the arrival vs passengers (possible spoilers)

Well I just saw passengers and I saw the arrival last week. I thought the arrival was going to be an appetizer for passengers, since I was under the impression that the arrival was going to be something like close encounters of the third kind and passengers was going to be something like pandorrum.

I wasn't completely wrong but the arrival was like a more advanced version of coherence, in terms of brain sci fi, so extremely good, while passengers was like a watered down version of pandorrum with a lot of romance.

With watered down I don't only mean the lackluster story and plot, but dear lord, If you have some intelligence, please turn it off when you're watching this movie, because it will get insulted every step of the way. On the bright side, jennifer lawrence is a pleasure for the eye, and she single handedly saved this movie but if you were expecting gut wrenching sci fi like pandorum , forget it, this movie is romance in a sci fi setting and I'm not talking about something like solaris, the sci fi isn't that challenging.

However if you like brain sci fi, arrival is probably one of the best i've seen in a long time and it reminded me immediately of coherence , not because of a similar plot but because of a similar genre, like brain sci fi. It will challenge your mind and make you wonder.

Do you have any thoughts on this two movies (or similar movies), did you like them (or not)?

Haven't seen Passengers (don't really care to) but Arrival is fantastic.

Put it this way, there is a reason Arrival is nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Just like there, probably, a reason Passengers is sitting at 31% on RottenTomatoes.

Why would you expect Passengers to be an intelligent sci-fi film? It looks like generic Hollywood fodder aimed at teenagers/young adults.

I'm so happy to see Passengers fail. The fake epic vibe they gave off in the face of the lackluster performances and terrible use of setting, eesh. The movie hardly used the sci fi element for it's own merit. I seriously think the people who made this film included the sci fi setting just for the "Holy shit, that's an epic shot!!" moments peppered in between the romance.

From the content of Passengers and Arrival, I would say Passengers was a "Duuuuude, you gotta see this insane sci fi movie we made, it's super cool!!!" and Arrival was a "Yeah, we put everything we had into this movie, and we think we crafted a brilliant film. Give us your cash and you will be satisfied."

I watched and enjoyed both movies, but I personally enjoyed Passengers a bit more. I just had some slim issues with arrival, it felt a bit slow and the entire universal language that crosses time, but only when it's necessary for the story to progress was kinda silly.

When I heard about the movie Passengers, I was expecting a movie based on the actual short story of juvenile god-like aliens taking over human bodies and causing mayhem. It's actually a great story about a main character who wakes up and tries to remember who he slept with and has a romantic attraction towards that person despite being taken over by the alien. Excellent theme, story, and characters.

I didn't see the movie Passengers. Arrival, however, was incredible, start to finish.

I thought Arrival was good, wasnt too much a fan of the ending, but was still really good.

@R3FURBISHED:reviews scores are not everything to go by , especially if the movie is just released and especially if we're talking about sci fi. There are numerous (sci fi) movies that are quite good and score 5 ish on imdb and very low on rottentomatoes. I don't expect every sci fi movie to be a masterpiece and/or brain sci fi as well. As much as I do love brain sci fi, I like sci fi movies with some action, horror, suspense and high production values even more.

When you watch the trailer of passengers you expect something like pandorum, sunshine, maybe even alien and the beginning of the movie certainly delivers in that regard. But it goes south quite fast and I'm not talking necessarly bad here. Jennifer lawrence is one of those woman that you can just stare at because she is so beautifull and the romance is quite well done here. The movie also adresses something I haven't really seen in other movies,

when he woke her up, he set something in motion that is certainly stuff to think about. First she doesn't know, then she finds out and hates him but ends up needing him either way and accepts it as her reality. I don't want to sound sexist, but I feel like a man would never accept this reality and It certainly adresses the old age dependence stereotype of the woman, and this while this was a highly independent woman. This kind of situation would have been very hard to replicate in a another setting.

