20 Things You Didn't Know About Arrival

20. One Of The Film’s Most Important Scenes Almost Missed The Cut

It is common occurrence for some films to have a fair number of deleted scenes. Unfortunately, some scenes add much needed context to the stories and characters, and their exclusion works against the final cut’s comprehensibility. Arrival nearly joined the list of such films when Denis Villeneuve and editor Joe Walker almost left out a dream sequence that was key to the plot.

The scene featured Louise encountering a Heptapod in her trailer after a conversation with Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker) and Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner). The sequence was almost cut for length purposes, but once the director and editor realized that this was the only scene with the mention of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis they attempted to salvage it and, in the process, gave it an unusual rhythm compared to the rest of the flick.

According to Walker, turning the moment into a dream sequence helped drive home the impact of the alien’s language on Louise as well as advanced her romance with Ian.