Revengeful engineer manipulates naive scientist

Rating: 9/10 (10 June 2016)

Unlike some others here I see an incredibly rich and powerful engineer who has designed huge government projects in the past wants one last bit to screw with the entire earth rather than merely the USA.
He selects his patsy early in her life and works his will to so totally to do his will without her even recognizing he is pulling all the strings. His plot is briefly ended when the government funding is removed and takes awhile before he can manage to get her back on track. But Hadden uses his powerful organization to manipulate Dr Arroway into finding his signal supposedly from the star Vega this signal just happens to be almost exactly what would be expected from some off world intelligence.
When the code he makes up becomes bogged down in translation he provides the clue for its decoding and the government is off to the races. Seems it is the plans for some mysterious machine that ends up costing 1/2 Trillion dollars. But its not just that, seems that most of the money spent goes to subcontractors or wholly owned subsidiaries of Hadden enterprises. Mind you he is dying of some cancer and this is his way to get back at all human society.
There is never going to be anyone but Arroway in the machine (his patsy) and when someone else is selected Hadden manages to get the first machine destroyed and Dr. Arroway goes to the systems test site in Japan with one more Hadden industry subcontractor which has another complete machine ready to go. Hadden doesn't want anyone to realize this machine is bogus yet.
This movie is really about Hadden and not Dr. Arroway and written well enough that it is hard to figure it out. Some people might even reject this theory but it is plain as day if you watch carefully.