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SirMildredPierce's Replies
So you are saying we should only account for the things we know when visiting an unknown environment like an alien spaceship.
Meh, I find her features a little too sharp, I actually think Lopez is the more attractive one.
But what about Lopez? What about Office Lopez?!? Will she survive?!
> Emmet is an asshole. Not in any remarkable special way... just in the average mundane way that most people are. If you cheat someone out their birthright... you just hand it to them and say sorry I took it... you don't say I'm giving it to you.
What?? No way, it was *Ray's* idea to trade the stamps and the Corvette. Just because Emmit made a bit of money off the stamps down the road doesn't make him an asshole. Damn, what you been drinkin' Nikki's Kool-Aid, too?
I agree, I was actually confused as to how or why the alien was killed because the partition was still intact. I literally loved everything else about this movie, but that one scene and chain of events didn't really make much sense.
I think overall the whole "fog" motif is a pretty easy way to introduce a bit of mystery (which is why it's such an easy trope to use with "evil" creatures), but I like how it actually worked to subvert our expectations of the aliens, too. It was also a little bit of lampshading about other alien "invasion" movies, although this is hardly as obvious an example as when the Alien ships were preparing to leave and their crafts manouvered in to a horizontal position that made them look just like the ships from movies like Independence Day.
I'll be honest, I was around when the movie came out, and it seemed like it was set way further in the past than season 1 and 3 are. Yeah, 2010 seems like last year to me too ;)
> The idea in the movie is that you can manipulate the physics of the universe just by thinking. This is called "magic" not science.
Well, in the realm of "sci-fi" you have a pretty wide spectrum. This is hardly the first science-fiction to explore the idea of non-linear time. You would literally have to dismiss every time travel movie made as "not being sci-fi" just because it deals with non-linear time.
I don't even believe that the movie implies that you can "manipulate the physics of the universe just by thinking". I don't think just because she existed in non-linear time that is the same thing as her being able to change the future. We don't even know is she *can* change the future. The concept of a "future" simply doesn't exist anymore.
> Learning a language can change how you think but it can not change how your brain functions.
What's the difference, really?
I would explore the concepts of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis as the concept of how language effects our perception of time is central to the hypothesis (and the movie, obviously).
For me this was a movie about linguistics, first, and a sci-fi movie second. You could have made a pretty similar movie about an isolated tribe of people in the middle of the Amazon and trying to decipher *their* language.
If you are dismissing the movie as "pure fantasy" then you are being way too limited on your definition of "sci-fi" which is a *very* broad category. The movie doesn't fail as sci-fi just because you disagree about how physics work, especially when so much of higher level physics deals *specifically* with models of time that aren't linear.
Even if you want to come up with some hairbrained definition of "sci-fi" that the movie has to have some sort of real science in it, the movie still succeeds in that about 50% of the movie focuses on the science of linguistics. Just because that's a science that sci-fi doesn't explore very often doesn't make it not sci-fi.
Yes dumb people are famous for their love of indepth analysises of language and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, I can't believe it took them this long to make a movie about linguistics.
Without a doubt its the most in-depth movie about linguistics I've ever seen. And not only is it in-depth about linguistics in general, but specifically about the Sapir Whorf hypothesis which is about the nature of how language is responsible for how we perceive the world around us, and those who learn different languages perceive the world around them. The concept of how time is perceived by different cultures is one of the big central questions in the hypothesis. Without a doubt it is one of the concepts that has generated the most controversy about the hypothesis. There are languages out there which do not make distinctions about grammatical tense. It is one of the great questions in linguistics, how does the brain of a person who grew up not making a distinction about the past present or future differ from someone who grew up always thinking of things in terms of past present and future. And how does that 'innate understanding' effect how they perceive other things in this world?
Because so much of our world is colored by the languages we grow up speaking, the different concepts on linear and nonlinear time are explored heavily in areas outside of linguistics.The circular and non-linear nature of time is something touched upon in Eastern philosophy and religion, especially Hinduism and Buddhism. That was the sort of vibe that I got from the movie. The literal ability to see into the future is a metaphorical gift of accepting the true nature of life.
Without a doubt there is no great big leap in exploring non-linear time within the context of an alien language, the only real obvious leap is making the implication that this would allow someone to see the future. I kind of saw the Universal Language as allowing a sentient being to unlock an already innate ability, as opposed to the language somehow instilling the ability itself. I don't really have a big problem with that part, theres nothing wrong with a little science fiction in our science fiction.
> Their was very little that was innovative or creative in this film. It's just another political message movie about how humanity is too violent and paranoid (especially the Americans who refer to the aliens as "monsters" and riot "across the country" any time there's a crisis) and needs to learn to get along by having the nations of the world "talk to each other" i.e. the governments of the world get together as opposed to, lets say, the nations of the world leaving one another alone or some other different and original idea - or having no political message at all.
