Contact (1997)

A very, very good, somewhat great film that misses the mark with it's climax.

I can forgive it though because, unlike Sunshine (which dovetailed needlessly into bad cliche), there was simply no way Contact could've paid off it's magnificent buildup with something truly satisfactory. It's a somewhat "Hard Sci-fi" film that asks very real, non-fiction questions that can only be answered with pure fiction. It's pretty apparent that they went with the fiction that would at least satisfy the protagonist's arc.

It's a uniquely intense & involving film that probably stands as Zemeckis' best non-comedy film.

They rolled the hard "Beard" and lost their shirt.

I still dig this film a lot.  I agree that the her moment with daddy was pretty pat, but I don't know what else would've satisfactory that provided some sort of closure.  Anything more 'interesting' seems like it would've just raised more questions (of a MYSTERY BOX quality), and that's not the film Zemeckis was making. 

It is pretty fun to see James Woods berating Jodie Foster for trying to get the world to believe that aliens brought her up to have some time with PROXY DADDY.  As if the aliens just wanted to fuck with her.  Hahahaha.  I wonder what that asshole Tom Skerrit would've seen had he gone up. 

Oh, and that slow-mo steady-cam shot of Jenna Malone being 'shot' through the mirror.  Hahahah, I was SO amazed by that shot.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mcnooj82 

I still dig this film a lot.  I agree that the her moment with daddy was pretty pat, but I don't know what else would've satisfactory that provided some sort of closure.  Anything more 'interesting' seems like it would've just raised more questions (of a MYSTERY BOX quality), and that's not the film Zemeckis was making.

Yeah, it's a shame that they couldn't dream up something more obtuse, cosmic, & Kubrickian but the "Daddy issues ending" really seems like the lesser of numerous possible evils. Had they introduced actual aliens, it would've spiraled even harder into cheesy This Island Earth territory.

"On my planet, we prefer 3 button business suits"

"You monster!"

Quote:

Originally Posted by mcnooj82 

Hahahaha.  I wonder what that asshole Tom Skerrit would've seen had he gone up.

"Crap, not again!"

Another moment I love:

HADDEN:  WANNA TAKE A RIIIIIIIDE?

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Originally Posted by Art Decade 

 

Quote:

 

"Crap, not again!"

Hey!  It's that pose Bruno makes in the LOOPER trailer!

Also, how did I NOT think to link Skerritt back to ALIEN???  Hahahahahaha

Speaking of Tom Skerritt: I always wanted to form a band called "Tom's Carrot".

This was always one of my favorites.  I was very time travel/wormhole fascinated in my formative years but like everyone else, the scene on the beach left me with a sense of "What just happened?"  When I was younger and much less astute, I thought for a bit that somehow her dad WAS an alien, in a sort of "girl discovering she's actually a princess" twist, though it was probably me just not paying attention to the dialogue because "Why is she on a space beach talking to her dad?!?"

The themes resonate more for me now and I agree that it's one of Zemeckis' best non-comedies and he should go back to making movies with real cameras and locations, especially since his last non-mo-cap feature was Cast Away in 2000.  Spielberg already proved with Tintin that Zemeckis isn't a master of full-on animated mo-cap.

Pretty sure the film matches the book in terms of plot. Carl Sagan wanted to instill a sense of wonder in his readers, and debate faith vs. science, and providing a detailed account of an alien civilization would work against that (not really imo but that's how he rolled).

The film works so well right up until Ellie enters the Wormhole....for me it started going downhill at a fast pace when Jodie Foster "morphed" into a 9 year old. Hey thanks for making sure I understand what's going on BY HITTING ME IN THE FUCKING HEAD! (The only worse and more intrusive/unnecessary use of cgi I've seen was in The Insider when Michael Mann deemed Russell Crowe's acting to be inadequate to convey his feeling so inserted a cgi sequence. Bleh). Having the aliens choose to manifest as Ellie's father was right out of the Star Trek OS bible....why not have the alien appear as Abe Lincoln?!

