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Contact (Jodie Foster / 1997)

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jond76 said:
Atheists HATE it!
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Not really. In fact, if it weren't for this movie I probably wouldn't be an atheist today. I saw it as a young child when it first came out, and it introduced me to the concept of skepticism.

Yeah, Jodie Foster's character is portrayed as just as pigheaded as the religious people she opposes, but at the same time, between this movie and the Heaven's Gate situation which happened around the same time as the film's release, it left a pretty profound impact on what kind of dangers blind faith could bring
 
Dan said:
A lot of it's great, until they destroy Foster's character and turn her into a flustery emotional wreck at the end who can't counter Woods' stupid arguments.

Also, I think it's absurdly laughable that Matthew McConaughey's loosey goosey deist represents the position of religion.

I have a very love/hate thing with Contact.
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Yeah that seemed like a very "Hollywood" treatment. I look past it for my love of the movie and what it tries to do, but I agree that it was lame and out of place.
 
DoctorWho said:
I love the movie.

The book is superior though.
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i actually think the movie is superior in this case EXCEPT for the ending. I think the ending in the book is mind-blowing.

I enjoyed ending in the film, especially that she was extremely emotional on the stand. In a sense, it was her making her own circle.
 
I love Contact.

I saw it for the first time when I was about 13 years old and it blew my mind. I didn't like the Matthew Mcconaughey part of the story, but aside from that I think it's brilliant.

I have a feeling that I would enjoy the book even more than the movie, but I've never gotten around to reading it.
 
Fantastic film, though the end is a bit wimpy, it has to be said. Jodie Foster was a great lead, but the one thing that falls completely flat is Ellie's romance with Palmer - talk about heat, this one was ice cold. No chemistry whatsoever.

Really must pick up the blu ray...
 
I always really dug the movie and thought it was woefully under appreciated. Not going to sit here and say it was Oscar worthy or in the ten best films of all time, but it's pretty fantastic. Much better than the general level of appreciation it gets.

My parents saw it for the first time while they were staying with me for Christmas. They thought it was great and borrowed my BluRay. I think they've watched it twice more since then.
 
Love the film and I really need to read the book. I have it on DVD and it came in one of those crappy early Cardboard/ plastic WB's cases.

In fact, I will order the book on Thursday.
 
One of the best Scifi movies ever.

Its a shame that no movie can come closer anymore.

EDIT: Also, thanks Gaffers.

Didnt know that it was based on a book.

Buying it NOW.
 
hEist said:
well... if i like the movie... should i read the book?
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Yes, but they're pretty different beasts. What I've always said is the movie focuses more on the emotional side of the story, whereas the book is a more cerebral and "scientific" take on the story - more Sci-Fi than character drama like the movie.
 
This movie somehow made me closer to my father. So that's cool.

Love the sound design in it. That machine just SOUNDS like it's doing some science.
 
It's on Amazon Prime instant streaming. Watched it last night and remembered just how much I enjoy it. I think the whole
2nd machine launch sequence and everything that transpired before the pod falls through
is brilliant.

"The rule of government spending. Why build one when you can build two at twice the cost?"

"Want to go for a ride?"
 
Liked it. Even though I'm not particularly religious I think it went well with the story. I remember seeing in the theaters though and people were walking out. I think since then it's more fondly looked upon.
 
I really liked the movie too, like most sci fi movies that focus more on the reactions of society to a specific situation, rather than on technology, flying ships or whatever. I remember being as dumbfounded as Jodie Foster's character when people started discussing
the importance of sending religious people as ambassadors, for a purely scientific person it was coming out of nowhere and still it's probably something that would actually happen in such a situation.
I don't see any issue with appreciating the movie as an atheist, by the way.

I'll probably need to read the book, too.
 
This is one of my favorite films ever, yet for various reasons I've never read the book. Can anyone who has elaborate on the differences (namely the endings)
 
Darkmakaimura said:
I always wondered at 2:02 in that scene, is that supposed to be some kind of extraterrestrial solar panels or a spacecraft of some kind she looks at?
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I thought it was a ship as well but a scientist who loved to do movie reviews in the 90s pointed out it's a telescope. It's probably something clarified better in the book.

Another note: it wasn't as clear as it could be in the movie, but the aliens were not from Vega. They had an automatic radio telescope of sorts orbiting the star, listening to nearby stars. That's how they detected us. We don't know from where the aliens themselves came, but I'll note that just before Ellie is whisked away from Vega by the wormhole, some sort of array can be seen in the corner of the screen. I thought that was a very nice touch. She actually glimpsed the telescope that detected Earth in the first place!
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http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/movies/contact.html
 
This film has aged really good, when I first watched it I thought it was a boring turd, then a few years later I watched it again and I found it to be a great film.
 
