Arrival

The year is 2016. Are they scientists or tourists? If they're scientists, they don't seem to ask a lot of questions. Why did they park where they did? The world's most decorated experts can't crack that one. The most plausible theory is that they chose places on Earth with the lowest incidence of lightning strikes. But there are exceptions. The next most plausible theory is that Sheena Easton had a hit song at each of these sites in 1980, so we just don't know. Film Arrival Hello everyone and welcome to Unspooled. Yes, welcome to Unspooled. This is a podcast about good movies. Critical hits, fan favorites, must-sees, and...in case you missed them. We have covered the AFI Top 100 and now we are checking off movies from three major lists. The Letterbox Top 250 films with the most fans, the IMDb Top 250, and the New York Times 1000 Essential Films. And actually, strange fun fact about the Letterbox Top 250. They just recalibrated it and one of the films we did dropped off! Well, which one? Saw. Oh, interesting. Wow, wow, wow. Very well-to-saw. You know what? We have to bend with the time. Like, if we would have known that in the future and in the past, maybe we wouldn't have done it. Or maybe we would have done it anyway. Just like Amy Adams in this movie, I'm Paul Scheer. I'm an actor, writer, and director. And this movie tricks me every single time. I know I like it. I know I'm excited to see it. Then it starts and I'm like, oh, I don't know if I like this movie. And then I am crying at the end of it. It's happened three times. I have amnesia about this movie and it happens the exact same way. I don't know what this movie does to me that tricks me every time. I'm a fool for it. I'm Amy Nicholson. I'm the film critic for The Last Angeles Times. And actually, now that you've mentioned it, I have had my own time travel experience with this film. I saw it for the first time at Toronto when it premiered September 2016. And I was like, it's okay. I didn't quite get it the first time. I hate dead kid stuff and I was just totally turned against it. And then when I watched it again the first week of November 2016, suddenly I was like, I understand everything about this movie. Oh my God, I'm such an idiot. I had to really live with this film. Time had to change around me. Oh, I like that. Maybe you changed too, Amy. I still hate dead kid movies. Don't even get me started. She's not a dead kid. She's 25. She's 25 in the book. She's like 12 here. Well, you know, who knows? Who knows? We don't say it specifically. Fine, fine, fine. Saying things specifically is what this movie's all about. I'll allow it. I'll now hand you over to my best man, Eddie. Wow, wow, wow. Second time's a charm, eh, Billy Boy? Oh God. Substitution could see a Paddy Power embarrassing Eddie makes way for sensible Samuel. Cool, that was close. You might not always pick the right starter, but your sub can still deliver. Because with Paddy's Super Sub, your bet rolls over to the player coming on. Paddy Power. Validant, selected leagues and markets only. Pre-match and in-play bets on qualifying player outcome selections only. T-sensees and exclusions apply at 18plus, scamelware.org. Listen up. Huh? That means you. Yes, you. We know you're pointing at yourself. When it comes to Paddy Power games, we've got a place made for all sorts. From the experts to the drama queens. It's me, the JC. The finance bros. Look at those stalks, lads. We'll stick with slots. It's what we're good at. And not forgetting you. Yes, you, the one listening. Because at Paddy Power Games, we've got all sorts of games for all sorts of trickles. Eligibility rules and terms and conditions apply. Please come for responsibly. 18plus, scamelware.org. Unspentful is sponsored by Sonos. I am saying that with a smile because my Sonos speakers have been filling my house with music and movies and podcasts for a decade. Check out how Sonos can make you happy too at sonos.com. That is sonos.com. Unspentful. Okay, well, Amy, let's get into it. The year is 2016. And one of the big topics of conversation is, is anyone in the world actually listening to each other? And a movie comes out that is exactly about that. I mean, the pitch of a rival is that it's a story about 12 alien pods who land around the globe, the linguist Dr. Louise Banks, that's Amy Adams, who was tapped by the military to try to make first contact. Now with her is a colonel, that's Forrest Whitaker, and a physicist named Ian, and that is Jeremy Renner. They learn that the seven-legged aliens have to possess what they call them. They have a couple different ways of communicating. There's the grumbles. And then there's this written language. That's kind of a strange squiggly circle. But when you listen close to the movie, it's also about humans trying to communicate with each other. And it's about the choices that we make in life. Now, a rival started as a short story called Story of Your Life by the writer Ted Chang, a screenwriter named Eric Hesser. He read the story shortly after it was published in this bigger book in the early aughts, and he had this reaction. It emotionally wrecked me. Like, I had this weird mix of just, like, feeling uplifted and hopeful and also completely shattered. And just put it down and went out and hugged everybody within walking distance. And just was like, wow. And then sat back down and thought, torture a greater audience with this. How can I infect a bunch of people with this feeling? And then Eric started pitching the story to producers. He wound up getting rejected 100 times. It's his estimation. Wow, 100 times. I didn't even know there were that many producers. Everyone's a producer out here, baby. I mean, I guess so. Now, some of the notes that he got back were, I don't know, change the lead to a dude. Or what if you have a guy punch an alien in the face? Or I got it. No flashbacks, which for anyone who has seen Arrival knows that that note means the person did not understand the story at all. Which would be me the first time I saw it. Now, Eric started to give up on the idea that this movie could ever get made, because as he says, quote, we actually have a character saying nonlinear orthography. But guess what? Whenever there's a problem, whenever anything is too big, too confounding to handle, that's when Denis Villeneuve steps in. That's right, the director of Prisoners in Sicario. And he wants to make his first real science fiction film. So he attaches himself to the script, and then Amy Adams wants to make it. And suddenly the rights to this movie sell a can in a bidding war with a price tag of $20 million. That's a record, by the way, it can. A record, I think, before then the biggest screenplay cell had been $8 million. Wow. Yeah. So nobody wanted it, now everybody wants it. Arrival gets released on November 11th, 2016. It costs $47, sorry. It costs, excuse me, it costs $47 million. It makes $203 million. It gets eight Oscar nominations, Best Picture Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Production Design, Film Editing, Sound Mixing, and the Academy Word for Best Sound Editing. It only wins the Academy Word for Best Sound Editing. This was the La La Landed Moonlight Year. And you might notice that Amy Adams did not get nominated at all. Which is a crime, Amy. A crime on Amy's, I feel like you should be more upset about it. She's fantastic in it, and it's one of those movies where I think that she's so good in it that people don't realize that she's that good because she's not pushing, right? It's not a showy performance. It's a very internal soft performance that I think really pays off on a second viewing. Because when you know what the movie is about, you can see her as someone who is living in a timeline that is a circle or that is constantly in motion, right? I feel like the minute we meet her, she's there. And watching it again, you can see those choices. It just is not revealed to us very much, like, you know, the sixth sense. Yeah, she's playing these layers. She looks like she's grieving. She might actually just be lonely and depressed. But it's refractory. It works on both ways. And I like that you're pointing out kind of her almost casual skill because that's the thing that Denny himself said he really admired about her. That her little choices in scenes really impressed him. Like, here's what he talks about in particular. We were doing a scene in the hospital with a tiny baby. Like a newborn, like he has a couple of days old or something. And the baby was a bit, of course, agitated. And you took him and you were so calm. And the baby became relaxed right away. And you asked me, I remember, you said, no, no, I don't look real. You