Worse is the film's coda: the whole world has spent years building a device, based on instructions from Outer Space, to make contact with aliens, at a cost of billions, plus everyone in the WORLD is anticipating/fearing the moment of contact, and oops LOL it's all a fake! And Ellie will just go be a tour guide for a Radio Telescope facility because LOL who believes in aliens amiright?

One of the most disappointing endings in a film in my experience. They literally could have ended the film when Ellie enters the Wormhole...worked for CE3K.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cylon Baby 

The film works so well right up until Ellie enters the Wormhole....for me it started going downhill at a fast pace when Jodie Foster "morphed" into a 9 year old.

Oh God...I'd completely blocked that out. It's like you're sitting there enjoying a nice bowl of Raisin Bran and you suddenly crunch down on a raisin-shaped rat turd. Just awful.

It was a REALLY creepy effect.  Like... uncanny valley levels of off-puttingness!  PROPHETIC!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ambler 

 

My problem is they didn't even TRY.  It was a very Spielberg thing to do.  I would've had alot more respect for the movie if they at least attempted to make the climax interesting...it is so far away from interesting that it's almost infuriating.  I do understand it was in line with Ellie's character arc, but they could've satisfied her arc and at the same time satisfied the movie's arc, which was by far the more compelling of the two arcs. 

 

A good observation, and one that holds even truer for the book, which I'm reading at the moment. I think Zemeckis did a good job of making Ellie more vibrant in the film, but she's still just a canvas on which an - admittedly fucking awesome - portrayal of how the world reacts to alien contact is painted. In the book the disconnect between the speculative fiction and the character-based fiction is very apparent, i.e the speculative, science-based stuff is amazing while the actual characters aren't that interesting. If anything, the film balances the two elements a little better; it's just that the source material was top-heavy to begin with.

They're talking about this on Movie Moan.  There was an interesting idea put forth;  just show nothing at the end.  There's build up and hints of a journey, but all the audience sees is the part where she falls through the device and comes out the other side.

I don't think it'd piss anyone off less, by the way, but it'd be an interesting move.

Anyway, the dad thing was really telegraphed for me and I called it in the cinema.  I'm not against it in principle, but the thing for me is what it means for Ellie's character.  She didn't go all this way on earth and everything to just have fucking aliens that look like dad tell her some Just So story.  The correct response to "We've done this to protect you.  You're not ready for the reality" is "Fuck you.  Show me.  I'm a fucking scientist".  Even if they refuse she doesn't even try, and you know she would (at least I do)

Contact is one of my favorite books and IMHO the film did a faithful job of representing it.  I think the disappointment with the ending is unfair.  What could you possibly show that wouldn't derail the film into sci-fi cliche?  Carl Sagan knew this writing the book, there is no way to describe the unknown.  If the aliens are super intelligent, as they would have to be to go to such lengths to make contact with us, then they would also know how fragile our psyche would be at the glimpse of something so unreal.  I don't care if she is a scientist or not, the fact that she wasn't in shock from the trip alone is a testament to her will power.  Showing up as the least threatening image seems like a very brilliant way to make a first impression with the human race.  If Carl Sagan couldn't find a better way to bring it together, I would welcome to hear some plausible scenarios you think would have fit better and also would have made a better book and also a better movie. This is a very honest request, this being my first post, I wouldn't think of coming on here and be an asshole to people I have been reading comments from for years.

Maybe the beach WAS the alien and the father is just an alien version of syntax.

See, fixed. If Douglas Adams had used that idea, nobody would be complaining.

And yes, Pensacola is an alien.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Takeshi Kovac5 

Contact is one of my favorite books and IMHO the film did a faithful job of representing it.  I think the disappointment with the ending is unfair.  What could you possibly show that wouldn't derail the film into sci-fi cliche?  Carl Sagan knew this writing the book, there is no way to describe the unknown.  If the aliens are super intelligent, as they would have to be to go to such lengths to make contact with us, then they would also know how fragile our psyche would be at the glimpse of something so unreal.  I don't care if she is a scientist or not, the fact that she wasn't in shock from the trip alone is a testament to her will power.  Showing up as the least threatening image seems like a very brilliant way to make a first impression with the human race.  If Carl Sagan couldn't find a better way to bring it together, I would welcome to hear some plausible scenarios you think would have fit better and also would have made a better book and also a better movie. This is a very honest request, this being my first post, I wouldn't think of coming on here and be an asshole to people I have been reading comments from for years.

