Arrival [**SPOILERS FROM POST 45 ONWARD**]

Sad Professor

Scientifically Interstellar is fairly solid, or at least way more solid than 99 percent of sci-fi movies. I take issue with some of the narrative gaps at the end, but the science is fine. The whole “love is the fifth dimension” thing obviously lost a lot of people, but was just something Nolan stuck in to compensate for the false reputation his films have gained for being cold. It doesn’t change the science underlying what happens at the end. The time travel in particularly is very well done. In contrast, I’m not sure Villeneuve really understood the concept of a closed loop in Arrival or made a bigger compromise than Nolan in attempting to make it accessible to the audience.

Fysh

Sad Professor wrote: »

Scientifically Interstellar is fairly solid, or at least way more solid than 99 percent of sci-fi movies. I take issue with some of the narrative gaps at the end, but the science is fine. The whole “love is the fifth dimension” thing obviously lost a lot of people, but was just something Nolan stuck in to compensate for the false reputation his films have gained for being cold. It doesn’t change the science underlying what happens at the end. The time travel in particularly is very well done. In contrast, I’m not sure Villeneuve really understood the concept of a closed loop in Arrival or made a bigger compromise than Nolan in attempting to make it accessible to the audience.

Hold on, hold on. The science in the film where people walked around unharmed on the surface of a planet whose gravity was so much greater than Earth's that it caused a time dilation effect on the scale of years passing for every hour they spent on that planet - is somehow more solid than the science in Arrival?

Sorry, I don't buy that for a second. Interstellar had some great moments, but for a film which went to efforts in some areas to get the science right, it also completely fluffed it a few times (see also: psych tests that don't identify people who will respond that badly to prolonged isolation, "love is the fifth dimension", etc).

Dempsey

Fysh wrote: »

Hold on, hold on. The science in the film where people walked around unharmed on the surface of a planet whose gravity was so much greater than Earth's that it caused a time dilation effect on the scale of years passing for every hour they spent on that planet - is somehow more solid than the science in Arrival?

Sorry, I don't buy that for a second. Interstellar had some great moments, but for a film which went to efforts in some areas to get the science right, it also completely fluffed it a few times (see also: psych tests that don't identify people who will respond that badly to prolonged isolation, "love is the fifth dimension", etc).

Our understanding of astrophysics might have their limitations but unless you are sitting on a white paper that discredits the law of relativity then shhhhh :pac:

Language allowing you to see the future goes far beyond the suspension of any disbelief

Sad Professor

Fysh wrote: »

Hold on, hold on. The science in the film where people walked around unharmed on the surface of a planet whose gravity was so much greater than Earth's that it caused a time dilation effect on the scale of years passing for every hour they spent on that planet - is somehow more solid than the science in Arrival?

Sorry, I don't buy that for a second. Interstellar had some great moments, but for a film which went to efforts in some areas to get the science right, it also completely fluffed it a few times (see also: psych tests that don't identify people who will respond that badly to prolonged isolation, "love is the fifth dimension", etc).

I didn’t say the science of Interstellar is perfect. Even Nolan acknowledged where they stretched things for dramatic effect. But it wasn’t the planet’s gravity that caused the time dilation, it was the black hole. My biggest scientific bugbear with that planet was that the light/sky seemed very Earth-like when it should have been messed up due its proximity to the black hole. But that would have involved a lot of CGI which Nolan was opposed to. And it would have revealed the black hole earlier than Nolan wanted.

The other issues you mentioned are not really science problems but plot/plausibility nitpicks in the narrative and are par for the course with the Nolans. Arrival has it’s fair share as well. They are irrelevant to me in both movies.

I loved Arrival but it isn’t any better than Interstellar in terms of scientific accuracy, throwing out a lot of detail in the book, some of it quite crucial. I don’t have a problem with this, though. It’s a movie trying to tell a story. Everything can’t be explained. But I do wish they left in Louise’s explanation of why she embraces her fate at the end because I found the writing of it quite nice and it was obviously something that many film viewers didn't understand.

