Wow....this one left us thinking for some time....what a crazy scenario! Want to watch 4 weeks EARLY and access our UNCUT reactions? AND Vote for what Movie we watch next over on Patreon! www.patreon.com/spartanandpudgey
The gift allows you to see the future but not necessarily change it; being non-linear, there is no more cause and effect. Heptapod couldn't heal Costello dying, Louis couldn't heal her daughter.
@@deek60819 I'd say it's more that the metaphor has fallen out of favor in popular culture than any fault of the education system. Sort of like "hoist on your own petard".
Spartan the answer you're seeking at the end is that the language the Heptapods gift will help the humans not blow each other up so in 3,000 years they can help the Heptapods. If the humans didn't learn their language the Heptapods know they will go extinct which in turn means their own extinction. (since they can see the future)
@@bradrich2000 She wrote a book on the language. Anyone who wanted to learn the language and was able to apply the discipline would be able to learn the language. Consider French. As an English-speaker, you can buy self-taught courses to learn French. How many English-speakers actually go on to learn French? Some do, but the percentage is quite small. There would be much more motivation to learn heptapod since it represents a monumental change in the development of humanity. But yet, the language would take time to permeate thru humanity, with some people having more fluent use of the language sooner than others do. It appears that Hannah did not grow up knowing the heptapod language. Despite the fact that we know that young children learn languages much more easily than older people do. If you were a parent, would you enroll your young child in a heptapod-immersion school?
I mean, he looked to be almost crying, but couldn't over Pudgey's laugh. This movie is better in private, when you are not performing a reaction for youtube.
@@wadestewart5504 that’s an arbitrarily cruel thing to say. They might not have seen films with this level of depth and weren’t prepared for it, considering when I watched this film I expected “SciFi” and got so much more instead.
The really cool thing about the Heptapods language is that since it opens time for Louise now and she sees it in a non-linear view, she can always see and visit the memories she has with her daughter, so they’ll always be together
@@fakecubed Yes, I think it's better. We haven't lived for the past 14 billion years and have nothing to complain about during that time, pure tranquility and a peace. Now we are living for a few decades, come to know suffering and then, who knows. Hopefully the same nothingness as before. Dying is the worst thing anyone can experience, but you can't die if you are not born.
I feel like, what Spartan missed is that the movie isn't about the aliens or geopolitics. The movie is about Louise and how her life was affected by the arrival of these aliens. If you look at it as her story, you will see that the movie ends, the moment she decides to still have her daughter and not tell the father about the illness. That's why the emotional beats didn't hit you as much as other people because you were concentrating on the aliens that storyline. For example, we don't get any explanation how humans will help the heptapods in 3000 years because it is irrelevant to Louise's story.
Yes to everything, but, she still will tell dad that she knows they die. She's seen it already happen and she chose, like with her daughter, to experience everything that comes and just enjoy the good moments while they're happening and not focus on how things eventually end. The love she will get to experience, even if it's short, waaay out weighs the sadness that will also come.
@@1HalfbloodPrince i understand what you are saying and that it is the movies intention. but in reality 1 happy year can be followed by 30 years of grief and sadness. so i dont think the movie is realistic in that regard..
@@MetalGuitarTimo but she has the gift now to see time differently. That's what happens when you truly understand the language. Even when she will get eventually horrendously sad she can still experience the, what maybe like 14 years, she gets with her daughter. The point is that the love we get to share with people is worth whatever comes after. She would rather have experienced the love and joy, even if it's short. Sharing experiences with people is what lifes all about. Of course there's sadness, but the need for human connection is stronger. (This doesn't apply to every single person, this movie was specifically about lousie)
I agree. The impact of this movie is best experienced focusing on Louise’s story. To try to figure out the whole movie as your watching takes away from the emotion and the WEIGHT of the decision Louise makes to face the future birth life and death of both her daughter and her relationship believing it is all worth it. The courage and faith it takes to embrace the suffering to that degree for the immense joy of having and raising your child is incredible. So beautiful and hopeful.
@@Steve-G-Maine1 that’s why I emphasised the last words not the conversation she engaged with the General before she spoke his wife’s final words. We can sort of guess she’s saying to the general who she is and why he should listen to her.
So weird you come into every single Arrival reaction and randomly say this, unprompted. It's not like it's some kind of relevatory bit of the movie that completes changes its meaning or story. Imagine just randomly walking into some conversation, saying some bit of trivia when no one asked, then walking off.
@@Pipboy989 I like this statement and I like to inform the first time reactors. I don't see the need to re-type what I said without just Copy and Pasting. I just like this cool fact that I want to share.
"Still don't know what their job was" It was to give their language to the humans. Their language is the "weapon", because it allows you to see time like they do
Yeah he understood that I think, what he meant was WHY they need human to see time like they do. To help them yes but for what? How seeing time like they do is gonna help them?
@@astragalusson Yes but help for what? I personally don't need to know, the movie is one of my favorite but I can understand people wanting to know why was it all for
@@PowerlightGG Yup I also have a friend who's an action buff, they really don't appreciate philosophical sci fi movies much. They want matter of fact sci fi action. These movies dont conclude with a bang, but rather more with an answer.
This is one of my favorite movies. As a side note, I think people need to stop telling reactors "this is a very emotional movie," etc. because that sort of thing should be discovered upon watching. When reactors are told these things in advance, what tends to happen is they end up "bracing" themselves for something that they expect will be coming soon.
Spoilers can be subtle. They don't have to be an event in the story, or a plot reveal. Creating anticipation is a spoiler. "This is a great movie" becomes a spoiler. Imagine Louise watching Game of Thrones. The Heptapods screwed her.
setting up an expectation is disrupting the storytelling reveal. It becomes impossible for the reactors to have the same experience because they've been "clued in" and told ahead of time "what to feel." It spoils the carefully crafted experience... by the writers and film makers.
@@mannygee005 exactly. 👉Yesterday, in the ER, my mother's partner: "That race today..." Me: "Don't say _anything_ ! I DVRed it." Him: "I know! I'm just sayin', they've never started a race on rain tires before." Me: 🤬 He's 90...🙄
@@mannygee005 I make reaction videos myself, with a whopping 2 loyal viewers haha, but I never wanna know what to expect from a movie/show. All I need to know is the genre. I consume reaction videos more than I make them, but it's always been a big pet peeve of mine when the comments clue-in the reactors on "how" to feel about a movie/show they're requesting, or overhype what's coming if it's a series. People should just let things happen, because that's how you get the most genuine reaction, which I think is the whole point...otherwise you're just performing and not so much reacting anymore. Say, even if Spartan & Pudgey DID end up getting emotional during Arrival, would it have come off sincere if they already knew they were meant to be emotional? When I watched this movie for the first time years ago, all I knew was that it was sci-fi and starred Amy Adams. I ended up bawling my eyes out at the end.
It wouldn't die. They watched it's behavior. It'd make noises, and they'd all come back up, including the canary. "Noxious" gases were also not very common, 90% of the time, it's just poor ventilation and oxygen running out.
@@JigInsane It rather surprises me the number of reactors to this movie who seem to have never heard the phrase "canary in the coal mine". I suppose that represents progress, since actual coal mines are terribly unhealthy places to work, so younger people having less contact with the trappings of coal mining would be a good thing.
Since the heptapods experience time nonlinearly, 'when' they arrived, they already knew English, they had already met Louise, they already knew that Abbot would die in the explosion, etc. When Louise first enters the ship, Abbot and Costello would be, like, "Hey, Louise is finally here, maybe we can get started with this thing?" but also, Abbot might have been "Hold up a sec', I'm going to die towards the end of this process, maybe we could slow down some and enjoy the experience instead of just rushing through?" From the standpoint of the heptapods, they already had the script, and it was like they were acting in a show. Maybe the show could be called, I dunno, maybe, "Mommy and Daddy Talk to Animals"?
I think there's still choice involved. Abbott has to choose to continue towards its death. Visions can not come to pass - I think we're to assume that the way humans are supposed to "use [this] weapon" is to avoid the pitfalls of in-fighting and world wars and violence, etc, so they're capable of helping the heptapods later. I assume bad actors could still choose to try and wage "disunification."
@@eschatological I think it's clearly an element of the storytelling to not give an outright answer to the question of "Is the future predetermined?" It is left unanswered in order to give the audience another question to engage with. Nevertheless, I suggest that the death of Abbott is non-conclusive evidence that the future is predetermined. If it weren't, wouldn't Abbott have simply decided to eject Louise and Ian a little earlier, so that Abbott could also get out of range of the explosion? We can invent answers for why that scenario might not be, but those would be moving farther and farther from what the movie actually supports through what it shows us. We should give large credit to what the movie actually shows us, and not try to invent lots of things that aren't really supported by the shown narrative (for example, don't invent that Abbott was sick and was going to die a more painful death in a few days anyway).
@@dondumitru7093 I think Abbott's decisions are predicated on how quickly Louise picks up on what she needs to do, which is out of Abbott's control. We see that Louise doesn't have knowledge of Shang's phone number in the 18 months between the departure and the gala, but as soon as he shows her, she realizes she knew it all along. In that sense, maybe Abbott doesn't really know it's going to die until everything prior solidifies to that certainty. If you ever watched the Matrix trilogy, there's a line about fate vs. free will that I think applies here: the future is set in as much as you've already made the choice, based on every other choice and outside factors that have built you, and "seeing the future" as the Oracle does is merely about understand why you made that choice and what it logically leads to.
Here's how I understood it - Louise didn't really have 'visions' of the future, she was just living all of those events but not how humans usually live them, in a clear sort of order. So when the general showed her the number, she was surprised because she lived that moment as it was and didn't realise it was the future. When you fully embrace that there really is no present and future for the heptapods and for anyone who learns their language, then you can see why it's a 'weapon'.
@@RealBLAlley it's not memories, its her living her life in different parts of it. If time isn’t linear, then there is no "present" meaning that she is living in future, present, and past all at once.
@@RealBLAlley sure, but the concept of memories insinuates that they have occurred in the past, but if time is nonlinear, then there can be no past, which means that she is living her entire life at once
@@yoda9256 For normal humans, memory is all of the past, in linear order. The Heptapods perceive all time, as does Louise after she rewires her brain by learning their language. It's a real phenomena experienced by a relative few people with temporal sequence-space synesthesia.
A lot of sci-fi try to explain things in science terms, but it usually doesn't work and ends up as useless exposition. If you think about it, many things in this movie are a mystery and basically magic to us: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" - Arthur C. Clarke. But because it's adapted by a master director, it works.
