Critics tend to be arty-farty types who prefer mysterious confusing plots that don't actually make any sense - like the
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Arrival
iceblink1 — 9 years ago(November 25, 2016 11:15 AM)
Critics tend to be arty-farty types who prefer mysterious confusing plots that don't actually make any sense - like the dude on drugs who mutters basic statements now and again and weak minds assume they are a genius.
No wonder people are getting fed up with all the crappy politically correct irrationality in the world and voting against it. This is also a terrible advert for women in hard sciences - it implies that the most important tool, mathematics, is not really necessary. If the writers had a basic understanding of Relativity they would have known that effect always follows cause in any local reference frame (such as all events on earth)
This movie has a plot which makes no sense unless you transfer to the world of Harry Potter and allow magic. Even if the nonsensical ability to see the future by thinking differently was possible, the consequences in the movie are silly - just ONE woman appears to have the ability, never mind that the the biggest event in the history of human civilization has just occurred with ALIENS VISITING, no, never mind all that, the lady goes back to a standard life, gets married and has a baby even though she knows it will die of a rare disease before adulthood.
I mean, if people could see the future this would be a minor drama in the scheme of things on earth wouldn't it?
But no, let's have long slow pretentious scenes with simplistic haunting music that happens to be a palindrome and the weak-minded arty critics go bat_s_hit
Terrible stuff, critics should be ashamed.
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amormortua — 9 years ago(November 25, 2016 01:13 PM)
The only answer I can give you is that it's a politically correct, well-made movie with very good performances. And what difference does it make if it's illogical? The majority of critics doesn't care about that as long as the movie looks good, is "progressive" (in this case: obnoxiously feministic; promoting globalism) and coherent.
You have other movie like that right now - "Jackie" - it's the same kind of over sentimental feministic claptrap. I'm wondering why Hollywood has produced a movie about Jacqueline Kennedy, but somehow it's not interested in making a high-profile biopic about her assasinated husband (That Oliver Stone's picture doesn't count). -
amormortua — 9 years ago(November 27, 2016 02:25 AM)
Here you have a movie where allegedly "higher evolved giant squids" (which in itself is an evolutionary idiocy) look for a person who'd be able to understand their language and, from all the people, it turns out to be a female linguist. Now, let's take a look at how many notable women linguists do we know?
http://www.ranker.com/list/notable-linguist_s)/reference
Not many as you can see, so it's not that much representative, isn't?
This woman is not only chosen by these "giant squids" On top of that, only she is capable of "traveling in time" or (as some people prefer to call it) to discover her "infinite self", only she is capable of stopping a worldwide conflictOnly her, only her, only her, only her And, in contrast, men are portrayed mostly as ignorant people (Webber; those soldiers who install the bomb inside the ship; Halpern wants to shoot her while she's saving the world's future; Chinese general wants to start a war, but is ultimately stopped by a women and a memory of his wife.; Ian "doesn't understand" Louises's gift and leaves her and his own daughter etc.)
That's why I call this "obnoxiously feminist", cause, in this aspect, it jarringly distorts reality to its own purposes. In other words: 'Arrival' again and again implies that women are wiser and more responsible than men are. -
Jesus Quintana — 9 years ago(November 27, 2016 03:50 AM)
Okay, so basically the movie is feminist (obnoxiously so, even!) because its main character is female. That's all you're really saying. There are hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands of movies where the protagonists are men and the female characters are love interests at best and helpless creatures to be saved at worst - yet when there is a movie where a woman takes center stage, suddenly it's some kind of annoying political statement.
The less said about your implication that a woman doesn't really count as a proper scientist, the better. -
amormortua — 9 years ago(November 27, 2016 05:18 AM)
No, the feminist attitude is not only expressed through a female character taking a centre stage.
Besides, previous Villenueve's picture was similarily constructed around a female "we should tell the truth" FBI agent surrounded by a group of (depicted as immoral) males. The pattern in his recent work is easy to discern. Also, one should expect that his sequel to "Blade Runner", despite Gosling's and Ford's presence, will also be female-driven.
'Arrival' distorts reality and insults audience's intelligence in many ways and its politics are plainly obvious. If someone, while analyzing a particular piece, choses to ignore that stuff - it's only a question of his/her ignorance.
But it's nothing new, it's always been like that: there are people who like something just because it looks "sophisticated", something they haven't seen before done in the genre And they don't care about its real meaning. That's how it is. -
Seestern — 9 years ago(December 01, 2016 04:38 PM)
Besides, previous Villenueve's picture was similarily constructed around a female "we should tell the truth" FBI agent surrounded by a group of (depicted as immoral) males. The pattern in his recent work is easy to discern.
I guess Alien is also a feminist movie then, right?
What a bs. I am everything else than politically correct, but I never has any issues with female main characters as long as they are not too ugly.
By the way, there is a simple reason why this film needs a female main character: Because of the daughter thing. That just would not work as well with male main character. Call me a sexist, but that's the way it is. -
Jesus Quintana — 9 years ago(November 27, 2016 09:54 AM)
Movies like the Ghostbusters remake and The Force Awakens were also considered 'politically correct' and 'feminist' in certain corners for no other reason than they had the temerity to star females. It's pretty transparent that some men just have a problem with seeing women on screen in non-submissive roles.
