Just a week after a teaser trailer was released, the first full trailer for Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival has, well, arrived.
The science fiction film stars Amy Adams as a linguist and translator brought in by the government to make first contact with aliens after mysterious ships arrive on Earth. The film, which also stars Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Tzi Ma, focuses on the importance of communication and language. Specifically, how do you speak with a species that communicates in an entirely different way than we do?
The film is based on the short story “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang, which won the 2000 Nebula Award for Best Novella. While the short follows the same story as the film, it appears that the movie might be expanding the scope way further. The novella is very specifically about the character portrayed by Amy Adams and rarely do its events go beyond what is happening with her and her team. You could describe it as a Big Idea story that explores themes such as determinism, time travel, and the basis for all language. The trailer implies that we’ll see a much bigger, Hollywood-level story being told. We’ll get to see what is happening around the world as Adams’s character is trying to decipher the alien language and how a few bad decisions or wrong moves could spell disaster for us all.
The short story also intercuts the plot with Adams’s character’s memories of her daughter and how motherhood and that relationship seem intertwined with her inability to fully communicate with this alien species.
The good news is that Villeneuve brings with him a pedigree of films known for balancing big plot ideas with strong character studies. His most recent work includes Sicario, starring Emily Blunt and Benicio del Toro as well as Prisoners, starring Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal. He’s also a three-time winner of the Genie Award for Best Direction (Maelström, Polytechnique, Incendies). Villeneuve has shown a talent in taking big ideas and ensemble casts and weaving them together, which bodes well for what Arrival is about.
Arrival will premiere at the Venice Film Festival in September and is scheduled to be released in the U.S. on Nov. 11, 2016.
