The first teaser for Arrival was evocative, but revealed very little about the first contact thriller. Now the first full trailer has arrived, giving us a much better sense of exactly how director Denis Villeneuve went about adapting the Ted Chiang short story “Story of Your Life” from his collection Stories of Your Life and Others.
While the new Arrival trailer suggests they’ve upped the action a bit (perhaps I’m misremembering, but I don’t recall any cruise missiles), it looks like an astoundingly faithful and thoughtful adaptation of the emotional mind-bending accomplished in the original story.
Check out the Arrival trailer and then we can get into some mild spoilers:
The key addition featured in this trailer and not in the first teaser trailer for Arrival is the alien’s written language: complex loops, packed with ideas.
Though both Arrival and “Story of Your Life” deal with humanity’s first contact with an alien species, they’re also personal stories about the life of linguist Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams). One of the key themes of the story is how language shapes the way we look at the world. Our linear language leads to linear lives. So how will learning the aliens radial language change Banks’ entire outlook on her personal tragedies and triumphs?
We’ll find out when Arrival comes out on Nov. 11. Or you could pick up a book, ya heathen (you won’t regret it, all of Stories of Your Life and Others is masterful and destined to be a part of science fiction canon forever).
