The Truman show is a movie with a meta-commentary on sit-com shows made in 2002. It asks the question, “Are we stars in a sitcom and just don’t know it?” That is the world and question that is posed to Truman, played by Jim Carrey. The reception of the show was quite high. Most of the common reception of the show is that it changed and/or made them question their surroundings and reality. One analysis of the film says that knowing the secret of the film, that one being that Truman is in a sitcom before the film starts, completely changes how you watch the film on further watch thoughts. The Truman show was written with inspiration from an episode of the Twilight Zone “Special Service”
When I was at work, one of my co-workers said that The Truman show made him rethink his surroundings for a month after seeing it. This comment was unprompted, I didn’t ask him for his opinion, and that just shows the influence this movie has. The Truman Show can and has been used as an analyzed piece for theses on Christianity, simulated reality, surveillance, metaphilosophy, existentialism, privacy, and reality television.
Arrival is a science fiction drama made in 2016. It was based on a short story “Story of Your Life” from 1998. The central plot revolves around a linguist, played by Amy Adams attempting to learn how to communicate with aliens before it leads to war. The film was praised for Amy Adam’s performance and its thought-provoking showcasing of communication with aliens. The film had to make its own unique language for the aliens to speak in the film. They called in 3 linguists from The McGill University for them to make the language.
Arrival made around 200 million dollars, which when compared to its production budget, made 4 times its budget in profits. Most of the critical responses to Arrival gave great praise for the performance from Amy Adams and called it “existentially inclined” The very few mixed reviews claimed it was too close to Interstellar and criticizing the dialogue, calling it “clunky”. The Arrival received numerous nominations and won around 27 awards, ranging from Sound Editing, to Best Actress, to even Best Sci-Fi/Horror Film.
Arrival was made with a lot of focus on the language of the aliens. The process of Amy Adams trying to communicate to the alien was so accurate that many Linguistic professors, one of which worked on the film, say that it gets nearly everything right about the linguist process. David Adger, a linguist professor, from the Queen Mary University of London, said that the process of “trying different hypotheses about the language, coming up with generalization, and test them was spot on” Betty Birner, a professor at Northern Illinois University, had a different opinion, saying that the movie’s usage of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis is unbelievable and that the film skips over important parts of the language process. Betty specifically said that Amy Adam’s character going from basic vocabulary to abstract concepts such as what is a “weapon” is oversimplified