If there’s one filmmaker who is known to break the boundaries of what cinema can accomplish, then director Christopher Nolan is by far at the top of the charts in this day and age. His absolutely mind-bending narratives in many of his projects until now have fascinated and inspired many individuals to rethink their approach to how to create a masterpiece.
But inadvertently, the filmmaker has also forced Eric Heisserer, the writer of the Academy Award-nominated film Arrival, to change the ending of the story towards the end and all for the better. The ending of the film featuring Amy Adams had to be changed due to Nolan’s creation of Interstellar, which had a similar ending to what the writer had envisioned for his project as well, and since it was released before his film, he had to do something different.
Christopher Nolan Indirectly Changed The Ending of Arrival With The Release of Interstellar
The Sci-Fi genre of films has always been a tough nut to crack, especially when there are so many amazing films in the genre already, and bringing something new to it is a task easier said than done. Thus, when Christopher Nolan created Interstellar, a film that defied expectations and understanding of both cinema’s extent and human intellect, it wasn’t a surprise that it became an instant masterpiece in the eyes of critics and the public alike.
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But the effect of this film wasn’t just felt by the audience, in fact, the ending of the film was coincidently so similar to Academy Award-nominated writer Eric Heisserer’s Arrival, featuring Amy Adams and directed by Denis Villeneuve, he had to change it completely. In a past interview with Collider‘s Adam Chitwood, Heisserer opened up about how he brought about the change for the end of the film.
During the interview, he said that the initial end of the story would’ve been the aliens leaving Earth after providing humanity with the blueprints of an interstellar ship that would let them traverse space, but then, it was changed to what we can see in the film. He said:
“I would say the only real significant change is the gift that the heptapods leave us with. In earlier versions they were leaving sort of the blueprints to an interstellar ship, like an ark of sorts. And then Chris Nolan’s Interstellar came out and all of us got together and said, ‘Well this doesn’t quite work now’. So we focused more on what we had there in front of us, which was the power of their language.”
What Was Arrival About?
Considered one of the most innovative and awe-inspiring Sci-Fi films in ages, Arrival takes the premise of interplanetary communications between humanity and the extraterrestrial and builds upon it in a serene and thought-provoking manner.
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The film starts when 12 crafts of extraterrestrial origin make contact with Earth in different locations across the globe. Thus, to establish communication with the beings on these vessels, the USA sends Linguist Louise Banks and Physicist Ian Donnelly to establish initial relations. But human nature is fickle in the face of the unknown, and the film tells the tale of just how long it can hold steady.
Arrival, streaming on Paramount+.
