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Originally posted by SYSTEM-J The film used Sapir-Whorf to explain its conceit in much the same way 1950s B-movies used "nuclear radiation!" to explain whichever over-sized crab/stick insect/tortoise the special effects crew had plonked down in the middle of a cardboard Los Angeles. And that was true of everything else the film attempted to tackle, too. A whole bunch of big ideas treated in the shallowest way possible.

So I finally saw this and didn't hate it as much as I anticipated. Maybe it was because I had heard so many bad things, or because I had already read the story years ago, but I found it rather enjoyable it. Perhaps I'm just a sucker for some Max Richter and grand cinematography. Obviously the whole Sapir-Whorf thing is ridiculous and all that, but seeing as how its just generally overblown in many people's minds (thanks, Orwell), it didn't bother me too much, other than leading to a few grimaces. Sad about the one alien, though. Damn paranoid fools =/

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Originally posted by Lews So I finally saw this and didn't hate it as much as I anticipated. Maybe it was because I had heard so many bad things, or because I had already read the story years ago, but I found it rather enjoyable it. Perhaps I'm just a sucker for some Max Richter and grand cinematography. Obviously the whole Sapir-Whorf thing is ridiculous and all that, but seeing as how its just generally overblown in many people's minds (thanks, Orwell), it didn't bother me too much, other than leading to a few grimaces. Sad about the one alien, though. Damn paranoid fools =/

I just found there are a lot of ostensibly clever-clever things the film dangles in front of you that are actually really stupid. Such as:

1. Firstly, Forest Whittaker's character is an absolute idiot and is clearly there just to provide a strawman military idiot so the clever scientists can spell out the film's paradigm on the whiteboard. Not only is every single thing he says egregiously stupid, right from his first scene, but he's a vital mechanism in the script's charade of intelligence. If he was replaced by a halfway reasonable character who asked the kinds of question I would ask, the film would flounder on its own intellectual conceits much earlier.

2. The difficulty of understanding and even comprehending alien intelligence is one of the weightier themes in science fiction, and has been extensively explored in texts such as Solaris, Roadside Picnic and 2001. Arrival has a stab at exploring the problems of human-alien communication, but its smug attempts to explain "Ah, it isn't as easy as 'Why are you here?'" is clearly levelled at people used to science fiction where the aliens are just people with wrinkly foreheads or an extra eye. The scientists should start off by assuming the aliens probably don't have a "language" as we understand it at all, and then be remarkably surprised when communication proves so easy and translatable. The fact the film assumes such a lecturing and smug tone makes its actual shallowness much, much more grating.

3. The whole time-paradox twist is pure Christopher Nolan level bullshit. It really doesn't make any sense - why would Amy Adams' character in the future not remember things from the past, even if her perception of time hadn't collapsed into a non-linear continuum? Like a Nolan film, it relies on the climactic reveal being so dazzling that the audience surrenders to its audacity and stops asking logical questions.

4. If you know anything about linguistics at all, there are so many little details in the film that are just plain dumb. The linguists point to themselves and say their name as a starting point for communication. Is it not thunderingly obvious that the sound they're uttering could mean a dozen different things even to another human? It could mean "me", it could mean "person", it could mean "scientist". Even with basic structuralist semiotics from a hundred years ago, this is dumb, dumb, dumb.

5. The whole plot point about the twitchy soldiers freaking out after listening to some Internet shock-jock is very messy and unclear. I can only hope some of it ended up on the cutting room floor, because otherwise it's extremely lazy writing and nakedly just a way of throwing in a stake-raising calamity just before the third act.

I could go on. The overall gripe is that the film's whole tone is self-regarding pomposity about how clever it was and how big its ideas are, when actually its treatment of all its ideas is lazy and under-cooked. There's little I hate more in cinema than a puzzle-box film that keeps its audience in the dark, only for its ultimate reveals to be nothing more than cheap deck-stacking.

Oh, yeah, don't get me wrong, I'm not claiming that it was an amazing, great, or even good film, just that I didn't completely hate it

I get you with the hate for pomposity and cheap tricks. I always quite like Nolan films the first time around, because he's excellent at giving a big spectacle that gets you with his Zimmer scores and seemingly-grand cinematography and illogical plot twists that carry one in the moment. And then of course as soon as I leave the theatre I start realising what all was wrong about it all and how it was just a giant trick on his part to seem grand, and then my friends yell at me for raining on their parade. [Except Batman Begins; that's Nolan's best, because it doesn't take itself too seriously.]

I think they should have focused more of the drama in the film on her knowing what will happen and fighting about what to do about it, and perhaps fighting with her husband about it - free will / determinism / time travel paradox etc - instead of the stupid army / CIA / China issues, which were problematic on many levels. Why is the military head of the camp an idiot? Why would we stop communicating with our NATO allies? What sort of accent is Whitaker attempting? Why is China playing Mahjong? Is no one checking in on the twitchy soldiers? How did they sneak a bomb onboard? Why didn't the aliens do anything to stop it, like pushing it out of their ship? Their technology is that amazing but a little C4 can blow out their glass window and kill one?

I guess I just don't expect much from any Hollywood film these days, though, and I was especially wasn't expecting much from this. Just taking it as it is, a Hollywood hit, I found it enjoyable, mostly from the visual and audio side of things, not so much the plot/logic side. I'd give it a solid 62/100.

