Anyone else see this yet? It's an adaptation of a Ted Chiang short story, and a pretty solid, serious science fiction flick that deals with some cool ideas and doesn't rely on blowing up aliens.
One of my favorite films this year. So glad that fall is basically becoming "Serious Science Fiction Movie" season, given the last few years.
Bait n switch film.
It advertises as serious science fiction, but it's actually a shmaltzy chick flick - take the sick bucket with you.
And that was my g/f speaking.
It's The story of your life?
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Excellent film, probably the best of the year. Amy Adams absolutely killing it. And yes, it's based on STORY OF YOUR LIFE.
My take:
Louise Banks is a linguist, haunted by images of her daughter who died at a young age from an incurable disease. When twelve alien spacecraft materialise around the world, including one in Montana, Louise is asked by the US government to lead attempts to communicate with the occupants, seven-armed, squid-like aliens nicknamed Heptapods. Louise concludes that the aliens' verbal language is completely indecipherable but finds more meaning in their written language, a dizzyingly complex collection of subtly shifting ink swirls. As Louise falls deeper into the alien language she finds it awakening more and more visions...but also finds signs that the aliens want something from the human race, and an offer that may also be a threat.
It is only ever possible to watch Arrival once. When you have watched it, it you can never watch it again, not properly. You will only ever be able to experience the memory of it. It's not entirely the first movie that's done this, and people will wax lyrical about "twists", but that's a simplistic disservice. When the story elegantly opens up and tells you what's really going on, it's an absolutely dazzling moment which makes the audience feel what the characters felt during an earlier set piece, during which the gravity in the alien spacecraft shifts and the walls become the floor. This is quantum movie watching, where the act of observing it changes the work and the observer, and it's an experience I've never had watching a film before. It's just one of the breathtaking feats that director Denis Villeneuve and scriptwriter Eric Heisserer accomplishes with this movie.
Arrival is based on the short story Story of Your Life, published in 1998 by Ted Chiang, the best science fiction author you've never heard of. A low-key figure on the SF scene, he has written just fifteen short stories and novellas in twenty-six years, but each short story is an Event which sends fans of hard science fiction scrambling. His 2002 collection Stories of Your Life and Others (he hasn't - yet - published enough material to warrant a second collection) is widely cited as the greatest SF short story collection of all time, certainly by a single author, and the title story is often-cited as the best short work of SF of all time.
Story of Your Life is the hardest of hard SF stories, riffing on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistics, Fermat's principle of least time and how causality interfaces with free will. It's also a deeply emotional story about parenthood, communication and empathy. It should be completely unfilmable. It isn't. Arrival - despite the rather unnecessary title change - is a masterpiece of SF cinema.
We've had a lot of "thinking screen SF" in the last decade and a half or so, from A.I. to Moon to Gravity to The Martian. Some of it has been brilliant, but blighted by a chickening out into needless action or deaths (Sunshine), or by a plot hole-ridden, overwrought ending (Interstellar). Arrival may be the best of the lot for its sharp, laser-like focus, lack of sprawl and Villeneuve's resolve in keeping cliches out of the camera lens. Several times during the movie, guns are fired. Each time it is off-screen, and more dreadful for what you imagine happening than any identikit firefight could be. At another point there is a big-ass CGI explosion, but it also accompanies a moment of profound plot revelation and emotional power which is more important than the fireball. The alien ships show up with a relative lack of fuss, without any five-minute CGI tracking shots and images of people gaping at the sky. We don't see the ship or the aliens until Louise does, which is a wise and canny show of restraint.
The film focuses on Amy Adams's character almost completely, so it's a good thing that she dominates the film with an intense, measured performance. She discovers and learns things about the aliens as we do, and makes the connections about what's going on at the same time we do, leading to a rare moment of total audience and character connection that's genuinely powerful. She pulls it off with her typical skill. Coming off the back of Nocturnal Animals, it's been a remarkable year for her and between these two films she should really get some major awards next year. Jeremy Renner also does great work in an understated, relatively low-key role for him (and one in which he seems to relish not having to dodge explosions or shoot a bow).
