Overwrought, underdeveloped and once again, America saves the day!

Rating: 4/10 (15 December 2016)

Arrival. Yes, well, what can one say? The most overwrought piece of nonsense since Interstellar. Just a few quick questions. Why would a race of beings who can perceive time in a non linear fashion and travel faster than light need a race "in 3000 years" who can only perceive time in a linear fashion? Plus the fact she agreed for all of us to undertake the reciprocal task without any consultation. Pretty sure the leaders of the world's governments might be a little upset about her cavalier usurpation of their authority. If the aliens could experience time 'from end to end' and travel faster than light, why all the cloak and dagger about their language? Surely they could master every one of our languages and just avoid all the confusion from the get go? Why 12 ships when 1 would do? Why a race that experiences time in a non linear fashion would let a bomb into their spaceship and then wait for the very last minute to warn the linguist and the scientist? Surely they knew about it all along because they have already seen it? Why when the linguist gets taken inside their part of the ship English suddenly appears on the screen? But most of all why would the Chinese general tell the linguist, in the future, what she said and show her his "private" phone number like giving her instructions? He was not asking her, he was telling her from the future. Makes no sense at all unless they actually understood they are being manipulated in the time stream. The linguist was apparently not aware because the big reveal was the daughter who dies has not been born yet. Picked up on that in the 'sitting on the truck tray' scene. Then there was the wrap up question asking if one knew their whole life from end to end would they change anything. Only creatures who experience time in a linear fashion would ask that question. Aliens who could experience time in a non linear fashion would already know the answer. The most annoying thing about this story to me was this: she got the job because she disparaged another professor's knowledge of a specific Earth language. Noam Chomsky has done more to advance the study of linguistics than anybody in the last 30 years but his theories apply to any and all languages, not just one. Linguistics is not about any one language. It is about communication using language.