In fact, on the second day after the release of "Arrival", I ran to see it. After reading it, I felt that there were some things I wanted to write, but the desire to write it was not so strong (well, the real reason is that I was lazy. ). In the middle, I also mustered up the courage to turn on the computer and knocked on it a few times, but I didn’t have enough energy to write it after I started it hastily. During that time, I let various public accounts bombardedly send information about the film and the original novel. All kinds of compliments, I had no choice but to say in my heart, forget it, let it (it) go (go).
But until a while ago, the company held a meeting, and a leader mentioned at the meeting that a small domestic director she knew liked the film very much, and went to the cinema to watch it several times, saying that it was because of strong mental tremors and huge ideological inspiration. I regard the director of this film as my spiritual mentor, and I worship this film as a god film... I can't sit still.
If this film is one of the most overrated films in 2016, I don’t think any film critic with a little conscience will openly object to it.
The core concept of advent is time. There are not a few sci-fi films of this type. There is a five-dimensional space in "Interstellar", which has become too popular in the past two years (but it is also a bit overrated). When it comes to sci-fi movies, the mountain "Terminator" (actually it is a masterpiece of time travel, whether it came first to John Connor or John Connor's father, it is estimated that even the screenwriter has not understood it yet), and then far To Groundhog Day (and its descendants, Source Code, Edge of Tomorrow, and so on), which created the "Cage of Time" genre. Compared with these films, although "Arrival" has a certain originality, it has definitely not reached the point of being unique and pioneering.
In fact, the creation of Hollywood science fiction films in recent years seems to have entered a plateau. Just like a big river, in the beginning, it was a trickle of snow-capped mountains and water on the plateau. It is a little interesting on its own, but it is not good in terms of production and skills. Slowly, all the streams came together to form a group, so it was able to stand on its own and had a separate name, called a science fiction film. Then it entered the pioneering period of rushing and jumping in the mountainous area, and the majestic momentum. Most of the classic works are basically from this period, such as "2001 A Space Odyssey", "Blade Runner", "ET", " Alien series, Star Wars series, The Matrix series, Terminator series. If the category of sci-fi films is the big jar in the chicken soup story about time management, then these classic productions are the first big stones to be put down in this big jar. But when the big river in the sci-fi movie rushed out of the mountains and poured into the plain, the river surface opened up instantly, the flow rate slowed down, and the river channel became shallower. Girl bathing in the river. The creation of sci-fi films in this period is like a jar full of large stones. It can only be filled with small gravel and fine sand, and in the end, it can only be filled with water.
For example, in 2016, "Space Traveler" and "Phantom Life Renewal Game", as well as "Independence Day 2", which repeats itself, are typical fine sand or even water injection, not small gravel at all. In fact, their core concepts have been played out before, but in order to fill the big jar of sci-fi films, they have to continue to shoot, because there is still a market, so it doesn’t matter whether you take a big step or a small step in artistic creation.
"Arrival" can be regarded as a small gravel level for other films. Because compared with other sci-fi films that explore the concept of time, it does not simply jump back and forth at different points on the timeline, but provides a new possibility, a bit similar to the high-dimensional space in "Interstellar", time It is no longer linear, but like the text of the heptapod, it is folded and woven into a two-dimensional painting, and it is still a circle, which may mean that time in the world of the heptapod has no starting point. There is no end, just like when we look at a painting, no one dictates whether you have to start from the center point or from the bottom left corner.
The possibilities presented by such a time dimension are far from what is presented in the film. The heroine flashes back to her past and future from time to time. Here, I want to make a film review that is not a film review, and put forward some false ideas based on the display method of this time dimension in the film.
Humans living in linear time may not realize that the vast majority of social order is based on linear time. First, human beings must acquire experience through learning or practice in linear time, and experience is an important basis for establishing authority. Why are the elders and the youngers superior and inferior in most human civilizations? Because the elders have existed in linear time for a longer time, and they have gained more experience through learning or practice during this time than the younger ones, so There are sayings like "If you don't listen to the old man, you will suffer in front of you", "The bridge that Grandpa has crossed is more salt than you have eaten".
For example, when I make a cake, I may not know that when I separate the egg whites, I don't know that there should be a little egg yolk in it, otherwise the egg whites will not be able to be whipped. The second time I make a cake, I'm still not sure how many minutes the oven will take at 180 degrees. For the third time, maybe the first two problems have not been solved well, and new problems have been encountered. So to become a master baker, it takes months, or even years, of repeated practice. In a cake shop, the so-called masters have also undergone this process of tempering and their skills have been perfected day by day, so they are qualified to point fingers at the apprentices of newcomers. But for the heroine of "Arrival", there is no such problem, because her time is not linear, she can learn this skill at any point in time and present it at any point in time. It's like she can learn from the Chinese general at the celebration dinner after the event what exactly she said when she called him at that time.
