Denis Villeneuve is one of the most successful sci-fi directors working today, and much of this comes from the praise he received for the Dune franchise. The first two Dune movies have Rotten Tomatoes scores of 83% and 92%, and they combined to make $1.1 billion at the box office. This followed the criminally underrated Blade Runner 2049, which saw Villeneuve take on the impossible task of creating a sequel to one of the most iconic sci-fi movies of all time. These movies helped solidify the director’s place among the best sci-fi filmmakers, and the most impressive part is that these three movies are not even the best of his sci-fi output.
Released in 2016, Arrival is the best sci-fi movie that Denis Villeneuve has made, and it is also one of the best genre films of the 21st century. The movie has an impressive 94% Rotten Tomatoes score and received eight nominations at the 89th Academy Awards, including one for Best Picture.
Denis Villeneuve built a career making movies that mostly played as thrillers, with his best films being 2013’s Prisoners and the 2015 release Sicario. While his psychological thriller Enemy bordered on sci fi and horror, it wasn’t until 2016 that Villeneuve actually entered the sci-fi genre, and he rolled out five straight sci-fi movies before finally moving on to the James Bond franchise, which he is working on next. That first movie he directed in the genre was Arrival, and he still hasn’t topped it. While Dune made more money and Blade Runner 2049 was great, Arrival is a masterpiece.
Written by Eric Heisserer and based on the novella “Story of Your Life,” Arrival is about first contact when aliens arrive on Earth, and the world’s governments need to figure out a way to communicate with them to learn whether they are here in peace or not. Amy Adams stars as Louise Banks, and the movie opens with a tragic moment in which Louise’s daughter, Hannah, dies of an incurable illness when she is 12. The movie then moves to the sci-fi aspects, with the spacecraft arriving in various locations around Earth.
The opening with the daughter ties into the entire story, which is a complex tale that plays with time and deals with some intense issues that are not just sci-fi ideas. Louise is a linguist, and she is called in to help crack the language the aliens are trying to communicate with. Jeremy Renner stars as Ian Donnelly, a theoretical physicist who is also working with her.
What really makes Arrival stand out as a sci-fi masterpiece is that it is about the ideas and theories of science fiction, and what it says about humanity. There are too many sci-fi movies that are just about space battles and thriller or horror themes, and there are not enough about the smart storytelling that classic sci fi specialized in. No movie did this better than the original Blade Runner. That movie had action and gunfights and thrills, but it was really about what it means to be human. The person who directed a sequel to Ridley Scott’s movie needed to understand how to tell that story.
Dune has a lot of space battles and war scenes, but it is a story about how one young man can rally people to follow him, only to become the exact person he swore that he would always fight against. This was a complex story that had to show the rise of an idealistic young man who wanted revenge and the fall of that same man when he gained too much power and realized that absolute power always corrupts. David Lynch tried to tell this story, and even with his incredible talent, he couldn’t make it work. Denis Villeneuve ended up as the perfect choice for the Blade Runner sequel and the Dune adaptation, and he proved he could do it in Arrival.
In Arrival, Denis Villeneuve takes the story of first contact and crafts a tale that allows the characters to attempt to understand what the aliens want. It isn’t about fighting the aliens, and it doesn’t even have the kind of attacks seen in a similar film like The Day the Earth Stood Still. This film just remains a calm look at how intelligent people could defuse the situation and then come to an agreement that would secure the future of both humankind and the aliens who came to Earth for help. Louise’s story adds another gut punch, and it just elevates the movie to another level. Arrival is a stone-cold masterpiece, and Denis Villeneuve proved he was a master sci-fi storyteller with it.
What is your favorite Denis Villeneuve movie? Let us know your sci-fi favorites in the comments below.
