Because of Christopher Nolan, the ending of a Denis Villeneuve sci-fi movie had to be changed. However, this ending change actually benefited the film and made it even better. Despite all the changes in its original script, the Villeneuve movie went on to earn $203 million at the global box office against a budget of $47 million. Although the film is not as mainstream as Nolan’s sci-fi flicks, it often gets ranked among the most innovative and narratively complex science-fiction movies ever.
Director Denis Villeneuve has several critically acclaimed thriller movies, like Sicario, Prisoners, and Enemy, under his belt. In recent years, he has also garnered recognition and appreciation for helming the Dune movies. However, his $203 million science fiction film remains one of his best works, not only because it got him an Academy Award nomination but also because it presented a unique challenge after the premier of a Christopher Nolan film.
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Arrival’s Original Ending Was Significantly Different
Arrival’s original ending was changed.
In Arrival‘s theatrical ending, Amy Adams’ Louise Banks publishes a book, The Universal Language, which serves as a guide to learning the unique language of the Heptapods. Before the movie’s credits start rolling, it presents a sequence of intertwined scenes from Banks’ timeline, highlighting how she perceives time as a loop instead of a line after learning the alien language. She sees how her past, present, and future are inextricably interconnected and how her future tragedies, including her daughter’s demise and separation from Donnelly, are inevitable. The movie’s ending also keeps the Heptapods’ motives shrouded in mystery and only reveals that they taught humans their language because they would need their help after 3000 years.
Although the movie’s ending is brilliant, its original script had a significantly different conclusion. As screenwriter Eric Heisserer revealed in an interview (via Collider), the Heptapods left humans with “the blueprints to an interstellar ship” in the original ending of Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi film. Unlike the ending that made it to the movie’s final cut, the original one provided a more affirmative explanation for what the Heptapods wanted. It showed how the aliens left humans with “an ark of sorts,” foreshadowing an imminent disaster that would threaten humanity. This ending, however, had to be changed because of a Christopher Nolan movie.
Arrival’s Ending Had To Be Altered Because Of Interstellar
Arrival’s original ending was reminiscent of Interstellar’s.
In Interstellar‘s final arc, Cooper makes the ultimate sacrifice to propel Amelia to Edmunds planet by detaching himself and TARs from their spacecraft and falling into the black hole’s event horizon. To his surprise, he and TARS find a five-dimensional tesseract inside the black hole, which was created by future humans (referred to as “them”) to help him send quantum data gathered from the inside of the black hole to his daughter. Using this data, his daughter, Murph, solves Dr. Brand’s gravitational equation, allowing humans to escape their imminent doom.
Considering how humans eventually leave Earth and live in a space colony in Saturn’s orbit after Murph solves the equation, it would be fair to say that Interstellar is fundamentally about future humans providing the blueprint of an interstellar ship for present humans. When Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar hit the theaters, screenwriter Eric Heisserer and the filmmakers behind Arrival concluded that their original ending did not work because it seemed too similar to Interstellar‘s. Therefore, instead of making the movie’s ending about humanity finding the blueprints of a spaceship, they focused on what was in front of them: “the power of language.“
How Arrival’s Ending Change Made The Movie Even Better
Arrival immensely benefited from its ending change.
Considering how the endings of both Interstellar and Arrival present a temporal paradox, where time becomes a loop, they are arguably quite similar even after Arrival‘s changed conclusion. At their core, both movies are also about love transcending humanity’s perceived limitations of dimensions. However, what makes Arrival‘s ending memorable is not the grandeur with which it presents these ideas, but the lack thereof. While Interstellar is marked by its epic scale and scintillating visuals of space and time, Arrival is more subtle with its depiction of how the perception of time bends one’s reality.
Since both films adopt unique storylines and have their respective merits, it would be unfair to compare them. However, Arrival’s ending change made it even better because, unlike Interstellar, its emphasis was never on outer space travel but on the profound impact of language and communication. By sticking to that theme even in its ending moments, Arrival closes on a bittersweet note, perfectly capturing the paradoxical nature of human existence and the passage of time.
Arrival
Based on Ted Chiang’s short story “Story of Your Life”, Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival follows Louise Banks (Amy Adams), a linguist brought in to establish a line of communication with an alien species that have recently landed on Earth. With the help of physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner), Banks begins to understand more of the aliens’ communications, and it alters her perception of life forevermore.
- Release Date
- November 10, 2016
- Director
- Denis Villeneuve
- Cast
- Michael Stuhlbarg , Forest Whitaker , Tzi Ma , Amy Adams , Mark O’Brien , Jeremy Renner , Nathaly Thibault
- Rating
- PG-13
- Runtime
- 1h 56m
- Genres
- Sci-Fi , Documentary , Drama , Mystery , Thriller
- Writers
- Eric Heisserer , Ted Chiang
- Budget
- 47 million
- Studio(s)
- Paramount Pictures
- Distributor(s)
- Paramount Pictures