Therefore, it is obvious that in the face of such a time display method, the authoritative mechanism that currently maintains the vast majority of human society will collapse. In the workplace, the qualifications of executives to rule employees will no longer be that they are more experienced than employees, but may become personal qualities such as pure intelligence, analytical judgment, and decisiveness. In the education system, the education system of teachers and students, masters and apprentices, and primary schools, middle schools, high schools, and universities will no longer exist. In the family relationship, there will no longer be superiority and inferiority between generations, and superiority and inferiority will no longer be based on the experience authority brought by age, but only the relationship of fertility will remain.
But further down the line, this chronological approach will bring up a more serious biological problem, and humans will have no age.
After being born, this person has only started his own existence. The process of growth does not exist in the space of this time display method. An organism does not need the accumulation of time to divide more and more Cells do not need to absorb nutrients and water in the dimension of time, grow up, divide, and age slowly... It seems that all the biological laws currently explored by human beings are no longer applicable.
Then another question arises, since the rules of biology no longer apply, does it mean that, in this way of laying out the time dimension, this pair of concepts will also die: life and death.
Both birth and death need to occupy two points on the time line, and they are arranged in order on the time vector. They are born first, and then they can die after a period of time on the time line. Now that the timeline has been collapsed into a two-dimensional image, a being needs neither a beginning nor an end. There is no need for birth as the beginning of an existence, nor death as the end of an existence. Humans will no longer need to live and die.
But without life and death, it seems that it is not the most terrible thing. If time were to be arranged in two-dimensional order, the demise of this pair of concepts would seem to have a devastating blow to human perception of the world: cause and effect would cease to exist.
There is cause and effect. When seeds are planted, crops can be created. When seeds are planted, they are the cause. When the seeds germinate and grow, they are the effects. The cause and the effect are like life and death. Cause happens before, effect happens after. In addition to growing crops, all aspects of human society are inseparable from cause and effect: for example, in the example mentioned above, if the egg whites and yolks are not completely separated during baking, the egg whites will not be completely sent; another example, household appliances in a sea-view room It is more likely to rust because the electrolyte is carried by the wet sea breeze to form a primary battery on the metal surface of the electrical appliance; another example, in a country with a sound legal system, a boy sees a girl in red walking alone on the street on a summer night , even if he had a bad idea, he didn't dare to act, because he knew that if he committed a crime against this girl, he would be punished by the law sooner or later, and the gains outweighed the gains; another example, Christians and Muslims believe that they will enter the kingdom of heaven after death, It is because he has kept his faith in this life.
Because human beings have been living in linear time, they have accumulated a huge experience base through thousands of years, and live according to the causal mechanism in the experience base to choose their own behavior. And once time is displayed in a two-dimensional way, the cause will no longer be the cause, and the effect will no longer be the effect, but just scattered events, and there will be no causal connection: a boy invites a girl to dinner on her birthday, and It doesn't mean that the boy is interested in the girl, the two will fall in love with each other and finally get together - it's just that the boy invites the girl to dinner, there is no antecedent, and there is no consequence, just a separate incident. It only occupies a small corner on the two-dimensional time picture. Cause and effect, the line of defense that constitutes 99% of human mental stability, will collapse and cease to exist.
There is no superiority, no age, no life and death, no cause and effect. This is the world that the heptapods in "Arrival" will bring to mankind. But this heroine, apart from predicting the events of her own life timeline, did not get all of the world of Heptapods. Perhaps the original author never thought of the essential difference between the world of heptapods and the world of humans, but just like the hero and heroine in general time-travel dramas, they have some special abilities to jump around on the timeline. . And this superficial cognition of the time dimension has actually been praised by various film marketing accounts, and has also been regarded as a god film by some directors. I, what should I say?
Perhaps this is due to the limitations of the properties of the medium itself. Film is indeed an art that needs to unfold in time. A reel of film needs to be projected frame by frame under a projector in sequence. But don't forget, film is still a two-dimensional art, and 3D film has been developed for almost ten years. The breakthrough from two-dimensional to three-dimensional is not so difficult, so is the breakthrough of linear time limit just around the corner?
Originally thought that the English name of the film would be descending, at least like "advent", it showed a kind of condescension, a kind of demotion, the heptapod barrel descended from the high-dimensional world to the low-dimensional world to give human beings apocalypse, just like the two thousand years of Christ The Word became flesh. But after a closer look, the English name of the film is arrival... um, I think too much.
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