YMMV / Arrival

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • The nature of The Reveal is subject to this. Louise now knows what her future will be and knows that if she marries Ian, they'll conceive Hannah and she'll die of cancer at twelve (not to mention Ian and her will split up when he finds out that Louise knew this would happen). Viewers can't decide if Louise has any choice in what happens to her future, if she can change it at all or if You Can't Fight Fate is in full play. If the latter is true, it raises the question of how ethical Louise's choice was to not share the knowledge with Ian before they married, although it can be argued that even when she tells Ian is already decided as well.
  • The Reveal also throws Louise's whole character into a different light. We're led to believe that the depressed and lonely Louise is that way because she's grieving for her daughter. But as that hasn't happened yet, that means the happy Louise we see playing with Hannah is who she will be. The last chronological shot of Louise is just her in the hospital after Hannah's death - so the viewer can decide for themselves if she'll go back to being depressed or she'll be able to move past losing her daughter.
  • It should be noted that we only see Louise, chronologically, beginning the day of the Heptapods arrive. We have no context as to how she is besides a short phone call from her concerned mother regarding the aliens. Any inference we are making as to her supposed depression is being projected on us from her future daughter's death.
  • On a more thematic point of view, the suggested hypothesis that language is universal adds the possibility that the Heptapods originally did not communicate like this and were enlightened in a similar way they enlightened humans - perhaps even BY humans in the far future, in another instance of stable time loops..
• Award Snub: When the film was released, Amy Adams was thought of as a shoo-in for a Best Actress nomination. She got Golden Globe, SAG, and BAFTA nominations, but was completely ignored at the Academy Awards. Fans take particular issue with Meryl Streep getting a spot for Florence Foster Jenkins apparently just out of habit (though its assumed that Streep's politically-charged Golden Globes speech denouncing Donald Trump's presidency might have something to do with her getting nominated over Adams). It has also been argued that Adams' similarly acclaimed role in Nocturnal Animals the same year may have resulted in vote splitting that cost her a nomination for either film. Averted for the film itself, which was nominated for 8 Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, and Best Film Editing, although it only won for Best Sound Editing. To rub salt in the would, her name was listed in the ABC's Oscar site after the nomination before ABC corrected and apologized the next day.
• Awesome Music: Jóhann Jóhannsson's score for the film does a spectacular job setting the mood at the appropriate moments, capable of creating tension, awe, and tragedy as needed. It's also beautiful in its own right. Max Richter's piece "On the Nature of Daylight", used at the beginning and end of the film, also deserves credit here.
• Genius Bonus:
  • The first clue the heptapods were not linear thinkers was when they they were revealed early on to be radially symmetrical like a jellyfish or starfish. They orient all of their limbs towards the humans as a social gesture, possibly to resemble human hands, or possibly to demonstrate trying to find common ground with the front-facing and linear-thinking humans.
  • The second clue was when they didn't recognize linear algebra and linear physics (at first) but quickly recognized multivariate calculus (which describes the shape and volume of complex three-dimensional objects).
  • In the end, it was revealed the Heptapods perceived time spherically; past and future radiated out from the present and were visible all around the sphere, but something about a sphere: you can take infinite paths around its circumference, but they all intersect at the same point on the other side.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The reveal that the Heptapods see through time makes Abbott's sacrifice even more tragic. All his life, from the moment of his birth, Abbott knew he was going to die this way. And yet he still chose this path, for the sake of his own species that this fractious alien species would save thousands of years in the future.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: The reveal that the aliens perceive time as circular paints the alien's motivations in a whole new way: Abbott and Costello would have already seen that one or both of them would be mortally wounded saving Louise and Ian from the bomb. This means that Abbott's choosing to come to Earth is, for all intents and purposes, a suicide mission - and he went anyway.
  • The Heptapods came to earth to help humanity advance, so they can help the Heptapods 3000 years in the future. However, as the Heptapods percieve time non-linearly, they are essentially already thanking us for something we are yet to do.
  • Considering how the Heptapods interact with time, they already understand what the humans are saying and are just really patient while we learn how to understand them.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Lois Lane and Clint Barton are work colleagues, get married and have a kid together. And their commanding officer is Zuri.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Jokes abound on how the Heptapod written language looks like coffee stains.
  • The scene where Louise holds up a whiteboard to the Heptapods in order to communicate has become a popular meme template, with may absurd and random things being written on it.
• Moral Event Horizon: The renegade soldiers cross this when they allow Louise and Ian to go back on the alien craft after planting a bomb. Planting the bomb itself was a clear mistake, and one that the viewer can probably understand on some level because of the ambiguity. But the fact that the heptapods had never shown any aggression or ill will and that the soldiers were acting rash based on fear and ignorance is another thing entirely. Letting two friendly civilian scientists who were trying to communicate get blown up along with them was the final nail in the coffin.