Mark Hamill

Fysh wrote: »

Hold on, hold on. The science in the film where people walked around unharmed on the surface of a planet whose gravity was so much greater than Earth's that it caused a time dilation effect on the scale of years passing for every hour they spent on that planet - is somehow more solid than the science in Arrival?

It wasn't the planet's gravity that caused the time dilation, it was the black hole's gravity. The planet's gravity was only a little stronger than earth's.

Mickeroo

Never had issue with the love stuff in Interstellar, it's just the characters having a very human reaction to extraordinary circumstances, I didn't get the impression it was meant to be taken as anything other than that.

Sad Professor

Mickeroo wrote: »

Never had issue with the love stuff in Interstellar, it's just the characters having a very human reaction to extraordinary circumstances, I didn't get the impression it was meant to be taken as anything other than that.

It didn’t bother me either but I understand people’s issue with it. Nolan definitely over-egged the love conquers all thing. It seems he gets studio notes about his films lacking emotion. This on top of the usual notes sci-fi films get probably caused him to overcompensate. And maybe there’s an argument that he’s no Spielberg when it comes to eliciting emotions effectively.

I do think Arrival handled the emotion of its story better than Interstellar. But they are very different films. Arrival is a much more intimate film that embraces the perspective of its protagonist in a way that can’t help but feel more realistic. Where as Interstellar is basically a post-Spielbergian take on 2001 but done in the high concept blockbuster style we’ve come to expect from Nolan. That said, Arrival is post-Nolan to the extent that it has a lot of cerebral stuff that was difficult if not impossible to do in studio films pre-Interstellar/Inception. And it’s got a very distinctive aesthetic, like a big budget indie film.

I love both films for different reasons.

Fysh

The source of the gravitational field isn't the issue (I haven't seen the film since it was released in cinemas, so I'm admittedly hazy on some of the finer details at this point), the issue is that a field that could cause such a substantial time dilation effect would also have compressed the crew and their ship to microscale sizes in an extremely short period of time, rather than being entirely unnoticeable except for the time dilation bit.

Sad Professor

Fysh wrote: »

The source of the gravitational field isn't the issue (I haven't seen the film since it was released in cinemas, so I'm admittedly hazy on some of the finer details at this point), the issue is that a field that could cause such a substantial time dilation effect would also have compressed the crew and their ship to microscale sizes in an extremely short period of time, rather than being entirely unnoticeable except for the time dilation bit.

As I understand it, it wasn’t actually the force of gravity itself that was creating the time dilation in the region of the planet. The black hole was spinning and the space surrounding it with it. The gravity was stronger, hence the waves on the planet, but not so strong at that distance to crush the ship and crew.

When Cooper actually flies into the black hole is another matter... but it is implied that the fifth dimensional beings scooped him up before he was crushed by gravity. Nolan didn’t make this very clear, though, and it bothers me as well.

Mark Hamill

Fysh wrote: »

The source of the gravitational field isn't the issue (I haven't seen the film since it was released in cinemas, so I'm admittedly hazy on some of the finer details at this point), the issue is that a field that could cause such a substantial time dilation effect would also have compressed the crew and their ship to microscale sizes in an extremely short period of time, rather than being entirely unnoticeable except for the time dilation bit.

It wouldn't sense for them to be compressed as they have nothing to be compressed into. The very space around them (not to mention the planet) is being pulled into the black hole at the same rate as they are. Relativistically speaking, they experience no G-force from the black hole itself, only the planet.

Fysh

Mark Hamill wrote: »

It wouldn't sense for them to be compressed as they have nothing to be compressed into. The very space around them (not to mention the planet) is being pulled into the black hole at the same rate as they are. Relativistically speaking, they experience no G-force from the black hole itself, only the planet.

That is not how gravitation or gravitation-induced time dilation works. Time dilation effects are the result of differences in gravitational potential between the locations of two observers. A change in the rate of passage of time of the order depicted in the film requires a related change in gravitational potential that would have a significantly different effect on mass than what we experience on the surface of Earth.

