"The Arrival" was the "other" alien-invasion flick of the summer of 1996. Whereas "Independence Day" is the traditional-conservative-values treatment of the theme, in which American cleverness and firepower save the day, "The Arrival" is the liberal-environmental-disaster flick, wherein a cabal of aliens is deliberately speeding up the process of global warming so as to make Earth suitable for their colonies.
Charlie Sheen is a jittery radio astronomer whiz-kid who discovers this conspiracy of extraterrestrial terraforming (how's that for an oxymoron?), which is being financed by American investors in PlanetCorp, the aliens' front company. Naturally, the "power plants" heating the world are all built in third-world countries without "sufficient" environmental regulations. This situation rounds out the film's array of liberal conceits: big business is bad; big government is good; and global warming--with or without alien intervention--is happening anyway.
Credit where it's due: "The Arrival" is well-produced, well-paced, and well-acted, with some good FX (including stop-motion aliens) and a startling opening sequence involving a poppy field in the Arctic. It's defeated somewhat by its general familiarity, since it belongs to a long line of aliens-among-us flicks that go all the way back to the '50s.
But in the final analysis, I'm happy to say that the American public didn't buy into "The Arrival" or its politics. At the box office, "ID4" was a huge hit. "The Arrival" tanked. 'Nuff said.
Charlie Sheen is a jittery radio astronomer whiz-kid who discovers this conspiracy of extraterrestrial terraforming (how's that for an oxymoron?), which is being financed by American investors in PlanetCorp, the aliens' front company. Naturally, the "power plants" heating the world are all built in third-world countries without "sufficient" environmental regulations. This situation rounds out the film's array of liberal conceits: big business is bad; big government is good; and global warming--with or without alien intervention--is happening anyway.
Credit where it's due: "The Arrival" is well-produced, well-paced, and well-acted, with some good FX (including stop-motion aliens) and a startling opening sequence involving a poppy field in the Arctic. It's defeated somewhat by its general familiarity, since it belongs to a long line of aliens-among-us flicks that go all the way back to the '50s.
But in the final analysis, I'm happy to say that the American public didn't buy into "The Arrival" or its politics. At the box office, "ID4" was a huge hit. "The Arrival" tanked. 'Nuff said.