Critics tend to be arty-farty types who prefer mysterious confusing plots that don't actually make any sense - like the
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iceblink1 — 9 years ago(November 26, 2016 08:51 AM)
If the science is wrong then the Aliens might as well have presented Louise with a magic crystal ball - why all the pretentiousness about language and "rewiring" the brain which can't possibly enable the ability to see the future by any known laws of physics. Oh I know why, all that pretentiousness is hugely appealing to scientifically ignorant arty types. You see, sci-fi doesn't just assume anything goes unless it's fantasy like Star Wars, and we're not in the Marvel world where no pretense of honest science is claimed.
Movie needed a science consultant who could have helped make it consistent, and a second writer to rewrite the aftermath of the Alien visit and its impact more believably.
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duffasaurus — 9 years ago(November 26, 2016 09:18 PM)
When children are young they have no object permanence, they don't understand that just because they can't see something doesn't mean it's not there. As they get older the neurons in their brain form more complex neural connections and they see the world differently. This has to happen through experience, children need to understand language in order to learn. Neglected children who do not learn language and converse with other humans do not magically gain these abilities over time, it is a learned behavior. Suspend disbelief just a bit and it's not implausible to assume the aliens have done something similar to Louise's brain. She realizes just because she can't see the future doesn't mean it's not already there. Just because she hasn't experienced it yet doesn't mean she doesn't have knowledge of what the future holds. This is based on an actual hypothesis in quantum mechanics. People far smarter than your or I fully believe that our entire existence is happening at once, but humans are only capable of experiencing it linearly.
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iceblink1 — 9 years ago(November 27, 2016 07:35 AM)
Just because she hasn't experienced it yet doesn't mean she doesn't have knowledge of what the future holds. This is based on an actual hypothesis in quantum mechanics.This is based on an actual hypothesis in quantum mechanics
This statement and the rest of the stuff you posted is exactly what I'm criticizing - very flaky scientific thinking, that sounds cool to other scientifically illiterate people and is used as the basis for a nonsensical plot.
There is no hypothesis in quantum mechanics which enables one to see or predict the future, in fact the opposite is the case, in quantum mechanics the future is impossible to predict until it is observed/measured because it is fundamentally probabilistic.
Basing the plot around a pretentious interpretation of language and obfuscating in an attempt to allow basic laws of physics to be broken is too sloppy and unacceptable to make for a serious movie, maybe a children's movie, where the level of science understanding is about ok for the arty critics, and sloppiness is ok too.
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Farshnoshket — 9 years ago(November 27, 2016 07:50 AM)
Basing the plot around a pretentious interpretation of language and obfuscating in an attempt to allow basic laws of physics to be broken is too sloppy and unacceptable to make for a serious movie, maybe a children's movie, where the level of science understanding is about ok for the arty critics, and sloppiness is ok too.
You really have no idea how pretentious that sounds.
You sit on your high hill and look down at everyone and feel free to criticize people because they don't have the advanced scientific knowledge you have and believe films are not allowed to be made that question that knowledge.
You do that. The rest of us will just enjoy the ride. Sorry your super powers spoil films like this. Real shame.
The fact that you can't perceive that 99% of the public won't be viewing this film from your angle is your biggest issue.
If a science fiction film says some aliens use a circular type of language that we humans have never contemplated and whatever surrounds that language gives users to think differently giving them some abilities that we do not understand because it is an unknown most people will simply go with it because it's fiction and if we fail then we'd have to start questioning a lot more films fictional subject manner.
If it makes you happy call it science fantasy. Just because it looks like a duck and walks like a duck it doesn't have to be a duck.
Until some alien spacecraft appears out of nowhere in the world we know is real it's all just fiction.
No one here should have to argue quantum physics with you and if you feel otherwise, again your problem. -
kenny-164 — 9 years ago(November 28, 2016 09:26 AM)
"No one here should have to argue quantum physics with you and if you feel otherwise, again your problem."
Excellent point in a spot on post, but I would go one step further. The way the concept of non-linear Time is presented as coming from an alien and advanced species raises the question whether the way WE understand the world quantum mechanics operates according to its "rules" might be limited. Limited in the sense that they way those rules describe the relation of Time and existence might not take the total reality into complete account. In effect we are asked to consider thinking outside the box, not as the OP suggests to ignore that the box is there and has meaning and purpose.
Ultimately the objection made to the film reflects a conservative mindset (not in the political sense of conservative, although in individual cases there might well be such overlap) that amounts to saying "I don't like thinking outside the box, and you shouldn't, either!"