In this regard the movie isn't a failure, but the sci fi holes are just atrocious, I mean if you know a thing or two about science, you just cringe a lot of times in this movie. Even more so if you know a thing or two about psychology, I don't think it's possible to stay sane if you live without sunlight for the rest of your life.

@Planeforger: The trailer is a bit misleading, however after watching the trailer again, I should have known that romance was going to be a big part of it.

I haven't seen Passengers either, but I can't see how the TC could compare them. I know you can't judge a movie by its commercial, but I would have never associated the 2 films.

Haven't seen the arrival but passenger looks like a chick flick.

Trust me, you'll love The Arrival, I know you're a scientific dude!! lol

I liked both movies, although in terms of overall quality I'd say The Arrival is the much better movie. Passengers is basically a love story with a sci-fi setting. There's nothing wrong with that, but The Arrival is a lot more. Also, regarding the language there's actually something to the idea in the movie. For example, Russian doesn't have one word for "blue" like in English but actually has several different words for different shades of what would just be considered blue and as a result in perceiving different shades of the color than English speakers.

https://eagereyes.org/blog/2011/you-only-see-colors-you-can-name

I wouldn't call that a plot hole, seeing as how we can simulate sunlight pretty effectively even with current technology (light therapy boxes, ultraviolet lights can grow plants, etc). It's not really that much of a stretch to imagine that in a future where we can travel to other solar systems that we've come up with some slightly better versions of what we've already got. There are a lot more elements of the ship that make a lot less sense. Where does the food come from? Is it produced or did they just pack a lot of lunches? The ship is massive so why couldn't they bring hibernation equipment in case the ship needs to wake up crew during an emergency? Why are various life support systems running on the ship 24/7 when everyone's asleep in pods (gravity, oxygen, etc)? Why does the ship provide "travel guide" sightseeing tips for parts of the universe that everyone is supposed to be asleep while they travel through?

This is the element where stuff gets waived away as "future tech!" and goes from science fiction to science fantasy. Nothing wrong with that, but there's a difference between the two categories.

-Byshop

@MarcRecon: I'll take your word for it bro! There's a movie theatre still playing it nearby.

Arrival was terrible, are you people high?

I don't know if you have ever lived in the dark for a while, it screws with your mind, it brings your serotonin levels down and you can counter it with antidepressants but it's not enough. It's more than just sunlight, but the interaction with the earth and the sun. The moment we figured that out , we probably figured out how to cheat death as well. That's why I called it a plot hole since the ending was supposed to be a happy ending and it just doesn't add up. Ok maybe they got happy pills, but still it feels akward.

Yeah of course the movie is ridden with plotholes and probably the worst one was the heat shield to protect from the cooling vent, that was just plain nonsense

"The ship was travelling at half light speed, we can achieve that today if we wanted."

I'm not sure what that had to do with what we were talking about. Also, it's very wrong. The fastest spacecraft we've built to date is still only in the double digits in terms of miles per second. Solar Probe Plus launches in 2018 and it's expected to hit about 200 km/s (kilometers per second) in orbital velocity and the speed of light is almost 300,000 km/s so you're about 149,800 kilometers per second short of your claim.

"I don't know if you have ever lived in the dark for a while, it screws with your mind, it brings your serotonin levels down and you can counter it with antidepressants but it's not enough."

Moot point because they literally weren't living in the dark.

"It's more than just sunlight, but the interaction with the earth and the sun."

Fair enough, but they turned the entire promenade into an greenhouse. They also literally passed by several suns just in the course of the movie so it's not like they never got to see the real thing even if the artificial equivalent weren't up to the task.

"The moment we figured that out , we probably figured out how to cheat death as well."

This is a statement that is not even remotely grounded in logic. That's like saying "if we can put a man on the surface of the moon, we should be able to put a man on the surface of the sun!"

-Byshop

Nope, some people don't need sex scene's, comic relief or something blowing up every 5 minutes to keep their attention. Some people actually like a well written film with good pacing and great acting.