Other castmembers are few, with Forest Whitaker doing the standard out-of-his-depth US general thing and Michael Stuhlbarg playing a completely predictable CIA hawk. More interesting by far is Chinese General Shang, played by veteran actor Tzi Ma. Mostly seen on news screens and overheard in snatched moments, he gives an interesting and key performance despite a very limited screen time. One can imagine an alternate universe where we see the film from the Chinese point of view (probably equally fearing the US are about to do something dangerous that the US are about the Chinese) and it'd probably be still fascinating.
Arrival feels timely, tapping into post-millennial existential angst and contemporary problems with communication, perception, media and political bubbles and plain old-fashioned paranoia and fear. But, like Netflix's superb series Sense8, it mainly traffics in empathy, the idea of understanding and on notions of commonality that transcend national borders and even worlds. It's a deeply human film in which one of the most devastatingly effective emotional lines is delivered by what looks like a faceless twenty-foot tall facehugger from Aliens. It's a film that will leave you thinking - if not actively reeling - for a long time afterwards.
Flaws? Well, the "military guys getting jittery and threatening to blow everything up" trope has been done to death, even if it's a marginal subplot in this film at best. The Chinese being more hawkish and willing to blow up the aliens than the Americans feels a little bit far-fetched. And that's really about it.
Arrival (*****) - which feels right now like it could have been entitled Story of Our Life instead - is a moving, beautifully-directed, wonderfully-written, smart, painstakingly-constructed and unrelentingly intelligent science fiction film with heart and wit. Excellent performances and a fantastic musical score (partly drawing on Max Richter's work) combine to make some thing exceptional and memorable. The film is on general worldwide release right now. And the director's next movie will be Blade Runner 2049, which suddenly got a whole lot more interesting.
I loved it. My simplest/shortest review:
If you liked Interstellar, Arrival is simpler and better in every way.
I'd write a longer review, but Werthead's is right there and you should just read that.
I was disappointed. It started out as smart sci-if and then solved its central problem with a miracle. Feh.
I was disappointed. It started out as smart sci-if and then solved its central problem with a miracle. Feh.
Most of what passes as "smart sci-fi" is miracle tech, not based on any real science. And yeah, Star Trek, I'm looking straight at your Heisenberg Compensators.
The actress was lovely and the acting superb.
But if you're looking for hard sci-fi, keep looking. There were key elements, particularly the writing, straight out of very soft sci-fi or even only explainable as magic. It relies very hard on you not being familiar with the occult or weird fiction in order to sell its sci-fi.
But, in spite of the flaws, I would recommend it.
I agree. Still worth seeing
The whole thing with the effect the aliens had on the main character was a big punch.
@MannyGoblin
There are a lot of parents if you asked them after they had a child afflicted with a terrible disease, or some development issue, would they go back and choose to not have the child now that they know what it was like to live through that and they'll say they wouldn't change anything. For example, a friend of mine who has an autistic child and if given the choice would not remove the autism or choose to not have a child. That isn't as severe as dying young, but it's still illustrative. Once you love someone, you're not going to change them or remove them from your life even if something really bad happened with them. When Dr. Banks is making that choice, she already loves her daughter, so it's not surprising at all that she would make the choice to have her. Not having her would be like killing a person she loved.
In addition, if she chose not to have the child, those events would no longer be in her memories and the child would disappear forever.
It's also dealing with deterministic concepts that once events are decided they cannot be altered. Time travelers can't go back in time and change the past, not unless they've already done so, resulting in the current set of histories that have already happened. It's not entirely implausible either, the more we look at quantum physics and the more we understand our brain, the more we realize that we're not in control of ourselves as much as we think we are.
@Tarondor
Changing the subject, what was up with Forrest Whitaker's accent? Was it supposed to be Bostonian?
