Other mistake: When Amy Adams leaves the spacecraft for the final time she is met by Jeremy Renner who throws a blanket around her shoulders. As he does so, the blanket gets caught on something out of view top-of-frame (presumably a boom mic) and he has to tug at it to free it. This was part of one long take in fading light and given the amount of background action going on it was presumably too difficult or time consuming to re-shoot. (01:32:55)
Arrival (2016)
Directed by: Denis Villeneuve
Starring: Forest Whitaker, Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Michael Stuhlbarg
Dr. Louise Banks: If you could see your whole life from start to finish, would you change things?
Dr. Louise Banks: You can understand communication and still end up single.
Ian Donnelly: You know I've had my head tilted up to the stars for as long as I can remember. You know what surprised me the most? It wasn't meeting them. It was meeting you.
Question: Why is it that the aliens, who obviously possess technology and intellect far beyond humans, didn't think to use their pictographs to communicate right out the gate? We had to wait for Amy Adams and her dry erase board?
Answer: The aliens don't see time in a linear fashion but all of time at once, meaning they can see the future, which is why their writing is like it is. They therefore knew Louise (played by Adams) would be the one to figure out their language and had to wait for her, or simply chose to wait for her.
Answer: This question was never answered in the movie. Any response would be speculation. One guess: the aliens waited for humans to make the first attempt to communicate in order to assess how to respond.
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Answer: The Heptapods' "present" encompassed about 6000 years of our human past, present and future. So, they perceived 3000 years of our past and 3000 years of our future simultaneously. It's a confounding idea to humans, but the Heptapods already knew, 3000 years in advance, that Louise was the critical contact for the evolution of communication between our species. For the Heptapods, there was no coincidence or impatience or blind luck; they already knew exactly when and how to start communicating with her.
Charles Austin Miller