Never put off until, tomorrow: a review of The Tomorrow War
The Tomorrow War
Directed by Chris McKay
Produced by David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, Don Granger, Jules Daly, David S. Goyer, Adam Kolbrenner,
Written by Zach Dean
Starring Chris Pratt, Yvonne Strahovski, J. K. Simmons, Betty Gilpin, Sam Richardson, Edwin Hodge
Should anyone have any doubts, I’ll say right up front that The Tomorrow War is of the BDM genre: Big Dumb Movie. Like all of its ilk, it cost hundreds of millions to make, relied very heavily on CGI, and does not have a particularly challenging plot. If the acting is competent, and the plot isn’t flat-out ridiculous, you’re ahead of the game. In this, the acting is actually pretty good (adding JK Simmons to the mix never hurts) and the plot, if derivative, is at least coherent.
This is a “Bugs!” movie. Earth in 2051 is under siege and at risk of humanity being exterminated by critters who are very fast, very vicious, and not the sort you can invite in for a cuppa and a convo. In fact, less than three years after they first showed up, they’ve reduced the human population to about a half a million. Earth is no longer under siege, but humanity sure is.
The remaining humans come up with a time travel device. While it can transport people and materials in large quantities back and forth, it has a singular limitation: the length of time traversed is thirty years exactly. If it’s Sunday, the 4th of July 2021, you can go to Tuesday, the 4th of July 2051. If it’s Monday the 5th, you can go to Wednesday the 5th. Both termini move along the time stream in tandumb.
2051 sends a soldier back to warn the world which is watching the World Cup, which is for some reason being played during Christmas and in 2021, to tell them an invasion is coming in 2048 and it’s really going to fuck with property values and oh, we’re nearly wiped out, so could you send guns, whiskey and lawyers to help us out? Oh, and start researching for a weapon that can kill White Spikes (so called because they are white and spiky, and let’s just be glad they aren’t purple and devour humans). Also, the movie has the time-honored and baseless supposition that if you meet yourself in the time stream, God will commit suicide or the universe will implode or at the very least you’ll get a nasty rash.
So 2021 is sending troops to 2051 to fight the bugs, only they’re sending only those who 2051 tells them have died of natural causes before 2051. Now, if someone came to me and said I had to risk my life fighting a grave danger 30 years up the road but it really wasn’t any of my concern because the fact that they were sending me at all was proof that I was already dead by then, I might need some persuading. Just sayin’.
Chris Pratt, whose very name provokes guffaws in south London pubs, is an ineffectual high school teacher who is drafted to spend a week meeting foreign and exotic bugs and killing them. His tour of duty is a week, presumably because hardly anybody lasts a week against the bugs, but a week is short enough time to install a sense of false hope.
He goes to 2051, has many exciting adventures involving loud ‘splody things, and meets a colonel in her late thirties who he can’t help but notice shares his last name. (No, not Pratt). Turns out she’s his nine-year-old daughter back in 2021! (Apparently meeting next-of-kin doesn’t cause God to implode—he just develops a stutter and a persistent twitch in his left eye).
This being a BDM, of course she’s the one who finds a way to kill bugs and save humanity, and dear old pops has to take it back to 2021 and mass produce it and have it ready for when the bugs turn up. Plot complications ensue.
The movie is well-made, aided and abetted by acting that at the worst is decent (plus JK Simmons!) and with an interesting amount of character development, something usually not bothered with in BDMs. The effects are good, and it has an exciting and entertaining conclusion that is, in terms of the plot, sensible. It’s a fun way to blow a couple of hours.
Now on Amazon Prime.