First Photos and Details on Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner’s Alien Sci-Fi Film ARRIVAL
The first photos have been released for a new alien invasion sci-fi film called Arrival. The film was directed by Denis Villeneuve (Sicario), and it stars Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner, who are both featured in the photos. We also have some additional details on the movie thanks to USA Today.
I actually got to see some very early footage of this film at Cinema Con earlier this year. It looked like it could be a great movie.
The film is based on a 1998 novella called Story of Your Life. Adams and Renner play members of a team brought in to help figure out the intentions of an alien race that has invaded Earth. Adams plays Louise Banks, “a linguist hired by the government to decipher an extraterrestrial language when a dozen alien pods pop into the atmosphere and hover mysteriously near the ground.” Renner plays a physicist named Ian Donnelly.
Here’s a description of the footage that I saw:
The footage they showed was very dark and moody. It starts out with Amy's character talking about the day "they" arrived. As she is teaching an almost empty college class, one of the student's phones start going off, and when Amy asks if she has any news to share we cut to a news report showing alien objects that have landed all around Earth. Forrest Whitaker also stars in the film, and it's at this moment that he shows up in her office and asks her if she would help translate a recording of aliens. Apparently, deciphering languages is her specialty. The recording features someone asking the alien why they are here, and the response is very creepy and strange sounding. We then cut to Amy's character in a helicopter with Renner, and they are headed to one of the spacecrafts, which stands upright and is extremely tall and kind of shaped like an elongated egg. It's levitating about 50 to 100 feet over the ground in a giant field. They throw on some hazmat suits and head on into the ship where they are met with a very bright light, and then we get a glimpse of the aliens, which kind of look like floating squids, but we really don't get a good look at them. Of course, Adams wants to communicate with them, so she puts her hand on a glass separating them, then a big tentacle slams into the other side. There's a news report that claims the aliens may be trying to pit humans against each other, which is definitely an interesting premise. There's some discussion regarding the aliens, and Amy insists that if the aliens stay, the humans have to stay. The footage then cuts to a series of chaotic shots and action with explosions, and we see a craft fall from the sky.
Talking about the film, Adams said:
“This isn’t a graphic-novel universe or creating a new universe. This happens in our world today, as it exists. Not having to transport myself to a universe where superheroes exist, which is also fun, really helped me ground the character and the experience.”
The actress talked about her character a bit and how she is a damaged woman who is going to some personal issues when the aliens arrive.
“She felt real, like somebody I would know and somebody I would like to have a conversation with. Emotionally, the journey she takes in this was devastating to me.”
She also revealed that her character doesn’t trust the government and that this is an event and duty that she needs in her life. Reiner added that there are no “goofy creatures with guns” who are trying to kill them. He went on to say that the film is like a blend of Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg and compared it to Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Contact. He also explained that the movie is going to be a hard one to watch for parents, saying:
“If you’re a parent, it’s going to wreck you. It’s big and there are thriller elements and tension, but it’s going to lean much more into a thinking person’s film.”
I really liked what I saw at Cinema Con, and I’m looking forward to seeing how the film turns out! I imagine we’ll get to see a trailer soon, so stay tuned for that! Arrival will be released in theaters on November 11th.