An intelligent scifi movie with heart
“The Tomorrow War” arrives at a timely moment, when every other day there’s talk about unidentifiable sophisticated aircraft that just might be attributable to space aliens. If you’ve been picturing E.T. flying a plane, this new movie should cure you of that delusion.
The premise for “The Tomorrow War” is positively frightening. On some average day in 2023, soldiers suddenly arrive from the year 2051 with distressing news: In their future world, space aliens are in the process of wiping out human beings. It’s hard to say what the aliens’ motive is beyond destruction, but the situation is desperate and the 2051 soldiers need 2023 people to go with them into the future to fight the monsters.
Part of what makes “The Tomorrow War” a successful movie is that screenwriter Zach Dean not only comes up with an interesting concept, but he also thinks it through. In human terms, he imagines the emotional effect that this knowledge would have on people. Twentyeight years is an interesting amount of time, in that it’s not enough for everyone to start partying like it’s 1999, but it’s also close enough to make all futuredirected activity feel pointless.
Why stay in college? Why go to
night school? Why worry about carbon emissions? Suddenly a helpless malaise washes over the 2023 world.
It’s especially hard for young parents. Chris Pratt plays the father of a smart and adorable little girl (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), and it doesn’t take a math degree to figure out that by the time she’s in her mid30s, she’s going to be living in an absolute hell of horror. Dean explores those feelings, and director Chris McKay allows the viewer to linger there and contemplate them. “The Tomorrow War” runs 140 minutes, but the extra time is used in intelligent ways — to ground the action in character and emotion when it might otherwise have been a cartoon.
The science in the film isn’t mumbo jumbo meant to confuse the audience either. It’s simple and interesting. For example, to keep from creating a weird rift in time, the people who visit from the future are all young enough not to have been alive in 2023. And the draftees enlisted, including Pratt’s character Dan, are all people who are dead before 2051. That makes for a lot of middleaged and older draftees.
The action is gripping but not overdone, and the aliens are more disturbing than revolting. Despite the running time, nothing is belabored. The story unfolds in three distinct waves, and each is satisfying. Occasionally, the tone dips a bit too far into silliness, but for a popcorn summer movie, that’s hardly a problem.
By far, the best thing in the film is the relationship between Dan and his now 37yearold daughter, played by Yvonne Strahovski, whom he meets in the future when she’s a scientist working for the military. Most action movies offer cardboard mockups of relationships and then expect us to invest in them. But the dynamic here is fascinating: father and daughter, practically the same age. She knows everything about him. He knows very little about her. Each needs something from the other, which makes each a little afraid of the other.
Yet it would probably be a mistake to emphasize the relationship aspect of “The Tomorrow War” too much. At its core, this is just a really good monster movie. All the same, there’s a touch of beauty to it.