I see it as the aliens needed our help so they traveled back in time to 2016 to teach Louise their language and show her the future and bring the World powers together so that in 3000 years humanity would be able to help them.
Whats your viewpoint? Is Louise stuck in a time loop?
No time travel was invoked in this movie. The point of this movie was to make you come here and make an incorrect observational statement. That was even ted chiang mission when he wrote the book.
shareAn observation cannot be incorrect. I have not read the book nor did I know there was even a book. That said, the Heptapods said in 3000 years that they would need humanities help. Either they time traveled to the past or they live outside space and time.
shareBubba did you not watch movie that closely? They made it pretty clear, it was funny actually, I just watched the film today and I knew as soon as she met the Chinese general, and said to the person I went with, I bet ya the aliens exist outside of linear time, I've watched a lot of science fiction. Obviously because it was a film and is 15-20 years later it looks better but the bit where she got taken back up to the ship reminded me of the worm hole aliens communicating with Sisco in star trek ds9, same premise, aliens existing outside of linear time, weird cloudy atmosphere, hazy visuals etc
shareyes
shareThe only reason they said three thousand years was so the huamns understood them. There is no three thousand years and they already recieved the help they came to earth to prepare humans to give them :)
shareWhich drains all the tension out of the film and gives us a deus ex machina plot resolution. There is no jeopardy for anyone involved because it already worked out fine before the events are even presented to us (or the characters). Amy Adams' character is imbued at a certain point with the ability to perceive non-linear time and she immediately gets all the answers she needs. The film is a circle jerk. Almost to the point that it rendered itself unnecessary, since everything is already preordained. Had Amy Adams' character had to rely on her smarts or initiative to figure things out, that would be different. But all her solutions are just transmitted to her at a certain point - and at that point her success is inevitable, despite the film trying to milk some kind of tension out of something we know has already happened.
shareThere's not supposed to be any tension, it's not an action film or evena psychological thriller. It's a whole philosophical question played out as a story. It's meant to raise questions about our reality and how we percieve it. Is how we perceive reality really how it is etc?
In this movie the huamans are effectively the Christian church with a certain view of reality, the aliens are galileo and capernicus, they come along and show us our understanding of the unviserse isn't what's really going on. The whole movie is one giant metaphor for we don't know crap about our reality. The book was written by ted chiang who works in the software development industry and he's obviously very anti religious, with a scientific, methodical and logical mind. This isn't his only work with anti God, Anti Christ, anti Christian themes.
Some people here don't agree with me, but in this movie and book humans aren't even bound by time. The aliens process things simultaneously and infinitely, while humans process things sequentially and finitely. This process is what humans confuse as time. That's partly what stops them accessing their infinite self. The other part of what stops them is their perception of free will, having access to your future, past and present infinitely isn't compatible with free will. So that's the other part in stopping humans infinately accessing their whole experiance.
If you had free will In this instance, you can change what you know is going to happen, well if you do that, then you didnt really knew what was going to happen did you? You simply imagined what might happen and that's different. She now has memories that go both ways from a human perspective and can, if only for a short while, experiance here whole life simultaneously. When she got the number off the general, that wasn't a memory, that was her experiancing two points in her existence simultaneously,
Personally I think the story is the work of a genius
P.s her success was always inevitable, even "before" the aliens arrived on earth, as she had already successfully helped them :)
I too read the short story first. I agree that the story is a work of genius. It is the best fiction I've read that deals with free will vs determinism. One of the themes of the short story is that when we are born, our brains become wired and our thoughts organized according to our language. The construction of the plot of the short story is brilliant.
By the way, the short story doesn't waste time with a subplot about China and Russia. That is what the movie is about. I was disappointed that they felt they had to resort to those worn out geopolitical cliches to entertain. I will let others ponder the reasons for that.
In the short story, the aliens brought us a gift. Understanding their language taught a different way to perceive reality.
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I do find it somewhat interesting that you say that as the film evolves things are revealed and then shown that everything works out in the end with your conclusion being that the film is basically useless because of just that, but most film work out in the end, so are all those films useless as well?
This film simply explains itself to show that things work out in the end, or the beginning. What is wrong with that?
I'm starting to believe that many film goers were routing for things not to work out, thus chaos, thus their own selfish satisfaction.
There were 11 other vessels in 11 other nations and it appeared no one had gotten as far as Louise in properly assessing their language. It did appear to be a fairly complex puzzle to unravel, so the fact that you felt it was something quite easy because once she cracks the code 'she immediately gets all the answers she needs', well that's what cracking a code does. Like breaking into a safe.
