I was expecting a generic alien invasion movie, and I was pleasantly surprised
Still one of my favourite movies ever
this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2025
619 points (98.4% liked)
movies
2346 readers
263 users here now
Matrix room: https://matrix.to/#/#fediversefilms:matrix.org
Warning: If the community is empty, make sure you have "English" selected in your languages in your account settings.
A community focused on discussions on movies. Besides usual movie news, the following threads are welcome
- Discussion threads to discuss about a specific movie or show
- Weekly threads: what have you been watching lately?
- Trailers
- Posters
- Retrospectives
- Should I watch?
Related communities:
- !showsandmovies@lemm.ee
- !animation@lemm.ee
- !homevideo@feddit.uk
- !horrormovies@lemm.ee
- !martialartsmovies@lemm.ee
Show communities:
Discussion communities:
RULES
Spoilers are strictly forbidden in post titles.
Posts soliciting spoilers (endings, plot elements, twists, etc.) should contain [spoilers] in their title. Comments in these posts do not need to be hidden in spoiler MarkDown if they pertain to the title’s subject matter.
Otherwise, spoilers but must be contained in MarkDown.
2024 discussion threads
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
The world is shocked to discover that Terry’s Chocolate Oranges are actually seed pods for intelligent extra terrestrial life.
It's not Terry's, it's Extraterrestrials.
Amy Adams wrecked me with two movies back-to-back. Nocturnal Animals and Arrivals really did a number on me.
Yeah its one of my favorite movies
Definitely a top 20 in my book, one of my wife's top 5. I also love the book, it's very short story, you can probably read it in the time it'd take to watch the movie (I'm a slow reader and did it in a few hours), it doesn't add too much, but it's a bit of interesting mathematical philosophy which I found quite endearing.
Watched it last week for the first time. Really enjoyed it
Alien Linguistics. Love this movie
Now you need to watch the 1996 classic "The Arrival"!
Reading this made my knees hurt.
Sapir-Whorf always fascinated me when I first read about it in philosophy class
I read this stuff casually and I was generally familiar with the theories in both Arrival and Interstellar, but I couldn't make heads or tails of either when I watched the movies. I completely missed what they were pointing at in Interstellar and thought they butchered the idea that Amy Adams was caught in her own frame of how she understood her experience of time.
I am sure that's my problem, but I truly wonder how anyone was supposed to appreciate the movies without internalizing the critical theories
load more comments
(3 replies)
So good. I think I listed it as my favorite movie for a while.
spoiler
I didn't care for it at all, I felt the memory as time travel thing to be weaksacue, and I felt ripped off at the end of watching it, plus I don't like her very much at all
Spoiler
Of course its totally fine to not like a movie, but I wanted to clarify the memory as time travel thing.
I can't remember where I first heard this, it wasn't this movie, but suppose humans are oddly fixated on the flow of time. To us the flow of time is immutable we exist in the present and remember the past. What if other races could "remember" things that haven't happened yet as easily as we remember things from the past.
The movie kinda proposes that learning human languages traps us into this linear / temporal mode of thinking. As in, as children we learn to parse things start to finish and that's it... we just never do it the other way future to now.
Turns out I've done a shit job at explaining this.
As I said, it's fine to hate the movie. I just thought I'd try to explain this part because I felt like I understood it, although I'm not sure anymore.
I think you explained it quite well. I just read the story and was a bit confused by the ending but this clarified it for me.
Major spoilers ahead! (struggling with the spoiler tag!)
!spoiler The story reads like she's in the present and you assume her memories of her daughter are in the past. Then looking back at the language used, she's describing memories of her daughter with language that indicates it's in the future, not the past. So it stands to reason that the encounters with the heptapods are in the present and learning their language gives her the ability to 'see' the future I assume Gary is her daughter's father. Just like she mentions of the readers of the Book of Ages, she won't do anything to change the future even if she knows what's coming, even if it means a future where her daughter dies young.
spoiler
Yes, Gary is the father. He's ended up leaving her (in the future) because he found out she had the future knowledge of their daughter's early death but went ahead with having her anyway.
!spoiler Ah? I didn't catch that, I thought they divorced when the daughter was still alive given the parts about dating someone else? Where in the story did you catch that bit?
load more comments
(1 replies)
As someone with differing opinions from the zeitgeist on a variety of topics, I appreciate your sincere and well-reasoned dissention
Same, tbh. I can't say I felt ripped off, but it was definitely a disappointment.
load more comments
(1 replies)
I get into Sci Fi, time travel and obscure concepts, and I have to agree with you mainly. It ended and I kinda felt like, "yeah OK". Another person here has said that it should be watched again. Like what, did I miss something ? Anyway, it's entertainment and each to their own. Maybe I should watch it again one day, but it will be a while.
It depends. What were you expecting and what was your takeaway after watching? Because to me, it didn’t have anything to do with the time travel or scifi aspects at all.
The main point of the film is summed up with the line “If you could see your whole life from start to finish, would you change things?”. It was about free will and the main character’s decision to let things play out knowing her daughter will die at an early age, because if she didn’t have her, she wouldn’t have experienced the life she had with her daughter at all. It’s a philosophical story wrapped in a scifi film.
load more comments
(2 replies)
load more comments
(2 replies)
Genuinely one of the best movies of all time IMO