There's too much Solaris about it for starters.  It would have been good to avoid that.  I don't really know what the aliens should have been or looked like (they could be completely non physical), but they didn't even explain why they couldn't explain.

Even with all else being equal what bugs me is that she's being set up to be the dewy eyed prophet/mystic with nothing but  faith in her own experience for this transcendent thing that happened to her.  While that's clever, thematically speaking, she offers up so little resistance to this I have trouble buying it.  Ostensibly she has been through a lot, the kind of experience that typically knocks your world view over in this kind of story and turns you to a vague love of all life and the mysteries of the human experience etc.  But it's just too pat for me.  I want to see her fight back against not knowing like she always did.  The book may throw in more detail here.  For my money the film is cruising on its faux spiritual optimism after that climax and not serving its characters properly.  Well, one character in particular.  But she's supposed to represent the quest and even if technically she's seen working and teaching, it feels like she takes her foot off the gas.

Even though it's a bit of a cheese fest, I did always like the ending of the Jurassic Park book where against all sense and any sort of neat plot resolution the scientists take time out to go observe these new dinos in the wild.  I want to see Ellie do everything she can for knowledge at the end, like she not going to stand for being a conspiracy theory or a guru.  That it might be human nature but it just won't do, if you know what I mean.

Thanks for the reply, and I do understand where you are coming from with this angle.  I guess my answer is that I read the book long before the movie came out and I might be in the minority here on that sequence of the introduction to the story.  It could be simply that in reading the source material first, I was not let down by the end because I essentially knew what was coming.  I accepted Sagan's explanation as very real and understandable and it held up really well in the context of his story for me.  Maybe I would have thought differently if I had seen only the movie, a situation I can unfortunately not recreate, that is unless aliens take me into a wormhole and deposit me back in a time somewhere before I read the novel. One never knows?

Ending Reminds me of the Lost finale with Jack and Christian Shephard. A pure character moment, but causes those who worship the plot severe disappointment
 

I love Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but to think those aliens do not fall into cliche is just being kind.  The aliens are direct copies of almost any drawing of supposed contact with humans.  Big head, wide-set large black eyes, arms, legs, hands, feet.  I just find it odd that we project very human traits onto a completely unknown species.  I don't even pretend to be anything of an expert in these areas, but I am open to the idea that gravity, atmosphere, and about a million other possible variables, tell me that they will not even remotely look anything like us.  Of course I am also open to the fact that I could be completely wrong.

BTW: I am really enjoying my first foray into the looking glass.  I have been on this sight from almost the beginning and it took me this long to make the leap to actually try and contribute.  I just wanted to say thanks for not raining a shitstorm on me in my first days, although I know that can change at any minute.

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Originally Posted by Ambler 

 

And I don't get this "you can't describe the unknown"...of course you can!  It's a movie, you can describe anything. 

And for me, there is the rub.  How do you put the indescibable on screen?  You can't, because then we can decribe it!  The only way to get that point across is to have a character tell us it's indescribable, and believe them.  I loved her quote "They should have sent a poet."  I chose to believe her.

But I do have an over active imagination and what I thought was possibly that the aliens were part of the 5th or 6th (or 7th or 8th...) dimension, and just could not fathom themselves how to represent themselves in a 3d way.

I always think I sound stupid...heh.

That was exactly my take on this.  How can you satisfy anyone in that instance with any kind of entity that wouldn't pull the movie out of the realm it has already built up?  I don't want to see aliens, because I have no idea what they could possibly look like and on top of that I probably wouldn't comprehend it in the first place.  The father image, although a let down for most, made sense for me and fit  because I couldn't see any other way to make that scene work.  Would a "God-like" voice from nowhere been a more suitable answer?  For me, no.

The ending is one of the things that stay closest to the Novel. Because yes, my friends, I remind you all that Contact is a wonderful novel from Sagan.

I'll simply state here that the Novel is more "technical", while the movie is more "emotional".

But really, no climax? Ellie sees the Alien City from space, and she also sees a representation of the process of Galaxy-building (a project the older races are involved in).