Based on that concept though, in a way, the universe has already run it's course. All events have already happened. We can't perceive that though, we only perceive one moment to the next in what we perceive to be "forwards".
In addition, it also adheres strongly to a concept that this perception would be limited to the moment it's acquired. She doesn't gain that perception for her entire existence, but only from the moment acquired to her death.
As for how and how much the brain could change, that's entirely speculative on your part. There are massive quantities of things we don't understand about the brain. In fact, we have very little understanding of the rules and principles that determine how our brain works. We know a lot of individual functions and how it reacts in certain circumstances, but we have no idea why.
All science-fiction is imaginative, otherwise it would just be science, not fiction. In this case, the story takes two basic concepts, the theory of language changing your brain and time flowing both forwards and backwards, combines them and presents a story. It's not fantasy, fantasy would be completely made up. These are grounded in actual science though. Yes, I agree it is speculative in nature and not wholly realistic, but that doesn't put it in the realm of "miracles" or magic. It might be implausible, but it is not impossible. There's a significant gap between those two words.
Yeah, okay. Done with that conversation.
Crusinos, references would be EXTREMELY interesting. I imagine I would have known of studies like that. Looking forward to learning more.
I'm not sure what the "miracle" was that solved the problem? The solution was very well presented:
Most notably, Louise only needs to start learning the language and when she reaches a trigger point of knowing enough, it then allows her to experience memories from the future when she's learned the whole thing. That's how she went from knowing the rudiments to speaking to the heptapod fluently in an instant.
I'm going to read the short story, which goes into the idea in much more, and much more hard SF, detail.
Key words there being "if you accept."
I'm totally willing to accept it as a story premise. But then the story ceases to be science and becomes a miracle tale.
Crusinos, references would be EXTREMELY interesting. I imagine I would have known of studies like that. Looking forward to learning more.
It wasn't that part that got me. It was trying to claim that the Lord of the Rings was realistic and plausible.
I'm totally willing to accept it as a story premise. But then the story ceases to be science and becomes a miracle tale.
Well, some parts of quantum theory do allow for the idea that time is very much not as straightforward as we perceive it and that perception of time is malleable is well-known (the way it seems to speed up as we get older, for example, even when it remains exactly the same).
I'm wary of going down the route of saying that something isn't science fiction just because it features an extreme extrapolation of ideas. In that case, any story involving FTL at all isn't science fiction, any story featuring aliens isn't SF and we're left with very little that is SF (in terms of recent films, not very much at all, as even THE MARTIAN and GRAVITY feature very loose grasps of the laws of physics).
I'm totally willing to accept it as a story premise. But then the story ceases to be science and becomes a miracle tale.Well, some parts of quantum theory do allow for the idea that time is very much not as straightforward as we perceive it and that perception of time is malleable is well-known (the way it seems to speed up as we get older, for example, even when it remains exactly the same).
I'm wary of going down the route of saying that something isn't science fiction just because it features an extreme extrapolation of ideas. In that case, any story involving FTL at all isn't science fiction, any story featuring aliens isn't SF and we're left with very little that is SF (in terms of recent films, not very much at all, as even THE MARTIAN and GRAVITY feature very loose grasps of the laws of physics).
Pretty much. Under that definition science fiction really doesn't exist, it's all just futuristic fantasy. You would be hard pressed to find science fiction that doesn't run up against some loose interpretation of science or have certain logistical details handwaved away.
If you can't tell the difference between the scientific accuracy of Arrival and Lord of the Rings, there's really nothing to discuss.
You might as well try to convince me I have $1,000,000 in my checking account.
The movie isn't actually about the things you've said it is. But we've had this issue before.
From my perspective, you are literally making things up and saying they're true. So, no matter how much you try and convince me of them now, you're not going to succeed. You'd have to say true things to convince me.
And maybe that's why you think the movie is fantasy, you're seeing things that weren't actually there. She wasn't seeing all relative quantum states. She only saw one future and one past.
