Arrival : The Gift of No Free Will

The movie gives glimpses that all of humanity will have the 'gift' that the main character slowly receives as she's learning their language.

With the 'flash-forwards' we see her teaching others the language/gift (oddlymostly military types) and clearly the Chinese General was already taught the language/gift when she saw him at the party, as he knew he had to tell her what to say to him back in the past. He'd already seen the story played out - beginning to end.

So, stretch it out a bit and now you have all of humanity that has this gift (except for her future husbandwho clearly didn't want to learn the language because he didn't know his daughter was going to die until she told him)

So we have everyone on earth who knows their future, and no one has the ability to change anything. Well, that would be a pretty sucky future to live in.

Yeah, the twist is just terrible. This movie was clearly made by people who have never lost anyone close to them tragically.

"There are too many of them. Can't kill the world."

I do have to give the writers credit for making the main character entirely narcissistic.

She is not narcissistic. Her daughter wasn't going to die, she already lived and died. If Louse had decided not to have her, she would have stole her daughter's life.

I don't think this is a fair accusation. I've known people who committed suicide. The message that I take away is that even though their lives were (from my perspective) cut short, and I wish they were still around, their time here was precious. I wouldn't have not wanted them in my life just because they would kill themselvesor have some disease that would make them die at a young age, or would die in a car accident, etc. In other words, don't not let people into your life just because losing them will/might be painful.

And also, if there are no ends and no beginnings, those we have lost aren't really "gone," something a lot of us already believe/live anyway.

"every time godzilla loses to mothra I die a little bit more"Godzillaswrath

The differences are that

A) No one could have known, before these people were born, that these people would have ended up committing suicide or dying early for whatever reason

and

B) They chose to take their own lives. A child born destined to get cancer did not choose to get cancer.

So it's not the same thing. Amy Adams's character made the choice to give birth to the daughter knowing that she would have an early, slow, painful, and psychologically agonizing death. It's not just narcissistic but borderline sociopathic.

Oh I've lost at least a few people tragically.

Some committed suicide, one was a disease that was "unstoppable" (Huntington's).

After all the grief and questioning I went through, in the end all I could say was that their time on Earth had a specific length, and I had to be content with knowing for as long as I did.

I actually appreciate the perspective of the main character: enjoy it all.

"Don't call me 'honey', mac."
"Don't call me 'mac' HONEY!"

After all those alien invasion movies humanity is almost exterminated, you are seriously complaining that losing the illusion of free choice is worse???

And yes, in the Arrival universe, free choice was never anything more than an illusion. It was not like the Heptapods stole them their free will. They only made them aware that there free will was only an illusion.

What do you have to live for, though, if you are not free?

I foresee this will be a future full of suicides due to the tragedy of the lack of meaning, lack of freedom. Just like in a Greek play.

Maybe the aliens were really wanting to exterminate us all along through this charade. Now THAT would be an amazing ending.

I assume the heptapods' language is not easy to learn. How many people realistically would be able to master it? Probably only a relative handful of people, so no mass suicides. Besides which, you don't need to see the future to believe free will is an illusion. I haven't believed in free will in a long time. I'm sure there are many like me who are also still alive.

I agree with the fact that maybe only a few people could learn/master the heptapods' language, that can be true and makes sense. No mass suicides.

Of course, what you believe it's your bussiness and I also know many people that think that everything is preordained, etc BUT for me there's a difference between choosing to believe that destiny is inevitable and literally SEEING/EXPERIENCING your future.

For example, if you see that your future death is being eaten alive by sharks and you know there's no possibility of changing that, wouldn't you go mad and "choose" to end your life on your own terms?

But hah! You can't, because there's no free will. What a horrible death awaits you! Wow, better go to therapy because of that nightmare that keeps repeating itself along with the horrible suffering it implies (because now there's no past or future, everything is The Now, right?)

Thing is, nowhere is it implied in the film that you can't change your future with "The Gift". Louisechoose to go along with it because in her mind the happiness her daughter gave her was a fair trade for the suffering that would come afterwards - and because she could not biologically save her. If for instance Hannah was supposed to die in a moutain accident (as happned in the original novel, I believe), then IMO Louise would have had the possibility of altering her destiny. I could be wrong of course.

