Forward thinking
Parks and fresh creations…
Tomorrowland: A World Beyond 12
OUT 5 OCTOBER DVD, BD, DIGITAL HD
How refreshing, in this age of reboots, remakes and franchises, for a film that looks forward rather than back. Ironically, the vision of tomorrow delivered by director Brad Bird and co-writer Damon Lindelof was created by Walt Disney over half a century ago, but still... here’s a film whose characters are fresh and whose destination is hard to guess.
Even as Tomorrowland begins, spunkily optimistic hero Casey Newton (Britt Robertson, in a charming breakthrough) and curmudgeonly inventor Frank Walker (George Clooney) are arguing over who’s telling the story. After an awestruck 1960s-set prologue that indulges Bird’s Jetsons- friendly aesthetic priorities, the film fast-forwards to 2015. Cue NASA dismantlement, climate change and the iPhone’s vicarious thrills. It’s fertile thematic ground, an implicit criticism of Hollywood’s gritty blockbusters that ponders: is this what Walt would have wanted?
The majority of the action takes place between two world(view)s; in cinema terms, the chronological mid-point is the laidback Amblin adventures of the 1980s. The non-stop second act is a throwback to an age of PG-rated peril and wondrous imagination. “Could you just be amazed?” Clooney asks, amid imagery that includes robots getting blown to bits in a boobytrapped house and a rocket that emerges from the Eiffel Tower. Amazed? Well, yes.
It is only when the film catches up with present-day aesthetics, with its overt proselytising and overcooked explanations, that the film comes unstuck, but the downbeat final act feels deliberate, a self-reflexive commentary on changing tastes. The result is awkward yet fascinating, an arthouse adventure that melds Disney propaganda, Bird’s fascination with Ayn Rand-style supermen and Lindelof’s preference for having fun today in case he hasn’t figured out the answers by tomorrow. The lack of a commentary is a shame, but extras are
Simon Kinnear plentiful and varied, if bitty. Extras › Featurettes › Deleted scenes › Animated shorts › Easter eggs