20 Things You Didn't Know About Arrival

If effectively used, foreshadowing can be useful in building narrative tension and ensuring that the payoff at the story’s climax is impactful. Fortunately, the 2016 sci-fi drama utilized this storytelling device to great effect early in the film by physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner).

As Donnelly and Amy Adams’ Louise Banks were being transported to the Heptapods’ landing site, the former quoted his colleague’s renowned linguistics book, saying that “Language is the foundation of civilization. It is the glue that holds a people together. It is the first weapon drawn in a conflict.”

Unless you had read the book upon which this film was based on, this line probably did not hold that much weight aside from establishing Louise’s high regard of language. It is only towards the end of the second act when it is revealed that language holds far more significant weight in the film than expected.