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StarkerMann — 9 years ago(February 12, 2017 02:13 PM)
When children are young they have no object permanence, they don't understand that just because they can't see something doesn't mean it's not there. As they get older the neurons in their brain form more complex neural connections and they see the world differently. This has to happen through experience, children need to understand language in order to learn. Neglected children who do not learn language and converse with other humans do not magically gain these abilities over time, it is a learned behavior. Suspend disbelief just a bit and it's not implausible to assume the aliens have done something similar to Louise's brain. She realizes just because she can't see the future doesn't mean it's not already there. Just because she hasn't experienced it yet doesn't mean she doesn't have knowledge of what the future holds. This is based on an actual hypothesis in quantum mechanics. People far smarter than your or I fully believe that our entire existence is happening at once, but humans are only capable of experiencing it linearly.
^ This! Thank you! It's so frustrating reading remarks from some who claim the film is "stupid" or "requires too much suspension of disbelief."
"Arrival" is based on Ted Chiang's award winning short story "Story of Your Life". A brilliant piece which the film adaptation changed a bit by adding a Cold War era conflict and the ending regarding humanity helping the sentient beings in 3000 years. Chiang beautifully wove complex, well-regarded scientific and linguistic concepts and principles into a linear story regarding time and language as non-linear functions. Google "Flatlands" and watch the episode from Sagans' series explaining how our physical limitations and concepts of moving beyond four+ dimensions in "String Field Theory" and "Quantum Mechanics". Sagan was excellent in expressing complex theories as he knew exactly how to break down variables and concepts into tangible, physical expression.
The protagonist (Amy Adams' character) tells the story from her perspective using linear written language yet at the conclusion realizes their written and spoken communication are very different from not just ours but amongst themselves. Written language doesn't follow a linear process that we use but rather a "multidimensional" and layered symbolic structure that assumes (or knows) the beginning and end of thoughts and events. This suggests that they must have some knowledge of future events. They think, act, and communicate on numerous levels simultaneously as though past, present, and future coexist, interwoven and happening at the same time. At the end of the story, the protagonist (Adams) begins to think as they do, first dreaming in a symbolic/visual language (much as we do when learning a new auditory language) and then begins to view events that will come to pass. The gift given to humanity was that knowledge and perspective. The concept that multilayered and highly efficient communication(s) can alter how we perceive the world and our lives was very well done. The story presents itself in linear form yet is turned around once we realize the flashbacks aren't flashbacks but Adams' character sharing her "story of her and her daughter" as she received it, i.e. knowing her future. The true mental "gut punch" is her decision to have a child even though she knows she'll die in a tragic accident at 25 years of age. Did she decide to have a child because of her contact with another species and their language or was it fated or both? In essence, whether she had "free will" didn't matter as she knew the time and love with her daughter transcends our fears and suffering in death (we all die, yet we don't know how, when, etc and still have children, hoping they'll outlive us and if not we still bring children into the world knowing they'll die whether we're alive or not).
I was especially intrigued in the concept of what comes first: language to form thoughts or thoughts that form language? We all have first person (inner) thoughts/experiences, imagine thinking without using a verbal language. It's the "chicken or the egg" conundrum using language instead of "being". This revelation hit me harder than philosophizing on the origins of life as it had to happen relatively close to our "blip" on this planet. "Parietal Art" is the only currently known earliest form of communication between Homo Sapiens[Sapiens]. Did that come first?
There are so many concepts and "real world" historical examples of human evolution packed into a brilliant examination of possible futures scenario's into a short story that I'm impressed with how well Chiang wove this complex tale. -
bruce-129 — 9 years ago(November 25, 2016 09:00 PM)
Artsy has little to do with it in Hollywood it is all about money, like anywhere else.
When it comes to Science Fiction, Hollywood has always been pretty bad and unimaginative.
The good movies are few and far between because most people do not think the public cares
about realism, message, morality they think it is all about effects and violence.
One of the best Science Fictions movies to me is probably the simplest movie ever made
called "The Man From Earth" which is good because it makes you think and it's kind of fun.
This movie is one of those movies that crawls up its own posterior there is no point to it
once you realize the plot doesn't really make sense. -
Farshnoshket — 9 years ago(November 26, 2016 08:02 AM)
You're funny!
You're blaming the critics because they (most) understood the film and the possibility that in a sci-fi film things can happen which are not explainable in the world we know.
If guess by your thinking films like Star Trek, Star Wars, Avatar, Doctor Strange, Cloverfield, AI, Alien, Superman, Guardians of the Galaxy and on and on because things happen that cannot be explained.
