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bawfuls posted:I saw her get a round of shots when they first show up on site as some kind of "here's a bunch of vaccinations and poo poo cause we don't know what you'll be exposed to" thing, but I saw zero indication that she was medicated every single time they went into the ship. I think they were taking a lot of stuff to stay awake, bc of the deadline. Some of it was like epipens. Also for some reason I want to say that the ship opened up at regular intervals that were inconvenient for normal sleep schedule.
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Feb 28, 2017 20:32
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I read Alien Invasion movies as at least partially being Reverse Colonialism fantasies. And you know what happened when "we" went to the new worlds - we brought a bunch of to us, trivial diseases, and then all the natives died. So now as we're being colonized, we're gonna be super smart and take a flu vaccine! Cause aliens got space bugs or something.
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Feb 28, 2017 21:55
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Just remembered another question I had. When the heptapods told them "Use weapon", that was a mistranslation right? They were saying "Use the Gift of time-vision" and the Gift isn't really weapon at all, yes? The word humans thought meant "weapon" actually meant "ability/power"?
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Feb 28, 2017 22:41
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Our own word weapon is insufficient. Should "weapons" include all methods that include strategic advantage? Sonar would have taken a long time to develop on its own, but WWII ramped that up quickly. Was it a powerful weapon? Arguably yes. I think the heptapods gave humans a strategic advantage that can be weaponized in millenia to come.
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Feb 28, 2017 23:09
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Or is it like the oracle in the matrix, "told you exactly what you needed to hear." I.e. it was a lie/misleading word, but put her on the path they wanted her on.
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Mar 1, 2017 00:09
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El Jeffe posted:Just remembered another question I had. When the heptapods told them "Use weapon", that was a mistranslation right? They were saying "Use the Gift of time-vision" and the Gift isn't really weapon at all, yes? The word humans thought meant "weapon" actually meant "ability/power"? Yes, but it's also a callback to the Sanskrit translation earlier in the film. If your word for war is literally "desire for more cows", you're going to reach for your sword when you want more cows.
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Mar 1, 2017 00:33
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CharlieWhiskey posted:Our own word weapon is insufficient. Should "weapons" include all methods that include strategic advantage? Sonar would have taken a long time to develop on its own, but WWII ramped that up quickly. Was it a powerful weapon? Arguably yes. I think the heptapods gave humans a strategic advantage that can be weaponized in millenia to come. Epitope posted:Or is it like the oracle in the matrix, "told you exactly what you needed to hear." I.e. it was a lie/misleading word, but put her on the path they wanted her on. Party Boat posted:Yes, but it's also a callback to the Sanskrit translation earlier in the film. If your word for war is literally "desire for more cows", you're going to reach for your sword when you want more cows. Cool interpretations!
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Mar 1, 2017 02:18
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El Jeffe posted:I might also be a Dumb Person. Specifically, he didn't understand that the kid had not been born yet until he got confused by wtf they were talking about near the very end and I had to explain it. The fact that the protagonist was seeing future memories clicked for me when she said "who is this child?" but apparently the meaning of that comment sailed directly over his head. 
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Mar 1, 2017 03:27
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Are you referring to the idea that language is so powerful that it can enable you to literally see the future?
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Party Boat posted:Yes, but it's also a callback to the Sanskrit translation earlier in the film. If your word for war is literally "desire for more cows", you're going to reach for your sword when you want more cows. I think it's more a callback to the other professor's translation that war meant "disagreement" and another of her talks about "tool" versus "weapon" "Use weapon to end war" or "use tool to end disagreement" are two sentences that basically could mean the same thing, but either could also be interpreted in a lot of wildly different ways. On the other hand "desire for more cows" has a more specific meaning. So the basic problem they have is they know the symbol for weapon, but there's no common understanding between the humans and heptapods on what weapon means.