But that still aint gonna stop me from reporting you to the Science Geek Association, they will not be pleased that you haven't seen the Arrival yet!! :(.....lol

@MarcRecon: what you think of the original The Arrival compared to the new one? What does the S.G.A. board of directors think is best, to watch the original or go for the new one?

Those aren't my complaints. The film was boring and sucked. The acting was stale and lifeless. The story was stupid as hell and left so many plots holes. I

We can even achieve near light speed if we wanted. Space has no friction, so you can accelerate indefenitely till close to the speed of light. It's really not that difficult. The problem is shielding from micro meteorites, asteroids and stuff like that. Not to mention funding.

With living in the dark I meant with lack of sunlight.

Even if they flew past stars, there's still no earth (like planet)

Why is cheating death so far off understanding the brain completely, we'll probably cheat death before we understand the brain completely. We can increase serotonin levels in the brain with antidepressants but what it does exactly is not known. A lot of medicinal science today is based on animal trials, human trials and cause and effect.

Your science is waaaaaaaaay off here on so many levels.

-Byshop

way off how, this is quite basic scientific knowledge.

I have yet to see Passengers just because heard it's isn't good but I did watch Arrival and that movie was great. Now out of curiosity and I need someone to explain this for me real quick. Did Amy Adam's character technically have the ability to see all past and future events in this movie from the beginning? The only reason I ask is because it seemed to me they bounced back and forth between what was her future life with a child and her current life in the present but I could have been interpreting this wrong

A little too basic is the problem. You're describing one principle (constant thrust with no resistance) while apparently unaware of many of the other principles that go into space travel. Even if we ignore cost of the moment, you're ignoring mass, escape velocity, and the really obvious one: fuel. There's a huge difference between "this is theoretically possible" and "we have figured out a way to do this" and when you say something like "we could do that if we wanted" you're ignoring the fact that we haven't figured out -how- to do that yet. Just getting something into space takes a tremendous amount of fuel, and every pound of fuel adds more weight you have to factor for. So no, we can't just infinitely thrust up to nearly the speed of light. Even the EMDrive idea that NASA is noodling with right now is purely theory.

-Byshop

I thought I was the only one who had seen (and enjoyed) Pandorum.

Don't get me wrong, it wasn't amazing. But I expected garbage and was thoroughly surprised.

It's basic because we already have the technology and know how to build these kind of systems since late sixties. We're not talking about a chemical rocket here but a nuclear powered spaceship. Maybe not the same nuclear tech as in the movie but we could build a spaceship that achieves 1/2 the speed of light.

It's also of course theoretical since no one has build a ship like this yet. But since this is well know technology there would be no unforeseeable problem to make this spaceship. The reason why it hasn't been made is obvious, radioactive fallout. They could use chemical rocket to bring the ship into space though, but even if they wanted to build a much bigger ship they could just build it in space.

Why haven't they done this, because of money of course, this isn't the space race between russia and the usa from the sixties. Governements have other problems to worry about than space travel.

I don't think you realize what we could build already, if we really wanted too we could travel to mars in a month. But it's all about money and the last 50 years no one has seen an economic opportunity in it, or a military advantage so it hasn't been build yet.

Do you know there's an episode from the original star trek where they found a relic ship from the nineties somewhere in space. That ship was nuclear powered. That means in the late sixties they thought we would already have nuclear powered spaceships in the nineties. Of course they thought that, they already had the technology.

But they forgot about economics and the fact that space exploration was military not much more interesting that going into orbit. The first man on the moon was pure propaganda . Going further didn't serve much purpose, since it had no military or economic advantage and was too expensive just for the sake of propaganda.

Ugh. I can now see that this is basically going to go on forever where I point out a flaw in what you're saying and you just randomly try to think of something else based on a complete lack of understanding of what you're talking about so I'm calling it now. Now you're using episodes of Star Trek as proof what you're saying exists. Have fun.

-Byshop

Lol did somebody in this thread we can travel at light speed?

WOW.