GALACTOGENESIS!

Seriously. No stronger climax could even be conceived for an ending.

(ok, I'll concede that the whole thing is only hinted at, in the movie).

One of my favourite movies of all time. Does it show?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Takeshi Kovac5 

I love Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but to think those aliens do not fall into cliche is just being kind.  The aliens are direct copies of almost any drawing of supposed contact with humans.  Big head, wide-set large black eyes, arms, legs, hands, feet.  I just find it odd that we project very human traits onto a completely unknown species.  I don't even pretend to be anything of an expert in these areas, but I am open to the idea that gravity, atmosphere, and about a million other possible variables, tell me that they will not even remotely look anything like us.  Of course I am also open to the fact that I could be completely wrong.

 

BTW: I am really enjoying my first foray into the looking glass.  I have been on this sight from almost the beginning and it took me this long to make the leap to actually try and contribute.  I just wanted to say thanks for not raining a shitstorm on me in my first days, although I know that can change at any minute.

Well Close Encounters was specifically portraying the UFO phenomenon and dramatizing what would happen if it was all real, but I take your point.

Since we currently have a data set of one planet to base our suppositions on, we have not been too good at showing what aliens might be like. Although Giger in Alien did an OK job (in terms of biology at least: Alien still shows us a hostile being who doesn't get really pissed until Sigourney Weaver gets into her skivvies).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cylon Baby 

Since we currently have a data set of one planet to base our suppositions on, we have not been too good at showing what aliens might be like. Although Giger in Alien did an OK job (in terms of biology at least: Alien still shows us a hostile being who doesn't get really pissed until Sigourney Weaver gets into her skivvies).

if extraterrestrial species do exist, I'm betting they look more like this than humanoid.

http://www.postiar.com/post/25366/insects-which-appear-to-be-from-another-planet.html

I'm not totally certain where I stand on this debate...

BUT... as it is, the ending with her father gives James Woods a chance to really chew on the smarmy delivery about how Ellie expects us to believe her ridiculous story.  Because it IS ridiculous!

Also, about things being indescribable...  I feel that if innovators can create things that people didn't know they wanted, an artist should be able to create something 'indescribable.'  Hehehe.  It just happens to be REALLY hard to do!

Oh, I know.  I just find it funny because Woods is so condescending.  

Listen, I am not trying to play the devil's advocate here, but I still do not get how the build up in this movie could have been improved with some weirdly interpreted alien?  I know this movie falls under the "sci-fi" banner, but it's true identity is really a technical science movie with shades of sci-fi thrown in and a big moral dilemma at the heart of it.  How do you prove to someone else that you love the person you are married to?  How to you prove to someone that God exists?  How do you prove that you went on a trip and visited aliens and they came to you looking like your father?  You don't.  And throwing some indescribable entity to satisfy some viewers is almost like saying this is what God looks like...are you awed?  Or will you be disappointed?  I, as a viewer and a reader of the book, would have been let down.  Of course this is just my humble opinion, and I respect the opinions of everyone else on this thread.

^ I agree with you on the theme of the film, but the problem is, the film builds up to a certain point plotwise, then wiffs.

I agree with your perception of the film Ambler, I just don't view it that way, and that's ok.  I wasn't trying to equate the aliens to God, but only using the example to express what would have been satisfying to you?  Everyone has a "feeling" of what they wanted the film to be, my question from the beginning has been, what could that have possibly been to satisfy you?  It's easy to throw it on the shoulders of Zemeckis and say he dropped the ball, but I feel he did what Sagan ultimately did and could not properly give weight to such a fantastical concept without it coming off cheap.

Interestingly, and perhaps this is the point, the aliens are arseholes too.  They aren't going to tell her shit.  They are completely "Nup, you can't have anything.  We're not telling you anything.  We're barely going to show you anything. We're big on annoying tradition like that (hey! that's just like...). Bye now"

This could be a mercy as her career as a guru would be short lived.  Everyone else who talks to aliens or communes with the spirits just has endless crap to tell us.  The friggin aliens never stop telling us how it all works, how to live our lives, how to save the planet etc.

