Carl Sagan: astronomer, planetary scientist, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, science communicator, author, and professor. An amazing man. If you want to be moved - and I mean to the depths of your being - watch The Pale Blue Dot. Peace.
Carl Sagan has one of the most inspiring speeches in human history in Pale Blue Dot. Sagan was head of the team that assembled the gold records that are carried aboard the Voyager spacecraft that serve as a greeting to any aliens that might find the probes in the far future. As Voyager was leaving the solar system, Sagan lobbied to have the cameras turn back to Earth to take a final image before the cameras lost power. NASA didn't want to do it because turning the craft is risky, takes tons of power, and they could lose contact with Voyager forever if they messed it up. Sagan kept pushing for it, and they took one of the most important images ever captured which Sagan introduced to the world with the Pale Blue Dot speech that unites humanity with science in a way that politicians and religions have no chance of equaling.
A friend of mine who had read Sagan's novel (I have not, shame on me) pointed out to me how this film shows just how books and films are different. In the book, the transport device is basically a chair in a room, and some time is spent talking about its funding and construction. But that's not how you do a film. Zemeckis wisely chose to give us this big rocket-sized device, and without a word, it _instantly_ tells the audience, this is complicated and took a lot of time and money and expertise to construct. It is one of the rare science-fiction films that treats its audience like intelligent adults, and presents them with thoughtful matters, and not mere spectacle. A personal favorite.
I read the book and I actually think the movie is better. the book has so much more religion in it and the trip to the aliens was taken by a few scientists who experience the aliens in a different way.
Yep ! been so cool if they said , " what interest me is recorder approximately 18 hours of WHAT sounds like static , BUT IT"S NOT .. " there MORE info IN THE STATIC !!!! "
That could very well be true. That static could have a digital signature just like the original message beamed back. Maybe the static is at different megahertz frequencies that when matched will create a digital harmonic pictures, just a maybe.
Glad you enjoyed it. I saw it back then in the theaters after reading the book. Such a great experience and what a performance she gave. And the mirror scene technically was amazing. Such a beautiful movie and story that we own to Carl Sagan. He inspired generations to follow careers in science including one of my best friends. We used to be glued to the tv when Cosmos was on and later with VHS tapes we would buy and share among us, every once in a while gathering to watch together. Carl Sagan gave the world so much!
The Theater I saw iy in , had a THX Complient sound system , Let me just say ,, 300 plus people where FLOOED , at the Machine walkway , ( plank walk ) The theater was SHAKING as the Massive rings swept by .. EFFFING MIND BLOWING ..
This is one of those movies that definitely deserves a rewatch. There is a lot of foreshadowing in earlier scenes, and I'm sure you miss something just by doing a commentary. I liked the shot of her sitting in the desert with all the satellite dishes in the background, and her sun hat echoes the circles that they make. Yes, that was John Hurt as Haddon, and it wasn't until seeing this that I remembered that he and Drumlin (Tom Skerritt) were both in Alien as well. Recommendation: Since the asteroid probe sample just returned to Earth YESTERDAY, I couldn't help but be reminded of The Andromeda Strain, another procedural real-science movie which I've seen several times.
One of my favourites. Loved this movie when it came out in 97. So underrated. Have you seen Apollo 13 Ollie? A great space movie with another incredible score
I have been so looking forward to this reaction/review video because Contact is one of my favorite movies of all time. I was blown away when it first came out and I saw it on the big screen. You have no idea how visceral the signal sound and the wormhole imagery were on the big screen with that massive audio. I think it’s really well written and all the things you said about the production aspects and the story. The one thing that I don’t think you gave enough love to was Jodie Foster’s performance. I think she is a phenomenal actress. Her performance in this movie and Silence of the Lambs really made me a fan of hers to the point where I will see any movie she is in because I know that it will be something worth watching.
I would have only been 8yrs old and wouldn't have been able to comprehend this movie at the time possibly, but I've seen this movie more times than I can count.
RIP Arecibo. Fell apart a few years ago due to poor maintenance. No, astronauts weren't given suicide pills. It's a persistent rumour, but if you really wanted to commit suicide in space, all you'd need to do is open the door. I can _highly_ recommend the book. Much like The Martian, the adaptation is pretty good (The Martian, I think, captures the original slightly better than Contact), the book mostly just adds depth and breadth. Instead of just Ellie, in the book several people go on the trip and each one is given a different unsolved problem, something the aliens haven't been able to figure out for millennia.
Jim Lovell specifically refuted the myth about suicide pills in the book "Lost Moon" (before it was renamed "Apollo 13" due to the movie that drew from it). And yes, his logic was just what you stated.
"Contact" is a truly phenomenal film. There is one aspect however that I think it maybe doesn't get enough focus. Any reputable scientist would agree that their personal anecdotal account of an experience would never be sufficient as evidence in support of a conclusion. They would agree that multiple lines of evidence and replication from unaffiliated studies should be done to gather more data before drawing conclusions. Ellie would normally agree with that, but there really is no further line of experimentation that's left to corroborate her experience. And her argumentation takes place in a congressional hearing, and those have no relationship to science, evidence, or responsible fact seeking. They are purely emotional theater for the purposes of political gamesmanship, and Carl Sagan knew that too.
