Good Enough Idea, Less Than Ideal Execution

Rating: 5/10 (22 November 2016)

Quite honestly, I was excited for this film for a reason most others probably weren't: I love the study of linguistics, the ideals of multilingualism and universal communication.
I honestly didn't care what the aliens looked like going into it, but now that I've seen the giant squid, I have something to say to Hollywood. Please consult E.O. Wilson for all future alien films, because no advanced species capable of space travel would look like that. They wouldn't travel in a giant cloudy rock, they would have some semblance of opposable thumbs, and would have the ability to use their appendages to manipulate tools. These are just the facts of biological development and technological enhancement; not just on our planet, but on any planet capable of sustaining life (which would in any case be very similar to Earth.)
The rest of the movie was alright, if tediously paced and over-moralized. Look, I like the concept of some time-bending language, but humanity's problem is not that we have languages that force us to experience time linearly, but that we exist in a mostly rational, cause-and-effect universe that forces us to subsist in a linear timeline, and our languages correspondingly reflect that.
Keep the message, but work on your writing of our base, pitiful, linear English. Maybe then at least you'll be able to tell a compelling story.