I was expecting a generic alien invasion movie, and I was pleasantly surprised
Yeah, genuinely one of my favourite original sci-fi movies I’ve watched in the last decade. I did a linguistics course in high school so just really loved that side of it. It also really felt like they did a great job building the tension and making it feel like there were high stakes to her work.
I had no idea what I was watching when I sat down in the theater. My friend had bought the ticket and I just showed up. I didn’t know ANYTHING.
One of the best experiences of my life and it turned me into a Denis Villeneuve super fan.
Same. I’m skeptical of most newer movies given all the rehashes and sequels. The presentation of the aliens had me shaking a little bit!
Could you be also recommend a few generic alien invasion movies?
If you haven’t seen it, District 9 is a good non-standard ‘invasion’ movie
you can watch skyline if you want to watch nothing new or interesting.
Loved the movie! Such a great concept and so elegantly made. But the tagged on love story kind of took me out of it. Could almost hear the producers pushing that love story for wider audience appeal.
It happens in the short story too.
The producers got to the book too!?
No okay did not know that. So maybe my problem is with the general need to put love stories into stories. Or maybe it was written better in the book? Might have to read the book now
The concept of linguistics changing the way we understand the world is interesting but i cannot enjoy a movie that portrays other countries as unreasonable warmongers and incompetent while portraying the US as reasonable and brilliant.
The thing I remember about this movie was that India got mad one of the fictional aliens from this movie decided to land in Pakistan instead of India.
The other thing I remember was that they for some reason decided to show the location on the map as “Punjab, Pakistan” which is even more generic because it’s a province not a city.
The other thing I remember was that they for some reason decided to show the location on the map as “Punjab, Pakistan” which is even more generic because it’s a province not a city.
I could see India being upset over that because it’s disputed territory. Edit: This is incorrect, Kashmir is the disputed territory.
No that’s Kashmir.
Punjab is technically a region that also happens to be the name of the province in both Pakistan and India since they both encompass the same region.
The best sound design team. I also love the ability of the visual design team to give a true feeling of scale and weight to things.
This was a good one. Definitely recommend
I need to give this a rewatch
Read the short story before re-watching. Definitely gives you a better perspective.
The aliens reminded me of the Tralfamadorians from Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five.
That was a mouthful. Is it worth a watch?
It’s a book. Then again I don’t watch much tv, so who knows, it may have been adapted by now. The book is worth reading though, it’s very good.
There’s a film of it, but I’ve only ever read the book. It is a really good book by a WWII veteran who really gets a lot of points about the war and what happened across.
Ah okay! I’ll add it to my ever growing list haha.
I too have an ever growing list. if you’ve never read Vonnegut before, he is really worth moving up the list.
I watched it for the first time last year without knowing anything about it and, as someone who loves to nerd out about anything linguistics related (am translator, for context), I cannot describe how gleeful I was that such subjects had center focus in a big blockbuster like that. Obviously the other aspects of the movie were amazing as well and the story got me very emotional by the end, but I will never shut up about how interesting and important that translation/communication aspect of the movie was.
This movie absolutely destroyed me emotionally for like a week. I was wholly unprepared for what this movie was really about. I was expecting an alien invasion movie and got a brickload of emotions dumped on my heart.
Same. Saw it a few months before my first child was born and it opened up something in me that I didn’t know was there. I’ve never watched a movie that made me weep until this one. Full on sobbing. Watched it again a week later, wasn’t a fluke - sobbed again.
It’s based on a short story called “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang. He’s published only eighteen stories in his career (starting in 1990), nothing longer than a novella and mostly short stories. Despite that they’ve won him four Hugos, four Nebulas, and six Locus Awards. He’s worth reading, is what I’m trying to say.
The short story was OK but this is one of the few cases where the movie did it better, added flavor to it that wasn’t in the book but carries the emotional hit farther.
The short stories in that book felt very “woah dude” to me, in the end I finished it but didn’t like it all that much. I’ve been downvoted for this opinion before, but oh well.
I put him up there with Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein, easily.
Well that’s got me interested then
That’s exactly what I was going to say. His prose is breathtaking.
If you haven’t read The Merchant and the Alchemists Gate by Ted Chiang I can’t recommend it enough. Here’s a PDF Link
It’s lesser known than his big hits like Exhalation, but I think it’s phenomenal.
Oh, I’ve read all of his stuff! It’s a red letter day for me when a new story is published. None since 2019, though.
My odd choice of his would be Seventy-Two Letters. I find him most interesting when he follows through in the consequences of an old disproven scientific theory or theological explanation of the universe, and he manages to fit two of them in here.
I read the story and found it very entertaining. I’m not sure what impact it had on me, but it made me marvel at the idea of the inevitability of fate and how often our suffering and regrets of the past are the reason we’re regarded so highly by others.
How did it strike you?
It’s also featured on a two-part episode of LeVar Burton Reads.
I will say I read the short story and it made me love the movie even more. It rare for me to say the movie was better than they book and the books was great as well.
Ya know I have to say I feel nearly the same about Dune. I haven’t gotten to the the later books but the first 2 have made me love the movies more. Not that I love the the books any less though. There is very little nuance lost in the movies and the changes that are made I can understand from a film making point of view. I guess what I mean to say is I appreciate the differences and it makes me like both more rather thank either any less.
Yeah Denis Villeneuve is a wonderful story teller. The book gives great context to what the characters are thinking and that was where Lynch failed trying to put that on screen when it wasn’t needed for the medium.
Don’t bother with the rest of the books unless you’re into heavy philosophy. The new movies are pleasantly close to the books which made me love them as well
I couldn’t agree more. I read them quite some time ago, and still find myself having philosophical discussions about them somewhat often today. Most are really thought provoking in a non-judgmental way.
I wonder if Ted Chiang was inspired by Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five
He’s written some “Notes” on the story when it was printed in his first short story collection and said that it has the same theme but that he wasn’t inspired by it directly. The roots were Paul Linke’s play “Time Flies When You’re Alive” and the principle of least time in optics – if you treat light as a ray, it has to know its future destination in order to know the path with the shortest time it will take to get there (though not if it’s a wave). Then there’s a bunch of diagrams and discussions about the principle’s implications for free will that will stretch your brain. It’s pretty fun.
Thanks for the reading recommendation!
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.