Bear in mind that the experimental evidence we have for this comes from atomic clocks stationed at the surface of the earth compared to those at high altitude, and in those clocks we're talking about nanosecond-order drift over a period of a year from the perspective of either observer. So for a drift of over a dozen years relative to an hour or two, the gravitational potential difference would be 10+ orders of magnitude larger than what we've observed.

At which point...well, if moving from Earth's gravitational field to effective zero-g poses problems for astronauts in terms of how their bodies behave, how muscles and bones handle the change, how do you think being exposed to a gravitational field 10+ orders of magnitude will affect a human body?

Mark Hamill

Fysh wrote: »

At which point...well, if moving from Earth's gravitational field to effective zero-g poses problems for astronauts in terms of how their bodies behave, how muscles and bones handle the change, how do you think being exposed to a gravitational field 10+ orders of magnitude will affect a human body?

You are missing the point: the gravitation field (the one which is causing the time dilation) is from the black hole, not the planet. The planet and the astronauts are in an orbiting free fall towards the black hole so feel no g-force from it. Astronauts on the ISS feel zero-g even though they are subject to the gravitation pull of the earth (and the sun).
If anything, the astronauts would stretch towards the black hole, rather than compress, due to tidal forces.

evil_seed

so the movie.... I watched it and enjoyed it. The ending had me a bit confused until we talked about it and came to the conclusion that through out the movie the flashback/forwards were both and happening concurrently because a loop is a loop with no end or beginning.
I don't get all the fanfare it gets but I did enjoy it

evil_seed

evil_seed wrote: »

so the movie.... I watched it and enjoyed it. The ending had me a bit confused until we talked about it and came to the conclusion that through out the movie the flashback/forwards were both and happening concurrently because a loop is a loop with no end or beginning.
I don't get all the fanfare it gets but I did enjoy it

I don't think it's a loop as such .. but that it is all happening at once. Part of me thinks that the cycle could have been broken pretty easily - at one point, Renner's character suggests that Adam's character made the wrong choice - which makes me think that she could have easily decided not to follow the path shown to her.

strawdog

Deleted User wrote: »

I don't think it's a loop as such .. but that it is all happening at once. Part of me thinks that the cycle could have been broken pretty easily - at one point, Renner's character suggests that Adam's character made the wrong choice - which makes me think that she could have easily decided not to follow the path shown to her.

That point has made me think, a while since I saw it now so could have this wrong, and at the risk of opening a can of worms, she only told him later that she knew what she knew about the future of their daughter. Renner maybe had a right to be pissed, not about her choice, but that she could have told him before they decided to do the *ahem* child making deed. Even if she had made her choice, surely he should have been allowed an informed decision before he made his *ahem* contribution.

Sad Professor

strawdog wrote: »

That point has made me think, a while since I saw it now so could have this wrong, and at the risk of opening a can of worms, she only told him later that she knew what she knew about the future of their daughter. Renner maybe had a right to be pissed, not about her choice, but that she could have told him before they decided to do the *ahem* child making deed. Even if she had made her choice, surely he should have been allowed an informed decision before he made his *ahem* contribution.

As I recall, in the book speakers of the alien language don’t talk about their knowledge of the future with anyone, not even each other. Telling “linear" people about stuff that they won’t understand seems like a recipe for chaos and possibly undermines the logic behind how the language/future-seeing works.

Re: whether Louise makes a choice, the book compares it to an actor saying their lines, knowing where it will take their character. If they made a different choice they would have seen a different future and vice versa. Basically they are incapable of bad faith. They accept their fate because they can see a bigger picture beyond the present or future suffering that a particular choice may cause.

HamsterFace

Watched it, enjoyed it, but wouldn't watch it again and I wouldn't have loved the fact that I watched it in the cinema if I had.

It was a really interesting concept, and that I really enjoyed, but there wasn't a whole lot else in terms or story for me, and you could tell it was based on a short story.

