Watching CONTACT (1997) For the FIRST TIME and it becomes one of my FAVOURITE movies! REACTION 

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.

The "18 hours of it"-part always gives me goosebumps!

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!

"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.

"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.

_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.

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 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. 🖖🌈

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.

I was leaving high school and my parent's religion when this came out. Hugely influential, all-time favorite.

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.

One of the best sci-fi films of all time.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Another movie like this I would recommend reacting to that you would enjoy is "Frequency" (2000) starring Dennis Quaid.

Yeah this movie is up there as one of the greats

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.

You really need to learn everything you can about who Carl is :)

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.

Oh, Silence Of The Lambs. You'll love that one. The prequel 'Red Dragon' is a must see as well.

The radio telescope at 9:13 collapsed and no longer working collapse on video all the cables came down and everything..

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.

Dude this reaction rocked almost as much as the movie. You are amazing, so open and unpretentious. Keep it up.

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!

Fun reaction. This is one of my all time favorite films. So glad you loved it.

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.

16:15 "It looks like uh... I don't think I can say it on RU-vid" 🤣🤣🤣

i always get full body goose bumps when i hear the signal for the first time.

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!

Thanks, Oliver! Thanks, Huxley! 📡 This is one of my all-time favorites!!! #RolyPolyOllieReactions #RobertZemeckis #Contact #Contact1997

Contact is one of my fav scifi movie. The concept is simply brilliant. Great reaction

This is by far one of my favorite sci-fi movies.

4:12 Bill Fichiner

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!!!

I love how we see all the other beings using the transit system.

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

1:46 That would be so amazing travel around space to catch different periods of transmission

Great reaction bro!!! You are an intelligent young man. Keep up the good work. 🤘🏼👍🏼

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).

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.

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.

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.

Thank you for your video. Contact is a wonderful movie. Also consider Allan Silvestri's soundtrack. It's amazing.

27:55 That stupid blond guy is Gary Busey's son, Jake Busey. He shows up in various 90s movies, like Starship Troopers

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.

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.

29:22 this sequence made me laugh loool

Bro calm down Traudeau a bit. He is losing his marbles😂

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.

"For Carl" is meant for Carl Sagan who wrote the book the movie is based on.

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 Grand Canyon is in Arizona, Jody was in New Mexico :P

"What the chicken?!" - 😄

Faith is by far the most important thing you will ever have young man. Please don’t underestimate it. Loved your reaction.

INTERSTELLAR almost seems like a tribute to this movie. Maybe it takes place in the future of this world?

A good zemeckis movie that he didn't direct but produced is The Frighteners. It to has crazy Jake Busey.

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…

Another great choice form Ollie, please checkout Mission to Mars from 2000.

Is this merch (is this merch?) or am I dreaming? Is this the merch (bew bew beew) that I've been... searching for?

22:24 He is creepy because he is Johnny Charles Bartlett from The Frighteners (1996). You reacted to that movie on the channel

Love anything with Jodie Foster !!!

Another good one!

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.

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.

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.

15:30 - No no, that little motif is Hunger Games.😅

Check out Gattaca for a great sci-fi film.

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.

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.

It's a cookbook!

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.

I need a shirt that says Oh My Days with a shock face.

