What is the movie "Arrival" about?
What is the movie "Arrival" about? What is the plot of the movie "Arrival" like? The movie "Arrival" is now in theaters, below Just follow me to find out!
What is the movie "Arrival" about?
The film is based on the short story "" "Story of Your Life" is an adaptation of "The Story of Your Life", which tells the story of an alien spacecraft coming to Earth. A linguist played by Amy Adams is hired by the government to communicate with the aliens and understand the purpose of their visit. However, when communicating with these visitors using the alien language "Heptapods", her complete life from birth to death, known or unknown, suddenly appeared before her eyes. Jeremy Renner will play a physics professor who is employed by the government together with the linguist played by Adams.
Introduction to the movie "Arrival"
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Screenwriter: Eric Heisser/Jiang Fengnan
Starring: Amy? Adams / Jeremy Renner / Forest Whitaker / Michael Stuhlbarg / Ma Zhi / Mark O'Brien / Joe Cobden / Pat Kelly / Natalie Hippoty / Russell Yuan/Christian Jada/Julian Casey
Genre: Drama/Science Fiction
Producing Country/Region: United States
Language: English
Length: 116 minutes Awards
The 73rd Venice Film Festival (2016)
Main Competition Golden Lion Award (nominated)
The 74th Golden Globe Awards (2017)
Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama (Nominated) Amy Adams
Best Original Score in a Motion Picture (Nominated) )
The 70th British Academy Film Awards (2017)
Film Award for Best Film (Nominated)
Film Award for Best Director (Nominated) Dennis? Villeneuve
Film Award for Best Actress (nominated) Amy Adams
Film Award for Best Adapted Screenplay (nominated)
Film Award for Best Actress Best Cinematography (nominated)
Film Award for Best Editing (nominated)
Film Award for Best Original Music (nominated)
Film Award for Best Sound Effects (nominated )
Film Award for Best Special Visual Effects (nominated)
The 69th Directors Guild of America Awards (2017)
Best Motion Picture Director (nominated) Dennis ?Villeneuve
The 23rd Screen Actors Guild Awards (2017)
Movie Award for Best Actress (nominated) Amy Adams
No. The 69th Writers Guild of America Award (2017)
Film Award for Best Adapted Screenplay (nominated)
The 28th Producers Guild of America Award (2017)
Best Film Producer Award (Nominated)
The 31st American Photographic Society Awards (2017)
Best Cinematography in a Feature Film (Nominated) Bradford Young
The 67th American Editors Guild Awards (2017)
Best Editing of a Feature Film (nominated)
The 21st American Art Directors Guild Awards (2017)
Film Award for Best Fantasy Film Art Direction (nominated)
The 88th National Board of Review Awards (2016)
Best Actress Amy Adams
Best Film of the Year (nominated)
The 22nd American Critics’ Choice Movie Awards (2016)
Best Picture (nominated)
Most Best Director (nominated) Denis Villeneuve
Best Actress (nominated) Amy Adams
Best Adapted Screenplay Eric Heisser
Best Cinematography (Nominated)
Best Editing (Nominated)
Best Art Direction (Nominated)
Best Score (Nominated)
Best Sound Effects (nominated)
Best Visual Effects (
Nominated)
Best Science Fiction/Horror Film
The 41st American Film Institute Awards (2016)
Best Film of the Year
No. The 15th Washington Film Critics Society Awards (2016)
Best Picture (nominated)
Best Director (nominated) Denis Villeneuve
Most Best Actress (Nominated) Amy Adams
Best Adapted Screenplay Eric Heisser
Best Cinematography (Nominated)
Best Editing (nominated) Joe Walker
Best Original Score (nominated)
Best Art Direction (nominated) Review of the movie "Arrival"
In recent years, every By late autumn, a phenomenal science fiction film will always appear on time: 2013's "Gravity", 2014's "Interstellar", and last year's "The Martian". There are also works that performed very well during awards season. This year, the baton was passed to Denis Villeneuve (who has directed "Scorched Earth" and "Sicario"). He used the science fiction film "Arrival" to practice in preparation for the filming of "Blade Runner 2" It premiered in Venice on September 2, more than two months have passed. After a period of word-of-mouth fermentation, the film still has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 100 and a Metacritic score of 81.