You guys, especially Spartan completely missed the point, the movie presents a dilemma using the sci-fi element as a plot point, none of the aliens, 3000 years and beyond ultimately matter. They are tool to cleverly reach the point where Louise sees her life, that she will be very happy for ~10-15 years, but ultimately loses everything. She actively makes the choice to lose Ian and her Daughter in the future. Would you have a child knowing it dies in 10 years? Would you fall in love and marry, knowing that ultimately they leave you. This is why it's so brilliant and profound because to her the answer is yes, that's why she asks him in the end, would you change a thing, because she is trying to justify it to herself, knowing he won't be ok with it ultimately, no matter what he says.
Exactly. We don't need to know exactly what happens in 3,000 years. All we need to know is that aliens will need humans help in the future, which is their motivation for giving Louise the gift of their language. Spoon-feeding the audience about every detail in the future would have strayed from the main point of the film and the director is respecting the audience's intelligence by leaving that part open-ended so that we can focus on the main themes of the movie instead.
@@januarybaby1063 Hrm, both those movies are in my top 5 all time but I'd put Arrival higher. Maybe because I'm a parent so this hits harder for me. Plus, as good as Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet were, Amy Adams is just transcendent. But yeah, there's a theme in my top movies. This, Eternal Sunshine, and Interstellar especially all deal with themes of time, relationships, and memory.
I don't know if you noticed that she wrote a book teaching others the heptapode language. During that gala you see a banner in the back that had the language. Meaning that by teaching Louise the language, she would teach others and humanity would start unlocking time and united together. This was the gift (weapon) that they offered. It was irrelevant what the event in 3,000 years would be, as nobody in the movie would be alive by then. They gave the information that was needed and then left. I liked how they resolved the plot but left it slightly open ended.
12 ships, 90 minute "conversation" sessions, 12 x 90mins = 18 hours. The entire "air cycling" time. In other words there is only 1 alien ship. But it is in 12 places at once.
The first time I watched this, it was the line 'I don't understand. Who is this child?' that made everything instantly click for me, and it broke my heart. She knew the outcome of her life, she knew the absolute heartbreak and pain she would experience losing her child, and she chose it anyway. To her, the happy times living with her daughter (and husband) was worth the devastation. There's also the idea that she told Ian that their daughter would die, and he was angry, angry that the choice was never his to make, and it impacted his ability to bond with his daughter, knowing she would die. It's really devastating and sorrowful, and it all emerged from that one line. The other interesting element worth discussing is - did she even have a choice? She could see the future, she knew the events that would happen, so the decision to have a baby was already made. It's a discussion about free will vs pre-determined destiny. Were these events truly already written, and Louise merely was shown a copy of the book? The point itself is not what the aliens needed humanity's help with, the point itself, as asked by Louise towards the end is 'if you could see the entire story of your life, would you change anything?' The sci-fi story merely creates the setting for this interesting discussion. The language theory stuff is also really intelligent and quite a cool concept to explore.
Okay I'd like to add to this (I wrote this comment as I was listening to your debrief, and as you're continuing to speak, more things are coming to mind) - to say it's not about what the aliens need help with is kinda unfair. The reason they shared the message in 12 parts is to make humans work together - I assume they somehow knew, seeing all of time in a non-linear fashion, that they needed humanity, and humanity would not be around in 3000 years if we continued as we were. They needed us to work together, and sharing this language, but trying to encourage us to come to work together was how they tried to do it. Ultimately, we failed to do so, and they needed to use Louise as the catalyst for forcing us too. General Zhang didn't learn the language, but when Louise called him, he (in the future) knew what had happened in 'the past', including what she told him, so he relayed the details (his phone number and his wife's dying words) in the future, knowing she would somehow then 'know' this in the past.
nice comments! I like sci-fi for this reason. Almost all sci-fi are good. I have to say my one line description what categorizes a sci-fi story. It is "about future technology and its effects on human society." It is always about the human story but with the catalyst of advanced technology projected into the future. I like that the movie leaves a lot to interpretation. I feel that 3,000 years is far enough away that it bears almost no relation to today - therefore the risks facing us today is about fighting each other, maybe we'll hurt each other or not be able to resolve a threat from outside. Their language also may not be a big deal for the fate of humanity, I mean we probably do not need to evolve to that high a level. What was clear was that it was needed at that one moment when Louise used it with the help of the general... to calm the world so-to-speak.
8:14 It's not that she knows something that others don't, it's about her attention to the nuances of language and the cultures they belong to. If the other linguist generalizes the concept as "an argument" (thus, a confrontation/conflict), whereas she understands that in *_that_* culture, the only real reasons for "war" would be to acquire and consolidate assets ("a desire for more cows"), she's making a very important distinction between interpretations, that, as you saw in the film, is extremely important to pay attention to.
I figured this out the last time I watched a reaction to this movie! I had to scroll down to see if someone else figured it out and comment about it as well! It's sooo awesome!!
That's what the screen writer put in the script but the final words were slightly different. There was much more Mandarin dialog in the scene when she called the general. Here's everything that was spoken in the scene. He answered and said "Hello, who are you?" Louise said: "General, I'm in the American camp." "General, your wife sent me a message in my dream." "She said, you should use your courage to help save the world." "War doesn't make heroes, only orphans and widows."
We all assumed they were flashbacks only to realize they were flashforwards. Which in a way are the exact same thing. It's so hard to comprehend, but "perfect timing" doesn't make sense. It happened. Period. Doesn't matter when. Time is nonlinear. What will happen has already happened. It's a circle. If you believe that, then you can't change the future anymore than you can change the past.
No they can change it... kinda. They're not just aware of all times but living them. They're aware of the block universe, and that all times coexist and us in all our times feel they're in the only present. If Banks could merely see or know the future, then in the scene with the General she would remember she called him. But humans do things in that time to help her back then. We're seeing events in an order to show the audience that the special thing about this ability is that your versions in different times can interact through knowledge. It isn't that time is linear and you can know it all. Time isn't linear and they're living it
Spartans a little slow but I appreciate the enthusiasm lol. Yes, every question was answered clearly. And if you paid attention, it’s not a story about aliens it’s a story about humans.
Spartan...the aliens in the movie are incidental. The movie is about Louise and how she approaches life. The help by humanity in 3000 yrs is just a plot point
Zero sum games are more commonly referred to than non zero sum games. A zero sum game is one where for there to be winners, there have to be losers, and the outcomes balance each other out (because the sum of the earnings is 0). This is basically most games, think tic-tac-toe, tennis, football etc. In a non zero sum game, there is no such condition: cooperation is most often key for this type of games
I wish more people got some basic economics education in school. But I suspect most governments running those schools feel it's more beneficial to their power if they keep the population ignorant.
Pudgey, your comment/sentiment about the importance of communication, is 'say what you mean, and mean what you say'... As for understanding time, by the end of the movie, all time is happening at the same time for Louise, which is why the effects are being felt by her at the beginning of the film. Such a clever film...
This movie now just serves to answer the question "How many people know what canary in the mine means?" And for me it is shocking to discover that almost none of "younger" generation has any idea. Soon people won't know anything without Google telling them...that's sad.
@9:39😂 Spartan: "What's all that cloud stuff coming off it, is that just the area?" Pudge: "I don't think so because that's quite low for clouds." 🤣😂🤣😂 Come on S & P!!! 🤔You never seen FOG before???🤣🤣🤣
I've always felt the undercurrent of this movie is that life isn't about the destination, it's about what you do while you are here. That there will always be pain and loss, but the joys you experience on the journey are worth the price.
The tool, the weapon is how we perceive time, for us time is linear, but what happens if time isn't linear for you anymore. The future, past and present are our conception of time, for the aliens and later the protagonist through understanding of their circular language it isn't. Therefore she can change the presence by knowing the future, but still even though she knows these things and could have opted out of losing her unborn daughter, she chose to give live to her and lose her. Awesome movie, awesome performance and awesome story ( I think it's a short story originally ).
In the movie we see the process of Louise learning the Heptapod language. And in one of her future “visions” she sees that she ends up writing the book on the alien language. Beyond her own life, the book will enable humanity to learn the language as well and they will be able to think non-linearly the way Louise does. Somehow, this enables humanity to help the Heptapods in the future. Regarding changing fate, I’m not clear because according to their language, the end and the beginning are one complete whole, a circle. You see your experience from beginning to end. I’m not sure how change fits into a completed circle. Maybe as you make choices, your circle changes. The more I think about it, you might be able to see/experience the future consequences of your choices. That would be a very enlightened way to live.
It's an interesting mind bender. If you change something, then that's the way it always would've been so your future memories would be altered and you'd never know you made the change in the first place. So did you really change anything or is hst just how it always was? Fun to ponder on fate vs choice.
I appreciate you saying what I needed to say. It's a mind-bending thought that your choice will affect what happens next. That's always true, but would knowing what happens next change your choice? Do you accept that consequence? Does it make you happy? Life is a bunch of choices.
Spartan, I personally have looked into death a lot. Way more than most. What I have learned is that life is like a spark from a flint. Life is so fast that separating start from end might be pointless. It was about that moment of light or spark that was the gift. So life, in a way, might be something like this alien gift. The moment someone arrives in your life, you also lose them. Because its so fast separating the two is pointless. Struggling against it is futile, like Ian chooses to do. The only thing that we can do is enjoy it, like Louise does. This is one of my favorite movies. I think Pudgey might be alien.
The beautiful music at the beginning and the end was "One the Nature of Daylight" from Max Richter. A piece of music that always brings tears to my eyes.
And realizing that Abbott perceives time in a non-linear fashion, he knew he was going to die, and still he/she/it exercised free will to go on this mission, because it was worth it. Louise is doing the same thing. And it is a mirror to all of us; are we consciously living our lives and be present for every moment despite of what we know will come. The same thing is true after a break up between people. It is better to have love and lost, than to never experienced love.
The choice Louise made is reflected in the choice Abbott made. Abbott came to Earth knowing that he would die here, and exactly how. Abbott knew it was worth it, because giving humanity their language would save the heptapod species in 3,000 years. Having Hannah was worth it to Louise because she knew as tragic as the end of that story would be, there would be so much more joy and Hannah's life was still important and worth living. Ultimately we all die, some sooner than others, but the tragedy of our ultimate ends don't negate the value of the lives we have before that time.