@@nagaslrac VERY strong evidence. Especially since in the book it was multiple people who went on the trip. That's 1000x more first hand evidence than there is that Jesus ever even existed as well as most biblical characters. It's all 3rd hand accounts, written over hundreds of years, by people who never even met them.
Even in ‘97 I knew a Congressional Hearing was inevitable, given how not one but two “Machines” had been built using taxpayer money. Had it been a purely privately-funded venture that would jot have been the case.
_Contact_ is based on the novel by Carl Sagan, AKA "The man who taught the world science." He was Bill Nye's professor and he inspired Neil deGrasse Tyson to be a science communicator. And even just those two have inspired countless more: Sagan's legacy lives on and grows.
I grew up as a Jehovah’s Witness but have always been a Trekkie all my life. When this movie came out one of the people in our congregation asked me what did I think about it. I told him we all find faith in our own way. You choose to believe in a god I do not. 🖖🌈
Actually, in my opinion, it's impossible to "choose" to believe or to disbelieve in anything. The proof of that is deceptively simple: Think of something you believe. Something you believe to your core and of which you have no doubt. Okay, now choose to NOT believe it. You can't. And it works both ways. Think of some idea, some concept, you absolutely do NOT believe. Okay, now choose to believe that same idea or concept or whatever it might be. You can't. Why? Because you either believe something or you don't believe it. You can't NOT believe something you DO believe. Conversely, you can't believe something you DON'T believe. Therein lies the problem I have when folks who are true believers in the idea of an all-powerful, omniscient, omnipresent, supernatural "God" tell nonbelievers that in order to be "saved" all they have to do is "choose to believe". Either way, it's a closed loop with no way out of which ever loop you're in.
@@Code9 Either way, it's a closed loop with no way out of which ever loop you're in. well i wouldn't characterize it as a loop , trap , futile recursive logic trap . NO , it's more of a Depth of mind and level of personal integrity , that bring the willing and the unwilling to the truth , regardless how incontinent , that TRUTH is , free will is the qustion , and WE do have it , BUT ironical in limited degrees , IF you simulation is good enough than FOR you , IT IS reality . sorry that went off in a few directions.. lol
After the fact you see in the intro that what you're witnessing is the very first radio signal we broadcast reaching Vega, which is the point at which it goes silent.
You wanted to know what the dedication at the end, "For Carl" meant. This movie is from a novel "Contact" by astrophysicist Carl Sagan, who died of cancer while it was being made. Sagan was a great popularizer of science and, among other things, had a PBS mini-series named "Cosmos" which has since been redone by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and Sagan's wife Ann Druyan Sagan.
Ollie I highly recommend you watch Carl Sagan’s 1980 documentary series Cosmos. I’m not sure if it’s appropriate for a react video. It did a great job though of explaining how our ancestors figured out the answers to some complex scientific questions. Voyager probes were conducting the grand tour of our solar system as it aired answering old questions and raising new ones.
I'd especially check out the segment "Who Speaks for Earth". It will shake you how relevant it is even to this day, and amid all the chaos going on right now, it is an source of inspiration for a better future. Great review Ollie.
This film was really quite advanced in terms of how it used CGI and special effects, in a way which is quite cleverly woven/hidden. It was also one of the first DVDs ever released when the format was brand new and I remember at the time how it was incredible upgrading from VHS tapes to DVD and this film was a great showcase for the clarity and features of the format.
4:33 "The Black Hole at the Center of M87" is, indeed, THAT black hole, the first one Shep Doleman and his crew photographed with the Event Horizon Telescope in 2019, and if this movie were made, today, about events in 1996, that's a thing people would consider too realistic to add. What are the odds that guy would happen to be caught up in research 30 years ago that would be showing results, today? But, that's just more attention to detail.
Robert Zemeckis first time in the director's chair was a small comedy that tanked called "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" and is still to this day one of my favorite comedies. You should check it out!
I definitely love the balance this movie gave between science and faith. Jodie Foster is a incredible actress. Silence of the Lambs is one of her best. Another great movie worth watching is Flightplan.
48:10 There are other mystical things in the movie, like the repeating quadruple star pattern in the popcorn on the floor when her father dies, the poster on Ellie's wall, the stars in Ellie's journey, the sparkling sand on the alien's hand, and the sparking dirt on Ellie's hand at the end. Suggesting some kind of god-like "design." In the book, the pattern was hidden deep in the values of the irrational number Pi.
Star Trek First Contact originally had the longest zoom/pan out in movie history until Contact was released and said "hold my bear". The character David Drumlin is played by Tom Skerritt who also played Dallas in Alien. The scenes with Clinton was done by CGI, same tech used in Forrest Gump to make it look like he was interacting with historical figures.
Not CGI... They used footage from an actual press conference that Clinton gave in 1996, but used a lot of clever editing to take his statements out of context.
I loved philosophy as a kid and so I naturally fell completely in love with this movie. I didn't notice the amazing cinematography when I was little though. Makes me appreciate the movie even more!
Tom Skerritt, who plays Drumlin also played Captain Dallas in Alien. “Now I know why I took that desk job!” I sometimes feel like that was a nod to Dallas.
In the book her mother was still alive and she lived with her after her father died. Then her mother remarried to a university professor, John Staughton. He felt Ellie wasn’t lady like enough and that annoyed her. Even more annoying to her when someone would assume they were related. Right after she came back at the end her mother died. John handed her a letter from her mother dated 35 years earlier. Said she kept this in her purse for years and she wanted to tell you. Ellie reads the letter saying how her mother made a mistake and your father understood and forgave me. But he wasn’t really your father. John Staughton is your father.
