Non-Zero-Sum Game: How ‘Arrival’ Reframes Alien First Contact
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By Elliott Cuff
Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival has a simple yet intriguing premise: a dozen extraterrestrial spacecraft suddenly appear on Earth and hover over 12 locations around the globe, and linguistics professor Louise Banks is tasked with making first contact as tensions rise and nations teeter on the brink of armed conflict.
This was such a sizeable step outside of Villeneuve’s wheelhouse back in 2016—Arrival came before Blade Runner 2049 and 2021’s Dune—and yet I remember being rooted to my seat in emotionally arresting awe watching this considered creation unfold.
A First Contact First
Science fiction movies that concern themselves with humanity making first contact with alien life mostly follow a similar path.
Independence Day focuses on our bravery and jingoistic patriotism in the face of extraterrestrial hostility. Ridley Scott’s Alien dials into the inherent terror and fear of making contact with an advanced predatory organism. War of the Worlds says it all in the title. Invasion of the Body Snatchers presents aliens as a threatening force, while Close Encounters of the Third Kind makes them out to be galactic travelers driven by curiosity.
But no film approaches first contact in the same way that Arrival masterfully does. Beyond the obvious themes about communication and mutual understanding that are present throughout the Amy Adams-spearheaded drama, Arrival is a thoughtful portrait of alien first contact that evokes the experience of encountering foreign cultures.
Through the eyes of our protagonist we are not only charged with the task of discerning the intention behind why the Heptapods (the name used to describe the aliens in the film) came to Earth, we’re also forced to come to terms with both a unique method of communicating and a new way of understanding the world around us.
Arrival tilts into the realm of temporality in its final act, and that’s the culmination of two acts’ worth of engrossing narrative that underscores our need for human cooperation.
From Outer Space to Our Inner Selves
Science fiction has long been a conduit for filmmakers to explore the human condition in ways that reality cannot allow. As a genre it operates as the catalyst for enhanced perspective and illuminates our nature by challenging us to look deeper into ourselves.
Arrival does this by exploring how the human mind can be exploited by something unknown to us. Our need to grapple with the significance of another civilization evokes wonderment in some and aggression in others. In that way, it is one of the few major sci-fi films to cover the moment of first contact that dares to dig deeper into the implications of what such a moment could mean.
Villeneuve certainly doesn’t fold political friction into the film’s narrative by mistake. The international and intercultural tension that follows the moment of first contact mirrors the paranoia and distrust that the very discovery of alien life brings out in us.
In the final act there’s just as much (if not more) suspense created by the threat of intercultural communications breaking down than by the mysterious aliens that we barely understand enough to have a conversation with, let alone enough to discern their intention on Earth.
But that’s why the conclusion to Arrival makes such an impact: it reveals itself as a hopeful piece of science fiction.
Eventually, confusion and fear are replaced with appreciation and respect, and in turn we learn to accept and trust not only the Heptapods but also the viewpoints of the other nations involved in the conflict. Banks grows throughout the film not because she learns to accept the aliens but because she finds enough perspective to understand their reality, which in turn allows her to shape the future of humanity too.
Coming Full Circle
Arrival was notably a critical and commercial success when it was released in 2016, with both Villeneuve and the film honored by plentiful award nominations to underpin its success. But to me the film’s biggest success—and what left me in awe—was not just the filmmaking and beautifully understated performances but what the movie truly implied.
Almost every single day we come into contact with people from different cultures and unique backgrounds, and we are shown the many shapes life can take. Yet we still share mutual experiences. We are capable of both learning and offering information that helps to enrich our lives by being inclusive and cooperative.
That’s what Arrival teaches us: that despite the Heptapods having originated from outside our realm of reality, they were still able to broaden our understanding of what it means to be human.
Elliott Cuff is a writer, journalist, and film enthusiast. Follow him on Twitter @CuffWrites and Instagram @elliottlovesmovies.