The Arrival (1996 film)

Did You Know?

• The working title before release was Shockwave.
• Filming took place primarily in Mexico, with additional scenes at the Owens Valley Radio Observatory.
• The alien creatures were digitally created by Pacific Data Images.

Plot

Zane Zaminsky and Calvin, both radio astronomers with SETI, picked up an extraterrestrial signal from Wolf 336, a star 14 light-years away, and recorded it. Zane took this to his supervisor Phil "Gordi" Gordian at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, but Gordi dismissed the finding and destroyed the tape. Zane was then fired, officially due to budget cuts, and blacklisted from working at any other observatories. After personal issues with his girlfriend Char, he found work installing television satellite dishes. Using his customers' dishes, he secretly built his own telescope array in his attic, with help from his young neighbor Kiki. He relocated the alien signal but discovered it was masked by a terrestrial broadcast from a Mexican radio station. Seeking Calvin, Zane found him dead from carbon monoxide poisoning, though it was actually murder. In Mexico, the radio station had burned down. While exploring, Zane came across a new power plant and met Ilana Green, a climatologist from NCAR. Security confiscated her atmospheric equipment, and Zane noticed a guard who looked like Gordi. Ilana explained that Earth's temperature had jumped several degrees, melting polar ice and altering ecosystems, and that this plant was one of several worldwide possibly causing the change. As they regrouped, Gordi sent agents disguised as gardeners to Zane's attic, where a device made his equipment disappear. Zane left Ilana at a hotel to investigate the plant, but scorpions planted in her room killed her.

Box office

The Arrival was a commercial failure, grossing only US$14 million in the North American domestic market against a production budget of US$25 million. Its performance was partly affected by the high-visibility marketing campaign for Independence Day, released just over a month later. The film had a more successful international run, partly because Charlie Sheen still maintained high popularity worldwide at the time. A Blu-ray version was released on April 21, 2009, with no special features, unlike the laserdisc release which included commentary, documentaries, and alternative endings.