‘Arrival’ Exclusive: Denis Villeneuve and Amy Adams Want To Make Science-Fiction Feel Real Again — Watch
Zack Sharf
If you’ve been keeping a close eye on Denis Villeneuve (and, at this point, you really should be), you know that his tone is one of his biggest strengths. He doesn’t so much pull you into movies like “Prisoners” and “Sicario” as much as he forces you to study them from afar, weighing the psychological motivations of his characters and what their choices and realizations mean. It’s a stimulating experience, one that he brings firmly to the science-fiction genre with the upcoming “Arrival.”
Starring Amy Adams and based off “Story Of Your Life” by Ted Chiang, the film centers around an esteemed linguist who is recruited by the government to decipher an extraterrestrial language after 12 alien pods appear over various cities on Earth. The intentions of these visitors are unclear, and it’s up to Adams’ Louise Banks and a new colleague, Jeremy Renner’s mathematician Ian Donnelly, to figure out what they want and why they’re here. To say more about the plot would spoil the emotional twists and turns that await.
In an exclusive new featurette below, Adams and Villeneuve talk about wanting to create a science-fiction film that very much felt real. And that’s one of the biggest takeaways of “Arrival,” in that nothing feels sensational or over-dramatic. The extraterrestrial plot is grounded to the point that “Arrival” plays more like an adult drama than traditional science-fiction.
Get a fresh look at “Arrival” below and see it in theaters nationwide November 11.
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