While most movies dealing with space aliens visiting Earth are your standard summer movie product, Arrival looks to change things up by producing something a little bit different. The first trailer is now here to give us a look at what to expect. Arrival looks to focus much more on the dramatic side of alien visitiation, rather than the action of a potential invasion. Overall, they're still leaving much of the movie hidden, which simply ups the suspense of the trailer. Check it out.
Usually, when aliens arrive in the movies, our main movie character is a soldier or a scientist. Here, Arrival will focus on Amy Adams as Louise Banks, a linguist. While it may not seem sexy, it is obviously an important job when it comes to making first contact, as the single most important thing is being able to understand what everybody else is saying. Of course, being a linguist doesn't exactly prepare you for meeting with aliens, so Banks isn't entirely ready for the meeting she's about to have.
In an era where far too many trailers are telling us far too much about upcoming movies, this simple one-minute teaser could teach a course on how to build interest from an audience. We're given the basic setup, we know what the conflict will be, and we don't know anything else. The teaser doesn't even give us a look at the alien creatures. They could be humanoids, they could be robots, they could be cats for all we know. Not seeing them also means we don't even get an indication of what their intentions are. While we're certainly given an indication that the aliens could be hostile, we don't actually know that. The drama comes from the not knowing.
Alongside Amy Adams, the film stars Jeremy Renner as mathematician Ian Donnelly and Forest Whitaker as Colonel Weber. Arrival looks unique enough that we're hoping it doesn't devolve into a cliched, scientists vs. military trope, where one side wants to talk, and the other side wants to shoot. What little we see of Forest Whitaker doesn't give us this impression, but, as we said, there's hardly enough here to draw any definitive conclusions at all.
Arrival certainly has us excited to see more, which is the best possible response to a teaser trailer. We want to know more, but at the same time, we're afraid that any new information could spoil everything the film has to offer. The film is directed by Denis Villeneuve, the man behind Prisoners and Sicario. He knows how to build drama and suspense so we have hopes that Arrival is going to turn out to be something special.
What do you think of this teaser for Arrival? Are you interested in checking this out or would you actually want to get more details first?
