Context: I watched Project Hail Mary (2026) and Arrival (2016) on back to back days. I didn’t finish reading the short story Arrival is based on (“Story of Your Life”) yet so I hold off on presenting a “complete” picture however:
- Both involve learning to communicate with an alien species that
- have no discernible face
- have a way of perceiving the world that is quite different from the way humans do it
- They are both separated from their communication partners by a transparent barrier
But, the rest of the context of these interactions is quite different. One is two sole survivors who encounter each other while on parallel missions, and the other are organized forces attempting species-wide diplomacy. The human/alien relationship in PHM is one where they are looking the same direction. The human/alien relationship in Arrival is one where they are staring each other down.
I also think it’s interesting, though perhaps not intentionally mirroring each other (and not present in their original written medium) that the talking-places are the inverses of each other, visually speaking. The tunnel that connects the two ships in PHM is relatively small, rather warm toned, and lit from the human side. The room within the ship in Arrival is cavernous, cold, and lit from the alien side. Plus the former being round/organic and the latter being so… iPhone shaped. Squares with rounded corners. On the contrary, the exteriors of the alien spacecraft are also opposites but in the inverse: Rocky’s ship is made of straight lines and is highly textured, whereas the heptapods’ is a very smooth lens-shaped black blob. These choices are representative of the differing nature of the communication, and the human-alien dynamics of each. Both are effectively using visual language to reinforce the mood that’s supported by the rest of the text.
Grace and Rocky get a cozy tunnel, which reflects their quickly personal relationship. They have different needs biologically speaking, but they squish together as close as they can despite the barrier(s). They sleep in there together.
The room in the heptapod ship is for business only. The relationship between the translators (despite communicating their names second of all) isn’t given any room to grow. We don’t see Abbot and Costello have personalities.
The level of formality also differs. Grace doesn’t have any contact with Earth, and therefore no protocols to follow (whether or not he would actually obey those protocols is of course a different question). Neither one of them have any formal training in linguistics, that we know of. Contrast this with the faceless teams of linguists and analysts, led by Louise and Ian. The elephant in the room is the suffocating military lens through which the communication is done in Arrival, but this is another can of worms that I would have to write up and link to later.
I ponder the different ways the alien and human environments are allowed to interact with each other, also. The “alien invasion” feeling is a lot more present in Arrival, though the heptapods remain contained in their ships. whereas Rocky is intruding on Grace’s space in a very literal sense, taking over portions of it and remaking them to suit his own habitat. But he was invited to do so, and it’s well established by then that he is not a threat. It’s significant in many ways that Rocky and Grace are more or less on even footing when it comes to their environment (being alone on space ships, even though Rocky’s is bigger), whereas in Arrival the heptapods are showing up to The Planet Earth.
All in all, although both are interesting, both leave me feeling somewhat lacking in their executions to a very fascinating concept. I would like to attempt to remedy some of these, though likely at the same time committing errors of my own. This garden will be dedicated to this and other explorations.