Contact (film): Difference between revisions

* [[Benevolent Precursors]]: The Vegans. They've been doing this for a ''long'' time. {{spoiler|It's actually played straight ''twice'', because even the Vegans don't know who built the transportation network they're using.}}

* [[Broken Aesop]]: After the [[Anvilicious|laborious effort]] to establish total equivalence between faith in religion and faith in science - representing both as mere personal choice in the absence of any hard evidence - the film breaks that [[An Aesop|Aesop]] by {{spoiler|definitively showing that Arroway, as opposed to the more religious characters across the aisle, actually ''has some evidence'' of her claims, and the evidence is being suppressed by the government officials involved}}.

'''Kitz:''' [''leans forward so he is looking directly in the camera''] That is interesting, isn't it? }}

* [[The Chessmaster]]: Hadden takes a ''very'' thorough interest in his long-term investments.

* [[A Nazi by Any Other Name]]: There's a certain amount of alarm when the signal turns out to be a retransmitted television broadcast of [[Adolf Hitler]] giving a speech. Kitz even suggests it comes from [[Scary Dogmatic Aliens]] who find his views appealing. Cooler heads point out that aliens wouldn't understand the context of the transmission -- the speech is Hitler opening the 1936 Olympics, which would have been the first strong [[Aliens Steal Cable|TV signal sent into space]]. Sending it back is simply their way of showing the message was received. But that doesn't stop the Neo-Nazis from believing "Hitler lives".

* [[New Tech Is Not Cheap]]: A terrorist attack destroys the first device. There are plans, but building the device was so expensive for the entire world that the prospect of building a second one (especially since it would invite yet another attack) is summarily dismissed. It is then that a second, backup device is revealed to have been built in secret. It is explained with the [[Crowning Moment of Awesome]] line:

* [[Not So Different]]: as it is pointed [[Sufficiently Advanced Alien|several]] [[They Should Have Sent a Poet|times]] below, one of ''Contact'''s themes is that religion and science are [[Not So Different]] after all. The film culminates in heroine describing her experience in ''very'' religiously sounding terms.

** Ellie Arroway spends the first quarter of the film demonstrating firm belief in the existence of Alien life, even at the detriment of her career, despite the fact there is no empirical proof, the exact thing she stated when she later admits that is the reason she ''doesn't'' believe in there being a God. Her later objections to the inclusion of a safety chair in the sphere is that that they should trust the Aliens would keep the traveler safe, which is an act of ''faith''. Her impassioned speeches on scientific principles often approach a fervor one would expect from an evangelical preacher, while she repeatedly treats Occam's Razor as though it were dogma.

* [[Western Terrorist]]: Joseph.

* [[What Year Is This?]]:

'''Mission Control:''' [[Wham! Line|You didn't go anywhere.]] }}

* [[When Things Spin Science Happens]]: The Machine is a giant gyroscope that generates a [[Our Wormholes Are Different|wormhole]] by spinning its rings at tremendous speed. The last ring is brought to speed via ''rocket propulsion''.