I watched this movie so you wouldn't have to. By the time 2021 arrived the world had
seemed to turn the corner on the pandemic. Multiple lingering issues
were still an embarrassing shitshow but with the vaccines out and the
Orange Buffoon being shown the exit, despite unprecedented and scary
attempts to stay in power, things were starting to look up. With the
receding of the pandemic the various workings of civilization began
to restart, one of them being movie studios who began tossing out
previews to films that had been long delayed.
One of those films is called the The
Tomorrow War staring Chris Pratt, a military science fiction film
about the usual unstoppable invading aliens. Despite my liberal
bleeding heart, tree hugging leanings I am a sucker for such movies
and watched Tomorrow War the day it dropped on Amazon Prime.
In truth, my eagerness to see the movie was in part due to my desire
for new content, any entertainment that wasn't a leftover from
happier, pre-pandemic times.
For example, over that extremely long
nightmare year of 2020, I had rewatched The Lord of The Rings movies
so many times I was starting to lose real life hope no matter the
multiple times Gandalf and Aragorn assured me it still existed. Yes,
I am a voracious reader but there are times everyone needs fresh
visual and audio input that only the boob tube can provide.
As for The Tomorrow War right
off the bat I had to dump a bushel of demerits for the basic premise.
Chris Pratt, not one of my favorite actors to begin with, plays Dan
Forester, a former Green Beret who is now a high school biology
teacher who deep down knows he's meant for greater things in life.
But in the first couple of scenes we find out that he has been turned
down for a position at a “prestigious research facility.”
Danny Boy gets all mopey, and even a
little bit whiny with his loving wife and daughter doing their best
to comfort him during a World Cup Soccer viewing party at his house.
See during the middle of this televised to the world game a wormhole
opens up with soldiers from the year 2051 literally dropping in to
tell everyone that humanity is losing a war against invading aliens
and on the brink of extinction.
These aliens, which are called
whitespikes, will suddenly appear in the year 2048 and overrun the
world in three short years. These representatives from the future
have interrupted the bloody World Cup match to ask the nations of
present to send soldiers to the future to help with the war.
Of course as with these types of
movies, the nations of the world almost immediately start sending
troops to the future without any apparent questioning of the future
people, or assessment of the tactical situation. More to the point,
nothing in the movie suggests that people here in the presents take a
moment and ask the future people detail questions of where these
aliens first set foot on Earth. All we're told is that the first
recorded encounters with the whitespikes were in eastern Siberia.
A huge area to be sure, but with
thirty-some odd years to wait it seems commonsense to be me to maybe
load up a couple of divisions of troops from different nations and
recon the area. Yes, we're talking Russia here but I wouldn't be
opposed to some vodka-soaked Russian general being put in charge as
humanity does a grid by grid search to short circuit our extinction.
Dear Lord, real life murderer, and petty dictator Putin would love
calling himself the freaking savior of humanity.
In fairness to the movie, one of the
future soldiers does say that that when the whitespikes began
appearing the nations of the world looked back on the records and no
telescopes nor radar saw anything drop down from space. Okay, I'm no
George Patton nor Alexander the Great but that suggests to me that
maybe they were already on Earth. And some forensic study on the
first few whitespikes killed in the war might narrow down the area
where they first appeared. Hint...Hint.
But no, present day troops are rushed
through the wormhole to 2051 for seven-day deployments with fewer
than thirty-percent surviving. Seven day deployments you ask? It's
all part of the movie's time travel gizmo and is just a useful plot
device.
With trained troops coming back as
hamburger, if they return at all, the nations of the world resort to
drafting civilians. No, these civilians have no prolonged period of
basic training. They are literally given weapons, some basic gear,
and then get sucked up into the wormhole for a seven day visit to
Hell.
Even worse for this movie many of these
civilians are not in the best of health. Many are clearly not
physically fit for serving as a REMF in present day armies much less
engaging in intense combat with murderous aliens.
Low and behold former Green Beret, Dan
Forester's number comes up for the draft. Forester's wife and
daughter plead with him to contact his estranged, troubled Vietnam
Vet, genius-level mechanical engineer father to dodge the draft. See,
Danny Boy's dad has figured out a way help draftees circumvent the
tracking device the government installed on those going to the
future. We then get a scene with Danny Boy and his dad where they
promptly engage in a father/son pissing contest. Danny Boy gets
disgusted with his dad and says fuck it, he reports to the base where
the pathetic civilians are dispatched to the future.
Right from the get-go the trip to 2051
is a cluster fuck with Danny Boy's group dropping from the wormhole
not five-feet above the ground but at least fifteen-stories above
apocalyptic Miami Beach. Luckily for Danny and the important
secondary characters they fall into a roof top pool that strangely
still has enough water to cushion their fall.
From there the survivors regroup and
get a mission to rescue an important group of scientists working in
the city. Now understand, whitespikes have infested the city and a
dozen or so pizza delivery-type guys and retail working ladies have
to fight their way to the building where the eggheads were doing
their thing. Remember no training, no months long physical
conditioning, just John Wayne movie determination and Danny Boy and
another former army type who has already served three previous
seven-day tours to 2051. That guy has terminal cancer and is a
walking death wish. But he does carry a souvenir, a claw from one of
the first whitespikes killed in the war.
