An excerpt from my script review for ARRIVAL which will be available 11/14/16:
3.) Quality of Characters
Louise is completely unbelievable.
A woman can’t be an intelligent linguistics professor? Certainly she can.
She can’t then use those talents to communicate with an alien race who speaks in ancient elvish ruin circles? Bit of a stretch, but we’ll allow it.
Now my turn…what’s one thing she realistically CANNOT do if she’s to leap off the page and become a living, breathing person?
Stand idly by while she loses her daughter a second time.
This might have something to do with already being pissed from the plot, but it was some bullshit!
LOUISE (V.O.)
(re:Hannah)
But I can honestly say I wouldn’t
change a thing…
…
LOUISE (V.O.)
Because I didn’t.
What kind of shit is that? Didn’t the fucking aliens tell you that you can break the chain of events, no future is certain, blah blah blah?
We see these absolutely GENERIC flashbacks of Hannah growing up, with the SOLE PURPOSE of implying that Louise loved her daughter, and then she doesn’t try to save her?
Louise, you KNOW she’ll be sick!!!
Fuck you, Louise, and the author that wrote you as a cheap attempt to shatter some mold and be “edgy” because we didn’t get a happy ending.
It wasn’t smart or trendy, it was stupid, because you ran out of time to tell your story, so you, perhaps inadvertently, made your main character an asshole.
(Sidenote – Went to see DR. STRANGE the previous weekend with the boss, and really enjoyed it. Glad I wasn’t high and/or seeing it in 3D, but I liked it. I only mention that so people don’t think I’m an asshole who hates on all movies/scripts.)
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