I liked the movie but the book is so much better. The fact that it is not just single person, Jodie, use the machine but 5 person make the book much better.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_(novel)
Differences with the film
Some plot points and characters were omitted from the film version, while others were added.
In the novel, Ellie is well into her 40s, as is Palmer Joss.
Attempts to cut funding for Ellie's project are not prominent in the novel.
S.R. Hadden's retirement plan and his last journey are different.
Ellie's romantic relationships are different.
Ellie's mother is still alive, and re-married after the man she believed was her father died, as in the end, Ted Arroway is revealed to not be her father, but rather her stepfather. Her mom remarried to James Staughton, Ellie's real father.
The President of the United States is a fictional woman, not Bill Clinton.
The contents and the coding of The Message are different (polarity modulation vs between lines of video).
The work on The Message causes a major thaw of international relations in the novel.
There are three Machines built in the novel, but only 2 in the film.
The transport capsule is enclosed within solid rotating spheres, with a vacuum between the spheres, instead of falling through spinning rings.
The Machine transports only one inhabitant (Ellie, an American) in the film, making the selection process much more contentious.
In the novel, the sabotage bombing caused a relatively minor setback in machine assembly, with much less loss of life.
The apparent elapsed time of the journey, from earth's perspective, is considerably shorter in film.
The alien "beach" in the novel is indistinguishable from a real beach, while in the film it is given an artificial, dream-like quality.
The entire last chapter of the novel was not included in the film.
 
wildfire said:
http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/movies/contact.html
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Thanks for the link. I'm familiar with Bad Astronomy, but didn't know he did a review of the movie. I found this entry interesting:

[NOTE (May 11, 2000): This next Bad/Good section deals with Ellie's trip taking no time to the outside world. I originally argued that this was not possible. I was wrong; at least, I was wrong in the context of the movie. Sagan established both in the book and in the movie that the aliens have faster-than-light travel, and even may have the limited ability to travel in time. Basically, they took Ellie out of her coordinates in space and time, chatted with her for a while, then put her back to her original coordinates in space and time. Therefore, no time elapsed for people back on Earth. I have received copious emails about this pointing out my error! I have left it in so you can read it anyway.]

Bad:
When Ellie returns to Earth, 18 hours have passed for her, but no time at all has passed on Earth.

Good:
This point isn't really astronomy, but physics. What is implied is that the travel through the wormhole took no time at all, as if she were moving at some super-relativistic speed. Einstein showed that an object moving near the speed of light relative to some outside observer has time slow down relative to that observer (for more detail about relativity, take a look at the Relativity FAQ). It's possible, if you fudge it a bit, to assume that no time elapses at all if you are moving faster than light, which Ellie did. However, she had a conversation with her ``father''. That conversation took up time. No matter what, some small amount of time must have elapsed during her trip.

The only way around that is to assume that the aliens could somehow manipulate time, and I have to draw the line there. Her ``father'' admitted they did not build the transit system, so I have severe doubts they could shape time the way they want. It's a neat plot twist, but the zero-time trip won't work.
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Obviously he admits a mistake in the note at the top, but I thought it was interesting that he references that Ellie's "father" did not build the transit system, and therefore could not shape time how they want. From my perspective, whoever built the transit system, let's call them the Founders, incorporated the feature of no passage of time for the occupant. The point being that first contact between alien civilizations needs to proceed with baby steps. The Founders knew that first contact could have disastrous effects on a lesser civilization. Thus, by making trip made by the machine's occupant seem ambiguous, perhaps not even real, the lesser civilization wouldn't have to immediately face the fact that first contact had been made. As James Woods' character gets Ellie to admit, she could have hallucinated the whole thing. Hadden could have concocted the entire first contact as a huge hoax. That leaves the lesser civilization, in this case humanity, without any clear facts to accept. Panic can be quelled, while some portion of the civilization believes the first contact was real. Essentially, it allows for a slower realization that there is more to the universe than what the lesser civilization knows.
 
Awful movie. Yet another good sci-fi ruined with religious themes stuffed into the storyline at the worst moments. Also once again with the very tired, old, lame "humans are not ready for this awesomeness" message.
 
The part about watches in the book was always incredibly dumb and was handled much better in the movie, and I really didn't care for the narrative flow of the book in general.

Love the movie, though.
 
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