22:36 “the fact they have names shows a higher intelligence” lol the control over gravity and the ability to travel through space wasn’t a giveaway huh Spartan? Lmfao
A bird can travel through the air in a way we cannot, are they more intelligent? Isn't there a short list of how we categorize intelligent life forms and a big one is self awareness ex they see a mirror & know they are seeing themselves vs attack the "stranger" staring back at them?
Louise could change her future by telling Ian that they will have a kid thats going to get sick. But she says in the movie that she CHOOSE to embrace the moments instead despite knowning the outcome. So with that said humanity can help the heptapods in the future because they can change the outcome once understanding the universal language.
The point really is that Louise is not changing the future. The heptapods are the solution for the conflict that happens in the movie, but they are also the cause. That is the logical conclusion once you assume that Einstein was right about the distinction between past, present, and future being a stubborn illusion. The heptapods must know that humanity will have helped them because the humans see their arrival as an intervention that has solved other conflicts that may have happened afterward. We can only assume that two (or more) outcomes of a situation can be (equally) possible because we can not perceive the outcome yet. Only after the act. But the heptapods and who holds their "weapon" can perceive the outcome of an action before the act. It is very much the same as the message in the The Matrix series. It is not about making a decision but only about understanding the decision that allows you to see beyond it. Louise can see beyond her decision to have a child, and since she understands why she did it, she can not make any other decision. Louise is not changing the future but more establishing the future the heptapods will have already been living in.
@@UltimaTheSeraph In the book, yes, but not in the movie. Villeneuve made very clear in the interviews that Louise had free will and could have decided to change things. The "Louise cannot change the future. It already happened." is your assumption, it's never stated in the film. Probably because it's a trope many other movies and books have used as a premise. Non-linear just means that something does not progress or develop smoothly from one stage to the next in a logical way. Instead, it can make sudden changes, or maybe develops in different directions at the same time. It doesn't have to be a neverchanging circle or route.
@cherrypi_b so the director is trying to say "nope ignoring the book Louise can change the future"? Why would he directly contradict source material? Or was it simply he personally thinks and hopes that vs any "you better interpret my film as diverging from the books on this point"?
@@cherrypi_bthe thing is, making it free will open up a massive plot hole: Abbott's choice. Why would Abbott choose to die when it wasn't necessary? Abbott knew it was a bomb, Abbott knew how long it would take to detonate. The whole bomb scene became unnecessary, Abbott could simply invite Louis to board the ship like Costello did and the result would be the same. So unless Abbott had no choice, the whole bomb scene is a moot and a massive plot hole.
I share a tear each watching, there is just something so sad in knowing u gonna lose all u love, but being brave enough to go trough it for all little moments of love
Theres two visions you missed one is the book she wrote that teaches the world of how to understand the language second shes in a class room teaching it to the students. As the years go by the entire earth will experience non-linear time!!!
@@amrbasri68 One may, of course, simply spend the rest of their lives on pursuits such as watching TH-cam, should that be their desire. Everyone who has learned the heptapod language will not be surprised by your choice to not learn it.
@@amrbasri68well, you can simply not learn the language. You can only experience the non-linear time perception if you immerse yourself in their language.
@dondumitru7093 damn coming out strong, whats up ur behind man. I meant it as a joke. Like what if this language gets pushed on kids, and the kids end up being depressed. No need for that attitude and condescending reply
They use the bird as a practical air test. This is an old miners trick. They used to bring a caged bird into the mines for safety, and if the bird passes out they know the air quality/oxygen levels are bad and they need to get out of there. Birds are generally more sensitive to air quality changes and for example gasses, so if they notice the bird starting to act strange or pass out its a clear warning that something is wrong and they need to get out.
Yes! Because even with the advances in science in the last century we still have no instrument that can test for all the different things that affect air quality (gas composition, poisonous chemicals, poisonous offgassing from molds, & more) in a quick enough way to be a helpful warning. While all the scientific advances we have now are amazing, it's still important to remember that sometimes the "old" way of doing certain things is still the best!
The bird is the "canary in the coal mine". If you're not familiar with that concept, miners used to bring canaries into the mines with them because the birds would be affected by adverse air conditions/particulates before the miners....giving them warning and, hopefully, allowing the miners to get out before THEY were overcome. That's why when Dr. Banks glances over and realizes that the bird is, in fact, okay, she decides she can chance removing her hazmat protection.
And the canary was an important member of the team, not a sacrificial animal. Soon as the canary starts having trouble they get the canary out of the mine, too, so they can keep reusing it.
It takes 3000 years for humanity to reach a point that can help the heptapods, why is irrelevant as humanity doesn't even know this yet, after being given the language and a few being able to see all of their time at once. Allowing those people to help humanity reach that point. And yet it still takes 3000 years due to the state we are in now.
Aliens in most science fiction universes are quite aware that humans are insane, yet highly-adaptable mad scientists who will pull miracles out of their butts as soon as as they're under pressure. We're the "hold my beer" species, the "look Ma, no hands" species. We do the things that no advanced civilization would ever do, just because we want to find out what will happen if we try. That's a very dangerous trait, which is why they usually avoid contact with us, but it's also a very useful one if they run into trouble. Who else would think to "reverse the polarity" on that carefully engineered piece of technology that has a specific calibration and standardized operating limits? Who else would wake up from a dream about a "flux capacitor" and then actually build one with stolen Libyan plutonium and test it on a beloved pet? It took the aliens millennia of heavier-than-air flight on their planets before they dared risk breaking the sound barrier, but we have mad lads figuring out how to cook food with jet engines just because we got bored one day. What is it they need us to do in 3,000 years that they're incapable of doing? I can imagine all sorts of crazy things. In 3,000 years we're probably way ahead of them in technology.
This leads me to wonder whether a Heptapod-speaker's vision is limited to events personally experienced within his or her lifetime. It seems reasonable and, if so, Costello or whoever initiated this mission must be destined to still be alive 3000 years hence. Otherwise, how would they know they'd need us then?
@@Yaktahbay Shared knowledge chains. It's a sci-fi concept rarely tapped into. So you have multiple people who live and can experience all of their personal time together, you can link up with another who can as well who outlives you, and that person to another who outlives them. Each a chain link given information like a game of telephone. And just like a game of telephone, there is the issue of data reliance and ensuring it doesn't change at each handoff. Not sure if the writer went into that on this book.
I swear Spartan makes Pudgey dumber, lol. Like Pudgey will be on the verge of understanding it all, and Spartan will introduce all these red herrings and confuse her.
This movie is phenomenal. Absolutely love the writing, acting, directing, soundtrack, plot twist, etc. This one hits "the heart" and "the head (cerebral, intelligent)" in equal measure.
One tie-in is the reading of the preface of Louise's earlier book: That language "can be the first WEAPON drawn in a conflict". Clues like that become obvious upon re-watching the movie. :)
I studied theoretical linguistics, and this movie was such a nerdgasm --- Also, in linguistics and learning sciences, writing is considered a form of technology ... :)
They keep saying weapon. That's meant to be confusing. Remember, Louise said that they don't know if the aliens know the difference between weapon and tool. So really, what they were probably saying was that Louise is a tool., and their language is a tool.
Its actually a reference to the forward of her book. "It is the first weapon drawn in a conflict." They call it a weapon, because she called it a weapon.
16:13 Google the term "canary in a coal mine' Pudgey. They bring the canary, because if the air is spoilt, the bird will die first, giving crews time to escape.
I don’t blame Ian but I also can’t be mad at Louise about the child. She knows the good times with her daughter and all the love and she can’t keep her alive. His stance is why have a child at all if you know she’ll suffer and die. It hurts either way for her.
Every parent knows their kid is going to die someday. Louise just knows when and how. But she also knows exactly how much joy Hannah will have in her life, and how much joy she'll bring to others for as long as she's around.
The ending always get me emotional, then again I have a soft spot for being able to take your whole life and shrink it down to quick memories in seconds. Make you wish you appreciated the moments you had in life and with people more.
I think this is one of the few movies that you really have to watch a few times to truly understand how good of a movie it it. I've watched it many many times, and almost every time I've seen it something else interesting has been revealed to me. When I first saw it in theaters, I barely understood it- only that I loved the score/visuals/directing of the movie, but then I watched it again a while after and was able to understand it more clearly because I knew what they were trying to convey. Overall I think this is a movie that is more appreciated every time its viewed.
I think the human story you missed the point of wasn’t that she couldn’t save the marriage or daughter despite knowing the future. It was that despite knowing they would separate and the daughter would die, she chose to have that life anyway because of the joy it brought her. Like, would you, Spartan, have chosen to not marry Pudgey, if you could see that she would die of cancer in 10 years or would you spare yourself the heartache? The movie is telling her story that she decides her life is better with having lived some part of it with her daughter in her life, despite the grief she knew would result in the end. And her husband left her because she didn’t tell him she knew the daughter would die, and had got him to have the daughter with her anyway. He was mad that she took his agency away, and could have spared himself the pain by not having the daughter. That was too much for him, knowing his little girl was going to die before him. It’s about determinism. She’s not destined to have the child. She now knows what will happen if she chooses her current path and has the power to change it. So should she? There is no destiny here. Like humanity, she has the power to change it, via this gift from the heptapods. The reason they didn’t focus on what happens to the aliens and humanity as a whole is because that wasn’t the story. It was a beautiful story because it was a human emotional story. The reason there were 12 ships was because they needed to divide up their language across the world to get us to work together once we understood the language and what it helps us do. They knew to do that because they can see time like we can see spatial dimensions around us. They know if they put all the pieces in the right place across time, it will have the desired result. Like how we know that drawing a line between two dots makes a line that connects two dots. That’s the power their language gives us.
Yes, The reason some fail to understand this movie is because they still think of time as linear, aka, past-present-future. But in non- linear time all timelines (past,present,future)are intertwined and happen all at once. No start, no ending.
It isn't a conventional story so much as it was an experience. Much like Rendezvous With Rama - which has almost no plot, in the normal sense, just exploring an alien spaceship with no "answers" - just experience. This is the same. This is like going on a walk in some strange new place that is full of things you have never seen before. It's an experience, but the only "plot" is that you are walking and experiencing things.
The heart of the movie is summed up in the last few minutes: If you could see your whole life from start to finish, would you change things? Ian: Maybe I'd say what I felt more often Louise: Despite knowing the journey... and where it leads... I embrace it. And I welcome every moment of it. Way to face the tragedy and joy in life. Love this movie
The purpose of the bird - it's a 'canary in a coal mine'. Miners would take canaries or other small birds in cages with them, because they were small they would be affected by any toxic gases much faster which would alert the miners to evacuate. Modern detectors replaced this. In the movie, they use the bird because in the ship they may be exposed to a gas or substance that we can't detect with human technology, but it would still likely affect the bird and alert them.
