-movie-2016-ending-time-explained/

I expected a lot of thought-provoking discussions about free will, predestination, and how we Catholics are supposed to approach these concepts - in connection to the movie - in this thread. Instead I found people droning and complaining that it was a “bad” movie. Phooey. :mad:
DaveBj said:
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.
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I think it’s more of how they needed to speed up the pacing to go to the plot points. Although I would like to see how they point out the specific sections of each logogram and what they mean.
 
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