REVIEW: ‘The Tomorrow War’ can’t avert a recycled screenplay
Chris Pratt stars in The Tomorrow War, directed by Chris McKay.
Since The Tomorrow War is all about skipping ahead to the future, let me jump to its most notable achievement. The movie features some of the nastiest, most frighteningly designed creatures I’ve seen in an alien invasion movie in a long time. Muscular, many-limbed and possessing tentacles that eject bullet-like spines, the so-called Whitespikes are instantly believable as a species that could overrun the Earth. So it’s a shame that the movie that introduces them feels distinctly familiar, as if constructed from pieces of other, better sci-fi movies.
It’s unclear if this recycled quality contributed to Paramount’s decision to sell The Tomorrow War to Amazon for a reported $200 million, or if it was merely a shrewd attempt to bring in some cash while theatres were mostly closed. Either way, the movie is now available on Prime Video, perhaps making it a more underwhelming experience, depending on your home viewing setup.
After a bizarre teaser of the characters’ arrival in the year 2051 in the film’s opening minutes, we’re then kicked back to 2022. Dan Forester (Chris Pratt) is a former special ops soldier who’s now working as a high school science teacher. He and a bunch of friends are watching the World Cup final one evening when a team of soldiers from 2051 appear in the middle of the field via a time portal. They inform the world that in their time, aliens have nearly wiped out humanity, and they need to call on people of the past to fill out their ranks.
One year (and a hilariously abbreviated montage of events) later, and the casualties are piling up. A global draft has started, bringing in conscripted fighters of every age, gender, and skill level, with depressingly low survival rates. Unsurprisingly, Forester’s number is called, and he heads off into the future, unsure if he’ll ever see his wife (Betty Gilpin) or daughter (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) again.
The alien Whitespikes are a plausibly fearsome enemy.
When Dan and his team do encounter the Whitespikes for the first time, it’s not hard to understand why humanity is losing the war. The creatures are clever and brutal, and the movie does a good job of showing (without too much expository dialogue) how they overwhelmed a far more technologically adept species. The Whitespikes, like the xenomorphs in the Alien franchise, have queens that are wickedly difficult to take down; the battles with them are tense and dynamic, and the tables turn several times in each fight, keeping you locked on the action.
The main issue with The Tomorrow War is the screenplay. The idea of a global draft and untrained humans being thrown as cannon fodder against a superior enemy calls back to Starship Troopers, but this time there’s no biting satire. The method of the Whitespikes’ arrival on Earth is borrowed from the recent Alien sequels, and the time-travel premise hearkens back to Edge of Tomorrow. But McKay’s movie doesn’t combine these pieces in a transformative or innovative way, so you’re left wanting to watch the titles that inspired it instead.
The character motivations also begin to slip around the end of the second act. Dan’s mission is to create a Whitespike-destroying toxin, which he’ll carry with him to the past, so it can be mass-produced and sent forwards in time to deploy against the aliens. However, any viewer paying attention will see the flaws in that plan: why not mass produce the stuff and hold onto it until the time in the future when the aliens arrive? Or (as the movie makes a big deal about during the climax) to pre-emptively track down the creatures and neutralize them even sooner? The movie wastes a lot of energy and audience goodwill by turning the final act into a desperate, eleventh-hour mission, when better solutions seem to be staring the characters in the face.
Yvonne Strahovski leads a dwindling force of humans in the future.
The movie also clumsily weaves in a theme of parental abandonment and PTSD. Dan is estranged from his father James (J.K. Simmons), a Vietnam vet, and he’s horrified to discover during his tour in the future that he’s destined to abandon his daughter like his father did to him. The time travel element makes this real confusing, real fast. Wouldn’t Dan’s new foreknowledge of his actions change the timeline? Ultimately, the parent-child strife only serves to set up some frustrating and obvious character moments, and it threatens to break the rules established by the movie’s world-building.
If all you’re after is a sci-fi blockbuster that you can easily stream at home, The Tomorrow War serves that function. But the story doesn’t hold up under close scrutiny, a disappointing result given all the work that went into the film’s production and creature design. If I could go back in time, I’d suggest they put Sam Richardson into a “Neil Patrick Harris-in-Starship Troopers” role. A little more irony could have made the movie feel like it really was from the future.
The Tomorrow War gets two stars out of four.
Stray thoughts
I half expected some kind of “raptors in Jurassic Park 3” reveal about the Whitespikes and their intelligence.
Why did humans decide to stick with lame old firearms in the thirty years before the aliens arrived? No lasers?
I can’t tell if the reveal of the pilot in the final act is intended to set up a sequel, or it’s just another Alien reference.