Make sense of the movie’s twist

Denis Villeneuve Arrival It may seem like a basic sci-fi movie on the surface, but it has a very complicated timeline that is easy to misunderstand. The film tells the story of a professional linguist named Louise Banks who is called by the government when aliens land on the planet. It is her job to ensure that humans can interact effectively with the creatures, but she soon learns that their form of communication is beyond anything humans are capable of.

Arrival is an incredibly complex story That he managed to make simple through many clear visual clues, allowing the audience to track Banks’ journey from start to finish – even when it is not presented that way in the story. The big twist at the end of Arrival Reveals that everything prior to this moment is not exactly as it seems, but on a rewatch of the movie, all the clues are presented from the beginning, allowing the audience to piece banks timeline together in the right order.

Banks’ “memories” of Hannah are actually from the future

Interaction with the aliens gave Banks the gift of prescience

at the end of ArrivalIt is revealed that Banks has acquired the ability to see time in the same way that the aliens do: non-linearly. This means that She lost all concepts of past, present and futureWith each of these points bleeding together into your perception and happening all at once. This is the distorted timeline the audience is presented with right from the start, with the apparent flashbacks of Banks’ daughter appearing as memories that haven’t even happened yet.

ArrivalThe audience twist messes with the audience’s mind at first, but it makes sense once they see the story as non-linear. Banks’ daughter is not born when she experiences these memories, and Banks knows that she is destined to live only 12 years. It distorts her perception of time and prevents her from experiencing her own life in the order it should happen. This ability proves to be both a blessing and a curse, because she uses her knowledge of the future to bend the present around her will in a non-zero-sum game.

Arrival’s events all happen at once, but non-linearly

The non-sequential narrative of the Arrival movie explained

What is important to do about ArrivalThe timeline is that it is not non-linear in the same way as movies Pulp fiction Or Memento Are non-linear: there is no jump between past, present and future. These moments are all happening at the same timeBut Banks (and the aliens) are the only ones who are not forced to see them in a sequential order.

When the audience is presented with the “memories” of Hannah’s death, it is not something that Banks has experienced in the past or will experience in the future, it is something that she is experiencing right now – but it takes the aliens for her To gain access to this. The clues to arrival s Twists are available from the start, as the story opens on something that hasn’t technically happened yet from Banks’ perspective.

By confusing the audience and placing them in the non-linear time frame, director David Villeneuve allows his viewers to go through the same process as his protagonist and gradually learn to see time differently. The moments in Banks’ timeline are all presented in order, and although they initially appear to be flashbacks, it makes the twist ending much more comprehensible, as the audience is already familiar with this non-linear progression.

The linear timeline of Arrival begins with the arrival of the aliens and ends with Hannah’s death

The actual order of events in Arrival creates different ways of seeing the story

Although Banks can experience time non-linearlyThis is not true for every other character in the story. They have to live their lives sequentially, which means there is a linear timeline that everyone else must follow. In terms of the story ArrivalThe timeline begins with the aliens arriving on Earth, continues in Banks’ attempts to communicate with them, and finally results in Hannah’s death approximately thirteen years later.

It is the ability to see the story in several different ways that makes Arrival One of Villeneuve’s best movies yet. The audience is initially thrust into Banks’ distorted perspective, but thanks to the clues Villeneuve includes, there is enough information to piece together the timeline and make sense of the story from a more accessible perspective. Hannah’s death is both the beginning and the end of ArrivalDepending on what point you access the story from, that makes the movie an endless cycle.

This type of timeline twist has been used in other movies

Christopher Nolan is known to play with time

The three in Arrival Comes with the discovery of the truth behind the timeline of the movie. While Arrival Finding a new approach to such a narrative twist, such timeline reveals have been used in countless movies with a number of notable mentions. Memento is one of the most famous movies to play with time with the movie that is told in reverse – the first scene in the movie comes at the last point in the timeline of the movie. The final moments show where the story actually began and it reveals the true motivations behind the protagonist.

Interestingly, some of the biggest twists in Christopher Nolan’s movies involve time because it seems to be a subject he is fascinated with. Both Interstellar And Tenet Using time as a unique narrative element with their respective endings revealing that the main character went back in time to influence his past self to make the decisions he made in the movie. Similar to ArrivalThe pieces of the timeline begin to fall into place and everything begins to make sense.

One of the things that makes ArrivalThe twist so effective is the revelation that everything the audience thought was a flashback is actually a glimpse into the future. This twist is also seen in the underrated sci-fi movie 12 monkeys. Bruce Willis’ character often has dreams where he remembers seeing a man killed in front of him as a child with the assumption that it is his father. However, when Willis’ character is sent back in time, it is revealed that he is the man who was killed in front of his younger self.

These movies with complex timelines can be tricky to decipher, but this can often lead to brilliant twist endings.

Why Arrival has one of the best twists ever

It’s a twist that improves the movie

Arrival was a critically acclaimed sci-fi movie, winning an Oscar and nominated for seven more, with particular praise for Denis Villeneuve’s direction and Amy Adams’ performance. However, it’s the ending of the movie that really leads to its impact, with it being regarded as one of the best twist endings of all time. Although there are many iconic movie endings that surprise the audience with the pieces suddenly falling into place, Arrival is one of the most recent to blow audiences away.

Like all great twist endings, the reveal in Arrival Makes the audience instantly want to go back and rivet the movie from the beginning. With all the pieces now revealed, it’s a real treat to see all the clues laid out and how the twist was built. Of course, just having a twist at the end doesn’t work if it doesn’t feel organic to the story and doesn’t feel like it’s important. In the case of ArrivalIt not only takes the story in a whole new direction, but also adds an emotional element that is deep and unique.

Another reason why this movie’s twist works so well is because it gives the audience elements of it early on. The scene in which Louise is able to pull some information from the past to tell her daughter is the first indication that the movie’s timeline is warped. It’s an exciting reveal even if it’s not entirely clear what’s going on. However, with this piece of information, the twist begins to gradually build and build, with the audience beginning to piece it together with the characters.

All the elements help Arrival Provide a twist that achieves so much in being exciting and intelligent, enhancing the viewing experience and delivering another emotional layer to the story.