It's so funny that you have recognized Matthew and had no reaction when jodie foster showed up on screen hahaha. Just one of the best and most consistent actresses out there. Hehehe
Dude ----- I caught your slip of calling the Vega System the Vega Quadrant. lolol What a Trekkie you have become!!!!! ;) And I knew you would love this movie. And I hope you get to know more about Carl Sagan. He was very important to the scientific world. This was his project, his book, and he and his wife oversaw the filming of it just before his death. That is why it is dedicated to him. (The turtleneck she is wearing that you commented on is also a nod to Sagan's turtleneck and jacket he always wore) I also LOVE how this is told through the eyes of a woman. I identified so much with her character. Sagan did this purposefully to benefit the integration of women in the science world. Thanks for watching this on your channel!! It's such an important film!!!
Ellie and Palmer both have encounters with things that are beyond them. While the details drastically differ, the personal experience is jarringly similar. Carl Sagan & Ann Druyan set out to write a tale that brought science and faith together - or at least closer. Sgan was a brilliant scientist AND a brilliant humanist diplomat. I feel Robert Zemeckis managed to portray that in this movie. Thanks for watching one my all time favorite films.
See: Jill Tarter. She was a friend of Carl Sagan's and was chief of operations at the VLA, where they shot the radio telescopes for the movie, and she has been one of the leading proponents of SETI, search for extra-terrestrial intelligence, Ellie Arroway is very much based on her.
@@miller-joel Look it up, it is common-knowledge that Arroway is based upon Tarter. It has nothing to do with what they have in-common, such as pioneering work in SETI and observing from the VLA, it has to do with the fact that Sagan created the character based not upon who she was but *who she was TO HIM from his perspective, as he knew her.* Also, Ellie Arroway and Jill Tarter are astronomers, not astrophysicists.
@@ZeroOskul "However, Jodie Foster's character Ellie is not directly based on Jill. 'Carl Sagan wrote a book about a woman who does what I do, not about me,' explains Tarter. 'He did his homework, and thus included many of the 'character-building' experiences that are common to women scientists studying and working in a male-dominated profession, so Ellie seems very familiar to me.'"
@@miller-joel According to WikiPedia: *"Tarter served as a consultant [To Sagan and Druyan] on the story, realistically portraying career struggles of women scientists from the 1950s to 1970s."* And *"The characterization of Ellie Arroway was inspired by Jill Tarter, head of Project Phoenix of the SETI Institute; Jodie Foster researched the lead role by meeting her."* So, yes, Arroway, particularly her characterization in the novel and in Jodie Foster's portrayal, is squarely based upon Jill Tarter. You are wrong, and digging-in and doubling-down on a bad bet ensures you will continue to be wrong. It is only by discarding the falsehood and accepting the facts that you can be right. This is a fact-based thing and our opinions about Sagan and Tarter are not involved. Sorry that reality is not equivalent to your expectations of it. The fault lies not in our stars but in ourselves.
The director inserted a clip from a Clinton press release that was about a rock from Mars that we thought may have had bacteria from Mars. It didn't, but the announcement about the investigation were such a big deal that the president announced it, that really happened. This movie uses an edited clip from the actual press conference to create the illusion of the movie press conference.
Gotta love that the whole reason they picked the man in the first attempt, was because he believed in something nobody can see, something science can't prove (God). But then when she DOES go, their argument AGAINST her experience is that it can't be proven with science that she went anywhere. Lmao, the irony.
I absolutely love this movie. You can thank the likes of Alfred Hitchcock and Orsen Welles for that fantastic mirror 🪞 shot. Great reaction as always. Would love you to check out The Parallax View (1974).
One of my prized possessions is a signed copy of one of Carl Sagan's books, Atomkrieg und Klima-katastrophe. I don't read German, but it was the first and only time I've ever seen his signature in red ink, so I had to have it.
Also by Carl Sagan, his timeless and touching recounting of the human condition in the universe across time, the book Cosmos, also the series from 1980 (not the modern remake). You will be touched by its heart.
29:55 imagine if you would you were one of the Apollo astronauts from the 60s/70s, and upon landing on the moon discovered that landing caused some sort of damage to the lander which would make it impossible to take off from the moons surface…you only have a couple days air at most, comparable food and water…obviously they’d want the astronauts a “quick and painless” method to end themselves rather than the slow torturous end of running out of air/food/water etc…
Good story for headphones. I hope they did the DTS to stereo conversion well, I haven't tried it. Good choice for an audiobook, too, really tunes you out of your eyes.
I can't imagine how life on Planet X, if there was such life, would add 1 plus 1 and not get 2 as the answer. It seems to me that 1 plus 1 would equal 2 no matter where or how you live in this universe. So in my opinion, math would be universal. It would require some kind of alternate reality for math to be different on another planet. Until someone proves that something like that exists, math is math.
If it turns out it doesn't equal 2, what happens? Just burn everything! Goodness knows, anything might fall on our heads, money, you might as well eat it!
Not only the "18 hours of it" line, but also does anybody really believe a woman of Jodie Foster's size would jump out of her chair, rip it free and "pretend" to have her experience? No one mentions that fact.