Plus, as you said, "The Gift" is a language, you can choose not to learn it and keep your future unknown. In this way I think the aliens were clever, they forced people to cooperate to unite and appease (for ex Louise is seen teaching scientists from all over the world, presumably), instead of giving away this ability to everyone for free.

So overall in my view the movie doesn't exactly speak against free will.


"I don't care what you believe in, just believe in something ! No matter what"

True, the movie does not say anything against free will but it never makes clear that we have it in this supposed reality. In fact, many people in this board think it is heavily implied that Louise does not have a choice at the end and thus she is just "wisely" accepting everything that will happen with their daughter, etc. There are also people who say the writer made clear that Louise has a choice at the end but I haven't seen the source for that statement, so I don't know if it's true.

The fact is, for me, the movie leaves many things unexplained and that's fine because you can find your own answers for your questions BUT, at the same time, it implies there's no free will and that the future, the past and the present for a being that masters the heptapod's language is THE SAME. This is why the aliens knew about the bomb and one of them accepted its death by it, that is why they know that, in the future, we are going to help them.

And I suppose that doesn't sit well with me because of my beliefs (especially when it comes to enjoy a good story).

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There are also people who say the writer made clear that Louise has a choice at the end but I haven't seen the source for that statement, so I don't know if it's true.

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It's funny coming to this board, because at no point have I taken out of the movie that Louise had no free will and that everything was already decided.

At the end, for me, she clearly did CHOOSE to have her daughter, because through her flashforwards, she experimented the pain of losing her, but before anything else she experimented the JOY of having this girl in her life, and the impact it would have on her as a mother and everybody else.

Balancing the two, I'm sure she thought it would be less painful to lose her daughter than never knowing her.


I think more likely there is an "ideal future" somewhere that the heptapod language can tap into, and that they can make choices based on the knowledge of those visions. Also maybe, those who know the language well enough are connected in some way and can communicate through time? Thinking about it, that would make sense and the fact that she knew the way to stop the Chinese general would lean to that. The fact that the heptapod also accepted his death could be that his sacrifice was the necessary push to prove that they were not hostile and they were genuinely trying to help the humans, for their sake as for ours.


I came out of this movie with a feeling of sadness but also hope for humanity, despite how horribly we treat each others across the world, through communication and understanding. It's certainly not the first movie to make that point, but it works in this feature because the way it is handled and written, and it's a powerful message.

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True, the movie does not say anything against free will but it never makes clear that we have it in this supposed reality. In fact, many people in this board think it is heavily implied that Louise does not have a choice at the end and thus she is just "wisely" accepting everything that will happen with their daughter, etc.

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I believe this points to a philosophical debate between those of the modern philophers who stated that free will was an illusion, like Spinoza (the person is only free once he understands he has no free will and is just following the necessity of the nature), and those who more or less accepted the reality of this notion. The one who had ideas closest to your argument could be Leibniz ; in his mind, people do have the choice, but God knows about it ; He doesn't control your actions, but He knows what they are going to be. Kinda like the heptas : they know what will happen to you, but you're still master of your destiny. Louise could have chosen not to have a baby with Ian ; from her perspective, her visions would have changed, from the heptas' perspective, it would have stayed the same.

That's just my -flawed - interpretation, obviously.


"I don't care what you believe in, just believe in something ! No matter what"

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The one who had ideas closest to your argument could be Leibniz ; in his mind, people do have the choice, but God knows about it ; He doesn't control your actions, but He knows what they are going to be. Kinda like the heptas : they know what will happen to you, but you're still master of your destiny.

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So if you were to believe in this type of system - God has given you free will but he controls the situations you are placed in. As he knows how you will act - he has given free will but essentially still has complete control over you. Because if he knows exactly what you will do given a specific situation - even if you choose of your own free will - he can make you do what he wants.

Thus even with free will and choice - you could still follow a set path (destiny). Your future is fixed even though you have free will to choose.

God doesn't "control" the situations in this system, He just sees them, he doesn't influence them (unlike what other philosophers thought, being that God stands behind each of your actions and pushes you into them). He knows what you will do in a specific situation, but you could have done something else, and He would have also known about it. At least that's how I interpret Leibniz, I'm far from an expert.