The movie meanders to a conclusion with
Danny Boy meeting his 2051 daughter, who just happens to be a colonel
in what is left of the military force fighting the whitespikes. The
2051 people have pretty much realized they can't win, so why they
were continuing to suck unprepared draftees from their past into their hopeless fight,
I can't figure out.
What the 2051 people do have is research into a biological weapon that will kill the female
whitespikes. Supposedly the females are extra hard to kill and like
Star Trek's furry and cute tribbles are born pregnant. Hence
how they were able to overrun the planet in three years.
Danny Boy and his adult daughter, who
is also the chief scientist of the research project capture a female
whitespike, take it back to humanity's last fortified base, and
perfect the bio-weapon. See Dan's daughter wants him to go back to
the present and use the weapon while there is still time.
Well now all sorts of crazy shit starts
to happen. That last base is attacked and overrun with whitespikes
out to rescue the female. Dan now fights to survive long enough for
his timer to hit zero where the time travel gizmo will automatically send
him, the nifty bio-weapon, and the surviving members of his group
back to our present.
Returning to the present the world has
gone to pieces. Realization that the 2051 war is hopeless and
extinction imminent the geopolitical situation in the present has
seen all nations turn inward with international alliances being
abandoned. It's clearly mentioned even NATO has disbanded something I
once thought ridiculous and even suicidal until the Orange Buffoon
did his best to make it happen.
To me that is when the movie got extra
super stupid, yes the 2051 war is lost but with thirty years to
prepare the world of our present could pull together and somehow
change the future. But then again the United States has in reality
just seen over six-hundred thousand people die due to Covid-19 and
there are motherfuckers who violently believe it was all some grand
conspiracy. Then there are climate change deniers, another massive
conspiracy, and Flat Earthers so maybe the writers do understand
human nature better than me.
But never fear, Dan Forester will save
the day. See in one of Dan's biology classes there is a student who
is a volcano nerd. This kid loves volcanoes and knows everything
about them. So after Dan and his terminal cancer combat buddy have
his souvenir whitespike claw analyzed by a scientist and discover
ancient volcanic ash embedded in it and get a general age of that
substance. For reasons I either missed or the writers never stated,
Dan get his volcano wizard student to tell them what part of the
Earth the ash originated.
They surmise that the whitespikes
arrive on Earth right before a certain Siberian volcano erupted and
ended up buried and then frozen in ice. That during our time the ice
melted enough to thaw out the planet-cleaning killing machines.
Great we have a location, eastern
Siberia but we then learn Russia has locked its borders tight. And
the United States government has no desire to contact them and say
they have cool information to share that might save humanity in
thirty years.
But wait, Dan's estranged father just
happens to own a C-130 transport plane and can fly the beast under
Russian radar. So Dan, his dad, the terminal cancer guy along with
several others organize a mission to fly into Siberia to find and then
destroy the whitespikes with the bio-weapon.
This motley crew locate the buried
spaceship, blast their way in, and begin killing the whitespikes
still sleeping in their hibernation sacks. That is until a couple of
whitespikes begin screaming waking up the rest. The group then begins
blasting away with weapons as the whitespikes start escaping until
terminal cancer guy detonates the C-4 explosives they had placed
throughout the ship.
Everyone inside the ship dies except
Danny Boy and a couple of lucky whitespikes that are doing their
best to run off into the icy wilderness. Dan and his estranged
father, who was left outside to cover the exit, give chase and have a
final confrontation with the two remaining aliens. Yeah, one of the
surviving whitespikes is female and she's clearly pregnant.
Father and son kill the last two
whitespikes and then have one of those redemption/reconciliation
moments that has all the sweet sincerity of saccharin. They go home
where they are greeted by the world as heroes.
Okay my biggest problem with the movie
was the basic idea that 2051 world would come to our present asking
for soldiers to fight a war that they had long since decided was
lost. The better plan, in my ever humble opinion, would have them
developed the bio-weapon first then drop into the World Cup game with
it and a detailed report and get us in the present to locate the and
kill the whitespikes.
The world could have still gotten all
gung-ho with Dan Forester drafted into a global coalition to locate
and eliminate the threat because of his prior military service. Dan
could have seen a message from his adult daughter who still would
have been the chief scientist on the 2051 bio-weapon and realized his
path to glory would be to change the future for her.
But no, we get a chaotic mishmash of
Terminator, Aliens, and Predator
tropes so Chris Pratt can look good on screen. My problem with him is
that he can't act. His character in the Parks and
Recreation was a one-dimensional
creature that honestly didn't seem to stray far from his real
personality. The same goes for his character, Peter Quill, in the
MCU. The first Guardians of Galaxy movie was great but the second not
so much.
In
short Chris Pratt strikes me as a pompous douchebag who isn't any
different than a couple of thousand other underemployed actors living
in Hollywood. His one difference is a couple of lucky breaks other,
better performers never got.
If you
haven't already figured out, The Tomorrow War
is a wreck of a movie that I honestly can't recommend for interesting
entertainment. Truthfully the best part of the movie were the
whitespike aliens, which were pure CGI. Time travel films can be
tricky things and when done well can be some of the best thought
provoking entertainment around. My final stab at this movie would be
for someone to go back in time and prevent Amazon from wasting money
on this script.