For the author who has read the original novel twice and couldn't put it down, the adaptation of "Arrival" can hardly be called a success. After watching the nearly two-hour film, Villeneuve made a very big difference based on the original novel. The plot changes and fillings, especially in the last 50 minutes of the film (nearly half the length of the film), are almost original and push the film to a very clumsy and unconvincing ending. But even so, "Arrival" is still far behind the three works in the previous three years in terms of visual spectacle.
"Arrival" is adapted from the Nebula Award-winning science fiction short story "The Story of Your Life" by the famous Chinese science fiction writer Ted Chiang. Anyone who has read the original work knows that although "The Story of Your Life" is a story with aliens coming to Earth as the background, the main theme of the novel is all about the protagonist Louise Banks, a linguistics professor, trying to understand, The process of deciphering and learning the language and writing of the octopus-shaped alien "heptapods", even until the end, did not include the spectacle of spaceship launches, space battles, or even crossing a black hole that most movie audiences expected.
The reason "Story of Your Life" is wonderful is that it confronts a question that most science fiction novels and movies avoid talking about? How do humans communicate with aliens? In most science fiction works (including hard science fiction works), aliens speak English as a matter of course, with or without "language translators". This is a very cunning and irresponsible setting. In "The Story of Your Life", Jiang Fengnan brings the charm of linguistics to the extreme, demonstrating step by step with reasonable evidence, and completely showing the process of Louise learning the "Heptapod" language in front of readers.
Limited by the form of expression, the movie cannot translate the rigorous linguistic and physical arguments in the novel onto the screen. Even if it can be forcibly stuffed into the movie, it does not meet the positioning of "Arrival" as a mainstream science fiction movie. Therefore, in the movie, the process of Louise learning the alien language (hereinafter referred to as "Seven Languages") is repeatedly simplified. Director Villeneuve replaced most of the space of learning the Seven Languages ??with parts showing visual wonders. For example, the "half-peanut-shaped" spaceship is similar to the black monument in "2001: A Space Odyssey". Another example is the change in the direction of gravity when a group of scientists enter the spaceship. They all occupy a large part of the time.
And these are almost mentioned in the novel. The conversation between the protagonist and the heptapods in the novel is only in an ordinary room, and does not go inside the spaceship like in the movie script.
Heptapod ships appear all over the world.
Such a shift in focus makes the process of deciphering the seven languages ????in the film extremely simple, so simple that it only uses a montage of about 5 minutes to complete the process, basically losing the essence of the original work.
The description of the alien heptapods in the original work is also extremely detailed, which is different from the image of aliens in general science fiction works that are clumsy, brutal, and only capable of invading the earth. They "have seven long limbs, with a cylinder hanging at the axis. Each of the seven limbs can be used as a leg or an arm, and they are stable, like a hovercraft." And when they are writing, It's "get a round screen, put it on a small base, and a bunch of confused scribblings will appear on the screen." It doesn't look like an octopus in the movie, and even the way to write is to extend a long limb. , an ink-like black object was ejected from it, forming circular words like Chinese calligraphy in mid-air.
It is true that this will be more visually beautiful, but the heptapods in the movie are more like some kind of beasts in a cage in a zoo, without civilization or mutual communication. It doesn't look like an advanced civilized creature that has mastered interstellar flight at all.
