Watched this for the first time a few moments ago and holy shit, am I totally blinded or is this one of the best sci-fi movies of all time?
>great story
>great moral
>astounding music
>great dialogues
>non-one-dimensional characters
>actual pay-off in the end and not only some theoretical bullshit
>great mix between practical effects and CGI
Can't believe I missed out on this for such a long time. What are your thoughts on this one? Any similar movies you would recommend?
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remember watching this in '98 in afterschool care and it scared the shit out of me and have been afraid to watch it since
It even has Hitler
great movie
OP here. oddly enough, I never saw any footage of the movie even though I remember seeing wallpapers all over the place when it came out in theaters. For some reason, I always thought the cover had something fantasty-like to it even though I thought it was a hard sci-fi movie. turned out to be both to some extent. Wanted to see it in the theater but I was 7 and it had a shitty USK12 (shitty German rating system) rating. I don't understand why it would have scared the shit out of you though. I actually thought about showing this to my mom and my little brothers
I actually found that part pretty amusing, especially when you lurk this shitty basket weaving board and instantly think about aliens being nazis
Guess the concept of the vastness of space and great unknowns was very new and terrifying to me. Just a kid having his first existential crisis.
It is legit one of the finest sci-fi mobies ever made. With a surprising amount of feels, too.
Small moves, Scout.
oh, I remember that feeling too well. went to an astronomy with my 1st grade class back in 97. got me into astronomy but it also made me question my goddamn existence on a whole new level. don't know whether that's normal for a 7 year old but fuck me, was it an odd feeling
>With a surprising amount of feels, too.
I noticed the music playing a huge part in that. they just don't make em like that anymore. I loved Interstellar but Contact just had this sense of comfiness to it mixed with endearing characters, no action required. It's not even nostalgia when I say that it's evident that the 80s and 90s had the best movies from a comfiness perspective. Way better representation of human emotions than nowadays
>that line
loved the interactions between Foster's character and her dad
Glad to see someone else appreciated this film as well.
I figured I'd make a thread because all I see is capeshit and other modern movies which nobody seems to care about anyway. at least not enough to warrant for decent discussions. kinda unfortunate that people don't get into discussing proper movies while always going for the comicbook threads
It was great and I remembered me and people around me grew up loving it. Back then I was interested in scientists and maybe others were the same.
Upon recent rewatch i did find the blind guy a little inserted/forced.
I don't think blind people can work together with normal people like that. when they were solving the tv signals, it's obvious he can't see patterns or use their computers. Every contribution he made seemed forced eg. They gave him the chance of translating German but it's just weird.
It was also kinda sad to see him being friend zoned next to macdonaughe
Great film, but hard to rewatch given its run time. Ive only seen it twice and i doubt ill watch it again. Same deal with Forrest Gump too and other 'novel-like' films. They are usually have admirable detail but you really gotta be in for thr long haul to get the payoff.
I found it extremely overrated. Half of the film is people looking at screens delivering straight exposition and nothing else.
It's not a bad movie by any means, but certainly overrated.
Discovering the signal is the most exciting part of the film (I say that as a good thing, it's fucking amazing) but it happens so early that the rest is just meh.
>Upon recent rewatch i did find the blind guy a little inserted/forced
>I don't think blind people can work together with normal people like that
I feel like he was pretty integral to the plot, considering he was able to hear all kinds of subtle shit from the recordings. he contributed a lot through that alone
>It was also kinda sad to see him being friend zoned next to macdonaughe
nowhere in the movie did I get the feeling that his and foster's relationship was anything but a non-romantic one. not every character has to slay pussy
Back then I remembered publishers in our country were promoting publication of books about scientific education and popularization of science in waves And Carl Sagan's older stuff were also promoted.
Anyway I believed this movie looked like this, partly because the filmmakers tried to take in the advices of it's source material novel. I remembered Carl Sagan said several times about importance of popular media giving a more positive, diverse and relatable treatment of scientists. That's probably why you feel the characters in this movie are more relatable.
Is it like proto-Arrival?
yeah, 2 1/2 hours is pretty long. I don't have any problems with that but getting my gf to watch it with me will be a chore. she outright refuses to watch forrest gump with me for that reason (and because she doesn't like tom hanks)
>Half of the film is people looking at screens delivering straight exposition and nothing else
I found the entire question of whether there is a god to be quite a nice topic throughout the movie. that and the suspense for what they were going to find in the end. went in completely in the dark about the plot which is insane considering that people here could have spoiled the movie for me thousands of times in the past
it was intense but I also liked the end where they actually start the machine to be amazing. zemeckis really outdid himself with that one
The part where the aliens decimate detroit because it "will help our evolution" was a bit disconcerting.
