So much potential - and most of it wasted

Rating: 3/10 (5 May 2017)

After I had initially read about the movie, I thought this was going to be an interesting film exploring the nature of another life form's communication and how different from the human way of speaking and writing it actually could be. And therefore difficult to understand. Because why do all the aliens in movies communicate with sound (which of course happens to be in the hearing range of humans) or why do they always use some form of visual script? Why do they always use the logic and grammar of human language?
Well, who cares. Because this turned out to be just another Sci-Fi movies filled with clichés, which could work, but due to the missing plot it was just extremely boring. Of course they also communicate with some Mumbo Jumbo language and script that somehow gets translated. How that works is not explained, our genius linguist just understands. Following that is the usual: The military guys who desperately want war, especially the evil Chinese and Russians, and a subplot with the daughter and colleague-turned-husband - the emotional love must-have, I guess. And that's all there is. The aliens just leave and leave the main character with the main feature of the language: Once you understand it, you can see the future somehow. The most interesting part of that - its philosophical and logical implications - is not even touched once. You could call that thought-provoking and intellectual, I just call it lazy.
Only good parts about the movie are the visuals and cinematography, which is done quite aesthetically.