He also thinks that we can easily fuel-less nuclear-powered space ships because he saw it in an episode of Star Trek: TOS (because everyone knows that electricity can magically make thrust with no exchange of mass), but the idea of artificial sunlight in space is where he draws the line as too crazy a sci-fi idea for him to get behind.

-Byshop

lol I never said that because it was episode in star trek , It was just anecdotal. I said it because the technology was already there in the sixties. I thought you would have looked it up and see that I was telling the truth but ok I can understand if you never heard of it it sounds a bit sci fi. But here you go.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)

Of course, like I said we would have problems with micrometeorites and radiation. Not to mention braking. But travelling at 1/2 the speed of light is possible with nuclear propulsion. Probably even near the speed of light.

@n64dd: I get what you are saying about the plot holes, but that's what happens when a movie deals with time travel. IMO I think the director didn't want the audience to get to far ahead of the film, I think he wanted to give the audience a FPP so we would get plot details as the where reveled to the main character.

lol...from what I remember about the 96 version, I liked it and you should see it, but go see the new version first.

@commander: Just stop.

so wiki is lying?

Good grief. This is the issue with the "University of Google". I'll do one more round of this but whatever ludicrous idea you google next I'm just going to let lie because I have better uses of my time. If you're talking about nuclear explosive propulsion (not like the reactor you compared to in your post but I'm guessing you don't get the difference) that's not even a counter argument to my point about fuel and mass because you're just trading one type of fuel (chemical propellant) for another (thousands of nuclear bombs, lol). If you read your own link, even the guy who came up with the design didn't think it would go nearly as fast as you seem to think (Alpha Centauri in 1000 years versus 8-9 which would be half light speed). That's also ignoring all the problems that this theoretical design introduces like g-force, durable enough materials to withstand the blasts, cool down times between blasts, etc and that's before you even get into the one you mentioned of fallout (plus EMP) which is why we can't use it to get into orbit in the first place. The article even mentions multiple theoretical design issues they'd have to solve for to make this work, assuming it's even a good idea in the first place (which it likely is not).

The other option I know of is a nuclear thermal rocket, which uses a reactor to heat up a liquid/gas/solid propellant to cause it to expand through a nozzle to create thrust, but AGAIN you still have fuel (the propellant). That still runs out and you still have to calculate how much fuel you need versus what you are trying to do.

Every pound counts, and in the current model based on our technology for roughly every 10 lbs of weight in your craft about 9lbs of that needs to be rocket fuel (Gazizza, my dillsnoofus!) or you aren't even going to get into orbit.

You seem to misunderstand the difference between a theoretical design and something we can actually do. There are tons of theoretical designs for all kinds of cool stuff that will never exist because when we try to build it we find out the problems with the theory. "Oh, we can totally do that if we just solve _____" could be the difference of 100 years of scientific progress or even never being able to do something at all because we discover that it simply won't work.

So no, when you say we can totally do something because you read a theoretical design that says it might be possible (which you didn't even do in this case. The design you reference doesn't support your claim even if it did work) that doesn't mean we can actually do it and saying that we can is factually incorrect. We don't know we can do something until we actually do it. But hey, if you think you know better than NASA and Space-X I recommend you give those guys a call and give them a piece of your mind.

-Byshop

I only used project orion as an example. I already learned about nuclear propulsion in space 20 years ago and while your all your arguments make sense, the problems you mention are challenging but these are not project breaking problems.

We already agreed that chemical propulsion is out of the question for bigger ships, so you have to build them in space. Or rather, assemble them in space. This creates for a need of a space factory of course but these are all things that can be done. You say that because something works in theory it doesn't necessarily work in practice , that's true, but it works the other way around as well, something that works in theory can work very well in practice, especially if they use old technology and that's exactly what nuclear power is.

Far from everything what we can build is actually build because of either economic reasons or functional reasons. Why would we need a interstaller spacecraft anyway, it's nice to explore, but apart from that there isn't much to gain since the distances are so vast.

