Clip It: Each day, Jon Davis looks at the world of trailers, featurettes and clips and puts it all in perspective.
The first thing we all wonder about when we take all of our friends and family to see a movie with aliens in it is what do the aliens look like? Are they the humanoid dudes with bug heads like in District 9? Are they the amazing H.R Giger creatures from Aliens? Are they the small grey guys from Close Encounter of the Third Kind? The worst thing that's ever happened in American cinema is when Jodie Foster traveled eight trillion light years only to end up in Pensacola, Florida to meet an alien who chose to look like her dad. That was awful. We can never repeat that atrocity committed on film.
This trailer for Arrival smartly doesn't tell us what the aliens look like yet. Amy Adams plays a linguist, which is the first person you hire when extra terrestrials visit, obviously, because how else are you going to talk to them? If only E.T. had Amy Adams, maybe things would have worked out differently. (And there'd be less crying on my part – Elliot and E.T. were friends!) Amy Adams and her crew, including Jeremy Renner and a low key Forest Whitaker travel to wherever this colony of aliens have set up shop. There's a giant silver-like pottery project in the sky, so we can only presume that's where the out of town visitors are hanging out. The crews gets into some space suits and travel upside down through a crevasse, they hear the aliens coming and — well, we're going to have to wait to see what happens next.
Let's say this much. Director Denis Villeneuve has not made a bad movie yet out of the two movies I've seen of his so far (Prisoners and Sicario). This movie seems like his big budget jump, and I trust him to do it well. I think. I mean, we really don't know what kind of aliens Amy Adams will run into.
Will the aliens look like Marvin the Martian?
Jodie Foster's dad?
Mac from Mac and Me?
If he can avoid the temptation to make aliens like that, then we're in good hands.
Let's do this!