As a well-known science fiction, arrival is set in the contemporary earth, and mysterious alien creatures suddenly appear. These alien creatures are called "newcomers", and they come to different places on the earth, which has aroused widespread concern and confusion in human society. In order to understand the intention and communication mode of the "newcomer", mankind organized an international scientific team, and sent a linguist Louise Banks (played by Amy Adams) and a physicist Ian Donnelly (played by Jeremy Renner) to contact and communicate with the "newcomer".

In the film, one of the most essential opinion the director wants to express is that language will change the way one think. A simple example: in mandarin, when people want somebody to do something for him, he/she will say that hey, help me do ……; on the contrary, in English, people will say: excuse me …… It seems similar; however, the thinking mode is varied. In mandarin, human sympathy is over everything, Chinese will take others to do a something for them which cost a little time for granted. On the other hand, in English, people will feel regretful for wasting others’ time; moreover, people will even pay money for these small assistances, which is how “tip” appears.

However, once somebody learns a new kind of language and use it continuously, the thinking mode change will be an almost irreversible process, thus, in Arrival, Louise is a special case. After learning heptapod’s language, she can still change her thinking mode of English and change smoothly from thinking mode of either language. This is not as simple as changing the thinking mode of mandarin and English, since from a macro point of view, these languages are same except for some frivolous details. Their understanding of time and space (basic elements of universe) are the same, which is caused by the identical races of the languages——human.

In human’s language and understanding, space is 3-dimention, and time is linear, which is kind of a river that will never flow back. All of the languages invented by human are linear, which express in order. On the other hand, heptapod’s language is impact by their way of thought. In the movie, their meaning is expressed in a circle——which has neither an beginning nor an end, the more semantic meaning is included, the more complicated the word will be. Thus, its language characteristic keeps pace with its thought and even structure. There is no “before” and “after” in its language, no “because” and “thus” in its thought mode, no “back” and “forth” in its body structure. It even contributes a lot to how it writes——they write by inkjet, which doesn’t have “first” or “then”. Under this circumstance, it’s understanding of time isn’t river but a pool. In their brain, time is a whole piece, everything happens at the same time. Tomorrow, today and yesterday all appear together, which is why they can foresee the things that will happen 3000 years later.

Another essential topic is non-zero-sum-game. In the movie, spaceships with a total number of 12 land on the earth. In order to save themselves from danger of 3000 years later, heptapod provide their technology to human beings. However, as what they forbode, if only one government on earth gets the technology, there will be a zero-sum-game, which has a negative externality to not only earth, but also the safe of heptapod. Thus, 12 spaceships land on earth with each 1/12 of the technology. In this case, it is cooperation that is the only way to get the technique, which creates an atmosphere of non-zero-sum-game. Non-zero-sum-game means that the sum of the total marginal income or loss of the partners is not zero. Non-zero-sum-games can be either positive sum games or negative sum games. Positive sum game means that the interests of both sides of the game have increased, or at least the interests of one side have increased, while the interests of the other side have not been harmed while in negative sum-game both sides lose. As in the movie, the advantage of cooperation is so huge that every country will agree to have information exposed, which will increase the total technology of human instead of only one of the countries dominant.