I have only half-finished it yet but I need to rant.

movie spoilers

Aliens have landed at 12 locations on Earth. One of them being the USA. American military is working with a pair of scientists–a linguist and a physicist–to figure out their language.

Meanwhile the American public is terrified of these aliens who have done nothing but landed and attempted to communicate. They are mad that the American military has not tried to blow them to smithereens. The baddies–China and Russia–are mounting a military operation against the aliens.

I cannot even…

  • OrnluWolfjarl@lemmygrad.ml
    18·
    5 months ago

    I don’t think Villeneuve did it to paint China in a bad way. There’s a point to be served for making China “the bad guys” (although they aren’t). Watch the movie to the end, and we can discuss it.

    Also, bear in mind that the US military might have interfered with the script, since that’s their term for lending assets to make a film.

    • loathsome dongeater@lemmygrad.mlOPEnglish
      211·
      5 months ago

      Of course the US military intervened. The film’s depiction of its world’s geopolitical realities is entirely shaped by it. It kinda looks like the world is just divided over self-serving bureaucratic governments engaged in petty squabbles which can be transcended if we just co-operate or reach across the aisle so to speak. The problem I have is that it portrays all countries as equally belligerent and that US just happened to have the only linguist in the world to whom it ocurred that the first mention of “weapons” might be a mistranslation or a misunderstanding. Meanwhile back in real life the American military is the most violent organisation by margins that can only be measured in astronomical units.

      • 小莱卡@lemmygrad.ml
        9·
        5 months ago

        Yeah at the end it’s an american movie so of course they’re going to be the heroes, at least China wasn’t portrayed as badly as Russia that iirc

        spoiler

        end up doing some kind of mutiny and killing between them? :::

        Something that i’ve noticed in these kind of movies is that the chinese representative is always a general, always a military guy, they never have a CPC guy, or a scientist. It’s as if China is a warmonger or smt in their minds.

  • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmygrad.ml
    10·
    5 months ago

    Highly recommend the short story it’s based on. Doesn’t have any propaganda nonsense from the movie, and I find the concept works better in the literary medium.