Love that Carl Sagan predicted Bezos/Musk...except that he made him likable, cool, and helpful. Got _that_ wrong. Poor John Hurt and Tom Skerritt...space ain't their friend. While Jodie Foster follows in her lost father's footsteps and McConaughey is worried about time dilatation in space travel and Gary Busey's son is crazy... wait... Which movie am I watching?
The opening “period music” is all out-of-sync from what radio signals have gotten where on the screen. It might take 10 years to reach Pluto by spacecraft flying at escape velocity, but only some 10 hours at the speed of light. So yes you would have still heard the Spice Girls way out in the Oort Cloud in the camera pan out.
You found one of the sci-fi movies that hit ya in the feels-zone. You should consider watching "A.I.: Artificial Intelligence" from 2001. It's a great under-the-radar Spielberg film you would thoroughly enjoy.
Carl Sagan. He's much more than just the author lol. For someone who loves astronomy, sci-fi, Star Trek, et cetera you should really look him up. I'm actually surprised youve never heard of him. It's like not knowing who Orson Welles or Salvador Dali was.
Its possible but unlikely that an alien species would use base 10 numbering. The reason we us it is simple, we first counted with fingers on our hands. I am sure you have heard of Binary, which is a base 2 counting system, or Hexadecimal using base 16 or maybe even octal using base 8. Each numbering system has its own prime numbers when not converting from one system to another. For example 111 in binary is not a prime in binary, but 111 converts to 7 in decimal which is a prime number.
i didn't read the comments, and this is 3 months ago, so you may already know. at 27:40 you say how creapy the guy is and he looks like a serial killer. He was in a michael j fox movie, called The Frighteners as a creapy af serial killer.
The Carl referred to in the credits was Carl's Jr. 🍟🍔🤪 It should be noted that where all the satellite dishes, the Very Large Array, are located is not too far from the site of where the first atomic bomb was dropped, and a little bit farther down the road is where the Roswell aliens crash landed. The canyon seen in the movie was edited in since no such canyon exists near the Very Large Array having driven by it myself. 👽
The ending was mocked by the creators of South Park! Lol! Mr Garrison, having had a nose job, is asked by the surgeon if he like to watch a movie while his stitches heal and when Garrison asks what they have, the surgeon presents him with a VHS copy of the movie, which causes Garrison to vomit violently, saying it was the worst movie ever made.
Carl Sagan: astronomer, planetary scientist, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, science communicator, author, and professor. An amazing man. If you want to be moved - and I mean to the depths of your being - watch The Pale Blue Dot. Peace.
Its so sad he never got to see the final film. The story of how long it took to make this movie is crazy. Hope you're having a good day!
Carl Sagan has one of the most inspiring speeches in human history in Pale Blue Dot. Sagan was head of the team that assembled the gold records that are carried aboard the Voyager spacecraft that serve as a greeting to any aliens that might find the probes in the far future. As Voyager was leaving the solar system, Sagan lobbied to have the cameras turn back to Earth to take a final image before the cameras lost power. NASA didn't want to do it because turning the craft is risky, takes tons of power, and they could lose contact with Voyager forever if they messed it up. Sagan kept pushing for it, and they took one of the most important images ever captured which Sagan introduced to the world with the Pale Blue Dot speech that unites humanity with science in a way that politicians and religions have no chance of equaling.
A friend of mine who had read Sagan's novel (I have not, shame on me) pointed out to me how this film shows just how books and films are different. In the book, the transport device is basically a chair in a room, and some time is spent talking about its funding and construction. But that's not how you do a film. Zemeckis wisely chose to give us this big rocket-sized device, and without a word, it _instantly_ tells the audience, this is complicated and took a lot of time and money and expertise to construct.
It is one of the rare science-fiction films that treats its audience like intelligent adults, and presents them with thoughtful matters, and not mere spectacle. A personal favorite.
I read the book and I actually think the movie is better. the book has so much more religion in it and the trip to the aliens was taken by a few scientists who experience the aliens in a different way.
The "18 hours of it"-part always gives me goosebumps!
Yep ! been so cool if they said , " what interest me is recorder approximately 18 hours of WHAT sounds like static , BUT IT"S NOT .. " there MORE info IN THE STATIC !!!! "
That could very well be true. That static could have a digital signature just like the original message beamed back. Maybe the static is at different megahertz frequencies that when matched will create a digital harmonic pictures, just a maybe.
For me, the goosebumps part is when they realize the numbers are prime.
Glad you enjoyed it. I saw it back then in the theaters after reading the book. Such a great experience and what a performance she gave. And the mirror scene technically was amazing. Such a beautiful movie and story that we own to Carl Sagan. He inspired generations to follow careers in science including one of my best friends. We used to be glued to the tv when Cosmos was on and later with VHS tapes we would buy and share among us, every once in a while gathering to watch together. Carl Sagan gave the world so much!
The Theater I saw iy in , had a THX Complient sound system , Let me just say ,, 300 plus people where FLOOED , at the Machine walkway , ( plank walk ) The theater was SHAKING as the Massive rings swept by .. EFFFING MIND BLOWING ..
@@geezz99 awesome ;-)
"For Carl" is refering to the late great Carl Sagan
This is one of those movies that definitely deserves a rewatch. There is a lot of foreshadowing in earlier scenes, and I'm sure you miss something just by doing a commentary. I liked the shot of her sitting in the desert with all the satellite dishes in the background, and her sun hat echoes the circles that they make.