In the novel, the most exciting part is the emergence of a breakthrough in deciphering the heptapods. This breakthrough was not made by the protagonist Louise, but by the simultaneous struggle between the physicist and the heptapods. Gains from exchanges. The physicist demonstrated the "Fermat's law of least time" experiment for the heptapods, and the heptapods repeated the experiment. In this process, humans discovered that the basic cognition of heptapods and the causal relationship of physical and mathematical theorems are exactly opposite to humans. The complex theorems for humans are the most basic for heptapods, and the most basic for humans. Theorems such as speed are extremely complicated under the cognitive system of the heptapods. This discovery quickly accelerated Louise's ability to decipher and learn seven languages. In the process, Louise discovered that the Seven Languages ??is a behavioral theory, which means that the communication between the two heptapods is just a show, and both parties already know what they want to say.
Human beings are in preliminary communication with the heptapods.
This is the most charming part of the original work: if you master the seven languages, you can foresee your future. At the beginning of the novel, Jiang Fengnan uses a narrative method that combines the first person and the second person, and the two timelines intersect, to narrate Louise's process of deciphering and learning seven languages, and Louise's oral story of her daughter's growth. This is a combination of rationality and sensibility. The process of babbling, growing up from a toddler to a girl, and then dying due to an accident is heartwarming and sad; the process of deciphering the seven languages ??is exciting and thought-provoking. Jiang Fengnan's words are like poetry: What will you do when you know that your daughter will die in an accident at the age of 25, and you are powerless? Such a heartbreaking story makes "Your Life" "The Story" transcends the level of cold theoretical derivation and sublimates it into a truly humanistic, warm and sad classic.
In the movie, the priority of these two story lines is too obvious. The story line of Louise’s daughter is obviously less than the main plot, even less than one-fifth, and the cross-editing The contact between them is also extremely alienated. As a result, the audience did not get involved in the role of the daughter, and also lacked the sigh of fate in the novel. This may be the reason why the film was finally titled "Arrival" instead of using the original title "Story of Your Life".
If the above can only be regarded as a change in details or focus, it is harmless. Then the drastic adaptation of the original work in the last 50 minutes of the film made the film go on an almost completely opposite path to the novel.
"Story of Your Life", a short science fiction novel with only a skit-level story on the surface, was changed into a bloody war drama with forced dramatic conflicts. Stupid humans and China, which are indispensable in science fiction films, are once again online, leading other Several countries (Russia, Cuba, etc.) launched military attacks on the heptapods, which is unreasonable and unreasonable. Not to mention the satellite phone call that Amy Adams, who plays Louise, made with the Chinese general in Mandarin that is even more difficult to understand than the seventh language. It is completely confusing and looks like a continuation of the story that cannot be continued.
"Intimate contact" with the heptapods.
But this is precisely the main reason why "Arrival" still has a strong reputation among North American film critics. The United States once again acts as the world policeman to save the universe. The difference is that this time they do not rely on Tony Star. Ke and his friends relied on a cross-border phone call from a university language professor. This is already ridiculous and unconvincing for ordinary viewers who have not seen the original work, let alone fans of the original work?
As we all know, Denis Villeneuve has been designated as the director of "Blade Runner 2" 》director selection. How to continue the glory of this science fiction classic is the biggest responsibility he currently shoulders. "Arrival" is also seen to some extent as Villeneuve's training for the upcoming "Blade Runner 2". Although "Arrival" is unsatisfactory on many levels, the atmosphere creation that the director has always been good at since "Prisoners" and "Sicario" is still very good.
Except for the work "Scorched Earth" that made him famous, none of Villeneuve's other feature films were written by himself. It can be seen that screenwriting is not his specialty, but how to present the story visually is what he is best at. In this way, the quality of the script basically determines the final quality of his directorial work. The script of "Arrival" is by no means brilliant, and even somewhat failed, but we can still see some of Villeneuve's ideas in shooting science fiction scenes. It can be said that the style is sufficient, but the soul is lost.
Compared with the original "Story of Your Life", which is a masterpiece in the science fiction world, "Arrival" is definitely a mediocre work. Domestic audiences should lower their requirements and be cautious in their expectations. ?;