Review of Contact (1997) by Cate D — 11 Jul 2009

Most 'negative' critics do the normal job of telling spoilers and then some rudimentary commentary on the plot.

Most critics though are not science-literate enough to really comment on this movie. they miss alot. They ignore these very intelligent concepts the story's author, Sagan, creates, amazingly before the web went full force in our lives:

* they miss the statement by the 'father' figure (i.e. alien) that some other civilization built this system a long time ago. this means that civilization was benevolent.

* only one person can go through it, preventing immediate military use.

* the movie depicts a wormhole system. this is NOT a travel by the speed of light system. a wormhole folds space so you in fact are covering distance faster than the speed of light.

* system demonstrated a multi-node, mesh network. the first 'stop' in the wormhole trip is a single star -- that's Vega. there is a pause there while the system sets up the next stop -- a planetary system with a nightime view of a civilization with a city of concentric circle 'streets'. we then pause again while the system recalculates for the last leg, the star system with 4 moons? where she meets her father-figure.

* ignores how the real military industrial complex, personified by Haggan, really would salivate over building a machine like this with its resultant financial and technology value.

* the architecture of the system is 'self-organizing'. each civilization builds another 'node' in this interstellar network. this is to me the most important part...after each civilization realizes it's built the next node in the network, it can now become the next beacon, setting up a listener/transmitter itself to extend the network, generating the power necessary to transmit instructions to the next civilization. the system node would have phased array antennas to transmit the powerfull signal, amoung other features.

* as far as drama, the highlight of the drama IS the hearing at the end of the movie where Jodie's character gives that impassioned plea about what she saw, the awe of it and promise of it. it is some of the best acting of any actor/actress that i've seen in movies.