"If Amy Adams can simply "remember" a phrase in Mandarin, and can "remember" a phone number that she has never seen before, then why couldn't the aliens "remember" how to write in English (or any human language) and simply write "we come in peace" from the very beginning?"
Adams could already speak Mandarin and the phone number must have been from their future visit, she remembers events from her life. The aliens understand events from their lives but they were here to teach their language had they wrote in English then this would have altered Adams learning process of their language. The Aliens were testing the humans.
"It seems that aliens smart enough to travel through space without emitting waste and with the superpower of clairvoyance should be able to figure out a simple plan to use these powers to communicate with humans in a non-vague way like "use the weapon"."
Forest Whitaker told us that Science and language are different and that he needed different opinions which is why he invited Adams and Renner's characters. Space travel and communication are not the same thing.
"And if they can see the future why did the aliens not know there was a bomb on their spaceship and push Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner out of the spaceship earlier so they could have time to run for cover?"
The aliens retreated after the bomb and the Americans did the same. This created a time urgency which lead Adams to take a risk and go out and enter the small spaceship, the bomb was part of a bigger process.
"Also, why did they arrive in 12 different locations and make it a puzzle? Why couldn't they just arrive in one or two locations? And if they knew that the Chinese were super crazy and violent why not just land somewhere else?"
Simple. It was about bringing mankind together because they would need mankind to help them in 3,000 years. Once the puzzle was solved all hostile countries lead by the Chinese came together and shared their research. The humans were being challenged to see if they were worthy of the language
"When you consider that the aliens could see the future it makes all the conflict in the movie seem unnecessary. These are beings that plan thousands of years in advance but they can't come up with a more efficient plan for making contact with humanity?"
You believe that the path of least resistance would be the ideal outcome but it would not have created such tension and emotion amongst the humans. A+B=C but the path to achieve this is not always linear. Humans would still doubt the Aliens as some did at the beginning. Adams chose to have her baby despite seeing the child's death she wanted the experience of loving her child, if she chose not to have the child then she would not have experienced life as a mother. The Aliens clearly wanted this experience with the humans an alternative may not have yielded the same results. We were never lead to believe that there was more than two outcomes from seeing the future, like left or right or yes or no, there were not infinite options only two.
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