spoilers ahead I felt like the character conflict arcs were contrived and ultimately the idea of learning a language makes you a pre-cog fell flat for me. In science fiction, the big idea goes ‘woo!’ or the characters go ‘woo!’ but in the case of Arrival, nothing really went ‘woo!’
But maybe I’m wrong - what was I missing about Arrival?
I thought that the reveal of the heptapods being much larger creatures, and our earlier understanding of them to be based on the characters limited perception, to be a really neet allusion to the overall premise of the story as well.