I was interested in the idea of the movie Arrival (2016) when the trailer came out, but not actually interested enough to actually go to the movies to watch it. That's why I was happy to see it on Netflix.
*I won't spoil anything that wasn't shown in the trailer here*
The movie is about an American linguistics professor dr. Louise Banks, played by Amy Adams, who is asked to decipher an alien language after they have landed on earth. There are 12 of the alien spacecrafts all around the earth, and one of the biggest plot points in the film is the different countries' failure to communicate effectively with each other to figure out why the aliens have arrived and what they want.
*Here there be some spoilers*
I mostly wanted to watch the movie because I'm interested in languages and fascinated by constructed languages. I loved the idea that a linguist was the main character in a sci-fi movie. That's why I was disappointed by how they ended up handling the conlang in it.
The beginning of the film constantly kept my interest up by raising questions and making me wonder what I would do in a similar situation that the people of earth were facing. Even at the beginning of the language lessons, I was excited as the aliens and dr. Banks were gathering together the building blocks of a common language. The aliens communicate in these circular ink splashes while dr. Banks does her best to teach them English, through writing, speech, and miming out words. She starts to search for similar patterns in the ink splashes while teaching the aliens basic vocabulary.
Halfway through the movie the language part kind of falls flat. The language is shown to "click" in dr. Banks' head with zero reasoning given as to why or how. They never explain the rules of the language. Even later in the film its made clear that the creators of the movie have no linguistical basis for it, by giving the language the ol' computer algorithm treatment and a handwave. They give images of the ink splashes to a computer programme and suddenly everything makes sense. Wow! Magic! Can you tell that I'm not bitter at all?
This bothered me enough so I did some surface level googling and it turns out that the language wasn't even planned to make sense from the start. It was designed by the production designers wife, artist Martine Bertrand. Kudos to her, it does look very alien.
*end spoilers*
I watched the movie solely for the language aspects but if you take out the disappointment that resulted from my wrong expectations, it was a pretty good movie. I just wouldn't necessarily recommend it to anyone. (It has 94 % on Rotten Tomatoes so decide for yourself, I'm not your mom.)
*I won't spoil anything that wasn't shown in the trailer here*
The movie is about an American linguistics professor dr. Louise Banks, played by Amy Adams, who is asked to decipher an alien language after they have landed on earth. There are 12 of the alien spacecrafts all around the earth, and one of the biggest plot points in the film is the different countries' failure to communicate effectively with each other to figure out why the aliens have arrived and what they want.
*Here there be some spoilers*
I mostly wanted to watch the movie because I'm interested in languages and fascinated by constructed languages. I loved the idea that a linguist was the main character in a sci-fi movie. That's why I was disappointed by how they ended up handling the conlang in it.
The beginning of the film constantly kept my interest up by raising questions and making me wonder what I would do in a similar situation that the people of earth were facing. Even at the beginning of the language lessons, I was excited as the aliens and dr. Banks were gathering together the building blocks of a common language. The aliens communicate in these circular ink splashes while dr. Banks does her best to teach them English, through writing, speech, and miming out words. She starts to search for similar patterns in the ink splashes while teaching the aliens basic vocabulary.
Halfway through the movie the language part kind of falls flat. The language is shown to "click" in dr. Banks' head with zero reasoning given as to why or how. They never explain the rules of the language. Even later in the film its made clear that the creators of the movie have no linguistical basis for it, by giving the language the ol' computer algorithm treatment and a handwave. They give images of the ink splashes to a computer programme and suddenly everything makes sense. Wow! Magic! Can you tell that I'm not bitter at all?
*end spoilers*
I watched the movie solely for the language aspects but if you take out the disappointment that resulted from my wrong expectations, it was a pretty good movie. I just wouldn't necessarily recommend it to anyone. (It has 94 % on Rotten Tomatoes so decide for yourself, I'm not your mom.)
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