@tyronnemoosa4741 I watched the whole thing to get the whole story. This my reaction to their reaction. Same thing... you can disagree with me but not cancel my opinion.
The bird is in there just like a canary in a coal mine. Canaries are more sensitive to air then we are, if there's a poison gas or low oxygen they will go first.
They used birds in mines in the old days to tell when they hit a gas pocket. Natural gas doesn't have a smell we can detect so when the bird drops dead it's time to exit.
Oh, man, when Spartan so confidently asserted that Pudgey was wrong about Ian being the father, I just laughed because I knew the comeuppance was on its way. How has he NOT learned yet to never question Queen Pudgey?? This may be my favorite sci-fi film ever, but I am behind on a few big ones, especially "Interstellar" but I'm seeing it in IMAX coming up whe it is rereleased in theaters in a few months.
I imagine someone else mentioned it, but I felt like, when Louise says she chose to embrace what was to come, it was less that she could choose to do or not to have the child, but to choose to enjoy and love her child. I don't think it was even much of a choice in her head then, because to her, her child had already lived, and been loved, and died, because time wasn't linear for her. It's a different thing to not have a child because you know they will have a disease, and to have had a child you loved and died, and asking if you'd go back and make it so the child would never have lived. It's tragic, but it's also beautiful in equal parts Also I always took it that General Shang had known at least some of the language, even if he didn't know all of it, because he was working with the heptapods.
The film takes a very extreme version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and expands it into its scifi concept. I forget who exactly said it, but one way to write a good science fiction story is to choose a particular thing to be "the scifi concept" for the story and leave everything around it as grounded as you can and follow the implications of what you changed about the world. A lot of people who have studied linguistics hear alarm bells when Sapir-Whorf comes up because there are a lot of misleading "factoids" that get passed onto the general public. Stuff like "The Inuit have 50 words for snow," and the implication that they perceive these different kinds of snow BECAUSE OF their language. But language is created by people and people are using their cultural perspective and describing their environments. Plus in that particular case, the grammar of the language in question has sort of affixes that do a similar job as adjectives do in English. So, are "fluffy snow" and "mushy snow" different words for snow in English? Anyway, it is a great film which shows how a single "What if" concept can be a great starting point for a story.
I think the gift was to help humanity come together, work together for once. Humanity will only be able to help them in the future if we are working together.
A couple comedic recommendations for your science fiction journey are "The Fifth Element" and "Galaxy Quest" but I'd LOVE to see you two react to the frightening "Alien"!
the thing is that "Weapon" is their language. in the middle of the movie we get the "when you fully sync in other foreign language you start to rewire your brain" or something like that. well, thats actually happen in real life when people are learning a new language, you have to start thinking, speak and see things in that language, and consequently you start to dream in that language (sorry for being repetitive, but its just to really help the understanding, bc spartan said he never experienced that, so i assume he only speaks english). so basically what end up happening is Louise start thinking like an heptapod does, so she starts to percieve the world and reality itself like them, where time is not linear like it is for us (past, present and future), for them, it all happens at the same time, like the black hole scene from interstellar where cooper visits his past and sees himself talking to murph, for him the past and present are the same in that moment. thats why Louise seems surprised when the china commander shows her his private phone number, even tho she's "in the future", that scene happens at the same time at the one "in the present" of the movie. from there you must have already understood the rest of the movie. I hope this extense explanation can clarify some of your doubts about the plot. see ya (disclaimer: english is not my first language, so im sorry if some words are out of place, i tried my best
The answer to Spartan's question is that human will now be able to perceive time like the Heptapods. Basically. We'll be able to see the future and avoid the end of humanity as we know it.
Still really hoping y’all will get to eventually cover the series “Dark”, with or without it winning a Patreon poll. I think it’s literally right up your alley and IMO one of, if not the best, SciFi shows ever made
After the movie, you are asking questions and thinking about what the movie was trying to say ? Good - because good sci-fi is not about FX and CGI, monsters and mayhem… it’s about creating a different perspective for the audience to look at ourselves and our own emotions and decisions.
16:15 Pudgey and Spartan ask what the bird is for -- In old times, miners used canaries in a cage as an early warning for environmental changes, like oxygen levels, carbon monoxide, or other air toxicities. "The bird's rapid breathing rate, small size, and high metabolism, compared to the miners, led birds in dangerous mines to succumb before the miners, thereby giving the miners time to take action." In the film, the principle is the same - Basics. At 21:11, we see Louise reference this when she looks to the bird and sees that it's fine, so she takes her suit off.
So, the bird is the canary in a coal mine. If the air is toxic, the bird will start freaking out. Also, in the context of this movie the canary is also a peace offering. "Look how well we treat organisms lesser than us" kind of thing. (edit: 30:10 👊Spartan)
The gift of this language will help humanity in the future, in 3000 years, to perceive the future and time in different ways and see important events before they happen, regarding our planet and how to guide our race through it in order to survive longer. The hectapods realize how important life is. Their race is ending. All they could do is help our race as much as they could, so that the same thing does not happen to us too. Its a love letter to "life" and how precious it is for all beings. At least that's the way I choose to perceive this script and I love it. This is the important bit, but it requires sacrifices such as the one Louise is doing here, knowing all her future and yet still choosing to embrace it. We still walk the way how it was meant to be walked, but the language gift will help humanity in the far future, future generations but not necessarily our current generation.
This is one of my favorite movies. I cry buckets every time I watch it. I suspect the child part might have to be relatable for some people. It's such a beautiful movie. I love that this movie leaves it up to you to figure out. The reason Louise figured it out so quickly is because she is good with languages, so she was able to think the way the haptapods more easily than other people. The job was to give humans their language so we can perceive nonlinear time and I believe figure out quicker how to help the heptapods. I think it would have been too confusing for the to tell us in the movie what kind of help the heptapods need. It doesn't really matter. Yeah, for the heptapods it wasn't about changing their fate, they just saw through nonlinear time that humans would help them. Canary in a coalmine. They used to take canaries down into coal mines to tell them if the air was ok to breath. Your intuition is spot on Pudgey. (Always trust your intuition.) 👍 And yes, there were hints as well. I think if you guys watch the movie again you will pick up on more things. I figured out pretty early on that she wasn't having memories. Edit: One of the heptapods was injured by the bomb. Remember one ran away and one stayed when the bomb went off. They knew it was going to happen.
Wow....this one left us thinking for some time....what a crazy scenario!
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Great reaction!! Arrival is a beautiful sci-fi film based on a short story by Ted Chiang.
You guys should react to the Blade Runner movies!
37:28 LOL Nice instincts, Pudgey... You tell Spartan...
The gift allows you to see the future but not necessarily change it; being non-linear, there is no more cause and effect. Heptapod couldn't heal Costello dying, Louis couldn't heal her daughter.
If u guys haven't watched Rush hour that movie is fun to watch 💯 recommend
my question is why would let the not mentally inclined ppl watch this movie is equivalent to torturing animals
Reactions to this movie taught me that not that many people know about the "canary in the mine" practice :D
this movie will do more to teach people about that than the education system tbh
I mean she kinda got it when she said she’d figure she would be fine and be able to breathe because the bird was okay.
Or in modern times, the California condor in the lithium mine
These Aussies don't know what Kangaroo means! 🤣
@@deek60819 I'd say it's more that the metaphor has fallen out of favor in popular culture than any fault of the education system. Sort of like "hoist on your own petard".
Spartan the answer you're seeking at the end is that the language the Heptapods gift will help the humans not blow each other up so in 3,000 years they can help the Heptapods. If the humans didn't learn their language the Heptapods know they will go extinct which in turn means their own extinction. (since they can see the future)
If time can't be changed, then the reason the heptapods helped humanity is simply "because that's what the heptapods have always done".
so I'm supposed to believe that Amy Addams taught everyone on Earth the new language?
@@bradrich2000 Not necessarily everyone just the select few that control the course of humanity's future..
@@bradrich2000 She wrote a book on the language. Anyone who wanted to learn the language and was able to apply the discipline would be able to learn the language.
Consider French. As an English-speaker, you can buy self-taught courses to learn French. How many English-speakers actually go on to learn French? Some do, but the percentage is quite small.
There would be much more motivation to learn heptapod since it represents a monumental change in the development of humanity. But yet, the language would take time to permeate thru humanity, with some people having more fluent use of the language sooner than others do.
It appears that Hannah did not grow up knowing the heptapod language. Despite the fact that we know that young children learn languages much more easily than older people do. If you were a parent, would you enroll your young child in a heptapod-immersion school?
@@dondumitru7093It’s been well proven that children don’t actually learn languages faster than adults. It’s simply that they are more immersed in it.
"Couples miscommunicate all the bloody time and they're speaking the same language. Imagine aliens!" That's a brilliant observation!
Pudgey was so excited to guess correctly that she forgot to understand how emotional and powerful the ending was
And I think Spartan was so pissed off that she guessed it early that it took him out of the film, too.
I mean, he looked to be almost crying, but couldn't over Pudgey's laugh. This movie is better in private, when you are not performing a reaction for youtube.
@patrikneperfekta7575 No these 2 and especially the female, is very emotionally immature still. Like a mid teenager... nearly soulless.
@@wadestewart5504 that’s an arbitrarily cruel thing to say. They might not have seen films with this level of depth and weren’t prepared for it, considering when I watched this film I expected “SciFi” and got so much more instead.
Yeah that constant laughing at the ’very emotional’ end was quite annoying. Also I have noticed Spartan is hella competitive, I think they both are.
The really cool thing about the Heptapods language is that since it opens time for Louise now and she sees it in a non-linear view, she can always see and visit the memories she has with her daughter, so they’ll always be together
Sucks for the daughter though
@@andrew.lp.mcneill Her daughter lived a good life. We all die eventually. Do you think that because we die it's better we never lived?
@@fakecubed Yes, I think it's better. We haven't lived for the past 14 billion years and have nothing to complain about during that time, pure tranquility and a peace. Now we are living for a few decades, come to know suffering and then, who knows. Hopefully the same nothingness as before. Dying is the worst thing anyone can experience, but you can't die if you are not born.
@@ESCLuciaSlovakia The fact you spend significant time and energy keeping yourself alive instead of checking out early is proof you’re full of shit.
@@ESCLuciaSlovakia"Dying is the worse thing anyone can experience."