wanted to show your shoulders, add a sweat on you, mess up your hair. And I was like so moved by your appetite, your desire for authenticity. I felt that you're the best ally for me to put all my chips on you because the visual effects, all that is not important. What is important is if you believe in what we were about to do and I felt that all the time, you were my strong, you were my rock during this movie. But you know what, Paul? Time is a circle because what is living on, well, this movie is number 61 on the Letterbox Top 250 films with the most fans. So Oscar losses aside, we have folded back in to say that this film is actually really important. And you know, looking back at this movie, there's so many things I want to talk about in the way that it was made. But I want to talk about this bigger theory that I guess is at the center of the film that I didn't know much about until I started doing research for this episode, which is the Saper Wharf Hypothesis, not Wharf from Star Trek, it's W-H-O-R-F, about linguistic relativity. And it's a theory that posits that language shapes thoughts and perceptions of reality. And I really love this idea that her learning a language changes her reality. And just letting that kind of like seep in for a second, that's a really heady concept. It is. I mean, Ted Chang, when he wrote this short story, he's studied linguistics for five years before he felt like he could write it. And he's leaning on this theory that comes out of a lot of people who got trained in anthropology like I did. We learn it and then we learn that it's not necessarily true, but it's really sticky and I like it as an idea. Because I think there are parts in it that feel sort of accurate. There's that old stand-up, like what? That in you that people have like 30 words for snow. Right. And you can also point to the Hopi tribe, where their language lacks tense, which kind of gives their linguistics this timelessness. Right. And so it's like this fine line of are we saying that their brains work differently or are we saying that in their culture different things are prioritized and you can see how their brain ranks things based on what they find important. Like maybe time doesn't matter. There's this really great movie I saw a couple of years ago about the invention of the pocket watch and how as soon as you could invent the second, suddenly the second started to belong to people and it started to belong to bosses and the idea of becoming late was more of a thing. Once we had a language for time that made time more specific, time became more important than it did in a way that was really destructive. I mean that totally makes sense. We, I think as a culture, always adapting to different ways of looking at things and time management and getting as much done in a day as possible and when you do a lot in a day that is rewarded, right? Like we are constantly re-contextualizing how we live our lives. I mean, even like sun up, sun down, right? Like that was the original bedtime or, you know, rising. Like we, I think humanity is constantly just re-contextualizing, you know, what the ideal way to live is. Or at least that's what my TikTok tells me. I mean, I'm getting a lot of people telling me, I am doing it wrong. Yeah. Why don't you spend more time on TikTok wasting your life as I tell you how to do it better? That's what I need. I mean, I do love this idea that, you know, you can get so attached to certain things that you don't see the, you know, the forest through the trees and that's kind of what's happening here as well, right? Or that your language is the trees getting in the way of your forest if you're not articulating anything. Exactly. Yes. Yes, yes, yes. And I think that just us talking about that idea, it starts to hurt your brain a little bit, right? Oh yeah, I'm tired. The spy cast is over. We did it in what, 10 minutes? And this whole movie is a film that makes, like, linguistics cinematic, right? Which I think is a really impossible task. And I wonder if this movie is benefited by the small budget that it has. Because, yes, this film sold for 20 million, but then they told Denis that he needed to make it for 45, I believe became 47. And 45 is small for a big blockbuster and or at least a big sci-fi film, which this is. And what you get is this kind of beautiful in between, this movie that looks like a big Hollywood film but is actually very small. It isn't expansive in the amount of locations or even other scenes. You know, it's very contained. And if you talk to Denis, he would say that it's the Quebec way of doing things. Yes, we have American money. Yes, we have an American cinematographer and an American leading cast. But the crew people are the Quebecois and they know how to put every dollar on the screen. Because it does not feel cheap. And we talked about Twilight last week and the budget for that. That movie does feel cheap. Really fun, but cheap. Yeah, and this doesn't. Wait, though, I'm really glad that you brought up that Denis is from Quebec. That Denis is actually directing this film using a different language than everybody else. He's directing this not in his native French, but in English. And I love that because Denis has talked a lot about what it's like to switch back between English and French. I mean, yes, he used this movie to learn how to make sci-fi movies. He builds from this. He does Blade Runner, which I did in like he does the dunes, which I love. He gets to direct with Timothy Chalamet, who speaks French, so he can direct with Timothy in French. But he's very aware of what it's like to direct on an English set versus what it's like to direct in his own language. I mean, he says that there are almost two different Denys. Like when he speaks in French, he comes across really serious and people think that he's really serious. But when he speaks in English with a French accent, people think he's kind of a crazier guy. His vocabulary is smaller. He's a little bit more limited in what he can say. So he comes across, I think, more charming. And it's really interesting to hear that he's conscious this entire time he's directing this movie of what a language can mean when you translate things back and forth. And then it also leads to, you know, exchanges like this. He's French-Canadian, so there's weird words in the lost in translation kind of stuff, and he'd be speaking to you're very softly and I can't do his accent. But, you know, there's the translation of O's and U's and because he would tell us, you know, we're going to take the camera and instead of saying focus, we're going to f*** us. We're going to f*** us. On Amy? Jeremy, listen, we're going to f*** us on Amy. 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See terms for details. Unspooled. And there's a way where the, the cheapness of it is almost part of the design, I think. You know, because he said that he wanted to make a sci-fi film that felt really grounded and a little bit boring. Like boring was a key word, which I think is fascinating. He's like, I want to make a science fiction film and make it boring. But it's the boringness of it, kind of the mundanity of just like, hey, we're in the tents. Hey, we're in the field. Hey, this is a normal truck. Hey, I'm at a dry erase board that make it feel believable. Like one of the details I really love is that there's this scene where Amy Adams is doing a thing that should give you flashbacks at Nightmares to being a child, where she's basically diagramming a sentence on a dry erase board. This, it's the scene right here. So first we need to make sure that they understand what a question is. Okay. The nature of a request for information, along with a response. Then we need to clarify the difference between a specific you and a collective you, because we don't want to know why Joe Alien is here. We want to know why they all landed. And purpose requires an understanding of intent. We need to find out do they make conscious choices or is their motivation so instinctive that they don't understand a why question at all. And biggest of all, we need to have enough vocabulary with them that we understand their answer. Oh, by the way, weird fun fact about why that scene even exists. It's because the original screenplay had a ton more scenes of them learning the language slower, more step by step, more explaining all of these ideas. And the producers are like, we cannot shoot all of this. This is not cool. Well, here, I'll just let Eric explain. The very first draft, I had a whole series of scenes that were little scenelets really of Louise teaching very basic vocabulary to the Heptapods. And Ian would demonstrate. And it was just super