Movie Breakdown: The Tomorrow War
Pre-Screening Stance:
Marvel Cinematic Universe aside, are there any great films with Chris Pratt as the star? I enjoy the two Lego movies, but he just provides his voice there. I guess Jurassic World is fun, but you could argue that it’s only watchable because of the dinos. Anyhow, what I’m saying is that I’m real iffy on The Tomorrow War.
Post-Screening Ramble:
The Tomorrow War is OK until it isn’t. Here’s the nonsensical but pretty simple plot – way, way in the future, Earth has been overrun by monstrous aliens and humanity is on the brink of extinction. With what resources the future folks have left, they create a time machine and travel into the past to warn people about their impending doom. No wait, they actually go back to institute a global draft so that they can attempt to save their timeline. Most draftees, as you can imagine, get killed and the whole thing is a disaster until the one man everyone needed all along, the mightily named Dan Forester (Chris Pratt), gets his call to serve. He then meets Charlie (Sam Richardson), Dorian (Edwin Hodge) and others and goes about making a difference. Or something. Honestly, if Dan and his new friends hadn’t been around, I’m pretty sure the outcome would have been similar, but whatever.
Despite being a very silly affair, I was actually in on The Tomorrow War for a good while. The action is solid, the pace is pretty breezy and I was fine with just seeing where the whole thing might go. And then I looked at the actual runtime, which is a whopping 140 minutes, and I realized that what I thought had been three full acts of an OK-but-forgettable slice of sci-fi had actually just been two. Weirdly, director Chris McKay must have noticed this as well, because the third act of this film is entirely jarring, almost as if it’s desperately trying to re-ignite your interest in it, and an already dumb movie shifts into something that’s wholly stupid and tiresome. It’s too bad, really, because The Tomorrow War does have a fun concept.
If The Tomorrow War was shorter, I’d say turn it on and maybe have a good laugh at its expense, but this thing is a beast and you should spend that time elsewhere. The film will hit Prime Video this Friday, July 2.
One Last Thought:
Spoilers here … but it’s all I could think about after the movie ended.
Considering that there are only 500,000 people left in the future, why they didn’t just abandon their timeline, move into the past, and then work from there on a way to defeat the aliens? It’s wildly silly that they’re good with grinding out their research in the middle of a global war that they’re very much losing.
