So, I watched Arrival, a movie many pseudo-intellectuals out there are calling a masterpiece. The hook is, aliens arrive on Earth and they do not seem to want to destroy it. Most of the movie is about humans trying to communicate with them by deciphering their weird language.
Up until the big revelation, I was fine with it. It was slow and mostly uneventful but was taking itself seriously and had a very captivating atmosphere. There was even tension and high stakes in the form of some countries across the world not trusting the aliens and be constantly one step away from bombing the hell out of the spaceships. If this escalates amongst those who see the aliens as allies and those who consider them invaders, it would mean the beginning of a new world war.
But then the revelation happens and the movie loses all its appeal. Turns out deciphering the language makes you see your future, turning the whole movie to be about fatalism. There never was any tension or high stakes because everything was supposed to happen as such. The resolution was predetermined because once the main heroine saw her future, she knew what she was supposed to do, as well as she knew everything will turn out fine while the crisis was still at large. Thanks for nothing.
And it doesn't stop there, no sir, it even insults your intelligence by resolving the military conflict through circular reasoning. The general who was about to attack the aliens was convinced they are harmless when the heroine spoke with him over the phone. His phone number was top secret and the reason she knew about it was because the general showed her the number in the future, so she would know it in the present. Freaking hilarious! Oh, and if you are wondering how the general was convinced she was telling the truth, it's because she told him things only he knew about. And how did our heroine know about those things? Because the same general told her in the future what to say to his present self, so he can be convicted! Damn son, that's like a free ticket out of any situation imaginable! I facepalmed so hard at this.
Wait, there is more. Throughout the movie, the heroine has these flashbacks where she is interacting with her daughter. It was a cheap way to make her more sympathetic to the audience, since she doesn't really have a personality other than looking worried with her mouth constantly open. Turns out those were not memories because they hadn't happened yet. They were not flashbacks, they were flash forwards to the daughter she will have, therefore she never had a life to make us care about her for who she is, compared to what she accomplishes as a plot device. And she accomplishes everything simply by finding the answer into the future, so it's all lazy and contrived.
Arrival boasts about making you think a lot, and I agree that it does. I was constantly wondering what kind of people would like this retarded revelation and give the movie anything higher than an average score. And here is a question the movie never bothered to explore. What is the beauty of life, if everything is predetermined and you know about them from the moment you are born? You are just a robot acting out a predetermined set of actions.
The movie never addresses that, because it's too busy trying to look mysterious and be in a constant state of danger when in retrospect there is none. It also explains nothing about the aliens as a species. Where do they come from, what is the threat they speak of, how do they appear and disappear in an instant? Why did they even send a dozen ships when one was enough to make the heroine decipher the language? Because it was predetermined that they needed to send 12? How about the alien that was killed in an explosion? He knew it would happen but did nothing to save himself! There is no free will! What a pile of nonsense! Another fine title for pretentious pseudo-intellectuals to touch themselves while analyzing its ludicrous plot.
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