Each film is an experiential journey for the viewer. The writers and filmmakers create obstacles for the fictional characters to overcome (romance, jeopardy, tragedy, etc.). When we see something like ARRIVAL that suggests by the end of the film that nothing mattered because it was always going to work out just fine, no matter how any character acted in the story, my reaction is that I've just been jerked off for two hours. It's a major cop out. ARRIVAL attempts to create tension at certain points, especially toward the end when Amy Adams' character is trying to make the phone call and the soldiers are chasing her. Then we find out, there were NO stakes involved for the audience because the tension was fake. The entire film is a contrivance - a well made one, sure, but a shill game for the audience. Nothing we rooted for, hoped for, feared or cringed at was honest. Delivering a 'revelation' that says Adams' character learns to experience non-linear time and is then able to affect change to coincide with what she sees will happen in the future is a complete cop-out -- and a paradox, in itself. She doesn't have to use her brains or wits or experience in the end to prevent an attack on the aliens... because she's GIVEN the right course of action to take by the writers in the form of non-linear time enlightenment. It's not earned. It's just downloaded into her mind at the most crucial point in the film and it's a huge cheat. She doesn't even struggle to arrive at that place where she's receptive to it.
shareThe purpose was to have a big profit. Which it did. The good reviews and Oscar (nominations) are nice bonus :)
I don't think Louise was stuck in a time loop. It feels like a paradox though, when something in the future causes an event in the present, causing the same event in the future... But after her final talk with the Chinese general, Louise can just continue living, she's not stuck. The same paradox applies for the aliens knowing about the event 3000 years from now and seeking help with the humans. By doing so, they're actually confirming that timepath for the next 3000 years.
By the way, if you like stories about time, time loops, paradoxes, etc: check out 12 Monkey's. Nice SciFi show.
i luv 12 monkeys
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<< The purpose was to have a big profit. Which it did. >>
I'm surprised the film was profitable...it's not the kind of "story" (of which there isn't much) that your ordinary viewer would be so excited by they'd recommend it to friends.
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The purpose of this film was to give people something to bitch about on the MC boards.
shareLouise wasn't stuck in a time loop, she just began to perceive time all at once instead of in a linear fashion. Maybe that makes it a time loop of sorts, but not in the typical way that term is used in sci-fi.
Understanding the aliens' language caused Louise's mind to expand and see time as the aliens saw it, not as a human sees it.
What was the purpose of the movie? Some people are stating, "to make money", and yeah, that's true. But I think you're asking the point of the story. I think it's complicated, but I'll give it a shot.
1. The main focus of the movie, the main theme, the main conflict, is built around understanding each other. Whether that's translating an alien language, making contact, not starting wars based on misconceptions, or talking to your friends (instead of a communications blackout), the big takeaway here is that we need to listen, to understand, and to seek to know others' perspectives and ideas. It's about harmony and peace. The motif of language and translation comes into play here.
2. Acceptance of the inevitable and an appreciation for time used and friends and family is another major point here. It's worth living a life with sadness because of what else occurs: the happiness and joy that comes with the bitter stuff.
3. Perspective: the movie is about looking at things from different angles. This is related to point number one.
I feel like I'm missing a lot here, maybe about the beauty of life and nonlinear thinking and other stuff...but I think those are the main points, however crudely I've expressed them.
That was a good post, Ace. I think you nailed it for the most part. It's good film-making, but I can understand why some people don't like it but I really enjoyed watching it.
shareSure - slow-pace sci-fi ("hard" sci-fi?) isn't for everybody. I hesitate to call it "cerebral", which implies "only the smarties get this!" and I don't think that's necessarily true... but it is that more plodding, "thinky" kind of sci-fi which is exemplified in films like this or 2001: A Space Odyssey. I definitely understand why somebody wouldn't dig it.
I love it (in general, and Arrival specifically)
Yeah, I probably wouldn't call it 'cerebral' either but I do hate it when people call films "pretentious". I guess it's become a buzz word among movie buffs but I really find its getting old. A movie is just a movie, you either like it or you don't. All this hair splitting and dissecting becomes a bit tiresome.
shareI only like the first 5 minutes of this when all hell breaks loose on the college campus. I love when that happens in films. One moment life is normal, then things start to devolve into chaos. Films like War of The Worlds, World War Z, Independence Day, Contact, Signs have these moments but this film did a better job of depicting how the chaos unfolds. I like when the one student suggests that they turn on the tv. I also thought the character being taken away from the landing site by medevac and the explanation that he didn’t process the alien encounter well was effective.
shareThe purpose of the film was to give them a reason to use these great special effects.
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