Yes, that was John Hurt as Haddon, and it wasn't until seeing this that I remembered that he and Drumlin (Tom Skerritt) were both in Alien as well.
Recommendation: Since the asteroid probe sample just returned to Earth YESTERDAY, I couldn't help but be reminded of The Andromeda Strain, another procedural real-science movie which I've seen several times.
One of my favourites. Loved this movie when it came out in 97. So underrated. Have you seen Apollo 13 Ollie? A great space movie with another incredible score
The Flight Director in Contact, wearing his distinctive vest, is very much like Gene Kranz.
I have been so looking forward to this reaction/review video because Contact is one of my favorite movies of all time. I was blown away when it first came out and I saw it on the big screen. You have no idea how visceral the signal sound and the wormhole imagery were on the big screen with that massive audio. I think it’s really well written and all the things you said about the production aspects and the story. The one thing that I don’t think you gave enough love to was Jodie Foster’s performance. I think she is a phenomenal actress. Her performance in this movie and Silence of the Lambs really made me a fan of hers to the point where I will see any movie she is in because I know that it will be something worth watching.
Don't forget the Accused. She really is a great actress.
How is this movie not a thousand times bigger than it is? People suck.
@@miller-joel well Some suck more then others , the ones who " GET IT" like this very Hopeful story , ARE alway COOL people, I have noticed .
I would have only been 8yrs old and wouldn't have been able to comprehend this movie at the time possibly, but I've seen this movie more times than I can count.
RIP Arecibo. Fell apart a few years ago due to poor maintenance.
No, astronauts weren't given suicide pills. It's a persistent rumour, but if you really wanted to commit suicide in space, all you'd need to do is open the door.
I can _highly_ recommend the book. Much like The Martian, the adaptation is pretty good (The Martian, I think, captures the original slightly better than Contact), the book mostly just adds depth and breadth. Instead of just Ellie, in the book several people go on the trip and each one is given a different unsolved problem, something the aliens haven't been able to figure out for millennia.
Jim Lovell specifically refuted the myth about suicide pills in the book "Lost Moon" (before it was renamed "Apollo 13" due to the movie that drew from it). And yes, his logic was just what you stated.
"Contact" is a truly phenomenal film.
There is one aspect however that I think it maybe doesn't get enough focus. Any reputable scientist would agree that their personal anecdotal account of an experience would never be sufficient as evidence in support of a conclusion. They would agree that multiple lines of evidence and replication from unaffiliated studies should be done to gather more data before drawing conclusions.
Ellie would normally agree with that, but there really is no further line of experimentation that's left to corroborate her experience. And her argumentation takes place in a congressional hearing, and those have no relationship to science, evidence, or responsible fact seeking. They are purely emotional theater for the purposes of political gamesmanship, and Carl Sagan knew that too.
yea while that is true, in the book it wasn't only just her account. An entire group of people went on the trip.
Hours of static is, possibly strong, evidence.
@@nagaslrac VERY strong evidence. Especially since in the book it was multiple people who went on the trip.
That's 1000x more first hand evidence than there is that Jesus ever even existed as well as most biblical characters. It's all 3rd hand accounts, written over hundreds of years, by people who never even met them.
@@willvr4 By semi-illiterate cave dwellers, as Hitchens put it.
Even in ‘97 I knew a Congressional Hearing was inevitable, given how not one but two “Machines” had been built using taxpayer money.
Had it been a purely privately-funded venture that would jot have been the case.
_Contact_ is based on the novel by Carl Sagan, AKA "The man who taught the world science."
He was Bill Nye's professor and he inspired Neil deGrasse Tyson to be a science communicator.
And even just those two have inspired countless more: Sagan's legacy lives on and grows.
I was leaving high school and my parent's religion when this came out. Hugely influential, all-time favorite.
Sounds familiar ...
I grew up as a Jehovah’s Witness but have always been a Trekkie all my life. When this movie came out one of the people in our congregation asked me what did I think about it. I told him we all find faith in our own way. You choose to believe in a god I do not. 🖖🌈
Except, you don't choose what you believe.
@@menotyou8369 life is all about choices.
Actually, in my opinion, it's impossible to "choose" to believe or to disbelieve in anything. The proof of that is deceptively simple: Think of something you believe. Something you believe to your core and of which you have no doubt. Okay, now choose to NOT believe it. You can't. And it works both ways. Think of some idea, some concept, you absolutely do NOT believe. Okay, now choose to believe that same idea or concept or whatever it might be. You can't. Why? Because you either believe something or you don't believe it. You can't NOT believe something you DO believe. Conversely, you can't believe something you DON'T believe. Therein lies the problem I have when folks who are true believers in the idea of an all-powerful, omniscient, omnipresent, supernatural "God" tell nonbelievers that in order to be "saved" all they have to do is "choose to believe". Either way, it's a closed loop with no way out of which ever loop you're in.
@@Code9 Either way, it's a closed loop with no way out of which ever loop you're in.
well i wouldn't characterize it as a loop , trap , futile recursive logic trap . NO , it's more of a Depth of mind and level of personal integrity , that bring the willing and the unwilling to the truth , regardless how incontinent , that TRUTH is , free will is the qustion , and WE do have it , BUT ironical in limited degrees , IF you simulation is good enough than FOR you , IT IS reality . sorry that went off in a few directions.. lol
After the fact you see in the intro that what you're witnessing is the very first radio signal we broadcast reaching Vega, which is the point at which it goes silent.