kindergarten level words. And they were like, Eric, this is not sexy at all. This is really boring. I don't want to, no actor is going to want to try and do it. What are you doing here? What are you doing? I went to the whiteboard and I wrote, this is the question we're trying to get to. And here's how difficult it is. And here's how many sessions you have. And after all of that, then you have to have enough vocabulary with them so that they can answer the question. And you can't even go specific, you know, because I said, what's a Pulaski? And they're like, we don't know. And I'm like, well, it's a tool that firefighters use. You can't start with Pulaski. You've got to start with tool. And they stared at me for a while and they're like, that's the scene that goes in the movie. Get rid of this other crap. That's the scene. So yeah, this scene is really just a patch for a bunch of other scenes that would have been a lot less erotic than Senate's time grabbing. And I want to talk a little bit more about that scene in a second. But the detail I want to say right now is what I really love about it is as she's diagramming that sentence on a dry raceboard, her markers kind of dry. It's not writing exactly perfectly. And it's faint in a way that just makes it feel like, oh yeah, I know that office. I've been in that. That's like livable. It's not like, oh, our markers perfect. No, right. I think that this movie doesn't feel like we are in the most state of the art facilities at a given moment. Right. It is very attainable. Like most of these films, when you have a dinosaur loose or an alien attack, like we are in a command center that feels like they're going to have the freshest dry race markers and the freshest dry race erasers. But no, here it is really. It feels rushed. Right. Like we had to hurry up. We had to get these tents here. And I do think that this speaks to this larger theory and going back to how we originally started the episode, this idea of miscommunication, right? And in diagramming a sentence, which I'm watching my kids do now and it, I don't even know how to help them because I'm like, I don't know. I don't. It upsets me. I don't like it. It shows how important language is and how there can be so much miscommunication. We can have that with our friends. We can have that with our partners. And then when you're trying to go out and do something in the world, you know, where you aren't given the benefit of the doubt, there's so many places where you can just, I don't know, insult somebody or give off the wrong vibe, the wrong signal. And I think that this movie does a really great job of talking about how hard it is to communicate when we don't share this like a commonality. And even when we have the same language, it's still hard to communicate. And we're watching Amy Adams try to communicate to the people around her, not just the aliens, right? And what they will listen to and what they won't. And she eventually has to go around everybody, speak in someone else's native tongue to get them to trust her so she can actually make a difference. Like there are so many steps to take to gain trust, to have something become actionable. Yeah. And yet in that scene that we just played with the question, one of the levels I like hearing in it is Forest Whitaker, his colonel. He's like, hey, I need an answer. What's happening? I have this military going down my, breathing down my neck. Like they, we didn't need to know if this is war or not. They need to know if we need to like spring into action. In a way, war is a military's 30 types of snow. Like they're sort of designed to see everything because that's their job through, do I go to work on war or not? Right? Anyway, maybe that's fair. Maybe it's not entirely fair. But like, you know, you bring a librarian to this site, her question is going to be like, okay, what do I organize and how? You know, what your passion is and how you see the world kind of frames how you see what you're supposed to do as your next step. So the military, their next step has to be war, yes or no, basically. And she's tried to come at this problem from a different angle, which is the language angle. And what's happening in the scene that I find great is like, it's not taking the lazy way of writing it where the forest Whitaker character is like, I'm a big old jar head. And here's what I think we have to do when blah, blah, blah, a little missy. And she's not like, excuse me, I'm a snotty scientist and you're stupid. They're actually cool, even though they're disagreeing on the mechanics, they're collaborating on the same goal. And they're listening to each other in that scene. And I really respect that. Like it's not written in the drama for the sake of drama screenplay school. Yeah, these characters are not at each other's throats. And even her partnering with Jeremy Renner, who is a stranger. You can see that there are moments where they don't see eye to eye necessarily, or they aren't like, you know, they aren't partners per se, but they have to work together and they have to like work with each other and figure out and each person brings a little piece to the table. They're the nerds. I do think it's like this. Yeah. Well, and I think that that's part of it, right? Which is really allowing yourself to listen to someone else. That's the only way that this gets solved. This problem gets solved because I think that we live in a time, and I think we've lived in this time for a very long time, where what's the answer? What's the next step? And what this movie is kind of saying is, can you take 100 steps back and look at the reverberations at each step that we will take will have? Obviously, Amy Adams character is gifted this ability to see everything in life, but it does ask the question if you knew all the things in front of you, would you act the same way? Right, which is so funny because when I think about watching this movie for the second time in 2016, I think about how it was a week after the election, and everybody in my social media field was like, we have to be doing a lot more listening. We have to be doing a lot more listening. We all have to read the book Hillbilly Elegy, and now I'm like, oh, but I see where this future goes, baby. Like when I watch this movie, I go back to that week, and I feel that urgency and that drive to communicate it, that I get scared. But what I love about this movie is, while it has elements of time travel, and I use that very loosely, because it's not about her injecting herself in the past or future. It does say that like, it's not about changing everything. It's really about embracing it and being thankful for it, right? Because the movie really does say like, she knows that her child will eventually pass away, but she has a child anyway. And she's in this calm state about it because she sees the world differently, whereas Jeremy Renner's character can't see the world like that. It's too much for him. He can't enjoy the moment of it because he's actually thinking about the end of it, where she is looking at something that never ends, that is consistently in motion, which is a beautiful way of looking at life. And I think anyone you ask would say, I need the heartache to appreciate, I don't know what the opposite of heartache is, the love. You know, we have those things. We want those things. We never want to be going through them, but when you look back on your life, you do see like, oh, that peak was good because then I needed that value. Or conversely, that valley, let me enjoy that peak more. And, you know, is that too much for us to handle? Are we much better, you know, in a roller coaster in the dark just going, OK, now we're going down. Let me react to that. OK, now we're going up. Let me react to that. And I think that as humans, we have a hard time looking forward. We can really obsess about the back. But I think that we, I think we have a harder time seeing like a few steps ahead. Well, it's funny because in a way, it's almost a different angle on the eternal sunshine question. You're deciding to love something when you know what the problems are and you know how it will break your heart. Which to me is beautiful. I feel like that's almost the best way we are able to even walk through being a human being on this planet. I mean, whoever, oh God, I'm about to get so depressing. Whoever you love in life is definitely going to die. Or like a pet. I think about this all the time with a pet. We choose pets knowing that we will probably outlive them. So every time you choose a puppy, you are also choosing an old dog that you will wind up crying for. Same thing with my cats. Like we choose to hurt ourselves and