Huh had no idea this one was coming out - it's my favourite film. Well, one of them. Alien or Contact. Or Terminator 2. Or Jurassic Park. Or... Instead of my normal 10 posts per video as I'm watching, I've put them all into one comment here, so as not to hog the conversation :) 00:15 it's based off the book Contact by Carl Sagan. If you have a PO Box I can ship a copy to you if you like. 00:27 the mirror is done very cleverly - it's such a good effect you almost don't even realise it's happening. It's a blue screen mirror - here's a 50 second behind the scenes from the DVD on how they did it - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-vEU0krH5HZI.html 01:44 I love the distortion through the asteroid belt. The scene is good but scientifically inaccurate - our signals are out to approx 90 light years and when you're in the asteroid belt, you're only about 2-3 hours away from Earth (radio speed) so you wouldn't really be hearing stuff from the 60s or 50s, you'd hear stuff from a few hours ago. 02:59 It was :) Same people who made Forest Gump which also has a lot of clever visual effects and transitions. Robert Zemeckis I think was the director of both? 03:18 That beach ... is the one she visits at the end of the film :) 03:54 It is out of the JB movie - it is, or rather *was*, the Arecibo Radio Telescope in I think Puerto Rico. Sadly it was destroyed a couple of years back when one of the support cables snapped and the top came crashing down on the dish. Kinda like the james bond movie, thinking about it >< 03:59 Goldeneye lol 04:02 you got it haha 04:10 It does sound like a motorcycle, but it's actually the radio waves from a pulsar, which makes sense cos she's scanning for radio waves I guess. 04:25 So Neutron stars spin very fast and send out two massive jets of radio waves at their poles. That's the flapping sound you can hear. A star quake is when a neutron star gets some funny stuff happening on the inside and it disrupts the spinning a little - this changes the radio waves coming out of the star. She was listening to the pulsar because of the change in radio signature was picked up. 06:29 I mean it's literally not the brightest star in the sky because it's not a star >< The brightest star in the sky is of course The Sun. Followed by Sirius. 10:58 Yeah that's the Very Large Array - either they filmed it at an appointed time or possibly they paid them something like $50,000 to "borrow" one of the dishes for a day or two of filming. I've visited the array - it's... the size of those things is crazy - they're all the size of skyscrapers and watching them all move at once in the same direction is astounding. It's in New Mexico and that Canyon is called Thompson Canyon. 14:54 in the movie the numbers are prime numbers. In the book IIRC it's the first 100 digits of pi - both would be impossible for nature to repeat as radio waves - but the writers thought people would understand prime numbers as a concept than pi. 15:00 Yes and no. They would likely use a different base than we do (we use base 10 because we have 10 fingers on our hands). Prime numbers exist in other bases, but they are different numbers - it's very unlikely they'd use base 10. Instead they're more likely to do things around the 21cm range (google) - it's how to detect hydrogen and is the basis of protons. 16:40 No it wasn't the first that was sent into space - but it was the first one powerful enough to reach other star systems. Well, to reach other star systems and be picked up - ALL radio signals we've emitted end up in space eventually. 16:48 Yeah - he's featured a couple of times - using the same method that they used in Forrest Gump. Weirdly they altered Clinton's tie colour - in the original news footage it was one colour and the director was like "nah I want this colour" so some poor sap had to spend a week manually altering the tie colour >< 17:10 Yes he was an actual President - 1993 to 2001 lol so probably in your lifetime. The footage is from news clippings I *think* talking about a Mars Mission at the time. 17:34 No but it was the first one transmitted around the entire world. 18:07 have you SEEN American cable news? lol 19:45 ROFL I literally said at the same time as you "Is that John Hurt?". I've never checked. Turns out - yes, it is indeed the late great John Hurt. 20:17 it is indeed a Star Trek in-joke - in the book it was coffee. 21:06 Drumlin is an arsehole - he reminds me of many, many senior managers who steal all the good ideas of the employees and treat them like pants! Didn't deserve what he got, though. 25:30 It's less now but at the time of the book (80s) it was pretty much true. 26:25 well, he *does* kinda fall. About 2 miles into the air ... :D 28:27 watching this in the cinema when it came out, the sound design is incredible - the room was shaking and the audience were just sat in silence - no gasps, no cheers, nothing - everyone was just staring at the screen. 30:00 They do indeed. In case something goes horrendously wrong and they're left out in space - say like Apollo 13 but instead of reaching Earth they miss - at those speeds, it's not possible to rescue anyone... and would otherwise just die of dehydration or something. 33:12 Composer is Alan Silvestri. You may remember him from such movies as Back to the Future(s), The Abyss (another movie you should review, actually), Forrest Gump, Volcano, Judge Dredd, Lilo and Stitch, and Castaway. Oh, and Predator. :p 34:10 the visual effects for this scene are, well I was going to say "out of this world" heh. This film pioneered so many things we take for granted these days. 35:46 those "barriers" she's touching - are the walls of the pod. The film and book are pretty ambiguous but my interpretation has always been that she never left Earth - this is a communications platform, rather than a vehicle. 36:05 Originally when writing the book, Sagan did consider ending the film here - leaving it open to "did she actually die?" Although he decided against it. 40:30 IT's Thompson Canyon, as above. Just below Elle there is a sloped surface, she's not actually "on the edge, on some sand". But every time I watch this movie I'm like "girl, take 10 steps back, that could fall of at any time :D" 40:44 Carl Sagan. You may want to check him out - he was a science communicator, much like Neil de Grasse Tyson etc. He was much nicer, though. Think Mr Rodgers as a Scientist. He wrote the book the film is based on. 41:00 Glad you enjoyed it - it's one of the best films ever made, imo.

If you enjoyed this film, you might like Arrival

25:25 ...now it's only about 45-50% on average worldwide

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

Katya Zamolodchikova would enjoy this reaction.

I think this is a superior sci-fi film until she finally reaches the alien world. At that point, writer Carl Sagan's seeming unfamiliarity with old sci-fi tropes is shown when he resorts to the old "we've assumed a form that is more familiar to you" routine. After such a great build-up, I've always found this crushingly disappointing.

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.

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 !!

Who's Carl, he says... 😂 Have fun researching and discovering greatness. Also, love your reactions. Well done.

Very simply, Carl Sagan was the Alex McColgan for Gen-X.

Have you seen the original version of The Arrival starring Charlie Sheen? It's been largely forgotten.

25:30 - it's around 93%.

Kids these days don't know who Carl Sagan was.

Do u have to be on Patrion to get the merch? I would be interested in a t-shirt and a "I love Frank" coffee mug. That is hilarious when u get your face close to the camera 📷 I seen a few videos 📹 when u do that. lmao

I much prefer Sean Bean as a good guy. I loved him in Silent Hill 2006.

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. Pale Blue Dot - Carl Sagan BA, BS, MA, PhD

I just had a thought. If this movie was made today. Instead of "Japanese subcontractors". It's going to be "chinese subcontractors". And the movie will be funded by, who else, the chinese.

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.

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!!

So, great review. And a great movie. It's another favorite of mine. But I have to disagree about the ending and the faith theme. See, the thing is, Ellie (the science side) did have proof with the hours of recordings. That kind of puts a wrench in the narrative they were portraying that science works on the basis of faith just like belief in a god does. That's just not the case. That aside, there were so many things in this move to love. I've never read the book, but maybe I'll check it out now.

I just recently found out that this movie has 68% on Rotten Tomatoes!!.............. ............................ 🤨😡😡😡😡😡🤬🤬🤬🤬