There are numerous techniques to use nuclear power in space and I'm not talking about the ones that need fuel. Allthough you could use a combination to boost acceleration/deceleration. You talk like nuclear propulsion is such a far fetched idea but a nuclear reactor is already used for propulsion in submarines. I know it isn't in space, but it can create electrical energy and people can be around, creating thrust in space with electrical energy isn't exactly like reinventing the wheel. Of course it would take a very long time to actually reach the 1/2 speed of light but again they could use a combination of techniques to boost the spacecraft on certain intervals.

But again the problem would be micrometeorites, the higher the speed, the bigger the impact, at this time we don't have the technology to build a proper shielding for this at high velocity. I know the space station uses some kind of shielding, but I don't think it's sufficient enough to protect a spaceship that's flying at 1/2 the speed of light.

This is beyond fucking stupid because we can never go the speed of light due to it being it's speed is measured in a different medium. The closer you get to the speed of light, the more mass you gain. If you could achieve the speed of light, you would have infinite mass.

You're dumb.

When did I ever said we could reach lightspeed. You're calling me dumb but you can't even read a simple sentence.

@commander: The nature of the way light works makes it impossible for us to go half of light speed. Try not to read and use Wikipedia as a source.

I disagree with him too, but insults are neither called for nor allowed.

-Byshop

There is no "The" in the title. It's just "Arrival".

Fantastic film, didn't see Passengers and don't care to.

The only entertaining part of Passengers was the pool scene. Other than that it was one of the worst movies I saw last year. On the other hand, I really enjoyed Arrival though I think a little less so than others did.

I liked Passengers, I don't see what all the hate was about. At its core, it's a romantic drama with a sci-fine skin. I saw it last week not even realizing until recently it has been out quite a while, saw trailer in theaters when I saw both Star Wars and The Arrival thinking it was still a ways off. Anyhow, trailers were in a way a bit cryptic about the main premise but I pretty much had it figured before I saw it that he woke her up from hybernation. The movie kind of reminded me of the first episode of that show Last Man On Earth. It also reminded me of that awful movie Pandorum, which for some bizarre reason got wide critical praise even though it was bad by straight to video standards, like Time Machine bad.

I liked The Arrival when I saw it, but the more I think about it, the less I like it. I liked that twist with the weapon/tool being the langauge, that knowledge of it effects consciousness that transcends space and time. But the inability to save her daughter in the future seemed way too deterministic. For her to invision a future she had no knowledge of, one where she learned of her actions that saved the day so she could repeat them, it says to me that the future wasn't deterministic but she had to have some will in envisioning a future she could choose to make happen through actions she could take. I mean, she didn't have to call the Chinese guy, she didn't have to have a kid with that guy, but she did. Anyhow, thinking about this is where it all falls apart for me. Mostly over her inability to change the future, but of course she was going to stop them from attacking the aliens or have a daughter she'd love profoundly despite her short life. Anyhow, still like the movie, just less when I get hung up on that one bit.

I wouldnt really compare the two movies, but if i had to compare and compete, id say Arrival is possibly the best movie of 2016 and Passengers is not even close.

Arrival is a bit overrated. It was interesting to watch at first but when it comes down to it the twist was a little weak and you could see it coming if you paid attention.

The real problem is not much really happens, the pacing and dialogue is glacial and the entire movie relies on subverting your expectations of the flashbacks actually being flashforwards instead. The language deciphering aspects weren't all that interesting and I felt Forest Whitaker's earlier movie "Species" did a better job at having scientists try to explain and anticipate the behavioral tendencies of an alien species than the foolish language semantics done in this movie.

In fact I found Dr. Bank's insistence on using words dumb, why did she not try to communicate with pictures first, it would have been far more logical.

Passengers was OK. It was definitely more fun and interesting than Arrival. Passengers got a lot of flak from the media while Arrival is almost universally loved, but if you held a gun to my head I'd definitely say Passengers was the better film.