STACK NZ February 2017 Issue 81

12 / 30

take a step back from
the process and decide
that this film needed to
be raw. It needed to be
truthful. When the aliens
and spacecraft arrive,
we all feel surprise, and as
frightened and compelled to
be in contact with them
as the characters in the
film."
Depicting
the visitors’
otherworldliness
was also crucial to
the film’s success
and presented
Villeneuve with the
challenge of creating
unique alien designs
beyond audience
preconceptions. The
director notes that he wanted
the creatures – called ‘heptapods’
in the film – to possess a strong sense of
presence and intelligence, like a whale or
an elephant. Moreover, their spacecraft and
technology also had to be unlike anything we
had seen before.
"Oftentimes in sci-fi films human beings
have so much influence on our interpretation
of what alien intelligence is," says Young.
"This is about backing away from that. What if
human beings never had contact with aliens?
Would they have alloys? Metals? Would they
arrive with all the things that we assume
because we, as human intelligence, have
access to these things?
"It's about a fresh look at how simple and
raw life can be for human beings on Earth
and how simple and raw it could be for an
alien intelligence. We wanted to scale it down
and make it very personal – that's been our
focus from the beginning, making a very
innocent, personal film but with scale."
Villenueve notes that he initially conceived
the alien spacecrafts as spheres, before
deciding on a design that was
unfamiliar and strange.
“I came up with the idea
that the spaceship should
be shaped like a pebble, a
little stone, ovoid. I based the
shape on an asteroid, or small
planet, called Eunomia [aka asteroid
15] that's in orbit in the solar
system. The shape's insane,
like a strange egg. That
strange, perfect [shape]
felt ominous, mysterious,
frightening to me."
The enigmatic, shell-like
craft that park themselves
over twelve seemingly
random locations on
Earth are as alien as their
inhabitants, but they also
have a symbolic significance,
according to Villeneuve.
"There was a relationship with
life, with birth, that was perfect for the
idea behind the spaceship," he explains. "We
thought… that the spaceship should be made
from matter that's not from Earth. It's not a
shiny spaceship. It's not white, or made of
metal or plastic, it's made of a strange stone.
We aren't sure what this is exactly. We can't
even guess."
"Every time they enter into the spaceship,"
adds Young, "as a viewer you want to go back
there, because it's the one space in the film
where you can see things, where you can
understand what it means to watch human
beings evolve. The other place is a little bit
darker, a little bit dirtier, as Denis and I would
call it. There's a visual trajectory about starting
in a dark place, which is the
unknown, and ending in a
place that's a little more
elevated, which is about
enlightening oneself and
coming to a realisation
of who we are as human
beings."
• Arrival
is out on Feb 22
These four Arrivals
arrived before Arrival...
An elderly gent is rejuvenated after he's taken
over by an alien parasite and transformed into
a vampire that feeds on estrogen. Also known
as The Unwelcomed, which is an equally
unimaginative title given the subject matter.
THE ARRIVAL (1991)
Before he was making Riddick movies,
writer-director David Twohy helmed this
X-Files inspired conspiracy thriller in which
Charlie Sheen uncovers an alien plot to
change the Earth's climate.
THE ARRIVAL (1996)
Patrick Muldoon continues half-brother
Charlie Sheen's efforts to expose the aliens
among us in this sequel to the 1996 film. Also
known as The Second Arrival, despite the fact
that the aliens are already here.
ARRIVAL II (1998)
Featuring hits like "Dancing Queen", "Knowing
Me, Knowing You" and "Money, Money,
Money", the Swedish popsters' 1976 album is
one of their most successful records. (That's
enough arrivals, time to depart – Ed.)
ABBA – ARRIVAL
It's about a
fresh look at how
simple and raw life can
be for human beings on
Earth, and how simple and
raw it could be for an
alien intelligence
visit DVD&BD FEATURE
12 FEBRUARY 2017