May be frustrating for scientists, engineers, or linguists. 1997 "Contact" a much better film.

Rating: 4/10 (11 February 2017)

I just watched "The Arrival" with super-high expectations, but I must say I was disappointed. It's a step in the right direction for sure, an examination of extra-terrestrial life as being curious and peaceful rather than hostile... but the whole deal with all the different languages made me frustrated and unsettled. Not to mention, Hollywood has a tough time getting away from military depictions of human reason; namely... "if we don't understand it, we must attack it". This is just stupid, humans know when we are outclassed technologically and if not threatened with extreme force, we would never initiate the first attack.
To think that a SUPER ADVANCED alien civilization would travel the cosmos and contact us is not a super far-fetched idea. Not likely that any of us will live to see that time, and most likely, we will be in space discovering other species first...
Here is my problem with the movie: Are we really to believe that a super-advanced species made such a long trip to contact us, but left the problem of communication to the responsibility of the lesser- developed primitive species? This super advanced alien race with all of its technology was unable to observe and study us before making contact? If the goal of this alien race TRULY was to help humans rather then total annihilation, then wouldn't it make sense that the more advanced culture make an effort to find a means of communicating with the less advanced one?
Later on in the movie, the main actress was communicating to the aliens with English, then subsequently reading the alien language and understanding the messages, after only being able to study the language for a couple of days or so. Meh... Wasn't really an alien movie as much as it was a romance flick with an emphasis on communication...
MORE FRUSTRATIONS:
The "written language" of the aliens was EXTREMELY INEFFICIENT. Much like Mandarin, it had a unique and overly-complex symbol for every new word.
Any advanced alien civilization would have a base alphabet of simple symbols, which in combination with one other, make words. This is the most practical way to convey information as it does not compound exponentially and does not require each individual to memorize thousands of unique shapes (like obsolete Mandarin).
Any idiot can make something that's complex. It takes a genius to make something simple. I would hope to give the aliens the benefit of the doubt with their advanced technology and assume that they are not "idiots".
I liked the 1999's "Contact" version of the alien language better. It introduced an unprecedented and innovative twist on written language, building up information on a 3-dimensional medium rather than what we are used to, writing and messages being passed on a 2- dimensional medium.
This was an exciting and alternative twist on alien communication which actually made sense and had practicality. Technically you could pack much more information in a 3-dimensional space versus a 2- dimensional plane, so the writers got it JUST right.
The "Arrival" writers are either lazy or incapable of thinking about things holistically and with a scientific principle. Their version of "alien language" had no clever or innovative twist, but rather opted out for some elaborately-drawn shapes which have no business being used as language. Just a bunch of fancy ring-shaped splashes of ink, with an excess of detail to each shape which would distract from the message and promote miscommunication. A lazy design, to be sure, done by some low-level intern who did their best to create something which appears completely foreign to us... but what they ended up with is something which would never realistically be used.
The movie was better than most blockbusters representing alien visits, but we still have a long way to go before making movies which both entertain the masses and satisfy the more practical viewers who desire realism.