Denis Villeneuve's 'ARRIVAL'

[psylockolussus]

Well, there's that moment with an explosion. You like that?

You literally thought explosion when I said action? Okay. No.

 

[Mysteryman]

Just saw this last night for the first time on Epix.
Amazing, simply amazing.

 

[Grootster]

For me, Arrival is like if you took the first two acts of Star Trek: The Motion Picture and mashed it with the last act of The Voyage Home. Neither is bad on their own, but you can't mix the two and have a consistent movie.

I liked the first two thirds of Arrival, when the characters were trying to communicate with the aliens and learn their language, that was interesting and smart; but I felt like the movie fell apart as it went on. I thought the twist was extremely silly and didn't fit with the tone of the rest of the movie: [BLACKOUT]The weapon IS their language! And it transcends time![/BLACKOUT]. To be honest, I didn't fully get the ending until I went home and read what happened on Wikipedia, and I know people who also found it confusing, which leads me to believe it wasn't presented well enough.

My fix? Cut out that twist, as well as the cheesy and cliche flashback backstory ([BLACKOUT]which turned out to be a flash forward[/BLACKOUT]) involving the main character's son or daughter (I don't remember), and focus more on developing the personalities main couple, neither of which I even remember the names of (and I don't think I did when I walked out of the theater). The ending should have been a logical progression the first two acts, not a cheap twist to fake out the audience.

Ex Machina is an example of a smart sci-fi movie that knows what it's doing, and follows through with it's tone and themes.

 

[Fallen Angel]

You can't get rid of the daughter storyline otherwise it becomes a totally different movie and story the movie its' based off. And that's why the author of the book (Ted Chiang)was so hesitant about and which the writer of the movie gave him his word that the essentials wouldn't be changed. The story is called 'STORY OF YOUR LIFE" clue is in the title of it, you can't just get rid of the daughter lol.

The movie was a critical and financial hit it doesn't need the internet to "fix" anything.

 

[Grootster]

Eh, I disagree to some extent. I've seen movies that completely skip storylines from books and end up with a just as good if not better end result. Just because the author included that storyline doesn't meant that the same general story of humans learning to communicate with the aliens can't be done without it. It would just be a different interpretation, which is sometimes necessary to streamline a book into movie format.

To me it felt like a distraction from the main story, it felt like the daughter storyline was included to appeal to the non-sci-fi demographic of people who were dragged along by their friends or family, and didn't want to sit through a movie about space aliens. This doesn't sound like the case judging by what you described about the book, but that's just the vibe it gave off to me.

 

[Fallen Angel]

Then if that's the case that was put forward to the writer of the book he wouldn't have given up the rights to his story and you wouldn't get a movie called ARRIVAL based on STORY OF YOUR LIFE, you get something different. It's as simple as that. The Mother/Daughter story is what makes it's it tick and why writers wanted to adapt it. Of course a few things were changed and added to the movie adaption but the core remained in place. Mother/Daughter story is the main plot of the book STORY OF YOUR LIFE.

 

[Mysteryman]

Take out the daughter storyline and it changes the story completely.

 

[Black Narcissus]

Do inception without the going into dreams thing too.

Just a good old fashion heist movie with a sprinkle of Manchurian candidate.
lol

 

[Grootster]

Do inception without the going into dreams thing too.

Just a good old fashion heist movie with a sprinkle of Manchurian candidate.
lol

That's sort of a different case. I haven't seen Inception (although I plan to check it out at some point), but isn't entering dreams pretty much the premise of the movie? Arrival's premise was communicating with aliens (that's what I took away at least), the daughter storyline was a subplot, one that theoretically could have been cut while still keeping the main premise.

I mean, if the movie didn't have the daughter subplot, wouldn't the part about the characters learning the alien language still have worked just as well (provided they came up with a different ending)? I fail to see how cutting it would have ruined the movie.

 

[hopefuldreamer]

Personally I thought the point of the movie was that our perception of time is incomplete, and that if we had the ability to see all the moments of our life at the same time, we'd realize that we wouldn't actually want to change a thing... because it's the complete picture that's beautiful.

