Amy Adams on the grounded approach: “This isn’t a graphic-novel universe or creating a new universe”.
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Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner have each faced aliens and beings from another world in comic book movies. Lights Out writer Eric Heisserer has adapted Ted Chiang’s 1998 novella Story Of Your Life (the film originally used that as its title), which finds a linguist named Louise Banks (Adams) pressed into service to figure out an alien language when a dozen mysterious pods appear in the atmosphere and hover above the ground (you can see one in the image with Adams above). For more on the film, head to USA Today’s site. Emotionally, the journey she takes in this was devastating to me.
Her co-star Jeremy Renner is also well known for his work within the superhero realm, starring as Clint Barton, a.k.a. Hawkeye in Marvel’s The Avengers, Avengers: Age of Ultron and, most recently, Captain America: Civil War. Renner aids her as a physicist and as his first “smart, nerdy guy” character. I love this first teaser simply because it doesn’t show us the creatures, instead cutting right before they arrive to keep that sense of mystery in tact.
Renner on the film’s tone: [It feels like] if you blended a (Stanley) Kubrick and a (Steven) Spielberg movie [instead of] big Michael Bay alien movie. Adams says she still “absolutely needs this, probably more than she knows”, as she goes far enough to try and contact the visitors directly.
If Villeneuve is a master at anything, it’s at restraint, knowing how to build intrigue and tension without giving too much away too soon – anyone who’s seen Incendies knows how paralyzing the film’s final reveal is once it arrives.
Arrival will receive its worldwide premiere at the Venice Film Festival next month before opening worldwide on November 11th.
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With Sicario, director Denis Villeneuve took us deep into the tunnels of Mexico’s drug cartels.
