Arrival — Subverting Expectations Through Story Structure

Be warned: this post contains spoilers for the movie Arrival.

The fantastic Blade Runner 2049 was the first movie to put Canadian director Denis Villeneuve on my radar. As the sequel to a 35-year-old cult classic, it had every right to be another bland, disappointing Hollywood cash grab. Instead, it managed to capture the essence of what made the original movie great, and built on those themes in a way that somehow felt cohesive. Dune (Part One) in 2021—for my money, the best screen adaptation of a story that has stymied directors for decades—confirmed that the quality of Blade Runner 2049 was no accident.

I recently watched Arrival, a 2016 sci-fi film about first contact with a mysterious, seven-limbed, octopus-like alien race, dubbed “heptapods.” I came away astounded by the story and the execution, and then discovered that this is yet another Villeneuve masterpiece, adapted from Ted Chiang’s Nebula Award winning short, “Story of Your Life.” At this point, I’ll watch any movie Villeneuve makes. I don’t even need to see a trailer.

Arrival follows linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams), who is recruited by the U.S. Army to attempt to communicate with the aliens. However, our first introduction to Banks is a flashback: tender strings play over her narration as she speaks to her daughter about the nature of memory.

I used to think this was the beginning of your story.

Memory is a strange thing.

It doesn’t work like I thought it did.

We are so bound by time, by its order.

We watch a montage of her daughter as newborn, child, teenager.

I remember the middle.

But all is not well. Her daughter is examined in a hospital room. Banks looks on, her fear written on her face. Conversations with a doctor at the end of a long, dark hallway.

This was the end.

she narrates, as we see her crying over the hospital bed where her daughter lays, head shaved, utterly still.

Moments in the Middle

Life moves on. Banks works as a university professor, and this is where we catch up with her, watching (along with the rest of the world) as twelve alien ships descend to different parts of Earth. The Army comes to recruit her, and she’s whisked off to Montana in a helicopter. She’s partnered with physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner), and they begin making regular visits to the alien craft, which opens a section to them once per day.

Inside the ship, they meet a pair of heptapods, who observe them from a separate, misty chamber through a glass wall.

Banks begins the process of communication, discovering that the aliens have a rich written language, but seemingly no concept of linear time. Their script is circular, and each sentence has no defined beginning or end.

They work under the scrutiny of government officials who are so afraid of the aliens that they seem perpetually on the verge of launching an attack. As they learn more about the aliens and their language, Banks also grows closer to Donnelly. But there is still a distance between them. There are more flashbacks of Banks with her daughter. They skirt around the subject of the husband and father who left them.

The source of this lingering depression and detachment is obvious to the viewer. Banks was broken by the loss of her daughter and the estrangement from her husband. Under the pressure of the situation, this is only growing worse. Banks immerses herself in the alien language. Software is built to speed up translation. She begins to dream about the heptapods and their circular sentences.

Things come to a head when diplomacy breaks down between the twelve countries hosting alien craft. China and Russia are poised to attack the aliens, calling them a threat to humanity. Through her incomplete translation of the alien language, Banks has uncovered references to what might be a tool, or might be a weapon. What if the aliens use this weapon on them? What if they give it to one country, but not the others?

At this critical moment, Banks has a revelation. The weapon is the alien language itself. Language shapes thought, and she is so immersed in their language that she begins to think like them. She is no longer bound by linear thought. Cause and effect are simultaneous.

But this isn’t just a revelation to Banks, it’s also a revelation to the audience. She doesn’t just remember the past, she remembers the future as well. She remembers meeting the Chinese general sometime in the future. He will tell her that her phone call to him was the reason he called off the attack. So, in the here-and-now, she steals a sat-phone and calls the private Chinese phone number that she will be told by the general. She says the words he has not yet told her, the dying words of his own wife, “in war, there are no winners, only widows.”

The attack is called off. The lines of communication re-open. The aliens close their ships and leave, saying only that they will return when they need the aid of humanity, in three thousand years.

With the crisis averted, Donnelly and Banks admit their feelings for each other. For Donnelly, this is a joyful moment, but for Banks and the audience, it’s bittersweet. We now know the truth.

Those flashbacks weren’t flashbacks at all. They were memories of the future. She will have a daughter, knowing full well what will eventually happen to her. She will marry Donnelly, knowing that he will leave, that he will be unable to bear the weight of the truth: that she chose this path, even though she knew what would happen.

Flashing Forward

This twist ending works for three reasons.

1. It is carefully telegraphed.
2. It relies on extremely familiar story structures.
3. It ties the personal stakes to the universal.

The opening scenes of the movie are powerful on first viewing. What’s more heartbreaking than a parent losing their child? The audience hears the narration about beginnings, middles, and ends, and takes it at face value: these scenes sketch the outline of a life cut short. But the narration is really a giant hint toward the twist at the end, a hint whose meaning isn’t apparent until it arrives.

Because the story opens with this scene, it needs to be relevant to the ending. Symmetry is critical to a feeling of closure. However, like any good magic act, the film immediately provides a flashy misdirection. What could more effectively distract us from Banks’s personal tragedy than first contact with aliens?

This also creates two sets of stakes: the personal, affecting only Banks; and the universal, affecting every person on Earth. As Chuck Wendig so aptly explains in Damn Fine Story, linking the personal and universal stakes is incredibly powerful. The only caveat is that the audience doesn’t yet understand how the personal and universal stakes tie together.

As the story progresses, we see several “flashbacks,” further illuminating what we believe to be Banks’s past. Modern audiences are so familiar with flashbacks, we automatically assume that these scenes, intercut with the first contact story, must have already happened. There are a few allusions to Banks dreaming these scenes, or woolgathering due to stress and lack of sleep, but it takes almost no effort to convince us that these are flashbacks, because they use a structure that we have seen countless times.

It is only in Act Three, when we have been introduced to the aliens’ non-linear language, where we get hints that not all is as it seems. Banks’s young daughter draws crude figures that look suspiciously like heptapods. Is she prescient? Is Banks mis-remembering or hallucinating? This throws the audience off-balance, revealing that the flashbacks we thought we understood are something we need to question. It primes us for the revelation.

When the twist comes, it is wonderfully effective. Firstly, the protagonist and the audience understand what’s happening at the same time! We feel exactly what Banks is feeling, because we’re all having the same experience.

Secondly, it ties the personal and universal stakes together. This revelation saves the Earth from war, but it also allows Banks to make sense of her life and her perplexing memories of a future that hasn’t happened yet.

Finally, it creates that symmetry between the end and the beginning. The narration from the opening scene lands on us with a new weight. An already powerful scene is supercharged as it becomes the crux of the story.

Arrivals and Departures

Non-linear storytelling works because it allows us to hide important information without frustrating the audience. Simply hiding information while telling a story in sequence is a surefire way to make the audience hate you, but by telling the story out of order, you can create a mystery for the audience to solve where there would otherwise be a series of straightforward events.

Non-linearity is used brilliantly in Arrival, because the characters themselves are experiencing the story out of order. The title is a reference to the aliens arriving on Earth. It is also a reference to the birth of Banks’s daughter, which is both the opening of the movie and, in some ways, the end.