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.