If you came out thinking she could see ALL outcomes, then yes, I would agree that that is well beyond anything realistic and complete fantasy. But as it is, that interpretation of the movie itself is a fantasy, since she can't see all outcomes.
In fact, at no point does she undertake any action that changes the outcome of the future. By the time she does take action, it has already been determined what happened and she merely follows along and does her bit. She even talks about how she knows the outcome of all her choices, but does them anyway.
I'm not going to debate the aspect of how fast she learns this new way of thinking, because movie time/perception of movie time is highly fraught. Since we aren't really given how much time actually elapses, it's a pointless argument.
But as far as I can tell, you problem with the perception of time isn't true, but rather your perception of the movie that is off. From my perspective, it's like you came in and complained that Samwise dies at the end of Two Towers. If it were true, I could maybe see your point, but it's not true, so your point seems... kind of dumb.
I already provided a link where you can confirm the rate of brain change via induced enhanced learning. You can even check that article's link to the actual study and read the raw data yourself.
The fact that electricity can cause brain death is established medical science. Google it.
The definition of "precognition" can be found in the dictionary.
The bit about drugs causing the ability to speak to the future and alien powers? Lovecraft's works, works by Clark Ashton Smith, the Oracle of Delphi, some Native American traditions, even DnD in some spots...
Oh, and that only seeing one future? That is the textbook sign of precognition and other fantasy methods of seeing the future. It's literally in every fantasy and paranormal movie that deals with seeing the future.
The idea this is using real-world scientific theories is from your own posts on this very thread. If the movie is not using those at all, then you admit you were wrong.
At this point, you have absolutely no evidence outside of personal belief that what I have said is wrong. And I am beginning to wonder if you have completely misinterpreted what I said yet again.
Edit
To explain what I meant about quantum point along the temporal access: I'm describing a quantum point contact. These can happen across time as well as space, or even between time dimensions. You can read more about it here.There's a lot more to it, especially with theoretical ideas of how it might interact with the brain, but for the most part any ability to get information from the future would require altering a significant portion of the brain to quantum entangle it with a point in the future. And if they're not all set to exactly the same point, you risk insanity or even brain death.
This isn't an insignificant change. And it's assuming the human brain doesn't already use a form of quantum entanglement (this would nicely solve some mysteries of how it operates, but opens up a...
The movie doesn't include any precognition.
Did you see the right movie?
What? is? going? on? here?
I feel like i should add some more question marks, i'm not sure if you guys are using enough???????
Crusinos: The study you linked to does not say what you claim. If you read their conclusions section, it is rather obvious that you misread it. Further, tDCS is by no means a method to "download knowledge". And finally, you have no support for your recurring statement that you would be killed if you got too much information too fast.
I repeat: Do you have any sort of scientific support for your claims?
Did she see her future? If so, that's precognition. If not, then you've invalidated your post here and eliminated all basis for your own argument.
The important aspect of precognition that shows up a lot within fiction is the idea that events are predetermined; that what you see will happen no matter what. It even shows up in real-world religion in the concept of prophesy. And a few soft science fiction stories have used temporal quantum entanglement as an explanation for precognition. Typically the ones that try a "hard" sci-fi explanation for psionics (a.k.a. magic with a new coat of paint).
So, did she see the future, or were you arguing about the wrong movie earlier?
Except she's not seeing the future. Every moment she sees is the present.
Neither set of fiction is scientifically accurate. One set is based on a study of language and myth, then writing up what amounts to an entire fictional mythology. The other is based on taking a couple of science theories to their Star Trekian extreme.
Star Trek does not take existing theories to an extreme. For the most part, it makes up it's babble totally from it's own cloth. That might be the hidden message in calling a key piece of transporter technology a Heisenberg Compensator.
Star Trek isn't even consistent within it's own technology. On the one hand the transporter is stated not to be a copier in moving people from place to place, and yet in another episode the transporter creates a fully identical copy of William Riker that is just as much the original as standard Riker. Which tends to support the hypothesis that the transporter IS a murder machine.
