By Merick N.H. Ulrik
A Sci-Fi, Time Travel, Alien Invasion Romp.
The trailers of this film looked great when I first saw them in late 2020 but for whatever reason, I put off watching this movie till just last week. Maybe because of the heaviness of the pandemic I didn’t want to deal with “The Tomorrow War” because that seems like something possible. For me, this movie was a sleeper. Meaning a movie that was great that I took a long time to recognize.
The Tomorrow War is the most expensive film.
At a $200 million dollar budget in 2021, The Tomorrow War was the most expensive film to debut on a streaming platform, Amazon Prime. Director Christopher McKay, aka Chris Taylor, was best known for directing the Cartoon Network Adult Swim show, Robot Chicken and made his debut directing Lego Batman. It is odd to me to go from Robot Chicken to the most expensive movie ever made on a streaming platform but I do not have anything bad to say about the quality of the directing of this film.
The Tomorrow War Spoilers
The movie centers around former Green Beret, Dan Forester, played by Chris Prat. Chris Prat is unhappy with his career when they find out that the world is facing future annihilation from an alien race in the near future. The military of the future travels back in time through a wormhole they call a “Jumplink” to bring back soldiers from the past to fight in a future war.
One thing that annoyed me at first.
In the movie, the world institutes a draft to inscript civilians to travel to the future to fight in the Future War. Why not get soldiers from the past to fight? But anyway. The lack of training they gave the new recruits and the way they threw them into battle seemed unbelievable that any military force would be that careless and unsafe. Handing new draftees weapons and sending them to fight with no training seemed unreasonable, and unbelievable. My mind rejected disbelief for a while but then I thought about how inept our own government is and I thought well if it continued getting worse this would make sense.
Is everybody stupid but me?
I liked this movie but it was not without plot holes. The future soldiers of the earth have a wormhole through time. According to the movie it had limitations, it could go back into a specific time in the past and back to the current time in the future. They did explain the limitation by stating that the technology was in infancy; they only used it out of desperation in the war. My question is why couldn’t they simply take their technology to scientists in the past 2022 and have them study the technology and even weapons to advance them for the coming war in 2048 and or kill the aliens when they first emerge? They gloss over this point with some McGuffin reason.
The Tomorrow War is more about family, connection and abandonment.
This movie has a lot more heartfelt family themes than just aliens versus space marines. The idea of family abandonment is brought up with Dan Foresters’s relationship with his father, James Forester, played by JK Simmons who abandoned his family when he divorced Dan’s mother. We learn later that Dan in the future repeats his father’s mistake.
Time Travel and PTSD
The movie does a great job on the special effects and keeping the tension in The Tomorrow War. The aliens, The Whitespikes are great-looking and well conceived predators that mindlessly are clearing the planet of life as they seek to feed. They are a terrifying and worthy enemy. When Dan Forester goes into the future to fight in The Future War, he meets his daughter now Colonel Forester who is working on a pathogen that will kill the Whitespikes, especially the Queens who are difficult to kill. Dan faces the inevitability of his death, and gruesome combat with the Whitespikes and he faces the fact that in the future he is estranged from his family and even his daughter’s love.
The War isn’t going well.
Humans are doomed in 2041, yet the end of all human life, but back in 2022 Dan has to find a way to win this war before it happens. Governments and politicians are stupid and so leave it to a high school biology teacher to save the day. That previous sentence is a little hard for me to digest. I think government bureaucrats are self-serving but possibly the end of their own existence would motivate them to actually solve a problem but what do I know. Let’s just say with the help of a high school kid and anti-government father they act unilaterally to save the world.
Four Stars!
I liked this movie. There were some elements in the plot that I think could have been better. But overall it was entertaining and done really well. The themes around family were heartfelt. The action sequences were good and intense. I’m not sure I would want to watch a sequel. There was no cliffhanger or reason for me to buy into the next movie. If you like Sci-Fi Alien fighting/ space Marine type action and time travel plots, lower your expectations just a small bit and you will be entertained as I was with “The Future War.”
But you won’t have to lower your expectations as low as The Matrix Resurrections! read the full review of the worse movie of 2021.
i guess you missed where they had already used up the soldiers in the current time-line sending them 1st through to the future. The aliens were here before we even had cities , there was no way to even know where they came from as they spread out so fast no one could pin-point where or when they emerged was spelled out needing the Volcanologist student to help narrow down where they crash landed there. I really liked the family aspect and the saving of it. Also the weapons were not futuristic ,everything they used was from that period in the past except the time bridge if memory serves. all in all if there were a part 2 i would check it out. On that matrix debacle that one sucked .
I agree I would check out a part 2 but I didn’t feel like it set up a part 2. It just wasn’t clear to me how they used up the normal military or why they didn’t use better weapons from the future. It just seemed dumb that they made no effort to train the new recruits on how to kill the white spikes or even prepare Them at all during training. But I did like the movie. The new Matrix movie was the worst movie I have seen in a long time. The Eternals were even better than The Matrix Resurrections in my mind but the second worse. Please feel free to comment anytime on anything Steve!