Walking into the movie theater, into escapism, this past Friday night, I don't think I, along with the (surprisingly) dozens of other moviegoers, saw Arrival without looking through a Trump'd up lens. It was fitting, too, because this film specifically dealt with several themes that I found relevant in the President-elect's platform.

When twelve alien--UFOs? No. More like monoliths or giant pods--arrive on spread areas of the Earth, Louise (Amy Adams), a Professor of Linguistics at an undisclosed University (from the looks of the campus, it's definitely not Rutgers) is called upon to try to communicate with the aliens, later known, through their physical stature, as Heptapods. Louise is deliberate. When a herd of students are glazing on a TV on her way to class, Louise keeps going. Her linguistic expertise seems to make her this way, just as, as she mentions later, the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis says that one's language determines how that person thinks.

The soldiers at the base rush Louise, trying to get her to ask the Heptapods "what is your purpose on earth?" She counters with all the flaws in their request, how the Heptapods need to understand what a question is and the difference between "your" as in the Heptapods and "your" as in "Joe the alien." Louise is cooperative with the Heptapods. In her second meeting, she literally takes off her radiation suit; "we need to show them who we are," she says. Meanwhile, China was reported to be playing "games" with the Heptapods in order to speak to them. She warns against this, indicating that they are keeping up with a winner/loser dichotomy.

****The rest of this article contains spoilers****

All around Louise, people are ready for an attack. The base is starting to think so. A bomb literally goes off at the end of the Second Act in the monolith, done from the fear of people for the unknown. And there literally is no reason to do so. The Heptapods were cooperative at that point. When they finally "answer" the golden question as to what their purpose on Earth is, they say "offer weapon" which warrants the base to literally try to pull out out of fear for what it means.

Then China announces they are going to use military force, with Russia to follow, indications of the hawk-ish global millitary mindset of today. While this is going on Louise finds the real reason why they're here, and it's that the Heptapods need to unite the world, because they're going to need the world's help in the future. This implies that the world is going to turn against each other without the intervention of the Heptapods.

Louise finds a contrived way to talk China out of it, and China doesn't attack. Because of this, China is implied to become allies with the US. After all the fear, the Heptapods weren't going to attack the Earth, contrary to all the opinions; they were trying to keep the Earth together.

I found this film to be a testament to what Science Fiction could do. Ethan Hawke talked about he did The Purge, and he discussed how a movie where a black man is being chased down by white people only bears actual, justified significance in science fiction films. In other words, it's an appealing, entertaining, different way to get a point across. People are afraid of uncertainty and fear, and our President-elect has cashed in on that. If a monolith comes out of nowhere, people are going to be scared because they don't know what it is. But maybe we can take Louise's lead, knowing to be deliberate and knowing that we need to collect all the information is before we can make a decision.

The first thing that Louise writes on her whiteboard to Heptapods is "Human". I guess this movie tried to remind us what we all had in common.