Yeah, it had a bunch of that sorta stuff, but I though most of that took a back seat to the linguistics and the exploration of how language effects the way we think. I'm really interested in linguistics, so this movie was a real treat to me, but I'm starting to think the whole linguistics angle of the movie really didn't interest all that many people, and considering it's like 50% of the movie I guess you are left with a movie about geopolitics and stuff like that. But all of that was mostly playing out on tv screens in the background.
I also didn't feel like the character of the Chinese general was shoehorned in at the end, I thought his inclusion as essentially the real twist of the movie was one of the best parts, he went from being an unimportant characters in the background of the movie to one of the most important characters in the whole story.
> It just goes to show that the generations who grew up after the "New Hollywood Directors" period of the 70s and 80s (where a string of creative and original movies were made) have been robbed of the experience of seeing something truly new and don't know any better but to call this an 8-star movie.
Well, like I said, as a linguist I sure as hell thought a movie about linguistics certainly qualified as "something truly new". I'm not even sure the Sapir Whorf hypothesis has been mentioned in another movie, much less been made central to the plot of 1
> 8.2 now 8.1 so.......its going down
Like literally the score of every single movie before it.
I would tell most people it is an excellent and in-depth exploration of the nature of language and it's effect on how we think and an interesting look at the concept of non-linear time. But most people aren't really all that interested in that sorta stuff, lol. The film *is* quite beautiful to look at (and listen to), too.
> I would not bring a child into the world if I knew beforehand that she was going to die a horrible death in less than twenty years.
Cool, but how do you reconcile that with the fact that you've already done those things. Time is non-linear for Louise, and if you were in her shoes (or you took the time to immerse yourself in the Universal Language) you would view time as non-linear, too.
I don't understand what you mean "what would I do"? If my brain was wired to view time non-linearly then there's no distinction between what I have already done and what I am going to do.
First, I actually really like that it is vague and nonspecific about what the aliens will require in 3000 years. But it is clear that they have "solved their problem" by involving the humans and gifted them the Universal Language, which will rewire humanity's brain to view time as non-linear.
I would suspect that the Heptapods are without ego and have no real need for concepts such as "more advanced" or "less advanced" but are more concerned with enlisting the support of another intelligent civilization who can be a part of a solution to whatever problem they are having.
What can the human race offer? It's difficult to say for certain. Perhaps the heptapods are few in number and they need vast numbers of people for something. Perhaps they will need the humans to build something. I personally like that it is an unknown, it doesn't really matter to the story itself.
High tech instruments can detect things that you are looking for. They detect the known unknowns. A dead bird can alert you to something unknown. You don't need to know *why* the bird died to tell you that the enviroment is harmful. Why would you assume your earthly instruments can detect everything harmful in an alien environment.
> This movie lacks common sense. But it is supplemented with bad science.
Damn, that's harsh.. It really didn't have all that much "science" though. What technology was there was so far advanced that it simply wasn't open to much analysis on a scientific level.
What about the movie lacked "common sense"? What do you feel was the "bad science"?
I'll tell you one thing, as a linguist, I thought the movie was awesome... but then again you don't get many movies about hard in-depth linguistics very often, so it was a real treat.
I feel like there is an important distinction that really needs to be made. She doesn't "see" the future, so much as experience all times at once. Her brain has been rewired to view time non-linearly. She isn't any more bitter at the end of her life than she was before her child was conceived, because time has ceased to be linear for her. That's why when she first finds her self in Ian's arms she mentions how much she had missed being held by him.
I also feel like you have also glossed over the fact that it isn't that the gift was the power, the gift was the language itself. The aliens didn't rewire her brain, the language did that. This is a hugely important distinction because it is at the root of the Sapir-Worph hypothesis, which they actually talk about a little in the movie.
This wasn't a gift for her, it was a gift for humanity. The reason why the aliens gifted humanity the gift is specifically to rewire humanity's brain for when it comes time for humanity to help the aliens in 3000 years. What they will need help with is anyone's guess, but it is clear that the aliens require humanity to think non-linearly about time.
Literally the most famous battle in Star Trek history took place inside a nebula that not only obscured them visually but also impaired their instruments, so don't go claiming that Star Trek is immune from that specific trope. If anything it's a great example of why "tropes" are hardly bad things when used properly. I wasn't bothered by the "fog" trope in Arrival at all, there's nothing wrong with a little mystery in terms of the visuals. And if anything I actually thought they showed the aliens *way more* than I thought they would. I thought they would go for even *more* mysterious, maybe even having the aliens basically being off screen.
p.s. I would argue that the "fog" trope is essentially present in Star Wars in the form of the "asteroid field" since it basically doubles as for and resembles nothing like what a real asteroid field looks like.