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Mar 1, 2017 08:38
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Nathilus posted:Specifically, he didn't understand that the kid had not been born yet until he got confused by wtf they were talking about near the very end and I had to explain it. The fact that the protagonist was seeing future memories clicked for me when she said "who is this child?" but apparently the meaning of that comment sailed directly over his head. Well, actually, your friend probably understood the film better than you did, since the time-travel conceit is just an excuse for Adams' character to speak poetically. "Who is this child?" is the sort of line Malick would include as a whispered voiceover in one of his films. Attempts at deciphering the literal plot miss the point of how Adams' 'future self' will suddenly snap out of her day-to-day and experience life as something alien. This is not her 'past self' seeing the future, but her 'actual self' briefly adopting this past perspective - stepping out of the context of historical reality. "And you may find yourself Living in a shotgun shack And you may find yourself In another part of the world And you may find yourself Behind the wheel of a large automobile And you may find yourself in a beautiful house With a beautiful wife And you may ask yourself, well How did I get here?"
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Mar 1, 2017 09:47
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Well, actually, your friend probably understood the film better than you did, since the time-travel conceit is just an excuse for Adams' character to speak poetically. "Who is this child?" is the sort of line Malick would include as a whispered voiceover in one of his films. Are there any other songs that complement/are "better than" versions of Arrival, tryna get a playlist going
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Mar 1, 2017 15:40
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Just watched this and loved it. So what I took from it is the aliens need our help 3000 years in the future and want us not destroy ourselves so they let Amy Adams see the future and so she can talk the Chinese down. Plus oh by the way now you know the future daughter you're going to have with Ian is going to die. I am not trying to be a jerk but it's a bit confusing.
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Mar 3, 2017 06:29
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Keith Atherton posted:Just watched this and loved it. Naw, that's the gist of it.
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Mar 3, 2017 07:52
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Steve Yun posted:Naw, that's the gist of it. Thank you. Going to enjoy watching it again.
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Mar 3, 2017 08:56
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CharlieWhiskey posted:Our own word weapon is insufficient. Should "weapons" include all methods that include strategic advantage? Sonar would have taken a long time to develop on its own, but WWII ramped that up quickly. Was it a powerful weapon? Arguably yes. I think the heptapods gave humans a strategic advantage that can be weaponized in millenia to come. Yeah, ultimately reading heptapod language and thinking like they do could be a super powerful weapon, even if you can't change the future with it. Like, Adams' character stops the Chinese by using knowledge she got in the future, but if there's one true path then she was always going to do that. So now imagine thousands of people able to draw on knowledge, perhaps eventually even detailed technical or expert knowledge, that they haven't actually learned yet. If it gets developed enough you could have early med students doing expert surgeries because they eventually become surgeons, diplomats knowing what to say to someone because they become friends with them in the future, and on and on. There's also the possibility that due to how humans think and use this ability we'll do things with it that Heptapod's couldn't imagine doing, which to me is the most likely reason they'd need us to have this ability in 3,000 years. Basically the aliens handed the human race a superpower, but it comes with some drawbacks and I feel like it'll take a real long time to really get good at it.
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Mar 4, 2017 21:51
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Loved, loved this film. Two things to nitpick: 1. Shang is so uncommon a surname it basically doesn’t exists. Reads to me like some white dude’s idea of what a typical Chinese surname would be. 2. It didn’t bother me that much because I liked the film, but General Shang really shouldn’t be speaking crisp American English and the mahjong thing was hella dumb and Amy Adams speaks Mandarin like all white Americans on TV and in movies. At least they had it slightly muted. Usually it’s just white people speaking gibberish very loudly. 3. Don’t know how it really is, but Adams and Renner both seem too young to be world-leading academics parachuted into a global existential crisis. Like I said, just nitpicking. Loved this a lot. I love how different it is from Sicario, which was – to me – a very fundamentally impersonal story with ciphers for protagonists. This was human through and through.
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Mar 19, 2017 18:12
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Vegetable posted:3. Don’t know how it really is, but Adams and Renner both seem too young to be world-leading academics parachuted into a global existential crisis. The actors are 41 and 45 when they film the movie. But also, for storytelling purposes, Louise needs to be able to have children so she can't exactly be 50 in the events of the film.
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Mar 19, 2017 19:21
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For what it's worth, Noam Chomsky at 41 was probably the leading linguist in the world, and physicists and mathematicians often peak young.
