THE TOMORROW WAR
DIRECTOR CHRIS MCKAY AND WRITER ZACH DEAN ON WHAT COULD BE THE NEXT BIG SCI-FI FRANCHISE: THE TOMORROW WAR
Chris Pratt fights the future.
WHAT DO THEY WANT?” ZACH Dean, writer of The Tomorrow War, considers of the film’s alien threat. “They want to live, just like we want to live. But we’re the means to that end. It’s that simple.”
Yes, the world is under attack again – but this time our best hope for the future lies in the past. Time travellers from 2051 arrive to warn the present day that, 30 years from now, the planet is all but lost to an alien species they’ve called the White Spikes. An original sci-fi action movie, something director Chris Mckay calls “increasingly rare”, it began life as Ghost Draft, with the film originally scheduled for a Christmas Day release in 2020. There was talk of a summer release, but Amazon – seeing a huge hit – swooped in. Dean’s original script came from a bank of ideas, coupled with the notion of conscription and people being drafted – particularly family man Dan Forester, played by Chris Pratt. “Maybe there’s some unfulfilled dreams of what his life was going to be. That’s the part that really made the story finally kick into gear.”
HONEY, I KILLED THE KIDS
The human components are what sealed it for The Tomorrow War’s director, too. “The script had a lot of the elements that I look for in a movie,” Mckay explains. “I really love genre movies and science fiction, but I also love John Cassavetes movies, character studies and movies about a human experience. So to be able to have a science fiction movie that does have the epic scope and scale of Independence Day – or pick your favourite end of the world science fiction movie – but also has the ability to have real human drama. And also have moments of levity and find moments of humour, that’s something I always look for.”
For Dean, there’s another, deeper level. “[It’s about] the existential threats that we face and how, eventually, it becomes not a political issue, it becomes a parenting issue. I think that’s what this story is about. If this alien force invaded the Earth in 30 years, and you knew that it was going to cost everything, would you be willing to be drafted now and give up what you have now to go in and do that? Sort of a parenting sacrifice thought from that perspective. So that’s really what it was about, because I have three kids. So those are the things I think about a lot.”
Mckay talks about how building the movie from a character piece, beginning at a party in a house to a crescendo of science fiction and the end of the world, helps to cement the human elements of the film.
“Chris Pratt’s in every scene in this movie – there’s not a single day of production that he wasn’t there. So you’re seeing this thing through his lens. It’s not cutting to the Pentagon, it’s not cutting to the White House.”
Dean agrees. “It feels like this really global scale, but it also feels really intimate and family-based. I really liked the idea that it’s a global effort through science to solve something – and through might; might and science in combination, in tandem. But everyone on the planet makes a sacrifice to do this thing.”
Both cite the original Star Wars trilogy as an influence, as well as the work of Steven Spielberg. “No matter which era Spielberg, at his heart he’s a horror filmmaker in my mind,” Mckay reasons, while Dean mentions a ‘little Raiders reference’ in the darts fired by the White Spikes.
“It needed some kind of offensive weapon on some level,” Mckay offers, “that it couldn’t just bite or scratch or tear apart things, in order for it to take over the world. Something that, from a distance, could prove to be a threat.”
And what a threat. When you see the aliens in The Tomorrow War – and don’t worry, you
I really love genre movies and sci-fi, but I also love John Cassavetes movies
really do see them – it’s fair to say they’re up there with some of sci-fi’s greatest. But what kind of mind comes up with a monster like that? “I’m really into biology,” Dean laughs at the simple explanation. “Something that’s so simple, but yet so horrifying and driven. They have very simple needs and drives and they’re incredibly effective. Their agenda is very clear and one dimensional.
“And we’re part of it because of what we all are – this is not a nefarious thing. It’s just pure instinct-driven biology. And I think that’s scary, because it’s very real in some ways, and anchoring, because there’s things in nature that are like that in our terrestrial world.”
The designs were a collaborative effort between the writer and production/creature designer Ken Barthelmey. Mckay – a fan of HP Lovecraft – knew they had to tread carefully when it came to these in order to create something truly original.
“Cosmic horror wasn’t that far off the menu as far as what we said to Ken, but you also have to watch out because there’s three really great movie alien designs. There’s the xenomorph in Alien, there’s Predator. Maybe you could argue the aliens from Independence Day. So you kind of have to step around the great Stan Winston designs and all that kind of thing. I also wanted the mouth to look like a dental nightmare.
Those were the things that we talked about – and try to stay away from Alien and Predator as much as humanly possible!”
Mckay also knew how he wanted them to feel – even though they’d largely be CGI. “I knew that I wanted them to feel old. I would oftentimes describe it as ancient. I wanted to feel a lot of texture, to be tactile for the
Horror and science fiction and fantasy are a great way to comment on things in our world
audience, so you have bumps, scratches, flaky skin, but I wanted it to feel hard. Tough, like tree bark. Bone. And I wanted it to feel like it had a kind of feral intelligence and to feel like it was hungry. That it had a sense of hunger, that the bellies were sucked in and it could never stop feeding.”
Dean laughs when he recalls the first time he saw the White Spikes. “I was in Atlanta on set. They pulled us aside and showed us on an ipad. I swore out loud, it was so good. And it was so scary. I do know that the version I saw, they pulled back a bit. They had to because that version was a little darker and would not have made a PG-13 [12A in the UK].”
Even though the creatures exist largely in computers, there were some physical creations. “Spectral Motion built a bunch of things for us,” Mckay says. “There were a couple that had some animatronic components to it, mouth and some rudimentary movement.
“We had a guy named Troy who was this really big stunt guy, and he would sometimes have to hold the creature’s head that we had built and run around with it. At times, especially in the nest scene, when Yvonne [Strahovski] is wrestling with the creature, we used the head a lot.”
Despite tentacles, poison darts and nightmare teeth, they both stress there’s a bigger story at play here – and they’re right, as The Tomorrow War succeeds on both levels. “Horror and science fiction and fantasy will never go away because they’re a great way to comment on things in our world,” Mckay says. “The stuff that people don’t necessarily want to talk about or don’t want to talk about in a certain way. I think that’s always been part of the appeal too.
“I’m always gonna want to work in this genre, I just love it so much. Telling a great epic story in a specific genre or a hybrid of a genre with great characters that have deep emotions and deep internal conflicts as well as external conflicts. That to me is the dream.”
Next up for Dean is The Gorge, another Skydance production, which he describes as a “crazy sci-fi love story”. For Mckay it’s comedy Renfield, a modern-day story about Dracula’s assistant. “Horror genre stuff, but a lot of action. Basically it’s a movie about codependency,” but he says he hopes the mooted Nightwing movie will still take place. “I have a very clear concept for the Nightwing movie that can exist independently of whatever they’re doing in DC, or it can be inserted into it, but I’m just waiting for them.”
But what about Tomorrow’s future? Both give tantalising glimmers of hope. “There’s a lot of the world after, and before, that is in my
With time travel, anything’s possible. You can go into the history of the White Spikes
head, so yes, there’s a lot of stories there,” Dean says. “I’d love to continue this story.”
“The amount of designs that we didn’t use – whether it’s the pilots that you see briefly or other versions of the White Spikes – there’s a lot more story to tell,” Mckay continues. “With time travel, anything’s possible. You can go into the history of the White Spikes, how they got there, and who’s behind them. I really hope that we get a chance to make a sequel because there’s still some money left on the table as far as the story goes, and I’d love to return to it.”
The Tomorrow War is available on Prime Video from 2 July.