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Originally posted by Lews Oh, yeah, don't get me wrong, I'm not claiming that it was an amazing, great, or even good film, just that I didn't completely hate it I get you with the hate for pomposity and cheap tricks. I always quite like Nolan films the first time around, because he's excellent at giving a big spectacle that gets you with his Zimmer scores and seemingly-grand cinematography and illogical plot twists that carry one in the moment. And then of course as soon as I leave the theatre I start realising what all was wrong about it all and how it was just a giant trick on his part to seem grand, and then my friends yell at me for raining on their parade. [Except Batman Begins; that's Nolan's best, because it doesn't take itself too seriously.] I think they should have focused more of the drama in the film on her knowing what will happen and fighting about what to do about it, and perhaps fighting with her husband about it - free will / determinism / time travel paradox etc - instead of the stupid army / CIA / China issues, which were problematic on many levels. Why is the military head of the camp an idiot? Why would we stop communicating with our NATO allies? What sort of accent is Whitaker attempting? Why is China playing Mahjong? Is no one checking in on the twitchy soldiers? How did they sneak a bomb onboard? Why didn't the aliens do anything to stop it, like pushing it out of their ship? Their technology is that amazing but a little C4 can blow out their glass window and kill one? I guess I just don't expect much from any Hollywood film these days, though, and I was especially wasn't expecting much from this. Just taking it as it is, a Hollywood hit, I found it enjoyable, mostly from the visual and audio side of things, not so much the plot/logic side. I'd give it a solid 62/100.

I finally got around to seeing it this weekend and I'm in the same feels as you. I didn't hate it as much as Jack did, but it's certainly flawed.

My biggest problem with it and it's fatal flaw from a directorial point of view that if one image of her future husband had been shown in the "future memories" the game was up, and when the twist finally came, that was the first thing that popped in to my head. We've been subjected to all these flashbacks under a false premise (by design to facilitate said twist) which would have been rendered void if her hubby had been shown once. It was a rudimentary cheat that felt like a gimmick.

I actually thought Whittaker's character, although clearly a basic plot vehicle, was passable but that's mainly becuase his last performances I've seen of him (especially Rogue one) were so utterly terrible that just by not doing much I was pleasantly relieved.

It was all shot pretty well and Amy Adams can certainly hold a film. Even Renner who has a patchy career, actually managed to somewhat convince he might know something about science.

I think the sub plot of the soldiers trying to kill the aliens is just a theft straight out of The Abyss to try to add some drama, and it's so ham fisted that it makes me think it was included as someone involved in the producer's chair said there weren't enough explosions.

One thing though regarding the chinese storyline. You wonder why they focus like that?

Look at Star Trek. The Lone Ranger. Look at Any big budget, major studio film in the last 3 years that will have global appeal (i.e. not manchester by the sea etc).

It's a requirement to have an Asian play a major, and heroic role.
I'm not making this up. Star Trek has an entire 20 minute section when the Asian character has to be the captain. Lone ranger, same thing.

in Arrival, the destruction of mankind rests on the Chinese general stopping the impending disaster.

You want a major release in China? You better have an asian character in a positive role. I'm not saying this a negative, or anything racist etc, but it's hollywood now.

It was a 6/10 for me, but still glad I saw it.

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Originally posted by Mr.Mystery

Good one.

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Originally posted by DJ RANN My biggest problem with it and it's fatal flaw from a directorial point of view that if one image of her future husband had been shown in the "future memories" the game was up, and when the twist finally came, that was the first thing that popped in to my head. We've been subjected to all these flashbacks under a false premise (by design to facilitate said twist) which would have been rendered void if her hubby had been shown once. It was a rudimentary cheat that felt like a gimmick.

I think the implication is that once she got pregnant they would sit down and have The Discussion that made him leave her, which is why he isn't present for the daughter growing up. But, of course, this is where the film gets tangled up in its own paradox, because this would require Amy Addams' character basically entrapping Renner's character into impregnating her before revealing the nature of the future. When you think about it like that, her supposedly admirable existential commitment to fate suddenly looks a lot more morally reprehensible.

Like everything else about the film, what appears on the surface as deep and philosophical doesn't stand up to a moment's closer scrutiny.

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Originally posted by SYSTEM-J I think the implication is that once she got pregnant they would sit down and have The Discussion that made him leave her, which is why he isn't present for the daughter growing up. But, of course, this is where the film gets tangled up in its own paradox, because this would require Amy Addams' character basically entrapping Renner's character into impregnating her before revealing the nature of the future. When you think about it like that, her supposedly admirable existential commitment to fate suddenly looks a lot more morally reprehensible. Like everything else about the film, what appears on the surface as deep and philosophical doesn't stand up to a moment's closer scrutiny.

Exactly, and that's really the biggest and most rudimentary mistake. If Villeneuve had shown one moment to the audience of them together, there's no twist, so he has to obscure it, and that blatant omission is such a cheap trick. Twists nearly always rely on some form of obfuscation, but when the twist IS that obfuscation, it stops being something hiding in plain sight, and really just shows you that the director didn't want you to see something and of course, you won't if he doesn't ever show it.

To go even further, if the universal language did go on to become widespread as shown in the "flashforwards" and that then alters your understanding or at least perception of time to a non linear format, then why did Renner's character not start getting these visions too? or at least afterwards in the preset future, why would he not understand that it was foretold that they would get together and have a child etc. The paradox gets even more tangled on itself and doesn't stand up to any logic test.

I know we can get too analytical about these things sometimes but known thine audience; this is sci-fi and time travel/aliens really is the basis of the entire genre.

Interesting points you made earlier about the communication aspect though. I always feel that if some alien species has mastered technology to the point they can travel across huge swathes of space or even time, they wouldn't be so fucking cryptic to communicate complex things to us in all our basic glory. I imagine they could figure out a way to communicate to us rather than the lesser species having to master their incredibly advanced language.

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