😐
Yeah, no.
I feel like, what Spartan missed is that the movie isn't about the aliens or geopolitics. The movie is about Louise and how her life was affected by the arrival of these aliens. If you look at it as her story, you will see that the movie ends, the moment she decides to still have her daughter and not tell the father about the illness. That's why the emotional beats didn't hit you as much as other people because you were concentrating on the aliens that storyline. For example, we don't get any explanation how humans will help the heptapods in 3000 years because it is irrelevant to Louise's story.
Yes to everything, but, she still will tell dad that she knows they die. She's seen it already happen and she chose, like with her daughter, to experience everything that comes and just enjoy the good moments while they're happening and not focus on how things eventually end. The love she will get to experience, even if it's short, waaay out weighs the sadness that will also come.
@@1HalfbloodPrince i understand what you are saying and that it is the movies intention. but in reality 1 happy year can be followed by 30 years of grief and sadness. so i dont think the movie is realistic in that regard..
@@MetalGuitarTimo but she has the gift now to see time differently. That's what happens when you truly understand the language. Even when she will get eventually horrendously sad she can still experience the, what maybe like 14 years, she gets with her daughter. The point is that the love we get to share with people is worth whatever comes after. She would rather have experienced the love and joy, even if it's short. Sharing experiences with people is what lifes all about. Of course there's sadness, but the need for human connection is stronger. (This doesn't apply to every single person, this movie was specifically about lousie)
I agree. The impact of this movie is best experienced focusing on Louise’s story. To try to figure out the whole movie as your watching takes away from the emotion and the WEIGHT of the decision Louise makes to face the future birth life and death of both her daughter and her relationship believing it is all worth it. The courage and faith it takes to embrace the suffering to that degree for the immense joy of having and raising your child is incredible. So beautiful and hopeful.
Isn't the book called "the story of your life"? But for movie it seemed more attractive to focus on aliens.
Loved your reaction and one of my favourite films of all time.
The General's wife’s last words are “In war there are no winners, only widows.”
Never knew this. Very interesting
@@Steve-G-Maine1 that’s why I emphasised the last words not the conversation she engaged with the General before she spoke his wife’s final words. We can sort of guess she’s saying to the general who she is and why he should listen to her.
So weird you come into every single Arrival reaction and randomly say this, unprompted. It's not like it's some kind of relevatory bit of the movie that completes changes its meaning or story. Imagine just randomly walking into some conversation, saying some bit of trivia when no one asked, then walking off.
@@Pipboy989 I like this statement and I like to inform the first time reactors. I don't see the need to re-type what I said without just Copy and Pasting. I just like this cool fact that I want to share.
@@Pipboy989That's kind of what OP comments are.
"Still don't know what their job was"
It was to give their language to the humans. Their language is the "weapon", because it allows you to see time like they do
Yeah he understood that I think, what he meant was WHY they need human to see time like they do. To help them yes but for what? How seeing time like they do is gonna help them?
@@PowerlightGG I think they knew humans needed the language to be advanced enough (or maybe even exist) to help the aliens 3000 years later.
@@astragalusson Yes but help for what? I personally don't need to know, the movie is one of my favorite but I can understand people wanting to know why was it all for
@@PowerlightGG Yup I also have a friend who's an action buff, they really don't appreciate philosophical sci fi movies much. They want matter of fact sci fi action. These movies dont conclude with a bang, but rather more with an answer.
@@PowerlightGGthey need help with not going extinct.
This is one of my favorite movies. As a side note, I think people need to stop telling reactors "this is a very emotional movie," etc. because that sort of thing should be discovered upon watching. When reactors are told these things in advance, what tends to happen is they end up "bracing" themselves for something that they expect will be coming soon.
Agreed
Spoilers can be subtle. They don't have to be an event in the story, or a plot reveal.
Creating anticipation is a spoiler. "This is a great movie" becomes a spoiler.
Imagine Louise watching Game of Thrones. The Heptapods screwed her.
setting up an expectation is disrupting the storytelling reveal. It becomes impossible for the reactors to have the same experience because they've been "clued in" and told ahead of time "what to feel." It spoils the carefully crafted experience... by the writers and film makers.
@@mannygee005 exactly.
👉Yesterday, in the ER, my mother's partner:
"That race today..."
Me: "Don't say _anything_ ! I DVRed it."
Him: "I know! I'm just sayin', they've never started a race on rain tires before."
Me: 🤬
He's 90...🙄
@@mannygee005 I make reaction videos myself, with a whopping 2 loyal viewers haha, but I never wanna know what to expect from a movie/show. All I need to know is the genre. I consume reaction videos more than I make them, but it's always been a big pet peeve of mine when the comments clue-in the reactors on "how" to feel about a movie/show they're requesting, or overhype what's coming if it's a series. People should just let things happen, because that's how you get the most genuine reaction, which I think is the whole point...otherwise you're just performing and not so much reacting anymore.
Say, even if Spartan & Pudgey DID end up getting emotional during Arrival, would it have come off sincere if they already knew they were meant to be emotional? When I watched this movie for the first time years ago, all I knew was that it was sci-fi and starred Amy Adams. I ended up bawling my eyes out at the end.
The canary is there to alert them to noxious gases - it would die first 😕. Miners used to take them underground before modern technology.
Hence the phrase "canary in the coal mine"
It wouldn't die. They watched it's behavior. It'd make noises, and they'd all come back up, including the canary. "Noxious" gases were also not very common, 90% of the time, it's just poor ventilation and oxygen running out.
@@JigInsane It rather surprises me the number of reactors to this movie who seem to have never heard the phrase "canary in the coal mine". I suppose that represents progress, since actual coal mines are terribly unhealthy places to work, so younger people having less contact with the trappings of coal mining would be a good thing.
@@dondumitru7093I know right in the UK it's taught when your young and we visited coal and gold mines as school trips
That's an awesome bit of trivia that makes alot of sense.
But also... poor birds 😢
Since the heptapods experience time nonlinearly, 'when' they arrived, they already knew English, they had already met Louise, they already knew that Abbot would die in the explosion, etc. When Louise first enters the ship, Abbot and Costello would be, like, "Hey, Louise is finally here, maybe we can get started with this thing?" but also, Abbot might have been "Hold up a sec', I'm going to die towards the end of this process, maybe we could slow down some and enjoy the experience instead of just rushing through?"
From the standpoint of the heptapods, they already had the script, and it was like they were acting in a show. Maybe the show could be called, I dunno, maybe, "Mommy and Daddy Talk to Animals"?
It is kinda funny that you still describe the events of the heptapods on earth in a linear fashion.
@@michaelklaus English is a very clumsy language.
I think there's still choice involved. Abbott has to choose to continue towards its death. Visions can not come to pass - I think we're to assume that the way humans are supposed to "use [this] weapon" is to avoid the pitfalls of in-fighting and world wars and violence, etc, so they're capable of helping the heptapods later. I assume bad actors could still choose to try and wage "disunification."
@@eschatological I think it's clearly an element of the storytelling to not give an outright answer to the question of "Is the future predetermined?" It is left unanswered in order to give the audience another question to engage with.
Nevertheless, I suggest that the death of Abbott is non-conclusive evidence that the future is predetermined. If it weren't, wouldn't Abbott have simply decided to eject Louise and Ian a little earlier, so that Abbott could also get out of range of the explosion?
We can invent answers for why that scenario might not be, but those would be moving farther and farther from what the movie actually supports through what it shows us. We should give large credit to what the movie actually shows us, and not try to invent lots of things that aren't really supported by the shown narrative (for example, don't invent that Abbott was sick and was going to die a more painful death in a few days anyway).
@@dondumitru7093 I think Abbott's decisions are predicated on how quickly Louise picks up on what she needs to do, which is out of Abbott's control. We see that Louise doesn't have knowledge of Shang's phone number in the 18 months between the departure and the gala, but as soon as he shows her, she realizes she knew it all along. In that sense, maybe Abbott doesn't really know it's going to die until everything prior solidifies to that certainty.
If you ever watched the Matrix trilogy, there's a line about fate vs. free will that I think applies here: the future is set in as much as you've already made the choice, based on every other choice and outside factors that have built you, and "seeing the future" as the Oracle does is merely about understand why you made that choice and what it logically leads to.
Here's how I understood it - Louise didn't really have 'visions' of the future, she was just living all of those events but not how humans usually live them, in a clear sort of order. So when the general showed her the number, she was surprised because she lived that moment as it was and didn't realise it was the future. When you fully embrace that there really is no present and future for the heptapods and for anyone who learns their language, then you can see why it's a 'weapon'.
Not visions, memories. Memories are merely our perception of time beyond the Present.
@@RealBLAlley it's not memories, its her living her life in different parts of it. If time isn’t linear, then there is no "present" meaning that she is living in future, present, and past all at once.
@@yoda9256 Read what I said again. Also, time is not linear. Our perception of time is linear.
@@RealBLAlley sure, but the concept of memories insinuates that they have occurred in the past, but if time is nonlinear, then there can be no past, which means that she is living her entire life at once
@@yoda9256 For normal humans, memory is all of the past, in linear order. The Heptapods perceive all time, as does Louise after she rewires her brain by learning their language. It's a real phenomena experienced by a relative few people with temporal sequence-space synesthesia.
A lot of sci-fi try to explain things in science terms, but it usually doesn't work and ends up as useless exposition. If you think about it, many things in this movie are a mystery and basically magic to us: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" - Arthur C. Clarke. But because it's adapted by a master director, it works.
not me tearing up as soon as "On the nature of Daylight" starts playing.... Gosh I love this movie
It also hit super hard in episode 3 of The Last of Us
@@ofthenearfuturedefinitely!
It’s in shutter island too
The weapon is knowledge. The more she understood the language the more she was aware of the past, present, and the future as one.
You guys, especially Spartan completely missed the point, the movie presents a dilemma using the sci-fi element as a plot point, none of the aliens, 3000 years and beyond ultimately matter. They are tool to cleverly reach the point where Louise sees her life, that she will be very happy for ~10-15 years, but ultimately loses everything. She actively makes the choice to lose Ian and her Daughter in the future. Would you have a child knowing it dies in 10 years? Would you fall in love and marry, knowing that ultimately they leave you. This is why it's so brilliant and profound because to her the answer is yes, that's why she asks him in the end, would you change a thing, because she is trying to justify it to herself, knowing he won't be ok with it ultimately, no matter what he says.