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Mar 19, 2017 21:11
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I just picked some random famous names but, Oppenheimer, Fermi and Feynman were in their 40s and 30s when they were a part of the Manhattan project at Los Alamos. I have a similar problem in that two people seems like kind of like nowhere near as many people as should have been working on this poo poo.
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Mar 19, 2017 21:21
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Cingulate posted:For what it's worth, Noam Chomsky at 41 was probably the leading linguist in the world, and physicists and mathematicians often peak young.
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Mar 19, 2017 21:22
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Vegetable posted:3. Don’t know how it really is, but Adams and Renner both seem too young to be world-leading academics parachuted into a global existential crisis. You're thinking that they're on the speed dial when they could, realistically, be the 4th or 5th choice by then.
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Mar 20, 2017 00:40
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Speaking of which, what changed Forest Whitaker's mind about sending her to Montana? I remember him saying "You're not going to Montana," then he just shows up in a helicopter and is like "You're going to Montana!"
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Mar 20, 2017 02:23
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Vegetable posted:1. Shang is so uncommon a surname it basically doesn’t exists. Reads to me like some white dude’s idea of what a typical Chinese surname would be. what
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Mar 20, 2017 03:15
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Josh Lyman posted:See: Fields Medal, Einstein Idgi, did he get passed over for being too old?
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Mar 20, 2017 03:19
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What part of that did you not understand
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Mar 20, 2017 04:34
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商 is an unusual but fairly normal surname, it's nowhere near "basically doesn't exist".
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Mar 20, 2017 04:47
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It's not fairly normal, it's exceedingly rare in mainland China. Try not talking out your rear end.
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Mar 20, 2017 06:12
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it's rare, but not "exceedingly rare" or "basically doesn't exist", i know people with that surname and i'm chinese.
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Mar 20, 2017 06:25
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The Saddest Rhino posted:it's rare, but not "exceedingly rare" or "basically doesn't exist", i know people with that surname and i'm chinese. My point was they clearly did no research about what a typical Chinese surname would be and just picked one that sounds right and rolls off the tongue of white people. Which is fine, whatever, but annoying.
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Mar 20, 2017 06:43
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the surname Shang is the 123rd most common surname in China compare this to, say, the surname McClane  McClane is the 23,221st most common surname in the US. even if we go to the much more common McClain spelling, that's still only the 712th most common surname in the US. even taking into account the fact that the US has a lot more surname variety, your chances of a random Chinese person being a Shang are about 1 in 1,000 while your chances of a random American being a McClain are about 1 in 6,000 amusingly, you're more likely to find a mcclain in the bahamas (1 in 3,000 chance) than you are in the US. in summary and in conclusion wow this is a dumb argument
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Mar 20, 2017 07:29
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Vegetable posted:I'm also Chinese and have not known a single person to use it. have more diverse friends with interesting surnames!
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Mar 20, 2017 08:45
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El Jeffe posted:Speaking of which, what changed Forest Whitaker's mind about sending her to Montana? I remember him saying "You're not going to Montana," then he just shows up in a helicopter and is like "You're going to Montana!" El Jeffe posted:Just remembered another question I had. When the heptapods told them "Use weapon", that was a mistranslation right? They were saying "Use the Gift of time-vision" and the Gift isn't really weapon at all, yes? The word humans thought meant "weapon" actually meant "ability/power"? "Ask him the Sanskrit word for war, and what its translation is" (in Louise's office after he's told her she's not going to Montana, as he's about to leave to go speak to another linguist) "He said it meant a disagreement. You?" (At Louise's home in the middle of the night) "A desire for more cattle." If the Heptapods spoke Sanskrit and expressed a desire for more cows, the other linguist would have told Weber they were declaring war. This basically happens later on, during the "weapon" drama where Louise tries to chill everyone out explaining that they may not mean weapon as we understand weapon. SHISHKABOB posted:I have a similar problem in that two people seems like kind of like nowhere near as many people as should have been working on this poo poo. They weren't the only two working on it, they were head of their respective teams: Linguists and physicists. It's briefly mentioned as the Colonel introduces Ian & Louise when they arrive at the site initially, but not really addressed after that. I think in the story there's a few times where Ian is explaining things to Louise that the science/physicist team have come up with. objectively bad fucked around with this message at 12:58 on Mar 20, 2017 |
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Mar 20, 2017 12:48
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Vegetable posted:85% of the population use one of 100 surnames and this is not in that list. I'm also Chinese and have not known a single person to use it.
