Arrival Is A Departure From the Action Sci-Fi Norm
Smart science fiction movies are a rare thing, ironically. Most are action-romance flicks like Avatar, or live action comic books like Guardians of the Galaxy. When they are smart, that usually means small budgets, like Duncan Jones’ wonderful movie Moon.
Which is one of the reasons why Arrival is such a good movie. Below is my spoiler-free review of the first contact film that opens today.
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Arrival isn’t a huge budget action sci-fi flick like the complete miss that was Jupiter Ascending, but it had enough of a budget to get Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner as its stars, along with Forest Whitaker. And it was smart enough to use its special effects budget sparingly and well.
As you will see from the trailers, the movie tells the story of the arrival on Earth of a number of enormous alien vessels that float above their landing spots like some sort of half-mile tall black-stone throat lozenges.
Col. Weber (Forest Whitaker) brings in linguist Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams) and physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) to study the aliens in the ships — Banks to establish communications and Donnelly to learn their science. As Banks builds her ability to communicate with the aliens she finds herself having strange experiences, all of which builds to a climactic moment around international tension and fear.
Saying anything else about the exact nature of what Banks experiences or what the climactic drama is would take away from one of the best things about Arrival — a wonderful twist that is like a more mind-bending, less shocking and much smarter Shyamalan reveal.
Ultimately, though, it is the focus on character and science that makes Arrival so good. This is a very personal story of what happens to Amy Adams’ character, and she inhabits Banks with a type of exhausted frumpery that is the polar opposite of her role as the high energy beauty Giselle in Enchanted.
Even Whitaker as the colonel in charge of the landing site, and Michael Stuhlbarg as CIA Agent Halpern are believable characters, in that they are dedicated functionaries doing their jobs even when that conflicts with the main characters. They are not portrayed as any kind of cardboard villains.
And the focus of how we interact with the aliens is all about (OK, almost all about) linguistics and science and not about laser beams and global disasters. Make no mistake, Banks and Donnelly are brought in by the military to find out as fast as possible why the aliens landed at all, and what risk they pose to the US first and the world second.
What transpires through the course of the movie is not only a tale of fear of the unknown (like, almost unknowably unknown) but it is woven throughout with the very personal family story of Banks. And it does it in such a way that both stories need each other and ultimately make sense in what is described ad nauseum in the press as a “twist” but is in fact more of a wonderful revelation.
If you like smart science fiction, intelligent writing and great acting, go see Arrival.
Arrival (PG-13; 21 Laps Entertainment, FilmNation Entertainment, Lava Bear Films) — 5 out of 6 hexapod tentacles.