it's absolutely worth it. I would choose having my cats 9000 times again. But in a way, we're making this bargain all the time. Well, I also think, you know, what we're doing is agreeing to live life. Life isn't always making the right decisions. Life isn't always about having the best outcome. But we become, you know, this version of ourselves through the trauma. I keep on saying when I was on my book tour, I would say that trauma is the fire in which we are forged. And it's easier to say that when you look back at the past than it is to accept that you are, you know, you know, going through something in the moment, right? It's easier to be like, I'm out of it so I can reflect on it now more positively. But no one wants to go into something knowing it's going to be bad. Like, yes, that is depressing what you said about the dog. But I think most people who adopt a dog don't assume it's going to die. Right? Like you have to kind of put it out of your mind. Well, right. Then again, but then why would you have kids? Why would you have any like everything is open? Why would you fall in love? Why would you have any experience? Right? If there's a version of that where it's like, any food will kill you too. Potentially like, oh, you could, you know, not kill you, but you could get very bad food poisoning, you know. Wait, so you're coming out this from the renter side of things where like knowing it makes it harder to do it. I think that, no, I am saying that that culturally I think that we are like that. I think that that is a, I don't think that as a society we are open to let it be bad and then let it be good. And then it will be this and it will be that like we want to control it. We want to make I want this moment to be good. I want this now. Like I think that as a society we are all renters to a certain extent. I mean, none of us can see the future, right? But if you could, is that something you could live with? Well, it seems like to be a parent, you have to fight off your inner renter because as a parent, imagine you want to protect your kids from anything bad happening to them, including having their heart broken when they're older and they start dating. And then that becomes a whole other nest of problems because if, if people aren't hurt, they don't grow, right? I mean, I don't know, maybe there's 100% there to grow fine. But no, but that's what that I mean, that's what we're talking about. It's like everything in life, you know, you that's life and she's got this beautiful way of sorry, I'll come out of your thing and say, right, and that life is, you know, failure and success and you don't appreciate the other unless you've had both. You know, one of the things that I've been on this jackass kick for a little bit, my sons are into jackass, we've been watching a lot of jackass and I listened to this Johnny Knoxville quote, I thought was great, which is if you're not failing, then you're not doing it right because failure is a part of success. And you know, I think that we are in a culture that values optimization and not making mistakes and kind of being perfect. Yeah, I'm going to have the best breakfast to fuel my brain. 100% right. And that optimization, I don't think is good for us. The optimization isn't like, it's, we can't game the system and I think that we are. Yeah, whatever I read those articles about people who are like, here's how I game the system. And I read their day, I'm like, that sounds like fucking misery. You woke up at 430, you chugged all these egg whites, you worked out all day and you didn't hang out with any friends. Like what are you doing? And it seems like all you're going to do is talk about the things that you're doing. And that to me, it's like, well, then you're not living life. And yes, you might live a longer life, you might, but you also might walk into the middle of the street and get hit by a car. And that's like the grand joke of this, right? Yeah. You don't know, right? I think about that all the time. I am deaf, but my dad ran marathons and died of natural causes at 49. My grandmother chain smoked and lived on nothing but little Debbie snack case, lived till her late eighties. Who knows, man? Like it maybe it doesn't matter that much. Yeah, I mean, and I guess there's also this question of if you had the knowledge of the future, would you tell someone? Because she does tell, you know, Jeremy Renner what their future is or, you know, it's alluded to. Yeah, in the scene right here. It's my fault. I told him something that he wasn't ready to hear. What? Believe it or not, I know something that's going to happen. I can't explain how I know what just do. And when I told your daddy, he got really mad. And he said, I made the wrong choice. What? By the way, that's my only issue with this entire movie because no kid would take that as an answer. He'd be like, well, what did you tell him? Or why did he? There's about 45 more questions after that. I love the way she acted that scene, but they cut off before that kid starts peppering her nonstop until she's like, okay, you die. And he left because he couldn't handle it. Okay, leave me alone now. I mean, I have to say, I like that Renner sucks. Right? It's nice. It's nice that like the emphasis of arrival isn't I'm going to fall in love with this guy and he's the best. It's like, I fall in love with this guy. He doesn't die. He just ditches us. He just leaves. He's fine. He doesn't agree. Love story. But can I say just for the sake of argument that he doesn't suck in the sense that he's overwhelmed and I do think that I would blame Amy Adams for that. I wouldn't tell him that. She's got it to herself. I think so because she is living in this rare air and this is kind of the ethics of this for knowledge, if you will. Like, like she can see and she is at peace with the life that she's living because it is a circle. It is constantly something she can move through. He can't. So when you tell him that it's a completely different way that he will receive that because he is not living in that reality. He doesn't have that language. He wasn't gifted that. He wasn't smart enough to figure it out. He's a physicist. It's not his fault. I don't understand anything he is talking about. And I like that she just erases his math. I also like that the movie just erases basically everything he did. I think they shot some scenes of him also adding his physics to this being like, yes, and but it didn't make any sense. And they're like, you know, our focus here is language. And I think really this is the genius of this movie because while it's heady, while it's this bigger idea, it's grounded in this emotional story, this emotional story of a family, a family with a child. And you see snapshots and it comes together in a really beautiful way. I saw this movie right. My son was born in my second son was born in 2016. And I saw this like right after he was born. I was bawling and this movie got me hard because you know, it's just dealing with you're looking at this life in front of you. And I do think that that grounds everything else. Is this movie, you know, if you take out the flashbacks, obviously there's really no movie, but I do think that putting it within this relationship. That's not super magical. That's not, you know, the two most perfect people actually makes us hit home a lot harder in a way because we can connect our own story to their story. I mean, the movie even makes, I think, a choice not to show us that many future forward scenes of her being happy with him. Would she chugs that glass of wine before he's like, let's make a baby. I almost think of it as her being like, well, I guess here we go. I guess I gotta do this, which is not fair. It is not fair. But I do think this movie wrestles with that idea of would she even have the free will to say no to him? Would she want to or not? Would you do it anyways? I mean, that was, I think a disagreement that went all the way down to between like the screenwriter Eric and Ted Chang when they would talk about the story is they both saw this predetermined feature in different ways. The message in Ted's story there was more about Louise embracing the inevitable. It was a very kind of deterministic realization that likely everything is predestined and you just gotta find a way to make peace with that. And I was a bit rebellious about that. I'm like, Ted, I don't like that. I don't like that at all. I think it's more profound for me if she has a choice, if she has free will and can change her future and yet she chooses to have Hannah. That to me is more affecting and that's really where I wanted to land on it. But if I did that, then I had to make sure it wasn't a rock climbing accident in which Louise could just call it a before and say, hey, don't go. Oh, and what you're hearing it, by the way, is that yet in the book, the girl dies at 25 because she is rock climbing. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. It's not an incurable disease. It was like the incurability as Eric was just saying is like the thing that now you can't evade because otherwise you would back to the future. Right? Exactly. Because I think it's like, well, just be at the end of the mountain and catch her. Right. Right. And I, and I feel like this movie doesn't really get into how to like, can you change the future? It's like the future it is. There's no change, right? Because I think that maybe that's part of it too. We're looking at it like, oh, if you could see the future, would you change it? But it's like, if you could see the future, would you? I don't know. I get confused, to be honest, because she can go into the future to find out stuff. Right? Like she went into the future to find a phone number that she doesn't know from someone else. But she's not changing anything. And, but how would she ever, it doesn't quite make sense to me. There are a couple of things that are hard to kind of parse in that way. Like it's faded. This is the circle. This is the play. It will happen like this every single night and you can try to avoid it, but it's going to move in the same direction. It will always write itself. That's all I kind of feel it is because there's a part of me that feels like that moment where the man that she calls, the man from China that she calls and he comes and speaks to her. Oh yeah, General Shang. Yes, when he speaks to her, it's her remembrance of it, not necessarily how I think it played out because it's so expository to be comical. I was like, Oh, remember, you called me on my phone. Here it is. And this is what you said to me and he whispers in her ear. Like there's something about that that feels like, Oh, that's not really what happened. That's her memory of what happened. That flash forward is triggering a larger thing that's putting all the pieces together. Right? I mean, or am I wrong in that? I don't know because I do get a little bit confused here because when she can go back and forth in time in her head or I'm probably even describing it wrong, saying she's going back and forth. I guess she's like looking at this other part of the circle from the part of the circle that she is standing on and she can help her kid with her homework. I don't quite get that. And then I don't understand how you wouldn't use that skill for the rest of your life. Like, where did I leave my keys? You know? Yeah. I mean, there's a thing that Ted Chang said, the author of the book, he said that, you know, his book was about free will in a determined universe. Like once you know the future, the emotional tension comes from you, you know, feeling that you should be able to change it, but you can't. And none of the general Chang stuff is in the story at all to begin with. So it's not more explained there. Right. Yes. Well, I wonder how they solve. Well, yeah. I think that they do a lot of things like that that make the movie a little bit more cinematic in that way. Like it does build to this kind of racing moment of her being on the phone, making the phone call, stopping war from breaking out. But I feel like what this movie does, it kind of reinterprets free will in the sense that she does choose, she doesn't fight the future. She goes with it. Again, I'm not sure if the movie allows you to change it. Like she couldn't say, let's know, let's not have a baby. I don't think she could. I don't know. Or yeah, it seems very effy to me. But I, yeah. Yeah. I mean, what I do find kind of funny though is like in that scene we're talking about in that pivotal one that in originally in the screen, Eric Hesser just wrote, and then she tells him something in Mandarin, but he didn't actually write what she said. And then he gets this panicked phone call from Denny Villeneuve. We were about three months away from shooting and then he calls me Eric. Eric, what did she say? I don't know. She said something about it. I have the woman here who translates from Mandarin. She's going to teach Amy Adams what to say. What does she say? I'm like, you have to teach. Oh, right. Because she's actually saying, oh, oh God. And she's like, Eric, Eric, Eric, this is the line that saves the world. This is the most important line in the whole movie. Eric, what have you done to me? You must find this for me right now. And I'm like, oh God, I started sweating. I started to come up with like draft after draft after draft. And Eric wound up saying that she says to the general in Mandarin is, in war there are no winners, only widows, which seems like such a bummer of a last line to say to your husband as you're dying. Like that. But I guess you want to make him a better man. But then also, don't be like, I loved you or goodbye. Don't bury me in this awful place. Or if you remarry, she's got to be cool or something like that. But part of the weird choice that you've made after that was he decided not to even subtitle that line. So if you watch the movie, you have no idea what she said. He went full, lost in translation, I guess, with it. Leave the mystery. And don't think that you need it, right? Because it's not important to, because it really is, that is her, not me a culpa, but that's her, like, that's her way to connect with him. Right? He trusts her because she must know something. Right? There is something going on here. Now. Oh, wait a second. Now I just had a thought. What? Did he, he wasn't also gifted language, was he? The general? No. I can't remember. Exactly Ma Zhong. He didn't learn the language. Oh, right. Okay. Yeah. So, but I do love that idea that, you know, to, to be able to communicate with somebody, you really have to be in it with them. That was her key to open up a conversation where he would actually listen. Like he said that thing, you did something that no one was able to do, change my mind. And how did she do that by listening, by connecting, by not only embracing him, but actually like meeting him where he is at. And I think that that's an important thing, especially in the context of 2016. How do we communicate better? We have to let down everything and we have to, sometimes we have to get on our knees in front of somebody else in a way to show them that we are completely on their side. So they feel safe enough to actually listen because listening is a two way, you know, communication is a two way street. You can communicate anything, but if you're not listened to properly or if it's perceived as not being sincere, then you can't make anything happen. Well, yeah. And that's what I find really interesting and kind of layering just even what the screenplay is about over the act of getting this movie made. Because it makes me think of this idea, listening to Eric talk about changing the ending with Ted and figuring out how to do it or how to navigate this scene with Danny Villeneuve, you realize that even in writing a screenplay, you're translating the intentions of an original story. And then to direct a screenplay is to translate the intentions of the script itself and that at every step of the level and everything that we do in making a film, it's an act of translation. Because what you're describing right now is that humans have to take a risk, right? We have to take a leap of faith. We have to put in some effort to try to bridge this communication gap. And I think that Danny takes that idea and as a director translates it visually. Like in Ted Chang's book, they don't really talk about how to go up and down from the ship. They don't really even go up and down from the ship. But Danny has this idea that the spacecraft, who he turns from spheres into, I guess, like cough drops, almonds, I don't know, that they are floating just off the ground. And for us humans to have to talk to them, we actually have to put in some effort ourselves. Like we have to get the little, you know, the crane thing and raise ourselves up. We have to climb into their hallway and then we have to take that really beautiful visual symbolization of a leap of faith. We have to leap and trust in the anti-gravity. Learn about the anti-gravity. And so he's building in all of those ideas but making them visual. And I think that that's such a beautiful metaphor for what making a movie is. And I would even go one step further and say that what you're describing is love. And we think about love as very romantic but really any real relationship where you are committed to connecting to someone