Arrival and the Story Behind It

When we think of aliens the first thing that pops into our mind is the idea that they will invade earth and destroy humanity as we know it, but what if that wasn’t the case? In the movie Arrival and The Story of You, that wasn’t quite what was envisioned, more like the complete opposite.

The story and the movie gave way to an entirely new concept: the idea of trying to understand an alien language polar opposite of our own, using not only linguists, but also physics and learning to change ones thought process to really understand how they communicated.

There was something rather unique about their thought process, if you learned their language well, you where able to foresee the future, but whether or not one could change it remained unknown. The person that learned to foresee the future -the main character- let what would happen, happen, but whether or not she could have changed it still remains uncertain, at least in the book.

The major difference between the book and the movie was how deeply they went into the divorce the main character had. In the story it was brief, no answer as to why they were divorced, but in the movie the main character told the husband what was going to happen, but since she told him then would he have been able to change the future? The divorce made it seem that he didn’t like the idea of it, so is that evidence enough, that they indeed, could not change what was going to happen?

In most stories simliar to this one, if one can see the future, they normally can change it. It’s feels good to see a story in a new perspective, I’m tired of hearing the same old thing. It helps me think of new ideas and thinking like everyone else can get really bland sometimes. Quite a bit of “new” ideas are just reruns of something someone created a long time ago.

The movie wasn’t as boring as I thought it would be, if anything the movie help to guide my vision of the story instead of surpressing it. The movie didn’t really give a “new” vision of the story, and it really bugs me when someone takes a book and tries to flip it around to match a certain theme.

If it’s a different vision, its an entirely different idea and should not be advertised as the same thing.