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Mar 20, 2017 14:34
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why isn't every character named after me and my friends? oh wait, i know why: racism
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Mar 21, 2017 02:04
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NowonSA posted:There's also the possibility that due to how humans think and use this ability we'll do things with it that Heptapod's couldn't imagine doing, which to me is the most likely reason they'd need us to have this ability in 3,000 years. I was actually wondering about that - say, it turns out you can change the future to at least a limited extent, but the Heptapods were stuck in the paradigm of quietly accepting one's fate such that they never bothered to try.
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Mar 21, 2017 02:39
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Cockmaster posted:I was actually wondering about that - say, it turns out you can change the future to at least a limited extent, but the Heptapods were stuck in the paradigm of quietly accepting one's fate such that they never bothered to try. In the movie it seems pretty clear that when she learns the Heptapod language, some sort of understanding comes along with it. She gains a kind of innate knowledge of time to the point that she no longer even wants to change future. Maybe seeing an entire lifetime at once is like a sentence in Heptapod. If you take one thing out it throws the balance completely off. Maybe its not so easy to change the future without sacrificing a lot of the great stuff. On the other hand, its definitely possible that 3,000 years from now humans have developed a more advanced understanding of time than the Heptapods ever had. Fun to think about but probably would make for a lovely sequel.
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Mar 21, 2017 02:54
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:"And you may find yourself More specifically, "how am I being here?"
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Mar 21, 2017 04:03
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Basebf555 posted:In the movie it seems pretty clear that when she learns the Heptapod language, some sort of understanding comes along with it. She gains a kind of innate knowledge of time to the point that she no longer even wants to change future. I thought it was simply a matter of her concluding that she wasn't going to forgo all the good times she had with her daughter to avoid having to deal with her untimely death. quote:Maybe seeing an entire lifetime at once is like a sentence in Heptapod. If you take one thing out it throws the balance completely off. Maybe its not so easy to change the future without sacrificing a lot of the great stuff. On the other hand, its definitely possible that 3,000 years from now humans have developed a more advanced understanding of time than the Heptapods ever had. Fun to think about but probably would make for a lovely sequel. Just because there can be unintended consequences doesn't mean the unchanged future automatically represents the best possible outcome. I'm sure there are plenty of people who, if they could see the entire timeline of their lives, would have every reason to conclude that the potential benefits of making certain changes would outweigh the risks (say, seeing yourself dying of lung cancer and deciding to quit smoking). For what it's worth, there are several major languages (including Mandarin Chinese) where specifying present/future tense is not a mandatory part of sentence structure. Native speakers of such languages tend to think of the future pretty similarly to how most of us think of the present. This, in turn, motivates them to be more mindful of how their actions impact their future (living healthier lifestyles, saving more money, etc.) http://theweek.com/articles/466512/how-language-speak-affects-future
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Mar 21, 2017 18:23
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Cockmaster posted:I thought it was simply a matter of her concluding that she wasn't going to forgo all the good times she had with her daughter to avoid having to deal with her untimely death. That's what I'm getting at yea, but she seems to gain an instant understanding of why it would be impossible to change the future without having to sacrifice those things. In most time travel stories the protagonist would at least want to try to cure their daughter without losing all of the good times they had together before the illness. She somehow already knows that's not possible so she doesn't even try.
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Mar 21, 2017 19:02
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Cockmaster posted:This, in turn, motivates them to be more mindful of how their actions impact their future (living healthier lifestyles, saving more money, etc.) Keith Chen is rather universally understood to be a quack though. On the other hand, I'm personally entirely willing to believe in hardcore relativist ideas like Ted Chiang's here.
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Mar 21, 2017 20:01
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