Arrival: #NoNeedToBelieve
Considering I write this blog, it’s not a surprise I was super pumped for this movie. An initial trailer was released last August and I was all in. I dove into the short story this was based on, reading it twice, back to back. Ted’s use of time and pronouns was so unique and I recommend his other short stories as well.
But…it’s one thing to have a 40 page short story, another thing completely to have a 2 hour major motion picture. The screenplay work took over a year and I commend Eric Heisserer for his patience and delivering a great script.
In my opinion, most reviews give too much away, and I have always tried to steer away from that. What I can say is this is the best alien movie in almost a decade. Not since District 9 I have I felt a story communicate what I find so intriguing about this genre. It is easy to have action (lately invasion/war movies), suspense (Alien series), but what I love is the thought provoking question of what does it mean to be human.
Too often, we as a civilization are divided between class, culture, country, race, religion, the list goes on and on. I truly believe that Extraterrestrials exist and my answer to the Fermi Paradox is that they are waiting for us to unite on our own, aka the “Zoology” answer. The must know that once their presence is known, everything changes. This is seen in science experiments from the Stanford Prison Experiment to any war conflict; the US banded together like never before at the onset of WWI, and especially WWII.
Once First Contact happens (or before on our own account), my hope is that there will be a real, unbreakable uniting of the human race. For some reason we agree there is a bond of people between neighbors on any street in America, what college you went to, what city you live in, what state, and especially lately, what country. But for some reason, finding the similarities and shared experiences with someone in Egypt or Japan is not the norm. That is what I hope changes in my lifetime, whether from Alien Contact or from our own actions, that we begin to understand we have more in common than apart.