Similar to Eternal Sunshine but not quite as good
Yeah it's more of a philosophical film with a sci-fi wrapper.
Exactly. We don't need to know exactly what happens in 3,000 years. All we need to know is that aliens will need humans help in the future, which is their motivation for giving Louise the gift of their language. Spoon-feeding the audience about every detail in the future would have strayed from the main point of the film and the director is respecting the audience's intelligence by leaving that part open-ended so that we can focus on the main themes of the movie instead.
The movie is about Hannas arrival. The aliens where just a part of it....
@@januarybaby1063 Hrm, both those movies are in my top 5 all time but I'd put Arrival higher. Maybe because I'm a parent so this hits harder for me. Plus, as good as Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet were, Amy Adams is just transcendent. But yeah, there's a theme in my top movies. This, Eternal Sunshine, and Interstellar especially all deal with themes of time, relationships, and memory.
I don't know if you noticed that she wrote a book teaching others the heptapode language. During that gala you see a banner in the back that had the language. Meaning that by teaching Louise the language, she would teach others and humanity would start unlocking time and united together. This was the gift (weapon) that they offered. It was irrelevant what the event in 3,000 years would be, as nobody in the movie would be alive by then. They gave the information that was needed and then left. I liked how they resolved the plot but left it slightly open ended.
12 ships, 90 minute "conversation" sessions, 12 x 90mins = 18 hours. The entire "air cycling" time. In other words there is only 1 alien ship. But it is in 12 places at once.
The first time I watched this, it was the line 'I don't understand. Who is this child?' that made everything instantly click for me, and it broke my heart. She knew the outcome of her life, she knew the absolute heartbreak and pain she would experience losing her child, and she chose it anyway. To her, the happy times living with her daughter (and husband) was worth the devastation.
There's also the idea that she told Ian that their daughter would die, and he was angry, angry that the choice was never his to make, and it impacted his ability to bond with his daughter, knowing she would die. It's really devastating and sorrowful, and it all emerged from that one line.
The other interesting element worth discussing is - did she even have a choice? She could see the future, she knew the events that would happen, so the decision to have a baby was already made. It's a discussion about free will vs pre-determined destiny. Were these events truly already written, and Louise merely was shown a copy of the book?
The point itself is not what the aliens needed humanity's help with, the point itself, as asked by Louise towards the end is 'if you could see the entire story of your life, would you change anything?' The sci-fi story merely creates the setting for this interesting discussion. The language theory stuff is also really intelligent and quite a cool concept to explore.
Okay I'd like to add to this (I wrote this comment as I was listening to your debrief, and as you're continuing to speak, more things are coming to mind) - to say it's not about what the aliens need help with is kinda unfair. The reason they shared the message in 12 parts is to make humans work together - I assume they somehow knew, seeing all of time in a non-linear fashion, that they needed humanity, and humanity would not be around in 3000 years if we continued as we were. They needed us to work together, and sharing this language, but trying to encourage us to come to work together was how they tried to do it. Ultimately, we failed to do so, and they needed to use Louise as the catalyst for forcing us too.
General Zhang didn't learn the language, but when Louise called him, he (in the future) knew what had happened in 'the past', including what she told him, so he relayed the details (his phone number and his wife's dying words) in the future, knowing she would somehow then 'know' this in the past.
Yes, and a key is her telling Hannah that the disease is "unstoppable".
nice comments! I like sci-fi for this reason. Almost all sci-fi are good. I have to say my one line description what categorizes a sci-fi story. It is "about future technology and its effects on human society." It is always about the human story but with the catalyst of advanced technology projected into the future.
I like that the movie leaves a lot to interpretation. I feel that 3,000 years is far enough away that it bears almost no relation to today - therefore the risks facing us today is about fighting each other, maybe we'll hurt each other or not be able to resolve a threat from outside. Their language also may not be a big deal for the fate of humanity, I mean we probably do not need to evolve to that high a level. What was clear was that it was needed at that one moment when Louise used it with the help of the general... to calm the world so-to-speak.
Great summary.
@@YaktahbayRight? That's a problem I always had with the short story.
37:30....... "No Pudgey no. You're smarter than this.." ....Spartan. BAHAHAHAAAAA
This is one of my favorite films ever. It was all done so well, I never get tired of revisiting it.
It's better the second watch when you understand what's happening. But it's still one of the best movies ever on the first watch.
8:14 It's not that she knows something that others don't, it's about her attention to the nuances of language and the cultures they belong to. If the other linguist generalizes the concept as "an argument" (thus, a confrontation/conflict), whereas she understands that in *_that_* culture, the only real reasons for "war" would be to acquire and consolidate assets ("a desire for more cows"), she's making a very important distinction between interpretations, that, as you saw in the film, is extremely important to pay attention to.
Agree, "desire for more cows" sounds benign until you are in a culture in the middle of a famine and you would go to war for a food source.
Spartan"I still don't know what their job was".Talk about a palm to the face,lol.
"It is the first weapon drawn in a conflict." This is how Louise describes language in the forward of her book.
I freakin' love this movie.
Ooh never made that connection! Good one.
I figured this out the last time I watched a reaction to this movie! I had to scroll down to see if someone else figured it out and comment about it as well! It's sooo awesome!!
In the end, it wasn't alien's but baby's Arrival.
This is it right here
General Shang's Wife's dying words... "There are no winners in war, only widows."
That's what the screen writer put in the script but the final words were slightly different. There was much more Mandarin dialog in the scene when she called the general. Here's everything that was spoken in the scene.
He answered and said "Hello, who are you?"
Louise said: "General, I'm in the American camp."
"General, your wife sent me a message in my dream."
"She said, you should use your courage to help save the world."
"War doesn't make heroes, only orphans and widows."
wow, awesome! Something to think about...
We all assumed they were flashbacks only to realize they were flashforwards. Which in a way are the exact same thing.
It's so hard to comprehend, but "perfect timing" doesn't make sense. It happened. Period. Doesn't matter when. Time is nonlinear. What will happen has already happened. It's a circle. If you believe that, then you can't change the future anymore than you can change the past.
No they can change it... kinda. They're not just aware of all times but living them. They're aware of the block universe, and that all times coexist and us in all our times feel they're in the only present. If Banks could merely see or know the future, then in the scene with the General she would remember she called him. But humans do things in that time to help her back then. We're seeing events in an order to show the audience that the special thing about this ability is that your versions in different times can interact through knowledge. It isn't that time is linear and you can know it all. Time isn't linear and they're living it
@@geneticjen9312 No, I really think she just didn't realize who she was talking to. It was more of a "Oh, YOU are the one I called, aren't you?"
Spartans a little slow but I appreciate the enthusiasm lol. Yes, every question was answered clearly. And if you paid attention, it’s not a story about aliens it’s a story about humans.
Spartan...the aliens in the movie are incidental. The movie is about Louise and how she approaches life. The help by humanity in 3000 yrs is just a plot point
Yes! This isn't an alien movie. They're a vehicle to get to the real story about journey vs destination.
Zero sum games are more commonly referred to than non zero sum games.
A zero sum game is one where for there to be winners, there have to be losers, and the outcomes balance each other out (because the sum of the earnings is 0). This is basically most games, think tic-tac-toe, tennis, football etc. In a non zero sum game, there is no such condition: cooperation is most often key for this type of games
I wish more people got some basic economics education in school. But I suspect most governments running those schools feel it's more beneficial to their power if they keep the population ignorant.
Pudgey, your comment/sentiment about the importance of communication, is 'say what you mean, and mean what you say'...
As for understanding time, by the end of the movie, all time is happening at the same time for Louise, which is why the effects are being felt by her at the beginning of the film.
Such a clever film...
This movie now just serves to answer the question "How many people know what canary in the mine means?" And for me it is shocking to discover that almost none of "younger" generation has any idea.
Soon people won't know anything without Google telling them...that's sad.
@9:39😂 Spartan: "What's all that cloud stuff coming off it, is that just the area?"
Pudge: "I don't think so because that's quite low for clouds." 🤣😂🤣😂
Come on S & P!!! 🤔You never seen FOG before???🤣🤣🤣
the song in the beginning is "Max Richter - On the Nature of Daylight". Its also used in Shutter Island, which you should watch too^^
I've always felt the undercurrent of this movie is that life isn't about the destination, it's about what you do while you are here. That there will always be pain and loss, but the joys you experience on the journey are worth the price.
Very underrated movie... It is such a unique masterpiece IMO!
"imagine having all the answers but no one's listening to you" pudgey that's you every reaction my girl 😭😭
The tool, the weapon is how we perceive time, for us time is linear, but what happens if time isn't linear for you anymore. The future, past and present are our conception of time, for the aliens and later the protagonist through understanding of their circular language it isn't. Therefore she can change the presence by knowing the future, but still even though she knows these things and could have opted out of losing her unborn daughter, she chose to give live to her and lose her. Awesome movie, awesome performance and awesome story ( I think it's a short story originally ).
In the movie we see the process of Louise learning the Heptapod language. And in one of her future “visions” she sees that she ends up writing the book on the alien language.
Beyond her own life, the book will enable humanity to learn the language as well and they will be able to think non-linearly the way Louise does. Somehow, this enables humanity to help the Heptapods in the future.
Regarding changing fate, I’m not clear because according to their language, the end and the beginning are one complete whole, a circle. You see your experience from beginning to end. I’m not sure how change fits into a completed circle. Maybe as you make choices, your circle changes.
The more I think about it, you might be able to see/experience the future consequences of your choices. That would be a very enlightened way to live.
It's an interesting mind bender. If you change something, then that's the way it always would've been so your future memories would be altered and you'd never know you made the change in the first place. So did you really change anything or is hst just how it always was? Fun to ponder on fate vs choice.
I appreciate you saying what I needed to say. It's a mind-bending thought that your choice will affect what happens next. That's always true, but would knowing what happens next change your choice? Do you accept that consequence? Does it make you happy? Life is a bunch of choices.
Spartan, I personally have looked into death a lot. Way more than most. What I have learned is that life is like a spark from a flint. Life is so fast that separating start from end might be pointless. It was about that moment of light or spark that was the gift. So life, in a way, might be something like this alien gift. The moment someone arrives in your life, you also lose them. Because its so fast separating the two is pointless. Struggling against it is futile, like Ian chooses to do. The only thing that we can do is enjoy it, like Louise does. This is one of my favorite movies. I think Pudgey might be alien.
Ur analysis is good, but depressing
@@amrbasri68 Death is alien to many people.