Carl Sagan's second greatest gift to the world.
The effects are sadly extremely dated. It really looks like a "90s" movie
Perhaps that's just my projection on the blind guy then.
I also had problem with this code breaking...that means aliens were idiots. They made the message unnecessarily complicated and made no sense at all.
better be worth it
>1.56GB
lmao have fun with your potato video and most importantly audio quality
The religious stuff is too nonsensical. I get the story they want to tell but it's taken too unrealistic for the sake of the script.
I personally think that has a certain charm to it. I'd rather see bad effects from the 90s mixed with tons of practical effects (paintings as backgrounds) than the half-assed attempts at CGI we see nowadays. it's like studios just stopped trying somewhere down the line because the audiences accepted mediocre quality anyway
>They made the message unnecessarily complicated and made no sense at all
how where they supposed to know the level of intelligence humans had though? it was probably their "basic" instructions which were just hard for people on earth. maybe they struggled to decipher adolf hitler's speech too
give it a go mate. if you like sci-fi, you should be able to enjoy this
the quality should be fine. yourmovie.org has a Yify version kek
>The religious stuff is too nonsensical
not sure what you mean but I found it to be quite compelling. they are basically making science be in the place of believers in god. obviously, they end the movie by saying that she was right because the 18-hour recordings but the logic behind it remains the same: how do you prove something only you believe in? really love how the movie (and probably the book) deals with McConaughey's character in that regard
It had a good grip on tension and music and sound effect and photography and scenes
So the signal scene and the test run scene were tight. And the launch scene.
The sound of the signal sounded great.
>not sure what you mean but I found it to be quite compelling. they are basically making science be in the place of believers in god. obviously, they end the movie by saying that she was right because the 18-hour recordings but the logic behind it remains the same: how do you prove something only you believe in? really love how the movie (and probably the book) deals with McConaughey's character in that regard
Don't get me wrong, the morals and things it makes you think and consider about are all fine, but the execution is flawed. I had to suspend my disbelief in many occasions.
>Oh no our alien phone broke
>oh fuck elon musk built his own so we're good!
>alien message
Well in their method, they wasted two frames for message of one frame. And they complicated the message by requiring the message to be combined and overlapped
>I had to suspend my disbelief in many occasions
care to give an example? not criticising, just curious. it's not hard sci-fi so the assumption lies near that you will have to suspend your disbelief at some points of the story
>oh fuck elon musk built his own so we're good
are you referring to the explosion that was literally caused by a crazy guy blowing the entire machine up?
I thought they did that because they used the hitler speech as a vessel for their plans. that way, they made sure to make people know that they got the human's message AND implemented the plans at the same time. I agree that the message was unnecessarily complicated because of that (they could have just sent the plans at the end of the "video")
It's way better than Arrival
I can't, I'm sorry. I watched the movie about 5 years ago, those are just my impressions from then. But generally it wasn't about the sci-fi, it was how they treated religious people that bothered me.
I'd say so too although I really liked Arrival. I love all three but I'd say Contact > Interstellar >= Arrival, at least if you can suspend your disbelief for Interstellar
>it was how they treated religious people that bothered me
how so? I thought it was a pretty fair representation of how people believe in god. mccaunaughey's character was the best type of believer (open for new things and primarily interested in the truth) while there were also literal crazies. in my opinion, the movie provided a very decent representation of discussions about religion
Ya they lose the machine but lucky for us the movie goes on becuase they have a spare.
