Poll

Louise Banks (Amy Adams) in Arrival:

had no choice.
9 (69.2%)
is a selfish shit.
4 (30.8%)

Total Members Voted: 13

Author Topic: Arrival  (Read 20940 times)

DarkeningHumour

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Re: Arrival
« Reply #170 on: September 15, 2017, 03:09:24 AM »
Are moderators bestowed with more evolved capacities to perceive space and time?
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IDrinkYourMilkshake

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Re: Arrival
« Reply #171 on: October 27, 2017, 02:27:54 AM »
Wow! Lots of interesting debate on here. Loving the poll.

I think I hate this film.

If, as 60% of you see to think, Louise merely sees the choices she will inevitably make, then what is the point of the whole Heptapod plot? In fact the Heptapods are scumbags for giving us a method with which to reveal our futures. To see our respective futures and be unable to change squat about any of it would not a glorious, heart-warming thing of soft tones and stirring music. It would be a nightmare.

What if, for example:

"Ah well, 5:30, time for me to clock out"
"See you tomorrow"
"Nah, 'fraid not. Getting mugged and stabbed at 6:15. They rush me to hospital but there's way too much internal damage. Dead by midnight."
"Aw... jeez.... "
"Yep. Still, nothing can be done, right?"
"F*cking heptapods."

eh? What if that?

The script heavily suggests that Louise has agency in the choices she makes.

Because if she doesnt, then doesnt that undermined any sense of tension in the film? If she only ends up making choices she would have made anyway, then the big war was always going to be avoided. All the Heptapods have done is come down from their big aquarium and f*cked with us all.

Maybe that's the point... Heptapods are a-holes. If they ever come, we should just ignore them until they fly off to cause a big mess somewhere else.
"What should have been an enjoyable 90 minutes of nubile, high-school flesh meeting a frenzy of blood-caked blades, becomes instead an exploitational and complex parable of the conflicting demands of agrarianism and artistry. I voted a miss."

DarkeningHumour

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Re: Arrival
« Reply #172 on: October 27, 2017, 02:58:51 AM »
Well, they were trying to save their species from extinction...
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IDrinkYourMilkshake

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Re: Arrival
« Reply #173 on: October 27, 2017, 03:32:00 AM »
Did they fear their species was going to go extinct?
"What should have been an enjoyable 90 minutes of nubile, high-school flesh meeting a frenzy of blood-caked blades, becomes instead an exploitational and complex parable of the conflicting demands of agrarianism and artistry. I voted a miss."

DarkeningHumour

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Re: Arrival
« Reply #174 on: October 27, 2017, 04:27:53 AM »
That's the whole reason they came to Earth, so they could give us the tools that would allow us to help them survive in 5,000 years.
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IDrinkYourMilkshake

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Re: Arrival
« Reply #175 on: November 02, 2017, 12:33:42 PM »
But if the 'future' is fixed, then they only saw what they were going to do anyway. To know they were going to die out implies that they had seen some alternate future which they were trying to avoid.

Therefore, Louise = selfish.

Also therefore Heptapods = selfish. Coming here, disrupting our lives.

Shoulda let China nuke 'em.
"What should have been an enjoyable 90 minutes of nubile, high-school flesh meeting a frenzy of blood-caked blades, becomes instead an exploitational and complex parable of the conflicting demands of agrarianism and artistry. I voted a miss."

DarkeningHumour

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Re: Arrival
« Reply #176 on: November 02, 2017, 12:41:26 PM »
Hey, no one said the science of the movie had been thought through. I stand by my point, with the added caveat that the whole thing does not make sense because people cannot remember or future remember things they never learn.
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St. Martin the Bald

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Re: Arrival
« Reply #177 on: March 27, 2021, 05:58:22 PM »
Etdoesgood - in case you were looking for this thread...
Hey, nice marmot!

Eric/E.T.

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Re: Arrival
« Reply #178 on: March 28, 2021, 12:41:05 AM »
Etdoesgood - in case you were looking for this thread...

Fun times!
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addem

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Re: Arrival
« Reply #179 on: April 19, 2023, 04:08:40 PM »
I really appreciate that Ted Chiang takes a fairly serious knowledge of formal sciences, and is able to build very emotionally and intellectually engaging stories around them.  And I did enjoy this movie for that.  However, I am almost never on-board for time-weirdness stories, since they can get so inconsistent so easily.  So this ultimately wasn't my favorite ever Chiang story --

But if anybody is in the market for that kind of thing, his collection of short stories did a much better job of incorporating Godel's theorem on the incompleteness of arithmetic into a human story!  I found that extremely satisfying in a number of ways.  He also has a great story from the perspective of a parrot in the rain-forest near the telescope at Arecibo that I highly recommend.