I know you say you don’t care about spoilers, but answering your question would, I think, totally ruin the movie for you and you might regret it.
Yeah, what Menzo said. But the movie does have an answer, if that’s any consolation. If you have to know, it has to do with learning the alien language.
Ok, I saw it. It’s really hard for me to judge it without thinking of it in relation to the short story it’s based on. The story is this perfect, compact little bundle where everything contributes to the central idea. The movie, on the other hand, is a ponderous hash where the central idea is thoroughly destabilized by all this stuff they had to put in to make a feature film out of it. In particular, the thing about the phone call was tacked on, dumb, and totally subverts the story.
That might be overstating it. Maybe I would have liked it if I hadn’t read the story, and I could judge the movie on its own terms. But I did, and I can’t. They really needed to make a stronger connection between the language, Louise learning it, and her disconnection in time. In the movie, she starts getting disconnected in time almost as soon as she sees the first logogram, which makes no sense.
My wife and I went into it last night not having read the story and absolutely loved it. Like, at least while the high hasn’t run out I’d probably put it in my top 10 movies. Felt like real science fiction without ridiculous action or BS inexplicable abstract fantasy elements.
I didn’t read the story until this morning and I’m glad I waited. There were aspects of the way the movie unfolder that I enjoyed a lot more not knowing the underlying theme of the film. But the movie is a wonderful complement to the book; they changed the story to fit the needs of a film, but without damaging the overall concept.
[spoiler]Don’t read this if you haven’t seen the movie yet. Seriously.
I thought one thing that was a huge change between the story and the movie was the daughter’s death. In the movie, it was an incurable disease. In the story, a hiking accident. In both, Louise has the realization that time is not linear and can’t be altered. (The Chinese phone call was part of the time-ordained link between the cause and effect. Explained far better in the story.) But in the book, she has to accept the futility of denying the script of the book of life, but she could have tried – prevented her daughter from going hiking. In the movie, she was faced with knowledge throughout the daughter’s life of what was going to happen, but she never had to face the knowledge that she couldn’t take advantage of an opportunity to change it.
In the movie, she’s faced with knowing she has a limited time window with her daughter. In the book, she has that knowledge, and the knowledge that the nature of time won’t allow her to extend that time, even though it seems as easy as a warning to her daughter. The movie’s message is far less harsh than the book’s. [/spoiler]
Just saw it. I thought it was good as sci-fi goes due to being serious and sincere. I liked the lead and the aliens. But as a movie qua movie I thought it was just okay. It felt rushed and choppy. Maybe they ran out of money or time? I’m guessing it got saved in the editing room.
Oh yeah, 18 years ago Ted Chiang totally stole the key scene of the movie from my upcoming Nature Magazine story, no doubt using future-perception based on learning the universal language.
Rushed? Choppy? Hard to reconcile those criticisms with what I saw. But running out of money? Maybe, because Amy Adams’ digital hair looked terrible when she finally gets face to face with the alien.
[quote=“tomchick, post:33, topic:120764, full:true”]
A facile observation that it’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. But with aliens. I wonder if the better point of reference might be Contact?[/quote]
I wouldn’t say it was that bad. But the kid/marriage arc seemed out of joint in the movie to me in more ways than one. In a philosophical short story there’s no problem with a predestined future, but in a movie with adventure-film takes it’s a bit dull. And while predestination implies all kinds of negative events and tragedy to come as well as positive things, I felt that handling it through a dying child was very heavy-handed. Though possibly that was an element of the original story they couldn’t do without. Everything in movies tends to be overwrought and heavy without a great deal of care, and I don’t think they took enough care to avoid that in this production.
Absolutely loved it. 5/5
I think it is dishonest to say this movie is about the human condition more than about the aliens landing and their language. Because the whole point of the movie is about asking the question about how humans would be able to handle a non-linear way of thinking. And, the thought that language can change the way that we think and feel. To me, the flashbacks (maybe that is what we should call them?) are very effective, especially when the other shoe drops about the reason behind them.
I think that the comparisons to interstellar are fair, but I think where that movie failed and collapsed into a confusing mess of time-garbage, this movie is quite elegant.
Also, apparently Denis Villanueve is in love with the same female actors as me. 2/2.
I liked this much more than interstellar, which I thought was just plain bad. But apart from the excellent sequences with the aliens I thought this film had problems too.
Of course, I am running on the high of having stepped out of the theater a mere 12 hours ago. But I would probably agree that the movie is not perfect. Some of the outside world interaction felt a tad tacked on (the “save our species”) dig at infowars and the alt-right felt a tad forced. Which is funny, because Contact dealt with that concept better in some ways.
Saw this on Saturday, and liked it overall, but let’s talk about these aliens for a tick.
You’re an advanced alien species that has mastered interstellar travel, and time. And yet you land on Earth, knowing tons of stuff about Earthlings, supposedly, at least enough to know that you want to land in a bunch of different places, and yet you have no plan to actually communicate to humans what you need from them.
You have to hope that supergenius Amy Adams comes along to learn your language and somehow convinces the rest of the Earth that when you carelessly throw out the word “weapon” that you don’t really mean you want to destroy them.
Wouldn’t aliens who need something from us in 3,000 years have spent a little time figuring out how to get it, without relying on a unicorn to come into the picture?
Well, no. They would know how it was going to work out, wouldn’t they? (In the short story, the aliens never explain why they came, so the problem doesn’t arise)
Yeah, I thought about that, but the whole predestination thing hurts my brain. What comes first, the departure for Earth or Amy Adams’ involvement? Seeing the future in the way this movie does it is kind-of a cheat code.
It definitely makes more sense after you read the story, @Menzo. The story does a good job of spelling out how the aliens live with the non-linear perception of time.
For someone who hasn’t seen the movie and so doesn’t read the spoilers, a lot of this thread looks like an FBI Freedom of Information document.
Menzo’s questions are part of the reason this movie didn’t work for me. The first hour and a half make you think this is the type of movie that would answer those sorts of questions. Then the last 10 minutes decides, nope, not important, the movie you were watching is about something else instead. Psyche!
-Tom
Loved this so very much! :D
Just saw it. I read all the spoilers and went into the movie expecting no surprises. Despite that I was pleasantly surprised. The concepts aren’t new (no story is new nowadays) but I did like the arts vs science (linguist vs math) themes, the “code cracking” themes, the “why are we here? / what is our purpose?” themes
I also find that movies like these often go downhill once they reveal the aliens. This case and ET are exceptions. The aliens were shown near the beginning and the movie continued to escalate despite that.
I wish they played the non-linear / Open space angle a bit more. The spaceships disappear at the end. They manage to sort of “teleport” Amy Adams into their gas-filled ship. They could have played off Open Space as well, not just Open Time.
All in all. Great flick. Up there with Contact and Interstellar.
I like that they left quite a bit of the reveal at the end so that you can think about it for a few days.
Most of my friends didn’t like it. But that’s probably because they aren’t geeks like I am! :)