Arrival (2016) – Taking place after alien crafts land around the world, an expert linguist is recruited by the military to determine whether they come in peace or are a threat.
Linguist Louise Banks’s daughter Hannah dies at the age of twelve from an incurable illness.
Twelve extraterrestrial spacecraft hover over various locations around the Earth. Affected nations send military and scientific experts to monitor and study them; in the United States, US Army Colonel Weber recruits Banks and physicist Ian Donnelly to study the craft above Montana. On board, Banks and Donnelly make contact with two cephalopod-like, seven-limbed aliens, whom they call ‘heptapods’; Donnelly nicknames them Abbott and Costello. Banks and Donnelly research the complex written language of the aliens, consisting of palindromic phrases written with circular symbols, and share the results with other nations. As Banks studies the language, she starts to have flashback-like visions of her daughter.
When Banks is able to establish sufficient shared vocabulary to ask why the aliens have come, they answer with a statement which could be translated as “offer weapon”. China interprets this as a “use weapon”, prompting it to break off communications, and other nations follow. Banks argues that the symbol interpreted as “weapon” can be more abstractly referred to the concept of “means”, “tool”; China’s translation likely results from interacting with the aliens using mahjong, a highly competitive winner-take-all game.
Rogue soldiers plant a bomb in the Montana craft. Unaware, Banks and Donnelly re-enter the alien vessel, and the aliens give them a more complex message. Just before the bomb explodes, one of the aliens ejects Donnelly and Banks from the vessel, knocking them unconscious. When they wake, the military is preparing to evacuate in case of retaliation, and the craft has moved beyond reach.
Donnelly discovers that the symbol for time is present throughout the message, and that the writing occupies exactly one twelfth of the 3D space into which it is projected. Banks suggests that the full message is split among the twelve craft, and that the aliens want all the nations to share what they learn.
China’s General Shang issues an ultimatum to his local alien craft, demanding that it leave China within 24 hours. Russia, Pakistan, and Sudan follow suit. Communications between the international research teams are terminated as worldwide panic sets in.
Banks goes alone to the Montana craft, and it sends down a transport pod. Abbott has been mortally injured as a result of the explosion (which Costello refers to as the “death process”); Costello explains that they have come to help humanity, for in 3,000 years they will need humanity’s help in return. Banks realizes the “weapon” is their language, and learning it alters humans’ linear perception of time, allowing them to experience “memories” of future events. Banks’s visions of her daughter, Hannah, are revealed actually to be premonitions; her daughter will not be born until some time in the future.
Banks returns to the camp as it is being evacuated and tells Donnelly that the aliens’ language is the “tool”. She has a premonition of a United Nations event celebrating newfound unity following the alien arrival, in which Shang thanks her for having persuaded him to stop the attack by calling his private number and reciting his wife’s dying words: “War doesn’t make winners, only widows.”
In the present, Banks steals CIA agent Halpern’s satellite phone, and calls Shang’s number to recite the words. The Chinese announce that they are standing down and release their twelfth of the message. The other countries follow suit, and the twelve spacecraft depart.
During the evacuation, Donnelly expresses his love for Banks. They talk about life choices and whether he would change them if he could see the future. Banks knows that she will agree to have a child with him despite knowing their fate: Hannah will die from an incurable disease, and that Donnelly will leave them after she reveals that she knew this.
