Talk:Nice Peter vs EpicLLOYD 2/@comment-24328089-20170310001621/@comment-5356835-20170310042528

I don't get this rule of every element must have an origin. Time travel is completely fictional and the "rule" is just whatever the creator wants. Who saved Harry Potter in Azkaban? Who told Matthew McConaughey everything in Interstellar? Who told Amy Adam the phone number?

Again, there's two types of time travel sci fi, and Arrival is the fixed timeline kind. If Arrival is the changeable type of time travel, then of course it's a paradox. But it's not. The whole film completely fits the fixed timeline type of time travel movie "rule". The fixed timeline is what the centre question asked in Arrival build on. Will you have the future even though you know it ends in sadness. If it's the changeable timeline types of time travel, then everything would fall apart.

The time travel travel elements is spread throughout the entire story. There's hints of time travel element for the alien language in the second act. Adam see more of the future once she learned more about the language. The second viewing makes the film much more interesting. The whole movie is anything but straightforward. The film starts with a flash forward and making the audience thinking it's a flashback. The film keeps time jumping and they time jumps again the the third act is not a "slap in the face", it's just that it might not be as obvious in the first viewing. The second time I saw it, the whole storyline is much more clearer the the first time.