This is coming out soon. It’s based on the true story about a US Army medic
Desmond T. Doss. It looks really good.
(Sep 30, 2016 06:27 PM)Magical Realist Wrote: [ -> ]Arrival
https://youtu.be/EmcRejckjjs
It comes out Nov 11.
The plot sounds promising. These huge sideways ufos show up and scare the crap out of everyone. The protagonist is a linguist, drafted onto a first-contact team to try to communicate with the aliens.
It sounds like the movie is fairly philosophical, since the aliens turn out to have a very non-human kind of psychology and perceive time differently than we do or something. They also aren't humanoid as I understand it (radially symmetrical?) I like that. They also aren't interested in attacking the Earth. (Figuring out what they are interested in is the problem, I guess.)
That does look good. Here's another trailer with a few more details. She said that she knows what the symbol means but I can't make out what she's saying. Something weapon.
Arrival
(Oct 15, 2016 05:53 PM)Secular Sanity Wrote: [ -> ]That does look good. Here's another trailer with a few more details. She said that she knows what the symbol means but I can't make out what she's saying. Something weapon.
Arrival
She says, "offer weapon", and then says she's not sure they know the difference between a weapon and a tool.
Looks like it has a The Day the Earth Stood Still vibe.
The Wikipedia article on the movie has a plot synopsis. Don't look at it if you don't want spoilers.
The "weapon"/"tool" turns out to be how the aliens perceive the universe. The swirly black stuff in the air is how the aliens "talk". The patterns convey all of their meaning at once, not in a string of symbols like we use. That turns out to be the least of their non-linear psychological aspects. I won't say more to avoid spoilers (look at the Wikipedia article if you want more) but the later parts of the movie revolve around the nature of time and the illusory nature of 'now'.
I think it sounds promising. Truly alien aliens... for once. And maybe a hint of what it might be like to encounter superior beings, like chimpanzees first meeting a human.
I'm gonna go see it.
I still haven't seen Arrival (maybe this week).
But I'm told that it's very philosophical (by movie standards anyway). Apparently it revolves around the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, that holds that what we can think about, how we perceive things and our cognition in general is determined (or at least influenced, there are strong and weak versions) by our language's store of concepts and the logical syntax that ties it together. The characters actually talk about this Sapir-Whorf idea in the movie.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
So... as our linguist-protagonist gradually learns a totally alien language, she starts perceiving and thinking in a brand new way. Her companion is a physicist and there's stuff about the illusory nature of 'now', about 4-D block-time and all kinds of stuff. The movie gets a bit psychedelic.
The aliens are anatomically like giant octopusses, with blobby radially symmetrical bodies with eyes all around, supported by large tentacles that can function both as arms and legs. They stay behind a transparent barrier in a fog-like vapor and apparently aren't oxygen breathers.
They can "speak" with sounds that come out of a hole on top of them, but our linguist isn't sure that she can recognize their language's phonemes even with a spectrum analyzer. She certainly can't reproduce the unearthly sounds with her voice. So everyone opts for writing. The aliens write with octopus-like ink that comes out of their tentacles and forms Japanese brush-stroke-like patterns. And as our heroine learns to understand it, she finds her consciousness... changing.
Zen octopuses! Who knew?!
Apparently the movie has a surprise ending, but I don't know what it is.
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