Just because this sci-fi didn't go over the top like most of the films I just listed doesn't mean it can't bend time because it's still a science FICTION story.
And in this film no one saw into the future, but it certainly looks like you're not the type of person who can expand on the laws you already know as fact.
A suspension of belief is always essential when watching abut you already know that, don't you? -
iceblink1 — 9 years ago(November 26, 2016 08:59 AM)
If guess by your thinking films like Star Trek, Star Wars, Avatar, Doctor Strange, Cloverfield, AI, Alien, Superman, Guardians of the Galaxy and on and on because things happen that cannot be explained.
WTF?!! er, YEAH! Except for AI, Alien and Cloverfield which are all feasible by the laws of physics, and maybe Star Trek and Avatar too. But Star Wars, Doctor Strange, Superman and Guardians of the Galaxy are not Sci-Fi.
Don't you understand the difference between Science Fiction and Science Fantasy? The former attempts to play by the known laws of physics, the later allows anything really, just like in magic movies like Harry potter.
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Farshnoshket — 9 years ago(November 27, 2016 06:21 AM)
Science fiction is a genre of speculative fiction dealing with imaginative concepts such as futuristic settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, time travel, faster than light travel, parallel universes and extraterrestrial life. Science fiction often explores the potential consequences of scientific and other innovations, and has been called a "literature of ideas."
By the laws of physics is time travel possible? -
iceblink1 — 9 years ago(November 27, 2016 07:56 AM)
By the laws of physics is time travel possible?
yes, but only with exotic high energy constructs like traversable wormholes or tachyons.
You can't just have the biological brain thinking differently and then see the future - it's a silly extrapolation of some sensible ideas about the structure of language wrt the direction of time, just to sound clever and appeal to pretentious arty types. Learning a new language "rewires" the brain, fine, but no biological process can see into the future without the help of magic.
The writers were clearly so up themselves with language theory and wanting to shoehorn it into their big alien story that they didn't bother checking with a proper scientist whether it made any sense.
In any case, as I said above, even if it did, the consequences are depicted very poorly and I can't understand how anyone could call this a great movie - the age of non-experts has arrived.
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Farshnoshket — 9 years ago(November 27, 2016 08:26 AM)
You have obviously built a wall and refuse to see over it.
That's fine, but don't expect anyone else to join you.
We prefer the arts and their ability to make us think outside that wall. The imagination is a wonderful thing and I invite anyone to encourage mine anytime. -
iceblink1 — 9 years ago(November 27, 2016 09:05 AM)
You have obviously built a wall and refuse to see over it.
LOL, it's always the unscientific and religious types who say that - when in fact science is the discipline most open to criticism, and in fact requires it to develop.
It is the religious and arty-farty cliques who prohibit progress by not allowing true criticism and suppressing voices that do not agree with the latest fashion so religiously beloved for nothing other than irrational reasons.
The movie is stupid, even if the science was ok, it hides behind a few weak layers of pretentiousness and political-correctness to conjure a feeble plot that only a weak-minded fool could admire
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Farshnoshket — 9 years ago(November 27, 2016 10:26 AM)
So it does appear it's hard for you to separate your life from rating a film based solely on it's own merit? You weigh you own bias heavily with many films?
I guess that's fine, but I try to keep my bias out of rating a film.
I suppose it might be extremely hard to separate your own bias when it comes to something like someone you know suffering like that, however in a film like Pulp Fiction it seems like the only one's who suffered were criminals, except that one fat girl on the street who got shot in the leg. Damn fat chick! -
doorclosed321 — 9 years ago(November 27, 2016 09:23 AM)
Science, aka the new religion. It used to be open to new ideas and now it's fastly becoming the very thing that it help marginalise. Anyone who wears a white coat these days think they know about how things work and the plebs should just go along with it. That's probablaby partly the reason TED chiang wrote this story. He probably got sick of hearing all the dogmatic views of the scientific community, just as he obviously had with the religious community
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iceblink1 — 9 years ago(November 27, 2016 09:52 AM)
You know I partly agree with you, especially with stuff like the promotion of Climate Scientists to the most prominent and well paid positions, even though they were the stupidest group of science students as teenagers.
But in its pure form, without political correctness intervening, Science is the most true form of knowledge.
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mrwnmero — 9 years ago(November 27, 2016 08:48 AM)
Erm, based on your words, this movie is a science fiction. since it didn't introduce any new ideas, everything in the movie have been discussed "scientifically" before, the existence of aliens, getting affected by another language, even the psychological approach of every country leader in the situation. except in that last part I really think the united states would have shot first..
Nobody panics when things go "according to plan." Even if the plan is horrifying!