This is why I say, for a science movie based on a book by America's favorite science publiciser, it veers off into completely unscientific , glurge-y Forrest Gump territory to make its point at the end there.  And I really don't think it needed to.  (They're floating that conspiracy theory that it was all Haddon's idea: cute, but how do you fake a signal from Vega exactly?  One that every radio telescope in the world has been picking up?  Also, has it occured to anyone to try running the machine again?  You know, with repetition being that whole science thing.  At least tell us why they couldn't).

I get the point and why its frustrating.  It's a cool twist.  But as I was saying, doing it this way is almost letting the audience cruise on that beatific optimism people like to get from 'spiritual' movies, which kind of defeats the purpose to me.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ambler 

I thought I'd made that clear.  Actual contact with ET beings that are not disguised as a family member I don't give a shit about.  

And that's what bugs me about than anything more than anything else: the whole appearing-as-her-father thing. Now I know that this is a perfectly subjective interpretation, but I know that if I'd finally met an alien and they appeared as my dead Dad, I'd be:

a) Creeped the fuck out - So I'm supposed to experience the 'emotional comfort' of getting to see my Dad again, all the while knowing that it's really an alien wearing his form like they'd ordered it from the Ed Gein Catalogue and

b) Justifiably pissed off because of the unsolicited emotional manipulation of a);

c) THEN I'd move onto the little fact of making me go through all this shit because of the message they sent, just to be told "Dude, you, like, totally can't handle it, y'naw?"

Again, this could be a personal response but I kind of feel that if you invite someone to build this machine and travel countless light years to meet them, you need to give them something at the end. We can start with not pretending to be their dead relatives. I'd rather they were eighteen-foot tall befanged Vagina Beasts, as long as they were honest about it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Workyticket 

 

 

And that's what bugs me about than anything more than anything else: the whole appearing-as-her-father thing. Now I know that this is a perfectly subjective interpretation, but I know that if I'd finally met an alien and they appeared as my dead Dad, I'd be:

 

a) Creeped the fuck out - So I'm supposed to experience the 'emotional comfort' of getting to see my Dad again, all the while knowing that it's really an alien wearing his form like they'd ordered it from the Ed Gein Catalogue and

b) Justifiably pissed off because of the unsolicited emotional manipulation of a);

c) THEN I'd move onto the little fact of making me go through all this shit because of the message they sent, just to be told "Dude, you, like, totally can't handle it, y'naw?"

 

Again, this could be a personal response but I kind of feel that if you invite someone to build this machine and travel countless light years to meet them, you need to give them something at the end. We can start with not pretending to be their dead relatives. I'd rather they were eighteen-foot tall befanged Vagina Beasts, as long as they were honest about it.

But seriously.  I love the movie, but my biggest complaint is why go through all that, only to leave the human race with nothing. You send instructions which, if the planet is smart enough to put together, requires them to pool their resources to build a massive machine which move them through time and space, only to come back with nada. What is the point aliens?  If it is a test of humanity to see if they are ready to join the Galactic Republic, then it is a terrible one. What is Jodie Foster supposed to do when she gets back? Tell the truth, only to be discredited? So... it was a punk?

I always thought that the failure of the first machine really showed the true nature of where we are as a society.  And that although we were able to build a second machine covertly, and ultimately get the job done; as a whole, human kind had a ways to go.  Given that she comes back and no one believes her, and the government hides the proof by burying the fact that her camera footage, although static contained hours and hours of taped "time", bears this out in the end.  Any other thoughts on this?

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Originally Posted by MrTyres 

 

 If it is a test of humanity to see if they are ready to join the Galactic Republic, then it is a terrible one. What is Jodie Foster supposed to do when she gets back? Tell the truth, only to be discredited? So... it was a punk?

That explains it!  These Vegan assholes are the Therns from John Carter!!!

IMHO this is the last truly great movie we got from Zemekis. That is until Jodie Foster wakes up on the fucking beach and talks to daddy. The build-up was soo great but the payoff sucked balls. As someone else said, I would have preferred an ambiguous ending where the ball drops, disappears and we are left to wonder what happened to Foster. A better ending would have been to see Foster being tentacle raped while the credits rolled.