You wanted to know what the dedication at the end, "For Carl" meant.
This movie is from a novel "Contact" by astrophysicist Carl Sagan, who died of cancer while it was being made. Sagan was a great popularizer of science and, among other things, had a PBS mini-series named "Cosmos" which has since been redone by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and Sagan's wife Ann Druyan Sagan.
Ollie I highly recommend you watch Carl Sagan’s 1980 documentary series Cosmos. I’m not sure if it’s appropriate for a react video. It did a great job though of explaining how our ancestors figured out the answers to some complex scientific questions. Voyager probes were conducting the grand tour of our solar system as it aired answering old questions and raising new ones.
I'd especially check out the segment "Who Speaks for Earth". It will shake you how relevant it is even to this day, and amid all the chaos going on right now, it is an source of inspiration for a better future.
Great review Ollie.
One of the best sci-fi films of all time.
This film was really quite advanced in terms of how it used CGI and special effects, in a way which is quite cleverly woven/hidden. It was also one of the first DVDs ever released when the format was brand new and I remember at the time how it was incredible upgrading from VHS tapes to DVD and this film was a great showcase for the clarity and features of the format.
4:33 "The Black Hole at the Center of M87" is, indeed, THAT black hole, the first one Shep Doleman and his crew photographed with the Event Horizon Telescope in 2019, and if this movie were made, today, about events in 1996, that's a thing people would consider too realistic to add. What are the odds that guy would happen to be caught up in research 30 years ago that would be showing results, today?
But, that's just more attention to detail.
Another movie like this I would recommend reacting to that you would enjoy is "Frequency" (2000) starring Dennis Quaid.
Yessssss such an underated movie
It's absolutely "fabulous" and it's a crime that it hasn't been reacted to more on RUclips.
Robert Zemeckis first time in the director's chair was a small comedy that tanked called "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" and is still to this day one of my favorite comedies. You should check it out!
I definitely love the balance this movie gave between science and faith. Jodie Foster is a incredible actress. Silence of the Lambs is one of her best. Another great movie worth watching is Flightplan.
Flight plan is a good one. She is awesome in pretty much everything.
48:10 There are other mystical things in the movie, like the repeating quadruple star pattern in the popcorn on the floor when her father dies, the poster on Ellie's wall, the stars in Ellie's journey, the sparkling sand on the alien's hand, and the sparking dirt on Ellie's hand at the end. Suggesting some kind of god-like "design." In the book, the pattern was hidden deep in the values of the irrational number Pi.
Star Trek First Contact originally had the longest zoom/pan out in movie history until Contact was released and said "hold my bear". The character David Drumlin is played by Tom Skerritt who also played Dallas in Alien. The scenes with Clinton was done by CGI, same tech used in Forrest Gump to make it look like he was interacting with historical figures.
Not CGI... They used footage from an actual press conference that Clinton gave in 1996, but used a lot of clever editing to take his statements out of context.
Hold my bear?" Rowr!
@@GeoffTrowbridge Not CGI, but they did edit the background to insert and remove people and stuff. Like DS9 Trials and Tribble-ations.
I loved philosophy as a kid and so I naturally fell completely in love with this movie. I didn't notice the amazing cinematography when I was little though. Makes me appreciate the movie even more!
Tom Skerritt, who plays Drumlin also played Captain Dallas in Alien. “Now I know why I took that desk job!” I sometimes feel like that was a nod to Dallas.
Yeah this movie is up there as one of the greats
You really need to learn everything you can about who Carl is :)
The scene with her dad dying...is almost same as in "Silence of the Lambs" which Jody Foster starred in both..👍🏼👍🏼
Dude this reaction rocked almost as much as the movie. You are amazing, so open and unpretentious. Keep it up.
Fun reaction. This is one of my all time favorite films. So glad you loved it.
i always get full body goose bumps when i hear the signal for the first time.
The radio telescope at 9:13 collapsed and no longer working collapse on video all the cables came down and everything..
In the book her mother was still alive and she lived with her after her father died. Then her mother remarried to a university professor, John Staughton. He felt Ellie wasn’t lady like enough and that annoyed her. Even more annoying to her when someone would assume they were related. Right after she came back at the end her mother died. John handed her a letter from her mother dated 35 years earlier. Said she kept this in her purse for years and she wanted to tell you. Ellie reads the letter saying how her mother made a mistake and your father understood and forgave me. But he wasn’t really your father. John Staughton is your father.
Oh, Silence Of The Lambs. You'll love that one. The prequel 'Red Dragon' is a must see as well.
16:15 "It looks like uh... I don't think I can say it on RUclips" 🤣🤣🤣
It's so funny that you have recognized Matthew and had no reaction when jodie foster showed up on screen hahaha. Just one of the best and most consistent actresses out there. Hehehe
I love how we see all the other beings using the transit system.