Pudgey is so proud of herself and Spartan is so annoyed, lol
And so they both were so focused on that instead of enjoying the end of the film.
The beautiful music at the beginning and the end was "One the Nature of Daylight" from Max Richter.
A piece of music that always brings tears to my eyes.
Me too, It will be played at my funeral
@@boxmulla I played it at my mother's funeral. 😢
Just noticed that Abbott waves goodbye after drawing on the wall with her.
And realizing that Abbott perceives time in a non-linear fashion, he knew he was going to die, and still he/she/it exercised free will to go on this mission, because it was worth it. Louise is doing the same thing. And it is a mirror to all of us; are we consciously living our lives and be present for every moment despite of what we know will come. The same thing is true after a break up between people. It is better to have love and lost, than to never experienced love.
The choice Louise made is reflected in the choice Abbott made. Abbott came to Earth knowing that he would die here, and exactly how. Abbott knew it was worth it, because giving humanity their language would save the heptapod species in 3,000 years. Having Hannah was worth it to Louise because she knew as tragic as the end of that story would be, there would be so much more joy and Hannah's life was still important and worth living. Ultimately we all die, some sooner than others, but the tragedy of our ultimate ends don't negate the value of the lives we have before that time.
22:36 “the fact they have names shows a higher intelligence” lol the control over gravity and the ability to travel through space wasn’t a giveaway huh Spartan? Lmfao
'Here's your sign' - Bill Egvall
A bird can travel through the air in a way we cannot, are they more intelligent? Isn't there a short list of how we categorize intelligent life forms and a big one is self awareness ex they see a mirror & know they are seeing themselves vs attack the "stranger" staring back at them?
Different forms of intelligence honestly
@@orphanedhanyoubirds can’t invent the tech to travel through space to other planets can they?
Louise could change her future by telling Ian that they will have a kid thats going to get sick. But she says in the movie that she CHOOSE to embrace the moments instead despite knowning the outcome. So with that said humanity can help the heptapods in the future because they can change the outcome once understanding the universal language.
The point really is that Louise is not changing the future. The heptapods are the solution for the conflict that happens in the movie, but they are also the cause. That is the logical conclusion once you assume that Einstein was right about the distinction between past, present, and future being a stubborn illusion.
The heptapods must know that humanity will have helped them because the humans see their arrival as an intervention that has solved other conflicts that may have happened afterward.
We can only assume that two (or more) outcomes of a situation can be (equally) possible because we can not perceive the outcome yet. Only after the act.
But the heptapods and who holds their "weapon" can perceive the outcome of an action before the act.
It is very much the same as the message in the The Matrix series. It is not about making a decision but only about understanding the decision that allows you to see beyond it.
Louise can see beyond her decision to have a child, and since she understands why she did it, she can not make any other decision.
Louise is not changing the future but more establishing the future the heptapods will have already been living in.
The thing is, Louis cannot change the future. It already happened. Time is non-linear. It was just an illusion of free will.
@@UltimaTheSeraph In the book, yes, but not in the movie. Villeneuve made very clear in the interviews that Louise had free will and could have decided to change things. The "Louise cannot change the future. It already happened." is your assumption, it's never stated in the film. Probably because it's a trope many other movies and books have used as a premise. Non-linear just means that something does not progress or develop smoothly from one stage to the next in a logical way. Instead, it can make sudden changes, or maybe develops in different directions at the same time. It doesn't have to be a neverchanging circle or route.
@cherrypi_b so the director is trying to say "nope ignoring the book Louise can change the future"? Why would he directly contradict source material? Or was it simply he personally thinks and hopes that vs any "you better interpret my film as diverging from the books on this point"?
@@cherrypi_bthe thing is, making it free will open up a massive plot hole: Abbott's choice.
Why would Abbott choose to die when it wasn't necessary? Abbott knew it was a bomb, Abbott knew how long it would take to detonate. The whole bomb scene became unnecessary, Abbott could simply invite Louis to board the ship like Costello did and the result would be the same. So unless Abbott had no choice, the whole bomb scene is a moot and a massive plot hole.
I share a tear each watching, there is just something so sad in knowing u gonna lose all u love, but being brave enough to go trough it for all little moments of love
Theres two visions you missed one is the book she wrote that teaches the world of how to understand the language second shes in a class room teaching it to the students. As the years go by the entire earth will experience non-linear time!!!
What if someone doesnt want that 😂
@@amrbasri68 One may, of course, simply spend the rest of their lives on pursuits such as watching TH-cam, should that be their desire. Everyone who has learned the heptapod language will not be surprised by your choice to not learn it.
@@amrbasri68well, you can simply not learn the language. You can only experience the non-linear time perception if you immerse yourself in their language.
@dondumitru7093 damn coming out strong, whats up ur behind man. I meant it as a joke. Like what if this language gets pushed on kids, and the kids end up being depressed. No need for that attitude and condescending reply
@@dondumitru7093 you must be a zionist
They use the bird as a practical air test. This is an old miners trick. They used to bring a caged bird into the mines for safety, and if the bird passes out they know the air quality/oxygen levels are bad and they need to get out of there. Birds are generally more sensitive to air quality changes and for example gasses, so if they notice the bird starting to act strange or pass out its a clear warning that something is wrong and they need to get out.
Yes! Because even with the advances in science in the last century we still have no instrument that can test for all the different things that affect air quality (gas composition, poisonous chemicals, poisonous offgassing from molds, & more) in a quick enough way to be a helpful warning. While all the scientific advances we have now are amazing, it's still important to remember that sometimes the "old" way of doing certain things is still the best!
The bird is the "canary in the coal mine". If you're not familiar with that concept, miners used to bring canaries into the mines with them because the birds would be affected by adverse air conditions/particulates before the miners....giving them warning and, hopefully, allowing the miners to get out before THEY were overcome. That's why when Dr. Banks glances over and realizes that the bird is, in fact, okay, she decides she can chance removing her hazmat protection.
And the canary was an important member of the team, not a sacrificial animal. Soon as the canary starts having trouble they get the canary out of the mine, too, so they can keep reusing it.
It takes 3000 years for humanity to reach a point that can help the heptapods, why is irrelevant as humanity doesn't even know this yet, after being given the language and a few being able to see all of their time at once. Allowing those people to help humanity reach that point. And yet it still takes 3000 years due to the state we are in now.
Aliens in most science fiction universes are quite aware that humans are insane, yet highly-adaptable mad scientists who will pull miracles out of their butts as soon as as they're under pressure. We're the "hold my beer" species, the "look Ma, no hands" species. We do the things that no advanced civilization would ever do, just because we want to find out what will happen if we try. That's a very dangerous trait, which is why they usually avoid contact with us, but it's also a very useful one if they run into trouble. Who else would think to "reverse the polarity" on that carefully engineered piece of technology that has a specific calibration and standardized operating limits? Who else would wake up from a dream about a "flux capacitor" and then actually build one with stolen Libyan plutonium and test it on a beloved pet? It took the aliens millennia of heavier-than-air flight on their planets before they dared risk breaking the sound barrier, but we have mad lads figuring out how to cook food with jet engines just because we got bored one day.
What is it they need us to do in 3,000 years that they're incapable of doing? I can imagine all sorts of crazy things. In 3,000 years we're probably way ahead of them in technology.
This leads me to wonder whether a Heptapod-speaker's vision is limited to events personally experienced within his or her lifetime. It seems reasonable and, if so, Costello or whoever initiated this mission must be destined to still be alive 3000 years hence. Otherwise, how would they know they'd need us then?
@@Yaktahbay Shared knowledge chains. It's a sci-fi concept rarely tapped into. So you have multiple people who live and can experience all of their personal time together, you can link up with another who can as well who outlives you, and that person to another who outlives them. Each a chain link given information like a game of telephone.
And just like a game of telephone, there is the issue of data reliance and ensuring it doesn't change at each handoff. Not sure if the writer went into that on this book.
but once time is non-linear, we can go help them next week
I swear Spartan makes Pudgey dumber, lol. Like Pudgey will be on the verge of understanding it all, and Spartan will introduce all these red herrings and confuse her.
And shuts her down when she’s right 🤣
There are two characters working closely together, it's not rocket science he was the dad
This movie is phenomenal. Absolutely love the writing, acting, directing, soundtrack, plot twist, etc. This one hits "the heart" and "the head (cerebral, intelligent)" in equal measure.
One tie-in is the reading of the preface of Louise's earlier book: That language "can be the first WEAPON drawn in a conflict".
Clues like that become obvious upon re-watching the movie. :)
I studied theoretical linguistics, and this movie was such a nerdgasm --- Also, in linguistics and learning sciences, writing is considered a form of technology ... :)
They keep saying weapon. That's meant to be confusing. Remember, Louise said that they don't know if the aliens know the difference between weapon and tool. So really, what they were probably saying was that Louise is a tool., and their language is a tool.
Its actually a reference to the forward of her book. "It is the first weapon drawn in a conflict."
They call it a weapon, because she called it a weapon.
42:23 say it once again with Feeling Spartan!!! She is right so much more than you give her credit for. It’s a partnership not a contest
16:13 Google the term "canary in a coal mine' Pudgey. They bring the canary, because if the air is spoilt, the bird will die first, giving crews time to escape.
1:05:14 Pudgey sees things more intuitively than Spartan does.
You love pirates, you love space and sci-fi, it is really time to watch The Expanse.
YES!! The best Sci-Fi-Show ever!
Really would be curious to know if any of the Patrons are pushing for The Expanse. I'd love to see Spartan and Pudgey tackle it.
I feel like they would LOVE The Expanse.
@@coexist617 I think so too! 😁
For sure up their politics/action series taste.
I don’t blame Ian but I also can’t be mad at Louise about the child. She knows the good times with her daughter and all the love and she can’t keep her alive. His stance is why have a child at all if you know she’ll suffer and die. It hurts either way for her.
Every parent knows their kid is going to die someday. Louise just knows when and how. But she also knows exactly how much joy Hannah will have in her life, and how much joy she'll bring to others for as long as she's around.
The ending always get me emotional, then again I have a soft spot for being able to take your whole life and shrink it down to quick memories in seconds. Make you wish you appreciated the moments you had in life and with people more.
Pudgey got it right! Pudgey sees future 🐙
The weapon was the ability to exist in the past, present and the future simultaneously.
pudgey: 'oh wow its their names'
spartan: 'oh cool, circle and circle :)'
Ringo and Star
I think this is one of the few movies that you really have to watch a few times to truly understand how good of a movie it it. I've watched it many many times, and almost every time I've seen it something else interesting has been revealed to me. When I first saw it in theaters, I barely understood it- only that I loved the score/visuals/directing of the movie, but then I watched it again a while after and was able to understand it more clearly because I knew what they were trying to convey. Overall I think this is a movie that is more appreciated every time its viewed.