Is zemeckis low key the most underrated filmmaker alive? Never see him in list of favorite filmmakers. I wouldn't trade his filmography for flavors of the month like refn or del taco
to be fair, it does seem logical to build a second one. you never know what the fuck will happen. also, didn't the rich dude sponsor that to begin with? he had his own agenda so it was believable to some extent
definitely underrated and undervalued if you ask me. you can argue about the scripts of his movies but the execution is pretty much up there with the best directors of all time
I'm glad you enjoyed it, it's one of my favorite sci-fi movies too, and it confirms my secret suspicion that movies were better in the past and it's not just nostalgia
>it confirms my secret suspicion that movies were better in the past and it's not just nostalgia
it really isn't nostalgia. gotta say that I feel like I've seen enough movies to have the ability of objectively saying whether a movie is well made or not. while I realise that movies like Hook are campy etc, they still have some merit to them as far as movie making goes. you just feel the effort that was put into them. it's very rare for movies nowadays to provide that same feeling
blaming it all on nostalgia is only a thing that people who try to be contrarian use to undermine other people's opinions even though it is true sometimes.
i think some adaptation, like adding the late father trauma to jodie foster's character was...to say at least, against Carl Sagan's wish about "positive depiction of scientists" although in some way it made her character more relatable.
not to mention the more problematic fact, that when carl sagan spoke against superstition, he specifically used his illusion of seeing his late father as an example, that science minded people shouldn't let this kind of emotion blur their judgement.
(jena marlone was cute though)
on the other hand the movie did right thing to be ambiguous on the international relation part i think. i remember in the novel, the narrator was very optimistic, that a space project like this can unite nations. when i read that i found it retarded. if so much money is spent and the result is inconclusive people should get angry.
this part was done right in the movie: the states are shown more interested in their self interest. the international relation was less friendly. the american politicians were neither too bad nor too kind. the MC scientist had to take the fall for the experiment. that sounds more reasonable.
One of the few movies that were better than the book it was best on.
I love Carl Sagan and have read all his books, but Contact was filled with some truly awful dialog. He was a much better at non-fiction.
Nah he built it in secret. The movie was shit.
>although in some way it made her character more relatable
it made her character human and believable as hell. it's funny how modern-day hollywood is always trying to promote female leads by using shitty written protagonists as an example while movies like Contact exist where the protagonist is shown to have flaws and strengths at the same time while still being sympathetic. also have to give it to Jodie Foster, always liked her work, probably one of the best actresses around
>(jena marlone was cute though)
holy fucking shit, I KNEW I recognised that girl but I just thought she only reminded me of a young Foster
>on the other hand the movie did right thing to be ambiguous on the international relation part i think
I also found that to be pretty believable. the US came off as selfish but it felt like a real thing a country would do
why was the movie shit?
>he specifically used his illusion of seeing his late father as an example, that science minded people shouldn't let this kind of emotion blur their judgement.
The movie did exactly that. It first let the female scientist character release her emotion and hug her dead dad. Then it let her rational side get back to work and make the conclusion that it's not her dad's ghost.
The movie doesn't contradict the message of science and rationality, and even Carl Sagan admitted that men have emotions and wishes and that make them see things.
Condoleezza Rice in clinton administration
Later in wakanda
>1080p
>1.56GB
Maybe he's deaf and downloaded the one with no sound.
I got myself a 3gb bdrip (german and english audio) and the quality was fine. I assume 1080p at 1,5gb should be watchable. there's no point watching a movie like that in remux quality
Better be worth it op.
>People need to see this incredible stuff I'm witnessing
>NO
>But why?
>That's how it's been done for billions of years. Goodbye, now. I don't apologize for messing with your mind and pretending to be your dad
So ancient aliens made this system of letting other aliens meet each other but won't allow proof of its existence to be spread among the population of these aliens because "small steps." What does that even mean in this context? So they'd rather humanity remain in the ignorance of thinking they're the only advanced intelligent life form in the universe? They want Foster to go back and appear as a mad woman obsessed with trying to prove her "faith" right? And if they erased all the footage, why did they only remove the images and sound but keep the recording length there? Did they wanna leave some vague evidence Foster is telling the truth to make people curious to further investigate it? If so, then WHY THE FUCK DID THEY ERASE IT IN THE FIRST PLACE?! This makes no sense. Oh you're so smart movie, because Foster's character's devotion to her science is like that of a fanatical religious person and you end the movie with her agreeing to someone saying they have to take her on their "faith" in what she saw with only vague circumstantial evidence compared to the more "logical" explanation when that's normally science's role. Fuck off!
from what I could tell, it seemed like the aliens just didn't want to affect the natural way of evolution TOO much. to me, it seemed as if the aliens only wanted to give humans an incentive to keep on working hard to achieve their goals and show them that they're not alone in the universe. mistake me if I'm wrong but it's kinda like what star trek did (not interfering with the natural cycle)
>And if they erased all the footage, why did they only remove the images and sound but keep the recording length there?
