The whole her dad on the beach thing kinda ruined it for me. The whole point was to find other life not some existential experience with dead relatives. Still a good build up that was enough to be enjoyable despite the weak ending. 7/10
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I got the same interpretation as Maximus, and also you could see it like this:
She went thru worn holes, and did see some stellar sights - but the errant addition of the chair (which was not in the blueprint) threw the pod out of whack which in turn caused her to pass-out and hit her head and the scene with her dad was merely a dream where her subconcious seeks to provide her some kind of answers ...
If the chair had not been added to the pod, her travel experience might've been quite different AND I think it would be a good sci-fi movie to come back with a sequel where they make the pod EXACTLY by the blueprints and send someone in it ... Ideally with Foster as the knowledge- advanced SETI director - all kinds of tension and directions such a film could go!
btw - that beach scene was not really the the end of the movie; there was the court scenes, including the financer's death scene, and the scene explaining 18 hours of static, and then the newly funded site, and her speaking to the students, and the final 'reflective' scene sitting on the edge of the canyon . . .
Not too corny imho
I agree--I love this film but HATED that her Dad showed up. Whether he was a projection of the aliens or a creation of her own mind, it was seriously corny and annoying.
It would have been so much more powerful for her to have a real experience, not a fantasy.
I think you folks are missing something absolutely crucial in this equation, and the movie actually does make an almost imperceptible reference to it.
In fact, it is one of my favorite little bits of the movie.
After Ellie is in the pod, looking at "Grand Central Station", the large light swirl that is supposed to be a myriad of pods arriving from other parts of the galaxy, and she says that they should have sent a poet, and that she "had no idea... had no idea...", the camera zooms in on her eyes.
If you follow closely, you'll see two transitions that are critical.
The first transition switches from Ellie's face in the pod to her eyes as she is seemingly lying on some kind of examining table, and the impression that I get is that she is possibly disrobed and naked, but the most important point is that if you look at her eyes during this brief moment, she is emoting through her eyes that she is terrified. Her eyelids are wide open, and her eyes are somewhat quivering as if she is nearly in overload as to what she is actually seeing in front of her.
Then, as the camera keeps zooming in, that's when we go "into" her eye, and the scene switches to her gently falling into the Pensacola simulation.
While people may think it is silly to have the alien appear as her father, I think this is supposed to demonstrate that it was actually a good idea, and was done to truly help "make things easier" for those who arrived in the pods.
I think we can all dream and imagine that we would love to meet an alien being. I think we could try to prepare ourselves as much as possible. But I also believe that it is quite possible that none of that matters when you actually come face-to-face with another alien sentient being standing right in front of you. This becomes especially true if the alien being is not similarly based on a hairless anthropomorphic biped.
What if it is evolved more from some kind of squid-like creature, and constantly secretes a glistening fluid and has a mouth on its head that looks frightening? What if it's some kind of advanced crustacean type creature, like the "Prawns" in District 9? You could easily become fearful and recoil from them, finding that it takes a lot longer for your brain to grok this and come to grips with the fact that they probably aren't going to eat you.
She DID have a real experience. But I'm sure that the aliens at Grand Central Station had done this enough times that they knew the risks and knew the fault points, and had adapted their methods in a way that insured that the experience was easiest for the visitors, and they could spend more time communicating and learning about each other rather than having to deal with the psychological terror of the unknown.
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You're makin'... me... beat... up... GRASS!
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