Incomprehensible

Rating: 4/10 (22 November 2016)

I have the feeling that I'm always farther and farther from the common people who write reviews and state that this film, among others, is a complete masterpiece. If they are smart people and they judge it to be a masterpiece, where does that leave me?
I'm desperate. Hopeless. Don't know what to do anymore.
I'm not going to pick every issue of a long list, because others have done that already. The flaws are many. Too many to count. Let me dwell into just one point, that according to the "masterpiecers" is THE clue to the story, that what makes you discuss the picture for hours: how do you handle first contact?
(This is a worldwide discussion; there are even TED conferences about this)
OK, so let's suppose these guys land (euphemistically, because their ship doesn't touch the ground) on our planet to give us a gift. Check this out: according to the film, WE have got to learn their language. We are primitive and they are incredibly developed. They didn't have the time or the will to learn ours, no, we've gotta do it. They want to hand us a bridge towards a completely different, far reaching mental state and yet, we have to get there with our aboriginal means... Like "Here's Mars, and here are you. Now pedal on!"
The military, the approach, everything is very primitive: we're afraid, so we'll nuke you. Ah, and if we've got time, we'll try to understand you too. But don't count on it. Cause fear comes first and violence second. OK? We're humans, we trample everything we touch. Remember that.
What appalls me is the tremendous lack of imagination. A developed civilization will find means to communicate with you REALLY FAST AND EFFICIENTLY, don't worry about it!! They will make their intentions clear swiftly, believe me. In any case, they won't play games. Do you cross the universe to play games? And Hollywood movies are based on games, intrigue, mental mazes. All the time. They write exactly the same way we see the military handling the situation in this film: shortsightedly, projecting the present into the future, avoiding big intellectual leaps, looking for shortcuts.
If an alien civilization lands here you've got to shut up and listen. They'll set the rules. They'll explain. If they are good guys, and we too behave in a sensible way, then they'll give us instructions on how to get to their level. They will teach us. They'll understand our psyche and avoid reactions that could cause violence on our part. They would have studied us, they would know us.
And if they are bad guys, they would do some of the same. And kill us or enslave us or whatever. In a much smarter way.
These movies portrait aliens as if they were as underdeveloped as we are. And that's what make most of them dumb. Yeah, really dumb.