I don't think they removed the footage but the camera just wasn't able to function properly. there probably was something on those cameras but the government kept it hidden from scientists who wanted to analyse them
>you end the movie with her agreeing to someone saying they have to take her on their "faith" in what she saw with only vague circumstantial evidence compared to the more "logical" explanation when that's normally science's role
wasn't the end of the movie pretty much showing that not all people believe her and that it's left vague in public eyes? obviously, scientists probably don't believe her
>show them that they're not alone in the universe
BUT THEY DON'T. There is no evidence to point to alien life besides the single eyewitness account of Foster who has zero evidence to show. The more rational but wrong conclusion that this was just BS done by a dying billionaire as a joke seems more reasonable to anyone that isn't Foster. Anyone believing her is doing so because of "faith" in what she's saying.
>star trek did (not interfering with the natural cycle)
Everything they did was interfering with our natural development. They sent us designs to build this fucking thing to talk to them in person and to tell us to go down a specific path rather than leave us alone and develop in our own way. Star Trek covered this sort of stuff multiple times with episodes like Who Watches the Watchers and First Contact which actually handles this concept a lot better.
>I don't think they removed the footage but the camera just wasn't able to function properly. there probably was something on those cameras but the government kept it hidden from scientists who wanted to analyse them
Wrong, because the very last lines of the movie were James Wood's character being told this by someone saying they had gone over the footage and that there was a physical recording of 18 hours of footage despite it being all blank like she said and saying "Well that is interesting"
>wasn't the end of the movie pretty much showing that not all people believe her and that it's left vague in public eyes? obviously, scientists probably don't believe her
Yes, which means nothing was accomplished by the aliens or the people who built that damn thing to talk to them. Might as well never spoke to them in the first place. We're back to square one but now people are pissed their governments of the world spent tons of resources to build what is believed to be a practical joke. Job well done?
>There is no evidence to point to alien life besides the single eyewitness account of Foster who has zero evidence to show
but the camera footage, which she brought back, was supposed to be the proof. the problem is just that the goverment were assholes who kept it from the public. you seem to be missing that important point. the aliens just didn't want to give her some tangible alien stuff to take with her
>because the very last lines of the movie were James Wood's character being told this by someone saying they had gone over the footage and that there was a physical recording of 18 hours of footage despite it being all blank like she said and saying "Well that is interesting"
yet, those 18 hours would have still been major evidence to Foster's argument of her having visited the alien planet. doesn't even matter whether there was proper video footage or not. the governments' arguments were all based on making her seem like a lunatic who HASN'T been anywhere else while the 18 hours would have instantly annihilated that line of argumentation
>Yes, which means nothing was accomplished by the aliens or the people who built that damn thing to talk to them. Might as well never spoke to them in the first place. We're back to square one but now people are pissed their governments of the world spent tons of resources to build what is believed to be a practical joke. Job well done?
I agree on that one. I'd actually like to know what happened afterwards and how the happenings affected the further evolution of society and technology. still, one can assume that even the machine's plans provided some sort of future technologic development
It's one of the worst movies I've seen. The plot requires everybody to be a total fucking retard, and the ending has the main character betray everything she stands for. Shit movie.
>the ending has the main character betray everything she stands for
how so? she only comes to the realisation that her way of thinking was very one-dimensional. you seem to have missed the entire point of the movie
>shit movie
that's your opinion but also a blatant exaggeration
i agree that alien erasing the tape (or the director letting camera to malfunction ) is retarded.
But I guess it had to be done to make this movie not to drift too far from this world.
I mean, each movies has its style and genre. Since they used image of Clinton they probably want it to look "real". Now if in the end aliens are confirmed, and humanity steps into a new era...I don't think would like it that much. Where are you going to put Clinton then?
There are thousands of examples like this in sci-fi but I would contain myself to Arrival. So in the end the concept of time is revolutionized. People cannot go back to normal life anymore. That's why Arrival looked much different from Contact from beginning.
Well perhaps i am just very conservative. I always enjoy movies that go back to square one, and find the movies that ended with "next step" cringy
I feel as if some people here are just overreacting. you don't have to pull apart every movie in its entirety to enjoy it to its fullest extent. as another user mentioned, sometimes it's alright to suspend your disbelief and not overthink the entire thing
It was embezzlement, and the least plausible embezzlement in all of fiction. Who the fuck conspires to defraud the tax payers with literally hundreds of strangers, any one of whom could sell you out at any moment? All suspension of disbelief dies the moment you see the second machine, because it's clear everybody on the planet is a moron.
