Contact
Movie, 1997, Present Day, Set in Present day
Contact is #3 of 18 in release order and #4 of 18 in chronological order in the Space Movies.
The story
A radio astronomer receives the first extraterrestrial radio signal ever picked up on Earth. As the world powers scramble to decipher the message and decide upon a course of action, she must make some difficult decisions between her beliefs, the truth, and reality.
Contact recap
Dr. Ellie Arroway, who lost her father as a child, listens for alien signals at observatories while her old boss David Drumlin, now science adviser to the President, cuts her funding. The reclusive billionaire S. R. Hadden backs her, and at the Very Large Array she picks up a signal from Vega: a sequence of prime numbers, then a rebroadcast of Hitler's 1936 Olympic speech, then the plans for a huge machine. The world argues over what it means. Ellie is passed over to ride the machine partly because she is an atheist, as revealed by Palmer Joss, a religious philosopher she once slept with. Drumlin is chosen, and a religious extremist blows up the machine, killing him. Hadden reveals a second machine built in Japan, and Ellie goes.
Contact ending explained
Ellie drops through the machine into a series of wormholes and arrives on a beach that looks like a picture she drew as a child, where an alien speaks to her in the form of her father. To everyone watching, the pod simply fell through in a few seconds. Ellie cannot prove her story, but it is quietly noted that her recorder captured eighteen hours of static. She returns to her work listening at the VLA.
Post-credits scenes
No. There is no post-credits scene.
Where to watch Contact
Contact isn't on a US streaming service right now. You can rent or buy it on Amazon, Apple TV, and Google Play.
Ratings
IMDb 7.5/10, Rotten Tomatoes 69%
Where it fits
- Release order: after Apollo 13, before Event Horizon.
- Chronological order: after Apollo 13, before Deep Impact.
Cast
- Jodie Foster as Ellie Arroway
- Matthew McConaughey as Palmer Joss
- James Woods as Michael Kitz
- John Hurt as S. R. Hadden
- Tom Skerritt as David Drumlin
- William Fichtner as Kent
- David Morse as Ted Arroway
- Angela Bassett as Rachel Constantine
- Geoffrey Blake as Fisher
- Max Martini as Willie
- Rob Lowe as Richard Rank
- Jake Busey as Joseph
Directed by Robert Zemeckis.