Well, there were a lot of montages showing them making slow progress, figuring out what the tails, loops, and whorls of the aliens' language meant.
At first they knew nothing.
Then she introduced writing.
Then touch/introduction.
Montage of the teams working (you don't want to see every tiny advance, do you...?)
And the next encounters they're able to send some signs back and forth in an unsophisticated manner.
Then the military dudes force her to ask THE question. She gets a vague answer.
All the time the language is re-wiring her brain (which they introduced earlier, slowly, in phases, and with Ian asking about the way language affects perspective and the mind).
They see the big chart. KA-BOOM! They study the chart for awhile (montage)
Renner makes that big piece of progress that starts to work out the geometry of the patterns.
She goes into the pod and has a tete-a-tete with the heptopods. She can clearly read the language (has been able to for awhile), just not at a complex level. The face-to-face meeting pushes her over the edge. All the jigsaw puzzle pieces start falling into place and her brain is near-completely rewired.
So, she didn't "just figure it out". She wasn't just smarter than everybody else, there were multiple, global teams, slow progress, and a build-up of themes (communication, perception, time, inevitability, cooperation, etc.) throughout the film.
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[deleted]
4 years ago
Never mind, he'll never understand the movie.
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Ace_Spade (9604)
4 years ago
I always figure it's worth a shot.
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Owlwise (1536)
4 years ago
Yes, you never know.
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Ace_Spade (9604)
4 years ago
Sometimes I wind up with a really interesting conversation by just trying to talk to somebody on these boards in good faith, somebody who is arguing with everybody else who came in hot. It doesn't always work; there are always trolls or other kinds of bad-faith actors, but sometimes it does. I've also had really nice, "Agree to disagree" moments where we at least wind up understanding each other.
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Owlwise (1536)
4 years ago
And even if there's an "agree to disagree" conclusion, a differing opinion expressed in good faith may still give us something new to consider about a film, something we might not have thought about before. And that can't be bad.
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Ace_Spade (9604)
4 years ago
Yes. A new facet to a film is (almost) always appreciated and interesting to contemplate. There are several theories I like, even if I don't think they're canon or that they "work" (Ferris is Cameron's fictitious creation, for instance).
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