else, whether you're making a movie for people to see, you're putting yourself out there, you're being earnest, you're being honest, whether you are in a relationship, whether you have a friend, like those are the relationships we always are putting ourselves out there. And every relationship, every movie, everything that we put into the world is done, I think, with this love. And when the stuff that doesn't work or the relationships that fall apart are the ones that are inauthentic. You know what? I'm going to re-translate your word love and say that to me, the word I would choose is trust. Because I don't know if this movie is like, America needs to love China, America needs to love Russia, but it's like America needs to trust them at least. And I think trust is as brave as love in a lot of ways. Absolutely. Yeah, because you're trusting. Yeah, I believe that. I like it. Change my words. But trust is hard. And I think that they're, gosh, now I'm really thinking about how even in the communication that we see between Amy Adams and the Heptapods, it's being framed by this gigantic white rectangle and we're looking at each other through screens. And that screen, I mean, I remember seeing this in the theater, it just looks like you're seeing a screen and a screen, a movie screen and another screen. And it feels like that idea of we go to movies and sit in front of screens because the figures that we see up there, they also show us a way of thinking about the world. You know, that's what a movie is. It's like Amy Adams is up there doing this pantomime for a story about how, hey, we should leave the theater and try to trust each other better. And that's exactly what she's seeing inside the rectangular herself, a rectangle, trust-ception. That's the original title of this, oddly, which is, yeah, trust-ception. I mean, the reason it's not called the story of your life is because then you thought it sounded like a rom-com. I agree. But I will say this because as you are changing my words, I also am realizing what you just said there is love can exist without trust and trust can exist without love. But the most human way to be is when they converge, right? Love is radical trust. And I think that that's what this movie is showing you. She trusts these haptopods and then she makes these choices of, you know, she trusts them and then in that trust, it opens her up to... Well, hold on. Wait, I feel like even in taking these words and tying them together, we're turning into like a superior war hypothesis of ourselves because I'm like, you have to get through... I'm like, there is no real love if you don't trust that person. But then if I trust somebody that deeply, maybe I do wind up loving them in a way. Right. I think that that's what this movie is, is like when you can trust somebody, you are giving everything over and you are trusting the ride. I mean, that's really what it is. Is it, does she need to have a dead child? Like, this movie doesn't say like, oh, well, your child dies, so you will then do a blank and then have another blank. Like, that's not part of it. It's not like you need to sacrifice to get this. It's just... Right, because that would be linear. Right. So I do think it is about both things coming together, like the perfect, the perfect lived life or the best way to communicate with somebody is to have love and to have trust with them. I mean, I think part of why we're drilling into this so deeply is because this is reflected to me in the screenplay of the idea that there's that whole difference between weapon and tool. You know, that this choice to define a word that they're saying as weapon or tool radically changes how we see a sentence. I mean, we see here, like Russia absolutely freaking out by like misinterpreting what the Heptapods are saying. Two hours ago, we pulled this audio off a secure channel in Russia, someone on the science team that was broadcasting wide. In their final session, the aliens said, there is no time. Many become one. I fear we have all been given weapons. If anyone is receiving this, please. Well, I mean, there are a lot of ways you can interpret what he said. I don't need an interpreter to know what this means. Russia just executed one of their own experts to keep their secrets. Many become one could just be their way of saying some assembly required. Why? Hand it out to us in pieces. Why not just give it all over? What better way to force us to work together for once? Yeah, Amy Adams comes out of there. She's like, you know, there's a different way of looking at that. And we could phrase it this way. And she sounds so nervous in that room. She sounds almost like she's certain she will be overruled the way that you would if you were like, okay, I know that this guy I'm dating hasn't texted me in like three weeks, but I think it's just because I make him nervous and I intimidate him. But like, that's how I'm interpreting this because you can definitely interpret things wrong on the gentle side as well. I mean, in a way, I feel like there are metaphors in this movie about what it's like, even just the act of dating. What do you want when you have this first encounter with something? Do you want to say, hey, I'm coming in with to this hot. I have a question for you. What do you want out of this? Which is basically sitting down at a first date being like, you want kids? What's up? Right? Yeah. But how do you get around there? How do you actually build to that conversation? How do you find out they are talking about the same thing? I think what you're also highlighting is this movie is sensitive and emotional and fragile. And I think even the visual approach here, that's Bradford Young, who was the cinematographer on this, you know, everything in this movie is lit in this like, you know, soft, low contrast fog overcast. Like the world feels fragile. Right? It does. It doesn't feel like we're not like seeing the bright sun and the big day. The shiny, marvel type of command center. It all feels like it could fall apart. It's all muted, right? And I do think that, you know, I think that helps make it feel troubled. And, you know, and I think that what you see like later on in the film is when she's home and we're seeing that like that life, it is warmer, right? It's like the world is a better place than, but I think that the way that the film is lit is like, in this moment where we might be on the precipice of war, the world is reflecting that kind of not embracing color. It's nervous. It's holding on. I mean, tents are unstable, you know? Right. And we hear the instability around the country. I mean, I think part of how they managed to keep this budget so low is that they do do that thing of leaning on news clip footage of what's happening around the world instead of having to show any of the scenes itself, like when they're talking about what's going on in America right now. And why can't we get a news footage to look good? The only one who did it good was one of the Mission Impossible's where they literally shot in Wolf Blitzer's studio. Like, let's get back to, why are we doing this? Why can't we get a graphics package that looks good? Every studio should just invest in buying a new studio and just being able to build all graphic packages. I mean, they can. They have it. Don't they? Come on. We are all, we are now learning that every movie studio owns a news channel, so hey. It's right there. But here's the news clip that I want to play. What I really enjoy about that clip is you see Denny taking this idea of miscommunications and misunderstandings and tilting it away even from politics into the whole nature of religion. Like, this movie does not get that deep into religion. It doesn't get into that question that, you know, Ridley Scott would, oh no, I'm looking at these aliens. I must question everything about spirituality. But in there, you do see how religions, cults have misunderstood things as a Jesus prophecy. Nothing that's what's happening with these, like, aliens has anything to do about, like, the end times. But it's just how they take it. Also, wait, you were talking about her house for a second. I will say that that is the one quibble that linguists themselves also have with the film, in addition to the superior wife or a hypothesis. They're like, none of us have enough money to have a house anything like that. What are you doing? Well, I have to share with that book. Oh, sure. You know what I mean? Yeah. I don't know if that's a barn burner, though, like, running off the, you know, I don't know if that's like the next twilight, just selling hot like hotcakes. Oh, the linguist book. I mean, you don't know is maybe it's like the linguistics