I think the human story you missed the point of wasn’t that she couldn’t save the marriage or daughter despite knowing the future. It was that despite knowing they would separate and the daughter would die, she chose to have that life anyway because of the joy it brought her. Like, would you, Spartan, have chosen to not marry Pudgey, if you could see that she would die of cancer in 10 years or would you spare yourself the heartache? The movie is telling her story that she decides her life is better with having lived some part of it with her daughter in her life, despite the grief she knew would result in the end. And her husband left her because she didn’t tell him she knew the daughter would die, and had got him to have the daughter with her anyway. He was mad that she took his agency away, and could have spared himself the pain by not having the daughter. That was too much for him, knowing his little girl was going to die before him.
It’s about determinism. She’s not destined to have the child. She now knows what will happen if she chooses her current path and has the power to change it. So should she? There is no destiny here. Like humanity, she has the power to change it, via this gift from the heptapods.
The reason they didn’t focus on what happens to the aliens and humanity as a whole is because that wasn’t the story. It was a beautiful story because it was a human emotional story.
The reason there were 12 ships was because they needed to divide up their language across the world to get us to work together once we understood the language and what it helps us do. They knew to do that because they can see time like we can see spatial dimensions around us. They know if they put all the pieces in the right place across time, it will have the desired result. Like how we know that drawing a line between two dots makes a line that connects two dots. That’s the power their language gives us.
Yes, The reason some fail to understand this movie is because they still think of time as linear, aka, past-present-future. But in non- linear time all timelines (past,present,future)are intertwined and happen all at once. No start, no ending.
Definitely one of the best sci fi movies ever, always wondered why so few people react to it
It isn't a conventional story so much as it was an experience. Much like Rendezvous With Rama - which has almost no plot, in the normal sense, just exploring an alien spaceship with no "answers" - just experience. This is the same.
This is like going on a walk in some strange new place that is full of things you have never seen before. It's an experience, but the only "plot" is that you are walking and experiencing things.
The heart of the movie is summed up in the last few minutes:
If you could see your whole life from start to finish, would you change things?
Ian: Maybe I'd say what I felt more often
Louise: Despite knowing the journey... and where it leads... I embrace it. And I welcome every moment of it.
Way to face the tragedy and joy in life. Love this movie
The purpose of the bird - it's a 'canary in a coal mine'. Miners would take canaries or other small birds in cages with them, because they were small they would be affected by any toxic gases much faster which would alert the miners to evacuate. Modern detectors replaced this. In the movie, they use the bird because in the ship they may be exposed to a gas or substance that we can't detect with human technology, but it would still likely affect the bird and alert them.
If you want to like movies more, you shouldn't treat them like a problem to solve but a reality to experience.
Agreed, they are very emotionally immature. This was a very poor reaction to the gravity of the plot. Like as if 2 teenagers watched it.
Nice callback.
@@wadestewart5504so don’t watch the reaction mate, not everything and everyone on TH-cam is here to impress you
@tyronnemoosa4741 I watched the whole thing to get the whole story. This my reaction to their reaction. Same thing... you can disagree with me but not cancel my opinion.
"It's like she's living those moments at the same time". Congrats, you understand this movie better than 99% of ppl and all reactors I've seen
The bird is in there just like a canary in a coal mine. Canaries are more sensitive to air then we are, if there's a poison gas or low oxygen they will go first.
Pudgey's understanding of the language of storytelling allowed her to see the future of this movie
They used birds in mines in the old days to tell when they hit a gas pocket.
Natural gas doesn't have a smell we can detect so when the bird drops dead it's time to exit.
It's one of my favourite movies and it did take me a second watch to fully appreciate how beautiful the story is.
Oh, man, when Spartan so confidently asserted that Pudgey was wrong about Ian being the father, I just laughed because I knew the comeuppance was on its way. How has he NOT learned yet to never question Queen Pudgey?? This may be my favorite sci-fi film ever, but I am behind on a few big ones, especially "Interstellar" but I'm seeing it in IMAX coming up whe it is rereleased in theaters in a few months.
He was seeing it intellectually and was certain he was right, but she nailed the emotional hints thrown out
I imagine someone else mentioned it, but I felt like, when Louise says she chose to embrace what was to come, it was less that she could choose to do or not to have the child, but to choose to enjoy and love her child. I don't think it was even much of a choice in her head then, because to her, her child had already lived, and been loved, and died, because time wasn't linear for her.
It's a different thing to not have a child because you know they will have a disease, and to have had a child you loved and died, and asking if you'd go back and make it so the child would never have lived. It's tragic, but it's also beautiful in equal parts
Also I always took it that General Shang had known at least some of the language, even if he didn't know all of it, because he was working with the heptapods.
The unification of the world is the goal,so when they need help 3000 years later earth would be united.
The film takes a very extreme version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and expands it into its scifi concept. I forget who exactly said it, but one way to write a good science fiction story is to choose a particular thing to be "the scifi concept" for the story and leave everything around it as grounded as you can and follow the implications of what you changed about the world.
A lot of people who have studied linguistics hear alarm bells when Sapir-Whorf comes up because there are a lot of misleading "factoids" that get passed onto the general public. Stuff like "The Inuit have 50 words for snow," and the implication that they perceive these different kinds of snow BECAUSE OF their language. But language is created by people and people are using their cultural perspective and describing their environments. Plus in that particular case, the grammar of the language in question has sort of affixes that do a similar job as adjectives do in English. So, are "fluffy snow" and "mushy snow" different words for snow in English?
Anyway, it is a great film which shows how a single "What if" concept can be a great starting point for a story.
Not clarified in the film: does the desire for more cows mean taking herds, or taking the land to feed them?
I think the gift was to help humanity come together, work together for once. Humanity will only be able to help them in the future if we are working together.
This movie is so good. One of my favorites in the sci-fi genre. If Villeneuve is directing, I'm watching.
A couple comedic recommendations for your science fiction journey are "The Fifth Element" and "Galaxy Quest" but I'd LOVE to see you two react to the frightening "Alien"!
Pudgey's writing the next movie 😊
the thing is that "Weapon" is their language. in the middle of the movie we get the "when you fully sync in other foreign language you start to rewire your brain" or something like that. well, thats actually happen in real life when people are learning a new language, you have to start thinking, speak and see things in that language, and consequently you start to dream in that language (sorry for being repetitive, but its just to really help the understanding, bc spartan said he never experienced that, so i assume he only speaks english). so basically what end up happening is Louise start thinking like an heptapod does, so she starts to percieve the world and reality itself like them, where time is not linear like it is for us (past, present and future), for them, it all happens at the same time, like the black hole scene from interstellar where cooper visits his past and sees himself talking to murph, for him the past and present are the same in that moment. thats why Louise seems surprised when the china commander shows her his private phone number, even tho she's "in the future", that scene happens at the same time at the one "in the present" of the movie. from there you must have already understood the rest of the movie. I hope this extense explanation can clarify some of your doubts about the plot. see ya (disclaimer: english is not my first language, so im sorry if some words are out of place, i tried my best
The answer to Spartan's question is that human will now be able to perceive time like the Heptapods. Basically. We'll be able to see the future and avoid the end of humanity as we know it.
Still really hoping y’all will get to eventually cover the series “Dark”, with or without it winning a Patreon poll. I think it’s literally right up your alley and IMO one of, if not the best, SciFi shows ever made
The book she sees, she wrote in the future about their language. That's how she knows
After the movie, you are asking questions and thinking about what the movie was trying to say ? Good - because good sci-fi is not about FX and CGI, monsters and mayhem… it’s about creating a different perspective for the audience to look at ourselves and our own emotions and decisions.
16:15 Pudgey and Spartan ask what the bird is for -- In old times, miners used canaries in a cage as an early warning for environmental changes, like oxygen levels, carbon monoxide, or other air toxicities. "The bird's rapid breathing rate, small size, and high metabolism, compared to the miners, led birds in dangerous mines to succumb before the miners, thereby giving the miners time to take action." In the film, the principle is the same - Basics. At 21:11, we see Louise reference this when she looks to the bird and sees that it's fine, so she takes her suit off.
So, the bird is the canary in a coal mine.
If the air is toxic, the bird will start freaking out.
Also, in the context of this movie the canary is also a peace offering.
"Look how well we treat organisms lesser than us" kind of thing. (edit: 30:10 👊Spartan)
This is such a great movie ! It's a nice thought experiment on language determinism
“On the Nature of Daylight” always always tugs on the heartstrings and gets me choked😞
It's nuts you guys didn't cry at the end I was balling like a baby
me too...
The people who watch this film who have children are always the ones who are wrecked the worst.
The gift of this language will help humanity in the future, in 3000 years, to perceive the future and time in different ways and see important events before they happen, regarding our planet and how to guide our race through it in order to survive longer. The hectapods realize how important life is. Their race is ending. All they could do is help our race as much as they could, so that the same thing does not happen to us too. Its a love letter to "life" and how precious it is for all beings. At least that's the way I choose to perceive this script and I love it.
This is the important bit, but it requires sacrifices such as the one Louise is doing here, knowing all her future and yet still choosing to embrace it. We still walk the way how it was meant to be walked, but the language gift will help humanity in the far future, future generations but not necessarily our current generation.
This is one of my favorite movies. I cry buckets every time I watch it. I suspect the child part might have to be relatable for some people. It's such a beautiful movie. I love that this movie leaves it up to you to figure out. The reason Louise figured it out so quickly is because she is good with languages, so she was able to think the way the haptapods more easily than other people. The job was to give humans their language so we can perceive nonlinear time and I believe figure out quicker how to help the heptapods. I think it would have been too confusing for the to tell us in the movie what kind of help the heptapods need. It doesn't really matter. Yeah, for the heptapods it wasn't about changing their fate, they just saw through nonlinear time that humans would help them.
Canary in a coalmine. They used to take canaries down into coal mines to tell them if the air was ok to breath. Your intuition is spot on Pudgey. (Always trust your intuition.) 👍 And yes, there were hints as well. I think if you guys watch the movie again you will pick up on more things. I figured out pretty early on that she wasn't having memories. Edit: One of the heptapods was injured by the bomb. Remember one ran away and one stayed when the bomb went off. They knew it was going to happen.