I'm going to go against the grain and say I don't like Amy Adams in these kind of roles also. When she plays these reserved roles, like in Nocturnal Animals too, she bores the life out of me. And I loved her in earlier roles, like The Fighter.

But sure we all have different opinions.

clever user name

Just watched this.

Mesmerising stuff, these are the kind of movies I live for. I can totally understand the negative reviews, this movie is absolutely not for everyone. There's plenty of critically acclaimed movies that I do not care for, but when it comes to Sci-Fi movies like this I am in my element.

It keeps you guessing throughout. I don't even like using the term 'guessing', moreso it makes you simply wonder what is going to happen, without even wanting to know. With some movies I feel an urge to try and figure out where it's going. With Arrival, I just went with it. No idea if that even makes any sense.

If I was to fault it, I'd say the last 10 minutes or so could have been shortened to just a couple of minutes. It was the only point in the movie I found myself saying 'OK, I get it, move on'. Other than that, instant Sci-Fi classic.

Hyzepher

Anyone else get a strong connection between the scenes in Louise's house (out the window) and the scenes in front of the aliens?

leakyboots

Don't think anyone has asked this yet - do we know exactly what Amy Adams says to the General in Chinese ?

FortuneChip

leakyboots wrote: »

Don't think anyone has asked this yet - do we know exactly what Amy Adams says to the General in Chinese ?

It's not translated in the movie at all, but Google tells me "In War there are no winners, only widows"

learn_more

I liked the movie to my surprise as until the first half hour I thought it was going to be a complete turkey. Some things were really silly like the idea that the ships could be blown up. With what exactly ? Dynamite ? Anyway it was a bit too Interstellary not that's a terrible thing just a bit too soon and not as good. I'd watch it again but not untill 4K OLED 100" TV's are affordable. Probably won't though.

I have to say that Jeremy Renner having a lead role in any movie is a real turn off for me. I think he is a really weak actor and has no stage presence whatsoever. Couldn't believe he was cast in the Bourne spin-off either. No wonder that died. Hoping he'll suddenly become unpopular and never be seen or heard off again. And he's a bit peculiar looking. Oh, and that romance at the end just came out of nowhere.

learn_more

leakyboots wrote: »

Don't think anyone has asked this yet - do we know exactly what Amy Adams says to the General in Chinese ?

Do you mean apart from recounting the exact last words his dying wife said to him?

Kirby

learn_more wrote: »

I liked the movie to my surprise as until the first half hour I thought it was going to be a complete turkey. Some things were really silly like the idea that the ships could be blown up. With what exactly ? Dynamite ? Anyway it was a bit too Interstellary not that's a terrible thing just a bit too soon and not as good. I'd watch it again but not untill 4K OLED 100" TV's are affordable. Probably won't though.

I have to say that Jeremy Renner having a lead role in any movie is a real turn off for me. I think he is a really weak actor and has no stage presence whatsoever. Couldn't believe he was cast in the Bourne spin-off either. No wonder that died. Hoping he'll suddenly become unpopular and never be seen or heard off again. And he's a bit peculiar looking. Oh, and that romance at the end just came out of nowhere.

Er...no it didn't? It's in every scene they had together....which is most of the movie. Two people dont have to be eating the face off each other to highlight whats going on. :rolleyes:

And its sort of integral to the plot? The scenes with the daughter throughout the film? "Go ask your father the scientist?"

The Black Oil

Video essay thingy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z18LY6NME1s

2smiggy

finally watched this last night. found it an excellent film. Can't believe it took me so long to watch it !! 9/10 for me

Zero-Cool

Same Smiggy, bit late to the party, just rewatched it tonight and loved it! Thought the way the story was interwoven between the alien parts and family parts was done so well and i feel it came together so well at the end.

I like the idea that she chose to stay on the circle even though she knows how it would play out but wonder how the aliens figure this would help them in 3000 years. Surely that's them breaking off their circle to try stop what they know is coming. Obviously that goes down the rabbit hole but the simplicity of watching it in action and how it affected a single family was really interesting.

I've been meaning to watch this for a couple of years but never did, better late than never..