Rrrright. Again, the study you link to says not what you claim. Stress in a cell biological perspective is not in any way connected to stress in a psychological perspective. That losing the mitochondria in neurons is bad is obvious. That it happens when the cell is subjected to stress is equally obvious. When else would it happen? Further, QE (and here I admit to leaving areas I know well) is very much not as it is described in SF, simply because yes, if one particle changes the other will as well, but both also change state randomly, which means you can't actually use it. Either way, it is very much fiction to draw any sort of conclusion from using QE with neurons.
Any further studies, or are we done, Crusinos?
Being able to travel faster than light through warping space is very much a theory that's shown up in science. The idea of there being a particle behind gravity actually is part of modern science theory; it's called dark matter instead of gravitons these days. There's a few others as well.
Dark matter is not gravity, it's the name given to the "missing matter" that we estimate is 90 percent of the universe's mass, but we have no way to directly detect it. Gravitons on the other hand are the theorised carriers of the gravity force.
Traveling faster than light is a theory, true, but with a lot of caveats.
1. The first example is tachyons which are particles that can not go slower than the speed of light. Problem is that their mass would be a multiple of i... the square root of minus 1. They have not yet been detected to date.
2. Models such as the Alcubierre effect. Problem is that such effects aren't steerable, they require insane amounts of energy to initiate, you can't perceive the universe outside of the warp bubble, and once started, they can't be turned off.
I see that we're done here. Sensory overload is and remains a fringe psychology theory without evidence or relevance. The wikipedia page, unsurprisingly, again doesn't say what you claim, at least if you mean it is saying one whit about hard limits for neurons processing information. Linking articles is pretty useless if they do not support your argument. I refuse to play this game anymore.
So I am just making assumptions about what you're saying? Let's take a look:
While language does change your brain, there's a practical limit on how fast your brain can change before it kills you. This is likely why Matrix-style skill learning will remain purely in the realm of science fiction for most people.
Changing your brain to be able to see the future would be well beyond the lethal upper limit, just due to how much of the brain's structure would have to be altered. The span of the movie is nowhere near the hundreds of years this would require.
If your brain changes fast enough, you die. Lethal upper limit to speed of change. This is a recurring statement you make, and the one I have been trying to ask you to show support for with no success. Worse, you then claim that actually changing the brain's structure to allow for this (How? We don't know.) would take "hundreds of years". Given that you haven't given us any point of reference for the "lethal upper limit", is there anything that says it won't take millennia? Millions of years? Can we even talk about changing a specific brain over millions of years, given that it wouldn't exist for most of that time? Again, no answer, but you do give odd time references that don't pan out. Where do these time references come from? Even better, then you start talking about how long it would take to evolve the brain to do this, and you actually provide time estimates for this too. To my knowledge, science as a whole has no clue how long it would take to evolve any sort of trait. You also claim that "your scientist friend says" that a few milliseconds could be attempted - but they wouldn't want to risk the life of someone by surpassing the dodgy concept of the "lethal upper limit"...
No. No more. I have no desire to waste more of my time reading studies you didn't even read yourself, or if you did, you did not understand what conclusions they drew from their work. It is a good thing to take a discussion seriously, but that requires that the discussion is worth taking seriously in the first place.
Per the "miracle" that was discussed above,
I also totally missed the part where she made an on-screen decision to have the child. And I definitely don't understand why she made the choice to tell her husband about their child's disease in the way that she did when the implication was that it was that particular way of going about presenting said information that led the demise of their marriage.
Or, with a Many Worlds Interpretation, all possibilities exist in which she makes each decision differently, but we're only shown one.
One thing to remember is that the concept is that language changes brain function. The concept here being a circular language opening up access to all points of your time line simultaneously. Once all of your experiences are placed on the circle of time, which one comes first?
I can write more later. It's a situation that doesn't lend itself well to our own current understanding/perception of time, nor our language. I've got other stuff I need to write for school though.