Current Events > *Spoilers* When does Arrival get good, exactly?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I'm 53 minutes in. I've seen Amy Adams nervous, Forest Whittaker impatient, goddamn floating ink bloats and whale noises for I believe this to be the exactly 50% mark of the story. It is really an odd movie, very low key, very subtle and occasionally has beautiful shots but good god this is going nowhere fast and the artificial tension from Forest (and his chain of command) and the world rioting isn't really doing anything for me with how it's portrayed.
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The whole point of the movie is that patience and communication are important.
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Something occurs near the end that changes what you think you know so far. Still not amazing, but it makes it interesting and the emotional scenes more impactful.
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sopfed posted...

The whole point of the movie is that patience and communication are important.

I get that and I'm rooting for Amy's character to succeed. I think she won't. I can see this going to hell in a hand basket. It's just that it's really exaggerating the human nature of panic and fight or flight. By protesting against those so much, it simply makes for an unenjoyable narrative for over an hour. There are better ways to approach this.

KogaSteelfang posted...

Something occurs near the end that changes what you think you know so far. Still not amazing, but it makes it interesting and the emotional scenes more impactful.

Everyone has hyped up the twist and remarkably I haven't been spoiled what it is, though. I have a few ideas mostly in regards to the notions of howtime and emotions being prevalent in the script.
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Not enough pew pew pews and Michael Bay I don't like it. Thinking movies are hard.
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Stellar movie with a great ending.
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MabusIncarnate posted...

Not enough pew pew pews and Michael Bay I don't like it. Thinking movies are hard.

I love introspective movies and slow burns. Hell, I loved Sicario by this same director. I just feel like this movie is incredibly dry with no payoff at, this point, literally 3/4ths of the way done since I made this topic.
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Gamer99z posted...

Stellar movie with a great ending.

I didn't like the 'twist' or whatever at the end. Still a great movie though.
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mediocre movie but the first boarding scene is incredibly well done
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prettyprincess posted...

mediocre movie but the first boarding scene is incredibly well done

Best part of the movie right now.
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You are supposed to have a dream later where you high five and see all these black lines splat on the wall in front of you. Sorta like the DT's.
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Ending did nothing for me. Time doesn't work like that.

Meh movie.
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CommunismFTW posted...

Ending did nothing for me. Time doesn't work like that.

Meh movie.

Yeah, her future self didn't understand what was going on when she got the phone number, but at that point her past self was realizing it already and made use of the number and quote to solve the problem. Her future self was even at a party celebrating how she saved everything, so she obviously had already used her time speech to stop it at that point but apparently forgot about it somehow?
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KogaSteelfang posted...

CommunismFTW posted...

Ending did nothing for me. Time doesn't work like that.

Meh movie.

Yeah, her future self didn't understand what was going on when she got the phone number, but at that point her past self was realizing it already and made use of the number and quote to solve the problem. Her future self was even at a party celebrating how she saved everything, so she obviously had already used her time speech to stop it at that point but apparently forgot about it somehow?

Exactly. I could name 3-4 other examples of how this whole time thing didn't make any goddamn sense. I thought the message would be about how humanity needs to unify, and how we need a central language, how we need to trust and be patient. Instead the octopods wanted us to help travel 3k years in the future to help them, presumably in an intergalactic war or extinction event, which the entire movie ****ing ignores instead to focus on the fact she has (some underlying) level of premonition and also knew she had to have the insta-dead kid in order to have the powers in the first place?

The whole message and symbolism felt like a Trump speech. Tons of fluff that isn't saying anything at all, and keeps going off trail.
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Boring movie with a boring twist (which I figured out). I love sci-fi movies but that one was very disappointing.

The short story is tons better. It doesn't have the (major spoilers) phone number plot point, and instead focuses on how physics can explain deterministic timelines

I did like the movie. The music was so creepy and good.
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