Contact is one of my fav scifi movie. The concept is simply brilliant. Great reaction
Dude ----- I caught your slip of calling the Vega System the Vega Quadrant. lolol What a Trekkie you have become!!!!! ;)
And I knew you would love this movie. And I hope you get to know more about Carl Sagan. He was very important to the scientific world. This was his project, his book, and he and his wife oversaw the filming of it just before his death. That is why it is dedicated to him. (The turtleneck she is wearing that you commented on is also a nod to Sagan's turtleneck and jacket he always wore)
I also LOVE how this is told through the eyes of a woman. I identified so much with her character. Sagan did this purposefully to benefit the integration of women in the science world. Thanks for watching this on your channel!! It's such an important film!!!
"For Carl" is meant for Carl Sagan who wrote the book the movie is based on.
Bro calm down Traudeau a bit. He is losing his marbles😂
Ellie and Palmer both have encounters with things that are beyond them. While the details drastically differ, the personal experience is jarringly similar. Carl Sagan & Ann Druyan set out to write a tale that brought science and faith together - or at least closer. Sgan was a brilliant scientist AND a brilliant humanist diplomat. I feel Robert Zemeckis managed to portray that in this movie.
Thanks for watching one my all time favorite films.
See: Jill Tarter.
She was a friend of Carl Sagan's and was chief of operations at the VLA, where they shot the radio telescopes for the movie, and she has been one of the leading proponents of SETI, search for extra-terrestrial intelligence, Ellie Arroway is very much based on her.
Not really. What they have in common is that they are both women and astrophysicists.
@@miller-joel Look it up, it is common-knowledge that Arroway is based upon Tarter.
It has nothing to do with what they have in-common, such as pioneering work in SETI and observing from the VLA, it has to do with the fact that Sagan created the character based not upon who she was but *who she was TO HIM from his perspective, as he knew her.*
Also, Ellie Arroway and Jill Tarter are astronomers, not astrophysicists.
@@ZeroOskul "However, Jodie Foster's character Ellie is not directly based on Jill. 'Carl Sagan wrote a book about a woman who does what I do, not about me,' explains Tarter. 'He did his homework, and thus included many of the 'character-building' experiences that are common to women scientists studying and working in a male-dominated profession, so Ellie seems very familiar to me.'"
@@miller-joel According to WikiPedia:
*"Tarter served as a consultant [To Sagan and Druyan] on the story, realistically portraying career struggles of women scientists from the 1950s to 1970s."*
And
*"The characterization of Ellie Arroway was inspired by Jill Tarter, head of Project Phoenix of the SETI Institute; Jodie Foster researched the lead role by meeting her."*
So, yes, Arroway, particularly her characterization in the novel and in Jodie Foster's portrayal, is squarely based upon Jill Tarter.
You are wrong, and digging-in and doubling-down on a bad bet ensures you will continue to be wrong.
It is only by discarding the falsehood and accepting the facts that you can be right.
This is a fact-based thing and our opinions about Sagan and Tarter are not involved.
Sorry that reality is not equivalent to your expectations of it.
The fault lies not in our stars but in ourselves.
The director inserted a clip from a Clinton press release that was about a rock from Mars that we thought may have had bacteria from Mars.
It didn't, but the announcement about the investigation were such a big deal that the president announced it, that really happened. This movie uses an edited clip from the actual press conference to create the illusion of the movie press conference.
Gotta love that the whole reason they picked the man in the first attempt, was because he believed in something nobody can see, something science can't prove (God).
But then when she DOES go, their argument AGAINST her experience is that it can't be proven with science that she went anywhere.
Lmao, the irony.
Yes. The irony & hypocrisy.
Thanks, Oliver! Thanks, Huxley! 📡 This is one of my all-time favorites!!! #RolyPolyOllieReactions #RobertZemeckis #Contact #Contact1997
I absolutely love this movie. You can thank the likes of Alfred Hitchcock and Orsen Welles for that fantastic mirror 🪞 shot. Great reaction as always. Would love you to check out The Parallax View (1974).
This is by far one of my favorite sci-fi movies.
INTERSTELLAR almost seems like a tribute to this movie. Maybe it takes place in the future of this world?
27:55 That stupid blond guy is Gary Busey's son, Jake Busey. He shows up in various 90s movies, like Starship Troopers
One of my prized possessions is a signed copy of one of Carl Sagan's books, Atomkrieg und Klima-katastrophe. I don't read German, but it was the first and only time I've ever seen his signature in red ink, so I had to have it.
A good zemeckis movie that he didn't direct but produced is The Frighteners. It to has crazy Jake Busey.
This one is really underrated. Such a cool movie.
I have already reacted to that on the channel!
Thank you for your video.
Contact is a wonderful movie. Also consider Allan Silvestri's soundtrack. It's amazing.
Also by Carl Sagan, his timeless and touching recounting of the human condition in the universe across time, the book Cosmos, also the series from 1980 (not the modern remake). You will be touched by its heart.
Great reaction bro!!!
You are an intelligent young man. Keep up the good work. 🤘🏼👍🏼
Faith is by far the most important thing you will ever have young man. Please don’t underestimate it. Loved your reaction.
29:55 imagine if you would you were one of the Apollo astronauts from the 60s/70s, and upon landing on the moon discovered that landing caused some sort of damage to the lander which would make it impossible to take off from the moons surface…you only have a couple days air at most, comparable food and water…obviously they’d want the astronauts a “quick and painless” method to end themselves rather than the slow torturous end of running out of air/food/water etc…
Is this merch (is this merch?) or am I dreaming? Is this the merch (bew bew beew) that I've been... searching for?