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Your future is fixed even though you have free will to choose.

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Kinda yes, since you don't know your future, only God knows. In the film, the power of "The Gift" makes it more complicated, since Louise does have visions of her future. As she is obviously still in control of herself, I assumed her visions were more of a general guideline, she can choose to follow them or not based on what she thinks is right. Remember when she talks to Hannah in a flashforward and tells her Ian (unnamed in the scene) left her because he thought she "had made the wrong choice".


"I don't care what you believe in, just believe in something ! No matter what"

That's my understanding of what my religion teaches with respect to God as well. Even though we have free will, God knows how we're going to exercise it. Then again, I believe there is a great possibility that the whole concept of "God" is a fairy tale, not much different than Santa Claus, but that's just me.

Well with respects to you I don't believe in God either. I was comparing the concept with the Heptas, as omniscient beings who sees everything about us, past and future (presumably).


"I don't care what you believe in, just believe in something ! No matter what"

Once people think about it, few may "choose" to learn the heptapods' language for the reason you cite.

One of the things in the movie that doesn't make sense to me is what impact knowing the future has on the present. If the timeline is fixed, you can't go mad or go to therapy (or avoid swimming with sharks) as a result of seeing the future because that changes the timeline. You would have to be able to see the future without being affected by it (no call to action to DO something), which seems to make that foresight pointless. If the timeline is not fixed, then you would see infinite futures and maybe none of them is the "real" one, so in essence you would be not that much different from how we are now, imagining various outcomes based on current conditions.

I will add, however, that the parts that don't make sense don't matter much to me; for me, the film is not a puzzle to be solved where every piece fits but a cathartic journey containing some magical thinking and really, doesn't all sci-fi, all fiction, involve magical thinking to a greater or lesser degree?

Not everyone believes in free will now and still most people find something they care about no matter where they stand on this subject.

There are religions that reject it on the grounds that an all-powerful God's will could not be contradicted.

There are extreme materialists(in the metaphysical sense not in the sense of greedy) who believe that since every event is caused by previous ones in a chain of causation going back to the big bang, there is only one way anything could have turned out.

It might be nice to live a life where the older and wiser (or at least better informed) future self is a direct influence on one's current behavior.

I definitely see your point, and thought that myself. But really, they can still make their own choices - they just know WHAT choices they will make and WHY.

Yeah, I'm not fond of this putative future either.


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"So we have everyone on earth who knows their future, and no one has the ability to change anything. Well, that would be a pretty sucky future to live in."

But that's only if you're stuck in linear thinking. If you're experiencing time in a more cyclical way like the heptapods, then you're probably not as worried about something like controlling the future. It doesn't remove the role of change - obviously, if there is time, there is change, whether it happens in a linear or non-linear fashion. And although the film didn't go into the notion of alternative futures, there may be the possibility that you can perceive a possible future, not one set in stone. The present still affects the future, only now, the future can also affect the present. If anything, it gives people more of a choice by revealing outcomes, rather than basing one's actions solely on chance or your "best guess" of what will be effective.

If the future was really that "set" why was Dr. Banks so hurried about getting done what she needed to do at the climax? If life were that hopeless in that form of consciousness, why would the heptapods even come to Earthwhy not just stay on their own planet in a wallowing of uselessness and despair?

Besides, even with non-linear thinking, there's no reason to think that our actions are really "free" in an absolute sense. For all we know, our paths in life are as set as the laws of the universe, determined by some natural force or by God. And all speculation aside, our behavior is a complex of will, social influences, childhood rearing, physical and environmental factors, substances such as caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, and other more extreme behavior-altering chemicals.

"every time godzilla loses to mothra I die a little bit more"Godzillaswrath

Just what I thought, maybe the future you see changes as a whole by the sum of your choices, if you know this, then you can choose better, because you are aware of where those choices lead, so your are not working for a better future, but from the point of view of a Heptapod, for a better loop! a zen circle of a life, which is where I suspect the main inspiration for the language for the alien race comes from.

The only way it can be considered a "gift" is if the perceived future can be altered for the better. Otherwise we're stuck in an inevitable destiny and, well, that's not very helpful at all. The movie never really addresses this.

Once you have the gift, the future doesn't exist, because you don't move from a beginning to an end.