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danielgalun — 9 years ago(January 15, 2017 11:20 AM)
Unfair, Ghostbusters really was feminist propaganda, if it was meant as a comedy it would have been funny. I don't feel like this was though, I didn't like it but that's not the reason. I loved Contact, which is pretty much this only good, and Jodi Foster is great in it, and her character also comes off as a lot smarter, stronger and more likeable than the character in this movie. In Contact all the opposition is male too, but they actually treat the issue of being a woman in a male dominated profession in a good way there, this movie doesn't even try to deal with it, or even imply it's an issue. I got no unreasonable feminist vibes from it at all. Let's not forget that feminism isn't inherently bad, it just the new age propaganda feminists that are a pest, there are still feminists that actually want to tell the truth and deal with real issues. Check out factual feminist on youtube for example, I doubt many people will be able to disagree with her.
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znapper — 9 years ago(November 28, 2016 07:12 AM)
I am sure that if it was possible for Jeremy Renner to get pregnant and give birth, HE would be the linguistic.
The movie is probably more about human existentialism and you can probably draw it even further and ask if maternal, unconditional love is choice, faith, or neither.
I don't find it particularly feminist (and I am usually pretty good at spotting cheap-shots against men), a female protagonist is simply necessary to tell the story. The film does make a point of men being naturally more aggressive then women though..and we are. (interpretation of the Sanskrit word for 'war' being one of the points driven home).
Oh, and if you want a movie that is a REAL kiss-ass, praise the lord, artsy over-sold crap-o-rama, watch the Soviet made "Stalker".
Then you watch 'Arrival' again, I am sure your view would change pretty fast
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amormortua — 9 years ago(November 28, 2016 10:29 AM)
No, no I watch too many movies and know too much about history and culture in general to be blind and just ignore an aggresive push towards feminism in contemporary cinema, especially considering big franchises. That's all I've to say about this.
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iceblink1 — 9 years ago(December 11, 2016 10:34 AM)
I don't find it particularly feminist (and I am usually pretty good at spotting cheap-shots against men), a female protagonist is simply necessary to tell the story. The film does make a point of men being naturally more aggressive then women though..and we are. (interpretation of the Sanskrit word for 'war' being one of the points driven home).
Exactly, the movie isn't feminist, it's too stupid for that, it's unreasonably misandrist, but misandry does not imply feminism, it just implies stupidity, just like unreasonable misogyny does.
The question about the Sanskrit word for war made me cringe so badly - like that is how you would distinguish the abilities of a world-renowned and well-published expert from a recently qualified post-graduate (At the time of a worldwide alien invasion). It's insulting to the academic community and indicative of the stupidity of the writer.
Anyway, I've probably said enough here about this movie, even if it was unfairly censored, check my public ratings and recommended viewing for other movies I like or not. I don't usually get so riled, but this piece of shhhtii did annoy me after all the underserved praise showered on it.
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dhs-07302 — 9 years ago(January 15, 2017 12:49 PM)
She wasn't chosen by aliens, she was contacted by Colonel Weber because of her past success with helping the military. It wasn't until later on that the aliens realized she had a gift when she had contact with them. Her gift was that she could see the future. She did not realize this right away either, however, it was first evident in her visions of her future daughter. Throughout the movie we were led to believe that her dreams were of a daughter she lost in the the past and her memories teaching her daughter life's lessons helped her to figure out clues in her interactions with the aliens, but in reality she was tapping into the future to gain those clues. This ultimately manifests itself in a sequence of visions of herself in the future one including teaching college classes of the alien language, so it would seem likely that once she realized this she became aware that she knew their language and also the scene with the Chinese general The aliens told her that her gift was seeing the future, which caused an awakening of sorts for her, with the vision of her daughter playing with the playdough alien figure. Which we find out in a later scene, was made by her future husband Ian. She then figured out how to access her visions in order to find a way to appeal to the Chinese general's emotions in order to save humankind from war by telling him what his wife's dying words were to gain credibility with the general. The future vision of her talking with the general and the way the general spoke that he felt he needed to show her his private number and whisper in her ear what to say was explained in earlier parts with the aliens, as time not being linear. At the very end of the movie they reaffirmed all of this in the last dialogue with Ian. At this time she knew she would have a daughter who would die and she asked Ian, "if he could see his whole life from start to finish, would he change things?", to which he replied, "maybe I would say how I feel more often". Which I think also reaffirmed the idea of time not being linear in the sense that they could change things and that it doesn't have to end with them separating. I believe the aliens also knowing the future made this initial "arrival" to save the human race from themselves, so that 3,000 years in the future the human race would return the favor. We can assume by then that humans would be very advanced technologically and perhaps capable of extraordinary things and we do not know the circumstances under which the aliens may need help from humans.
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BrainGremlin — 9 years ago(February 10, 2017 06:03 PM)
What that other guy said is totally accurate: you are bringing your own baggage here. The protagonist is female. She's
supposed
to be the reasonable one, being what the viewers connect with. You might have had a case if there were several women consistently outwitting several men (and ditto about statistics if the movie had several linguists all of whom were women, but we've got just the one; hardly a statistical anomaly of any sort), but as it stands there's barely even another woman in the film.
I don't wish to pass judgment, but I guess I will anyway: you could probably afford spending some time on introspection.
Sad story. You got a smoke? -
Berbil — 9 years ago(November 25, 2016 01:24 PM)
The aliens came because they had to find some human(s), not matter who, which had the potential to understand their language. If it hadn't been Louise, it would have been someone else, and the movie would have been about them instead.
Who it was is irrelevant, the only thing that mattered was that they met someone who would eventually do understand.
She is the only one with the ability because she is the first to learn the language. Of all the linguists in the world, only a small handful had access to the information.
Only when she starts to learn the language does she get the ability. All the other flash forwards disguised as flashbacks are just a trick the director is using to make the audience believe she is thinking about the past.
When they leave, she goes back to her life, marries, have a baby, and she writes a book and educates others to that eventually the whole humanity knows the language.