4:12 Bill Fichiner
22:24 He is creepy because he is Johnny Charles Bartlett from The Frighteners (1996). You reacted to that movie on the channel
The Grand Canyon is in Arizona, Jody was in New Mexico :P
Good story for headphones. I hope they did the DTS to stereo conversion well, I haven't tried it. Good choice for an audiobook, too, really tunes you out of your eyes.
I can't imagine how life on Planet X, if there was such life, would add 1 plus 1 and not get 2 as the answer. It seems to me that 1 plus 1 would equal 2 no matter where or how you live in this universe. So in my opinion, math would be universal. It would require some kind of alternate reality for math to be different on another planet. Until someone proves that something like that exists, math is math.
If it turns out it doesn't equal 2, what happens? Just burn everything! Goodness knows, anything might fall on our heads, money, you might as well eat it!
Not only the "18 hours of it" line, but also does anybody really believe a woman of Jodie Foster's size would jump out of her chair, rip it free and "pretend" to have her experience? No one mentions that fact.
15:30 - No no, that little motif is Hunger Games.😅
Love that Carl Sagan predicted Bezos/Musk...except that he made him likable, cool, and helpful. Got _that_ wrong.
Poor John Hurt and Tom Skerritt...space ain't their friend. While Jodie Foster follows in her lost father's footsteps and McConaughey is worried about time dilatation in space travel and Gary Busey's son is crazy...
wait...
Which movie am I watching?
The opening “period music” is all out-of-sync from what radio signals have gotten where on the screen. It might take 10 years to reach Pluto by spacecraft flying at escape velocity, but only some 10 hours at the speed of light.
So yes you would have still heard the Spice Girls way out in the Oort Cloud in the camera pan out.
29:22 this sequence made me laugh loool
Berlin Olympics were first ever televised...
"What the chicken?!" - 😄
Blind guy is William Fitchner.👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼
SAGAN WROTE MANY BOOKS. I ENJOYED THIS AND "BROCA'S BRAIN" 📒📓👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼😎
Another great choice form Ollie, please checkout Mission to Mars from 2000.
Check out Gattaca for a great sci-fi film.
I don't trust those aliens. Imagine if our best idea of first contact with an alien race was to A.I. a woman's dead father to say hi
You found one of the sci-fi movies that hit ya in the feels-zone. You should consider watching "A.I.: Artificial Intelligence" from 2001. It's a great under-the-radar Spielberg film you would thoroughly enjoy.
Carl Sagan. He's much more than just the author lol. For someone who loves astronomy, sci-fi, Star Trek, et cetera you should really look him up. I'm actually surprised youve never heard of him. It's like not knowing who Orson Welles or Salvador Dali was.
I need a shirt that says Oh My Days with a shock face.
Love anything with Jodie Foster !!!
25:25 ...now it's only about 45-50% on average worldwide
YES THAT WAS THE GRAND CANYON, BUT ONLY A PART OF IT, U CAN NOT SEE THE GRAND CANYON IN ONE PHOTO, IT IS SO LARGE !!
It's a cookbook!
IT IS JOHN HURT!!!!👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼
Its possible but unlikely that an alien species would use base 10 numbering. The reason we us it is simple, we first counted with fingers on our hands. I am sure you have heard of Binary, which is a base 2 counting system, or Hexadecimal using base 16 or maybe even octal using base 8. Each numbering system has its own prime numbers when not converting from one system to another. For example 111 in binary is not a prime in binary, but 111 converts to 7 in decimal which is a prime number.
Have you seen the original version of The Arrival starring Charlie Sheen? It's been largely forgotten.
Who's Carl, he says... 😂 Have fun researching and discovering greatness.
Also, love your reactions. Well done.
i didn't read the comments, and this is 3 months ago, so you may already know. at 27:40 you say how creapy the guy is and he looks like a serial killer. He was in a michael j fox movie, called The Frighteners as a creapy af serial killer.
I reacted to that movie on the channel if you want to watch it! :)
awesome, @@RolyPolyOllieReactions one of my all time favs :)
Katya Zamolodchikova would enjoy this reaction.
We sent probes\VOYAGER...I got a tattoo to mark the day!!!👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼😎😎😎
Ollie's shirt is nice, nice, nice! Boop!
If you enjoyed this film, you might like Arrival
The Carl referred to in the credits was Carl's Jr. 🍟🍔🤪
It should be noted that where all the satellite dishes, the Very Large Array, are located is not too far from the site of where the first atomic bomb was dropped, and a little bit farther down the road is where the Roswell aliens crash landed. The canyon seen in the movie was edited in since no such canyon exists near the Very Large Array having driven by it myself. 👽
Very simply, Carl Sagan was the Alex McColgan for Gen-X.
Another good one!
25:30 - it's around 93%.
Please, You must do a close up face to the camera in every video from now on!!! Also , how did you not see Chozen from Karate Kid? Come on man!!
Kids these days don't know who Carl Sagan was.
The ending was mocked by the creators of South Park! Lol!
Mr Garrison, having had a nose job, is asked by the surgeon if he like to watch a movie while his stitches heal and when Garrison asks what they have, the surgeon presents him with a VHS copy of the movie, which causes Garrison to vomit violently, saying it was the worst movie ever made.