• Narm:
  • The Mood Whiplash of one of Louise's dreams where she's talking to Ian and then suddenly an alien. The effect can be so jarring it's a little comical, especially since Louise doesn't react at all to the heptapod's sudden appearance. The oddness of the scene comes in part because it's completely the product of the edit. The script had it be another real expository conversation between Louise, Ian, and the Colonel, which is how it was filmed. The editors were unable to trim it down to just the crucial information without making the whole scene a little surreal, so they just slapped an alien into it in post.
  • When Abbott starts poking on the glass pointing at the bomb, it comes off as him saying, "Hey, idiots. OVER THERE! LOOK!" The Narm Charm comes from the idea that may have been exactly what he was trying to say.
  • At the end, when Ian says "you wanna make a baby?" is just hilariously awkward and unnatural and feels as though the film just didn't want to risk anyone somehow not getting the fact that Ian is Hannah's father. The line is from the story but isn't as well integrated.
  • Related to the above, during the ending says something along the lines of "the best part wasn't meeting them. It was meeting you." Which is an unimaginably cheesy line that the sequence just kind of demands you accept and move on. Again, this is down to the film not spending any time developing Louise and Ian's burgeoning relationship.
  • The reveal of the Heptapods' upper bodies. It may either seem a surprising twist to show them being bigger than first thought, or it may come off as awkward given how they seem like a dark vaguely-humanoid figure balanced awkwardly on seven tiny legs.
  • While Louise talks to Costello, the camera zooms in on both the head-like knob atop his body, and the lower section of his body where the limbs join the torso. This gives the implication that Louise was tallking to his crotch.
  • As the bomb ticks closer to exploding, Costello flees the scene with urgency...and in doing so releases a massive cloud of ink from all seven limbs, giving the visible impression of soiling himself in terror.
  • Louise's phone call to General Shang is a pretty powerful moment... as long as you don't know or speak Mandarin. If you do, Amy Adams' delivery of her lines will be, at best, a serious case of What the Hell Is That Accent? or, at worst, unintelligible gibberish.
• Narm Charm:
  • Ian and Louise decide to name the aliens Abbott and Costello. Silly, yes, but Louise breaks out into an Adorkable grin and enthusiastically agrees. The aliens themselves even answer to those names later on in the movie.
  • The space ships' design got quite a laugh in Norway as they look exactly like a common Norwegian candy, "Licorice boats".◊
• Nightmare Fuel: Although the aliens are revealed to be benevolent their first scene is still very unnerving. They emerge from the mist as giant tentacled creatures - thoroughly freaking Ian and Louise out. Seeing how they communicate for the first time can also be very startling.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • In many ways to Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Contact, offering a Setting Update. All while still being its own thing, too.
  • Many reviewers commented that the film feels like it was based on a Michael Crichton novel (specifically its basic premise is very similar to Sphere). However, the film is a good deal more optimistic and less violent than most of Crichton's work, and is based on a preexisting short story.
  • The film is also the closest we've ever come to an adaptation of the Samuel Delany novel Babel-17, with its examination of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, plus a female protagonist who is changed by learning an alien language.
• Ugly Cute: The heptapods are weirdly cuddly-looking. It helps that they're genuinely benevolent, and are well-liked enough to have children make clay sculptures of them!
• Visual Effects of Awesome: While the rendering of the ships is nice to look at, special mention should go to the scene where they speak to Louise directly. Mostly because it averts the hell of No Flow in CGI. Louise's hair comes undone and spends the entire scene realistically billowing around as it would in zero gravity.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Some viewers have said that at the beginning of the movie they were more interested in hearing Louise's lecture on Portuguese than the then still unknown thing that has most of her students distracted. As she states, Portuguese sounds very different than other Romance languages and while that's a well known peculiarity, the reasons why aren't.
• The Woobie:
  • Louise goes through an extreme Trauma Conga Line in the film's first five minutes and she continually looks lost and lonely throughout the film. The fact that she's played by Amy Adams - the queen of Woobie-ish characters - contributes to this greatly.
  • Hannah as well, considering that she dies of cancer at the age of twelve, presumably after enduring her parents divorcing or separating.
  • Ian retroactively becomes one as well once you know that he'll have to face his daughter's illness and the knowledge that his wife knew it was going to happen before she was even conceived.
  • The Heptapods themselves, particularly "Costello" - "Abbott" is mortally wounded ("ABBOTT IS DEATH PROCESS") by a bomb planted by renegade soldiers in the craft. Crosses to Fridge Horror if you realize how Heptapods perceive time - "Abbott" knew all along the trip was one-way, but did it anyway to complete its mission of giving humanity its gifts. Costello has to go home... alone.
• Woolseyism: The French title of the movie is "First Contact" which has subtle double meaning : the obvious first contact between the humans and the aliens, and the first contact between Louise and her baby Hannah, which is the final twist and the opening scene of the movie.