The writer wrote himself into a corner and pulled the second machine out of his ass to save himself. Whole story should have been scrapped and rewritten from scratch.
>I always enjoy movies that go back to square one
Then why bother telling this story? All this stuff happens and it amounts to nothing in the end. What was Jodie Foster's lesson in all this? To not be as devoted to science as she was? But that was what the aliens wanted from humanity. The alien straight up tells her to continue with this to improve her species but then removes all evidence to make things extremely difficult for her to achieve this goal. It makes no sense. Why bother going through with all this in the first place if they have no intention of having actual relations with this species? This isn't like Star Trek where Starfleet secretly monitors less technologically developed races as to not affect their development for scientific purposes and only have formal relations with space faring races, but these guys did.
This is what we got:
Aliens pick up the messages SETI has been sending out
Humans and aliens start to talk to one another
Aliens send plans to build a giant thingy to send one of them into this other dimension of something
Human goes through and begins to record everything
She meets one of the aliens lazily as a human because of BS reasoning
He doesn't say much besides this technology existing before they did and how they talked to other species in the past with it
Won't allow any evidence of this place to be shown for no reason other than the writer can make some stupid "what a twist" with Jodie Foster asking people to take her on her word when there's no real evidence because THAT'S NOT HOW A SCIENTIST IS SUPPOSED TO BE! IT'S LIKE YOU HAVE SOME KIND OF "FAITH IN SOMETHING THAT CAN'T BE PROVEN" WHICH YOU HAVE DENOUNCED THROUGHOUT THE MOVIE! DO HOHOHO ISN'T THIS SUCH INTELLIGENT WRITING?!
Fire in the sky is the thinking mans Aliens movie
It was great for about 40 minutes when they are first discovering the aliens.
it seems to me as if you're looking at this movie from a very realistic and boring perspective. the movie played a lot with symbolism and allegories. for example, the entire movie had lots of obvious religious thematics. adding to that, it linked science and facts to belief
>She meets one of the aliens lazily as a human because of BS reasoning
it's not BS reasoning when you know how god/angels/etc use objects, animals, or people to communicate with the living. the alien coming to her in the form of her father to some extent has a cathartic purpose as well as a metaphorical one
Everything involving the discovery of the signal is kino.
Everything after they figure out that the aliens are sending them blueprints for a machine is fucking stupid.
Liked it up until it was revealed her dad was an alien all along
You cannot put science in the same category as any faith based system. Science in a of itself is about tangible evidence and cold hard facts not word of mouth and feelings. Religion is based upon accepting things that have no real proof which is not what science is at all. Science exists in a constant state of scrutiny and dissection for sole purpose of finding truth in how the universe works. It's why concepts and theories within it change over the generations due to more work being put into it unlike Christianity which uses the same book that had been cut and pasted over thousands of years by people manipulating it to serve their agenda and then say it's the "word of God."
> it's not BS reasoning when you know how god/angels/etc use objects, animals, or people to communicate with the living. the alien coming to her in the form of her father to some extent has a cathartic purpose as well as a metaphorical one
Yeah and that's dealing with magical beings representing aspects of nature, not real life. These aliens aren't gods where their "true" form would kill a person like say Zeus' form being pure lightning that will vaporize anyone in close proximity. They are mortal beings like us who seem to think similarly to us so why hide their form if their intention is to make contact with us? I can understand them doing it to conceal themselves if they were on Earth, studying us cause it would create panic, but why do so for just a short little meeting? Why is an alien done up like Jodie Foster's dad saying all this more impacting than an alien telling her this? I know why. It was just to add more to the "religious" experience and to force this "science is like religion" bullshit. Seeing a dead one is far more in the realm of religion and mythology rather than something in science.
great movie. my dad rented this and showed it to me when I was probably 12 or 13, perfect age to watch it IMO. great progression and storyline in general, although the ending felt a bit too whimsical for its own good, and left something to be desired. Also that scene where they first start hearing the noise (you know which one im talking about) is intense as fuck and scared me shitless. 8.5/10 comfy movie
Literally just realized thats jena malone wtf CUTE