Freakinomics. Okay. Yes, absolutely. I do want to talk about death, too. I mean, we talked about it about the kid dying, and I know how you feel about that. But I do think that there's something interesting. You're talking about the screen and, you know, they're in this cavern. And Villeneuve was saying that, like, he wanted the ship to be like a subconscious representation of death. You know, that this idea, like we're in this, you know, long tunnel and there's something moving in the white light, like in front of us. I come to the white light, you know, this idea of like, I guess rebirth in a weird way, because once she goes to the white light, goes into the white light, she is reborn and has a godlike power. I mean, she does. Her hair looks so good. Yeah. She has the godlike power of good hair. Oh my God. It's really flowing. You know, my wife did a show, and this is a fun thing for everyone to recognize now when you see things. She went up in space in the show and, you know, her character has her hair very, you know, it's down to her shoulders the entire time. It's loose. And then the minute they go in space, it's so tight. It's like there because they can't afford the CGI to make the hair look like, flowy like that. It's like, it's just so expensive. And so whenever you watch anything like watch women's hair and then when they go to space, it just gets clamped down. Like it's it is the only reason is because it's too expensive to do. I don't like good French braid. I guess that means I can't go to space. My bangs are probably real stupid. It would just be flying up there. I would look like I would look like there's something about Mary. Are you a campaign's lighting up the dashboard? 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You know, what's kind of beautiful is we've talked so much about, you know, her acceptance of death. But you know, these aliens also have that acceptance too, right? They know that this trip here is going to take one of them. Yeah, they know that they are on a suicide mission or at least one of them is. Yeah, and that's why they don't react in a way that's, you know, immediate, right? They're they're they're they're comfortable understanding how the world plays out. But I never think about that. I don't think about the alien knowing. Oh, yes. This is where I am. This is where my life is ending. And I think that that is, you know, that's where this movie has an interesting parallel as well. I guess maybe we don't, you know, want to give that a much emotionality to the Heptapod. But the Heptapod, like going through the what does they say like the death process, the death process. Yeah, that it knows that it is making a choice that it will not be coming back from this trip. And there's a lot we don't know about them. We don't know about do they have a life or a love life back home? I mean, part of why I'm glad we're doing this now is because there's that movie coming out, Project Hail Mary. And these movies to me feel like they're almost fun echoes of each other. Yeah, oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And you're right. I think it took me until my third watch to really realize that when one of the scientists is like, man, they're really curious. They don't ask us any questions about ourselves. What are they doing here? It's just because they already know all the answers. They know exactly what's happening. They don't need to ask us anything. But you know what I do have a quibble with? I do have a quibble with the fact that they would name them Abbott and Costello because doesn't that feel a little old? Like Abbott and Costello feels like, I don't know, an older journal rule might name them that. Well, I guess we're not like, but I don't think we're like naming hurricanes like Kylie, you know, or, you know, like, like, you know, we're kind of like, we, I think that there's. Oh my God, in our lifetime, there will be a hurricane Kylie because it'll sound like an old name. It'll be a hurricane Kyler. You know, I think that there's something universal about keeping it, you know, I guess, but and Lou would have been interesting, but Abbott and Costello are kind of a nice duo. Oscar and Felix, none of those work as good as Abbott and Costello. I mean, I do like that when we go behind the screen to her shampoo commercial, that you realize that even the way we've interpreted what they look like, which to me is just, you know, the thing with two extra figures, that there's so much bigger than that, that what we can see in that screen actually isn't even the truth. And I think that's such a neat subtle way of saying, even what you see is not necessarily the full picture, that they're just tall, and there's this gigantic shape above them. And I appreciate that the film doesn't have to hammer that point home and go, wow, I couldn't see all of you through the screen. It's just there. But I guess that goes to the larger thing of communication. Don't judge a book by its cover. We're looking at the cover when we're looking through the screen and then, you know, essentially she's in the book and then she's getting to see even more, right? This idea that it's a constant evolution, understanding somebody, gaining their trust to learn more about them. And the more that they trust you, the more they will show of themselves. And that's kind of the beauty of this movie is it continually unravels itself to her. And, you know, to your point, I don't think that they need to know anything about humans. Not they don't need to know because they know, but the only thing that they really need to do is give this gift so they can save themselves. In the future, like that's all they really need is that this gift is something that will help them. They don't need to like, they're not coming here because like in my film that I was in meet Dave, they needed to get a lot of salt for their planet. And so we brought back a bunch of hot dogs. Great classic Eddie Murphy film that I'm pretty much cut out of. But right, they're not they're not here for like, oh, our planet is dying. It's like it is dying. But like what they're here is to stave that off. It's like, OK, this is the moment we give this. So in 3000 years, you will help us. But that's that's all I need. Like this is the this is the bridge moment. It's not about like, oh, we need to work together. We're we'll build bridges. You need interstellar travel. Nope, none of that. It's none of that. I mean, they do feel like kind of planetary therapists because it isn't their whole goal to get us talking to each other. Right. To be able to land in these different areas to force communication. Right. Because I think there was a script or they're supposed to get us on the same page so we could all combine our technology and build an interstellar spaceship that we needed to have for when they needed us in the future. But then interstellar came out and they're like, OK, never mind, we'll take that out. Oh, that's interesting because I do feel like this movie does still do the hero's journey. Right. And it's like, she figures it out. She's the best. She stops it all like no one's working together. It's basically China is going to start a nuclear war. Everyone else will follow suit. And then she's like, wait, wait, wait, I figured it out. Like there's no real like there's a little bit of work, but there's no real like I maybe I guess that's a kind of. Breezed by that. Oh, yes, all the linguists around the world working has allowed them to understand more of the language. But at the end of the day, she's the she's prime. She's the one. And that's why I say time and time again, America is the best. Get used to it, people. You know, one weird fact about the design of this whole screen is that it means that this movie shares one piece of the same DNA as Drake's video for Hotline Bling. Oh, because no, I'm serious. Picture the screen closure as picture like walking through the tunnels, see the square. Picture Drake's video, giant rectangles and square and I'm dancing and blah, blah, blah. And I was a meme for a really long time. They are both inspired by the light artist James Turrell. So they both took James Turrell's ideas of how to use light and shadow and darkness and shapes and push them in different directions. One monochrome, one really colored. The only interview I could really fight about this was James Turrell saying, while I am truly flattered to learn that Drake fucks with me. I nevertheless wish to make it clear that I was not involved anyway in the making of the Hotline Bling video. You know, while you're thinking about Hotline Bling, I'm just thinking, wow, you know, the Adams family, that's what I keep on