Arrival (2016) - need answers! (Spoilers)

So I saw Arrival last night and I am interested to think what others have to say about it. I don't know if I necessarily enjoyed it but I found it quite interesting to see how the human drama was wrapped up into a succinct, if flawed, time travel story.

I ultimately just wanted to get a better understanding of what exactly transpired in the film with regards to the time travel structure and so here's my understanding: (I am totally open to being wrong, and hopefully someone can shine a light on my mistakes)

Chronological film events up until the aliens "leave"

1. Aliens arrive

2. Amy is called into the field for her work with languages

3. They make contact

4. Aliens and humans begin interacting. Aliens begin to teach Amy and Jeremy their language.

5. It is shown how language can wire/re-wire a brain, and it is shown that the aliens' language is time manipulation itself

6. Bomb goes off; one alien is killed

7. Amy is taken aboard and is told that the Aliens will require human assistance in 3000 years.

8. Amy realizes she can control time in a consciousness-way and not in a physical sense. In other words, she has an understanding of everything that will happen to her in the future, and can draw upon that information but is unable to change anything.

9. Aliens disappear into a mist, almost like they are being vaporized from time or that time itself is correcting itself. From what? Human war? Im not entirely sure at this point if it was all a coping mechanism for Amy or what happened with the Aliens actually happened.

END of chronological events

10. Amy and Jeremy get together after the alien event.

11. Amy has a child knowing it will die in the future from some kind of disease, and refuses to help the child knowing that it will change nothing.

12. Jeremy leaves Amy, presumably due to number 11.

13. Amy sees the Chinese general, who presumably also knows the alien language and tells Amy secrets to prevent an attack on the aliens.

14. Amy's daughter obviously has knowledge of what the aliens were. Amy retroactively uses this knowledge to understand she has time travel powers, somewhere between points 7 and 9.

is there anything Im missing? Did the aliens actually exist? because if they did, it would fall into a glaring time paradox. Was the entire thing just a rumination on loss, distrust and unity? also if one of the aliens knew he would be killed in the explosion, why let it happen? it didn't seem to add anything to the situation.

As I said, I would really like to hear what others thoughts were or if they could add to this.

Thanks in advance!

*Amy and Jeremy get together before the alien event.

@katygaga: Re: point 9: The aliens weren't fading out of existence or anything like that. They were leaving. Their job was done, and they had done what they came to Earth to do. The entire point of their visit was to teach humans their language, because they could see into their future and know that if they were going to make it through whatever happens in 3000 years, they would need humanity's help.

@kvel2d: I don't think thats correct because Jeremey's character has no awareness that she was married prior to the event. Also, he states that he likes her after the aliens leave

@katygaga: The Aliens did exist. The aliens language itself doesn't manipulate time, the conceit of the film is that thinking about language in this cyclical (looping) nature unlocks the mind to experience consciousness across your lifespan; the thoughts themselves travel (or - probably more mechanically accurate - bleed) through time. She doesn't refuse to help her daughter Hannah, the disease her daughter is suffering is incurable. Also if the way the aliens think is similar to the way the doctor thinks then the timetravel thoughts thing isn't that perfect so the aliens won't know everything that happened. Especially considering that the aliens live for more than 3000 years if they have thoughts from then.

I think this was an amazing film. The "twist" -if you wanna call it that. was pretty jaw-dropping at first, even if admittedly I probably should've seen at first glance, considering that in hindsight, there are plenty of clues that suggest that this is the end result of the alien's language.

To answer your questions:

When it comes to 11, it is pretty clear that her daughter will die anyway. It's all circular, right? Knowing the future, doesn't mean she can change it, and it looks like no matter what, her daughter is gonna get a cancer-like disease that will kill her. And yet, Louise accepts it regardless. (It's about the journey, not the destination, yada, yada, yada.)

I don't think 12 actually happens. That's probably a way to interpret it, but just like the end of Inception, it is up to you to decide whether the totem drops or not.

When it comes to 13, I don't speak mandarin, so it's kinda hard to know what they to each other at that very moment. Also, Louise cannot travel through time. What she got was premonitions more or less, not some time-changing capability.

And yes, this was mostly a rumination on loss that only someone like Amy Adams could've done well, which is why I was pretty happy with the end result. It's really well acted, which is why I thinks it works so effectively, even if you leave with a lot of questions at the end.

@jd_delgado: yeah, on second thought, I think its a closer dissection of unity than it is of loss. There's a recurring theme of perceived fatalism causing problems for cohesion and unity.

- The two aliens are broken apart from a fear of an attack backed up by human historical precedence.

- The aliens want the humans to interact with all 12 parts of their spaceships in order to gain a greater knowledge.

- the main conflict is how the world fears an attack from the aliens, or possibly from each other, causing the world's main forces to break apart and not work together.

- Im convinced that Amy and Jeremy's marriage breaks down due to Amy not telling Jeremy, prior to conceiving, that their eventual daughter will die of an incurable disease.

the more I think of the film, the better it appears to be. Its not something I want to watch again because I don't think it'll be as good, but I definitely have a higher opinion of it now than I had after watching it.

Don't think of it as time travel. Their language isn't linear, because they more than likely don't exist in a linear time scale , right? So theoretically, their perception of time is due to that they exist in a sphere in which all that ever will be, past, present, and future is all happening at the same time. Forwards or backwards in time is just a different perception for them because they don't exist in that sphere. The aliens really didn't even need a physical embodiment, but for the purpose of learning language and communicating to human who do exist in a linear world and perceive time in a linear fashion, it makes sense for them to have some physical body to communicate to humans with. When they disappear, I don't think it's meant to be a "it's all in Amy's head moment". How I perceived it was that the aliens accomplished their mission and now they are going back into their realm of cyclical time in which everything is happening at once.

@whitestripes09: fair enough, it just causes problems with obvious time paradoxes.

the most glaring of which is when the General tells Amy (or Louise) what his dying wife told him.

Amy wasn't even aware she had made a phone call in the first place to him, let alone tell him all the information. I agree its not Terminator-like time travel, more Lost-ish... but still, the obvious question is how can knowledge be disseminated if she didn't even know it in the first place? Thats not the fatalistic time travel that has been set up in the film, its something that feels paradox-y

My question is how does this actually help humanity at all? It seems that Amy Adams is the only one who has gained this gift of transcendence, although perhaps it is implied that others do as well as other people learn the alien language. At the very least it doesn't necessarily seem like something that would be remembered by humanity in 3000 years.

@jdizzlefoshizzle: Well, she does write a book about the subject, so it's not as if she keeps it to herself.

I always have 1 or 2 nagging issues with most of Denis Villeneuve's films but man, this was moving.