Which was exactly why I loved it so much.

The daughter subplot was essential to that point - a tragedy that she still chose to occur, because she could see the value of the good moments that she'd have had to lose if she didn't.

It seemed to me like the discourse about language/communication and the political side of the story were the sub plots.

If the movie had just been about that, it wouldn't have been half as good to me.

 

[NotSoLongAgo]

That's sort of a different case. I haven't seen Inception (although I plan to check it out at some point), but isn't entering dreams pretty much the premise of the movie? Arrival's premise was communicating with aliens (that's what I took away at least), the daughter storyline was a subplot, one that theoretically could have been cut while still keeping the main premise.

I mean, if the movie didn't have the daughter subplot, wouldn't the part about the characters learning the alien language still have worked just as well (provided they came up with a different ending)? I fail to see how cutting it would have ruined the movie.

That's the thing, it's not that simple. Really the movie uses the idea of communicating with aliens (and thus unlocking the ability to perceive time like a 4th dimensional being) to tell a small human story. The themes of the movie lie in our understanding of time and the way our lives play out because of it.

With the inception metaphor a better way of looking at it is removing the plot with his wife and kids. Now we no longer have the themes of guilt, reality, time and it's just a heist movie with a cool plot device. The story is about entering dreams to heist, the plot is how that affected Cobb's entire life. With Arrival the story is about communicating with aliens, the plot is about how that affected Louise (and the world, kinda) when she figured the language out.

 

[Grootster]

So you're saying the story of the characters communicating with the aliens was more of a backdrop for the main theme than it was the plot? I guess when I watched Arrival I saw it as a linear story that took an odd turn in the third act, but it sounds like the author's intention was to explore bigger themes, and I just didn't pick up on that. I'll have to try re-watching it sometime with that in mind, maybe I'll enjoy it more.

 

[Mysteryman]

Personally I thought the point of the movie was that our perception of time is incomplete, and that if we had the ability to see all the moments of our life at the same time, we'd realize that we wouldn't actually want to change a thing... because it's the complete picture that's beautiful.

Which was exactly why I loved it so much.

The daughter subplot was essential to that point - a tragedy that she still chose to occur, because she could see the value of the good moments that she'd have had to lose if she didn't.

It seemed to me like the discourse about language/communication and the political side of the story were the sub plots.

If the movie had just been about that, it wouldn't have been half as good to me.

I Love your interpretation of the film.
Very Well Said.

 

[Dr.]

Many alien “first contact” stories have interesting enough premises and setups. In the 1st act, there’s the initial shock/surprise. In the 2nd act, there’s some intriguing obstacle to overcome (a mystery to solve, a conspiracy to work through, a side villain to defeat, a race-against-time to conquer, etc.). The big finale, however, is often weak and underwhelming. And it’s not too difficult to understand why. Given the lofty notion of highly advanced, god-like aliens, there’s an expectation that communication with said aliens will yield profound insights and epiphanies. Of course, the authors of these stories are only human and, alas , they have no god-like wisdom to offer. So the climax and dénouement of these stories tends toward simplistic platitudes: “be nice to each other,” “don’t make war,” “protect the environment,” “love is the answer,” etc. See, for instance, movies like Close Encounters, The Abyss and Contact. Arguably, 2001 solved this “problem.” But it did so by making the aliens highly symbolic (the mysterious monolith) and non-verbal.

Now, folks can have different opinions regarding how well (or not) Arrival handled its version of the alien “big message/big reveal.” But however you view the themes of “simultaneity,” the perception of time and Banks’ non-temporal relationship with her daughter, they're (IMO) absolutely integral to the overall narrative. Without them, you’ve got just a very generic, been-there-done-that “first contact” story.

 

[Starcat]

10/10. Only problem was I had a contact come out during the first 20 minutes, so my vision wasn't great for the rest of the movie, lol. But I found the story to be engrossing and surprising.