by Tim Reyes

Have you ever noticed that most Sci-Fi aliens arrive and then, in short time, leave? A nice place to visit - Earth, but maybe not to live here. Sometimes we have to dispatch them to save ourselves. Arrival’s aliens are different. Their intentions are unknown. To our credit, we do not shoot first and ask questions later, although we can't avoid some shooting.

Questions are all the rage in Arrival. This is not your special effects spectacular and surely if you want that, there is always at least one at the box office.

So what does Arrival offer that is new? Language. Lots of language and the challenge of deciphering one from life beyond the Earth.

Arrival is directed by Denis Villeneuve. The screenplay by Eric Heisserer, is based on the short story "Story of Your Life" by Ted Chiang.

There are familiar faces in Arrival - Forest Whitaker and Jeremy Renner being two. However, Amy Adams plays a linguist professor, Louise Banks, who is chosen to initiate a conversation and learn what is the purpose of their presence. She is the central character not unlike what was done with Jody Foster’s in Contact.

Amy Adams, as Louise Banks, faces an ultimate linguist’s challenge — communicate with aliens from another World. She teams up with Jeremy Renner, a physicist. (Credit: Paramount Pictures)

Tagging along with Amy’s character Louise, we watch our world thrown into chaos and realize what we might face upon first contact with aliens. There is no doubt that if anything is realized that is different about us and aliens, it will be language — a barrier.

Other linguists had been given a shot at communicating with them - a brief one, because they need answers fast. A world is living on the edge because of curiosity and fear.

The producers and directors of Arrival have built upon the rich history of the Sci-Fi genre. For anyone familiar with the great ones, there are a couple of subtle moments early on that reminds one of 2001 Space Odyssey, colors of a cabin and the hypnotic moment of first realizing one is in the presence of an intelligence out of this world.

As is often the case, and how well suited Sci-Fi is for it, Arrival is really about us and how we might someday react to an actual arrival.

Make no mistake that despite all the UFO sightings and the realization that nearly every star in the Cosmos is surrounded by a planetary system - trillions of planets, we have yet to meet or see anyone.

The Cosmos is simply a unimaginably vast, open space and time. It took 4 ½ billion years, one-third the age of the Cosmos, to create intelligent beings with technology on Earth. With no apparent signs out there, it seems that intelligent life takes lots of time to develop no matter where you reside and we are all caught up in the ultimate haystack.

Ultimately, Arrival does not entertain us with the details of from where they came and how they did it. We do realize that their sense of space and time must be well beyond our present understanding. Fortunate for us, Amy Adams is given glimpses of that understanding. It is beyond disturbing to her and at the same time it carries us to a hopeful conclusion albeit a quizzical one. Like 2001, audiences leave the theater befuddled. What does it all mean? It’s not at all a bad end game for the viewer.

One thing that the ending means is sequel. We realize why they came to Earth and something, somewhere, some time will need to be done. Also, an initial statement by the aliens seems to be a clue to what they are asking of us and we totally misunderstood them almost to their demise.

The possibilities for language or generally communications are endless. Theirs could be mathematically based, it could be allegorical. Whatever we might realize of them, out there, evolution and a multitude of environments lead to many solutions.

On the other hand, the Cosmos forces us to share some things in common. Gravity for one. Enough earth and rock begets a watery layer and a watery layer, a blanket of air, all if there is enough planet. Arrival’s aliens are apparently from a water world. It's not clear how a race of aquatic beings could ever achieve space travel without first crawling onto land and becoming land creatures. Arrivals aliens do though and that difference poses the barriers to communicating with a much larger creature, albeit akin to creatures familiar to us, that took a different path to self-awareness and technology.

Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival does carve out a new niche in Sci-Fi movies that has not been tackled before to such a degree. Arrival makes you think of what we might face. It makes us also reflect upon the delicate nature of international relations. This movie forces us to face not just the challenges of communications with a race from beyond the Earth but also simply among ourselves.

Other recent stories by T.Reyes

The Prelude to the Singularity — our relation with past & present technology foreshadows what could become of us with emergence of artificial super-intelligence

New Horizons’ success at Pluto: Its all about Ralph and Alice! “Someday Alice!” … that day is less than 2 months away — the flyby of Pluto and Pluto’s moon Charon