seeing. Like, oh, that, you know, thing from the Adams family, he's probably a Heptapod, right? Like that hand that runs around. Yeah, why do you think they look so much like hands? Well, like, you know, the design of it was really interesting because they are this like kind of squid spider, right? It's starfish. Apparently, Carlos Wanta is a the designer and he was like, it was a bunch of abstract ideas. He calls it an anthropomorphic whale creature with a spider hand at the end of an umbilical cord, which he also admits is a very bizarre way. I've been in Castelavet. And, and, and Denny Villeneuve said that what he really liked about Carlos's designs were that they felt like there was a soul within them. They felt real. They didn't just look like cool creatures. And I think that that really shows we've seen a lot of vagina mouth creatures, right? Since Cloverfield, we have been inundated with vagina mouth creatures and um. Yeah, teeth on teeth on teeth. Yeah, come on. We don't need all this stuff. And, and I think that Denny Villeneuve was trying to create something that felt really organic and it and the, and the movement of it and the way of communicating and thinking was really well thought out. So it wasn't just like, just slapped in there. And it does read it. Like you, you feel for these characters or you at least feel connected to them. You do, but I'm still thinking about Hotline Bling and realizing I think Hotline Bling maybe should be a theme song for this movie. Because isn't that what Drake is even singing about? That he knows what it means when you call him on his telephone. It can only mean one thing. It can only mean one thing. He's interpreting the action of somebody calling someone to assume that it means that they don't need him anymore. And yet he knows that they're never going to call him back, but he calls anyway. Hence a full circle, Amy. It all comes back to Drake. Wow. What a great film. And I feel like a movie that oddly isn't spoken about as much as it should be. I don't know. Maybe I'm misreading it because it, it, it. I don't know. It's 61. It's the 10 year anniversary. Maybe it's time for it to start bubbling back up. Yeah. I think this is a movie that is incredibly relevant. It's incredibly cerebral. It's incredibly successful. And really the only misstep is that somehow Amy Adams avoided being nominated. I was curious to see who she was up against. Do you remember this at all? No, no, I mean Emma Stone. Yes. Emma Stone for La La Land. She won. But it's an odd crew. All right. You have Meryl Streep for Florence Foster Jenkins. I mean, she's a given, right? We always give a nom to her, but not a memorable role or movie in my memory. Natalie Portman for Jackie. Great performance. Ruth Negga for loving. Great movie. And then Isabelle Huper for Elle. She won the Golden Globes. Interesting. That's an interesting crew of people. Yeah. That was a really fun Isabelle Huper role. But now that I'm thinking about it, Amy Adams has never won an Oscar. She has been nominated so much that I figured she had. Because maybe they didn't nominate her because they're like, listen, we have nominated that woman. In 2016 they would have nominated her already for like five Oscars. I think she's been nominated for six Oscars now and never won, which is really nuts. I think she is, I think she's right up there with Glenn Close almost as like actresses with the most nominations without winning. I think she's a couple nominations underneath Glenn Close, which is nuts. Like she feels like she should have been a lock by now. Well, you know what, and it's interesting because maybe she'll just be one of those people like Meryl Streep who's like continually on that, not shopping block, but just kind of assume. Maybe we don't look at her as critically as other people. I will say that. Maybe we're at risk of taking her for granted, but also she hasn't been working a ton lately. I think she's back. Well, you know what? She's on the office and she's on the office is kind of like the like the other Pam in the early seasons. She's like a bag saleswoman and she's so good in the show and she looks a little bit like like Pam. So it's a it's she's great and you watch her and oh my God, she's been doing this for such a long time. I know I love her. I just think she has a real gift for coming across like the best version of a normal person. Yes, 100%. I met her a handful of times. She was friends with my probably still is with my friend Jack McBrayer and after they had done Talladega night, she would come to see me and Jack do improv shows together. She was great. Oh, all right. So Amy, I feel like we've tipped our hat to Project Hail Mary, which you should definitely go see not only because I think it's a fantastic film, but because it's good for cinema to have a big blockbuster movie. Get support. Yes, it's on IP, but it's Lord Miller, a duo who I think every time I see them make something, I'm like, wow, how do they do this? It's like this is what I want movies to be more like. It's it's got everything. I don't know if I said this to you, but when I was watching Project Hail Mary, I brought my sons the second time I saw it. And my son turned to me in the middle of the movie and said, this is the best movie I've ever seen. Oh, yes. And then my other son said it was the funniest movie I've ever seen, even though I cried five times. Oh, that's so cute. I mean, I do think Project Hail Mary saw Arrival refreshed on it because there's a joke that I think is definitely building off of this scene right here where the aliens are tapping. What are you doing? I mean, come on. When you see Project Hail Mary, anybody out there listening, report back. I think that's definitely a little nod to Arrival. OK, Paul, well, you know what? We just talked about a peaceful way of saving the world. What if we make a hardcore pivot and talk about a totally rockin' aggro way to save the world with a lot of boning, a lot of wooden boning? Oh, I love this. What do we got? I think we should do Team America World Police. Ooh, I'm excited about this because I don't think I've seen that movie in such a long time. Oh, I'm very. All right, this is great. Amy, great choice. Excellent. You mean fuck yeah. Fuck yeah. You can find Team America World Police currently streaming on Paramount or wherever you get streaming movies or also from your local public library where they have services like Hoopla and Canopy, all those great places to go. Anyway, yell out America fuck yeah, wherever you are right now, and we will see you next week. And remember, check out our sub-stack where we go into even a deeper dive on the Arrival and we have some shirts available. That's right. Just go to our T-Public site and get an official unspooled merch. All right, Amy, we will see you next week. Unspooled is produced by Amy Nicholson, Paul Scheer, Molly Reynolds, and Harry Nelson. Sound engineered by Corey Barton, music by Devon Bryant. Episode art by Kim Troxell. Show art by Lee Jameson. And social media production by Zoey Applebaum. This is a realm production. See you next week. Bye for now. From the parents behind law and order comes a mystery the whole family can enjoy. Patrick Picklebottom, everyday mysteries. Step into the whimsical world of Patrick Picklebottom, a precocious 11-year-old with a love for reading and an uncanny ability to solve mysteries. Inspired by the beloved children's book of the same name, this podcast vividly brings Patrick's tales of deduction and everyday adventures to life as he unravels baffling in his own life. He unravels baffling in Digmas and solves clever cases. Patrick Picklebottom, everyday mysteries is perfect for kids and is just as entertaining for grown-ups who love a good mystery. The whole family can listen now wherever you get your podcasts. The war is over and both sides lost. Kingdoms were reduced to cinders and armies scattered like bones in the dust. Now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken world. Praying the darkness chooses someone else tonight, but in the shadow dark, the darkness always wins. This is old school adventuring and it's most cruel. Your torch ticks down in real time and when that flame dies, something else rises to finish the job. This is a brutal rules light nightmare with a story that emerges organically based on the decisions that the characters make. This is what it felt like to play RPGs in the 80s and man, it is so good to be back! Join the Glass Cannon podcast as we plunge into the shadow dark every Thursday night at 8pm Eastern on youtube.com slash the glass cannon with the podcast version dropping the next day. See what everybody's talking about and join us in the dark!