As much as I love movies, I’m still not quite ready to return to theaters, so I was excited to see Amazon announce a big alien time travel summer popcorn flick called The Tomorrow War. Plus, Chris Pratt generally adds a nice levity to these types of movies.
The premise of the movie–as you learn in the first 5 minutes from some future humans who appear in the present–is that aliens in the future have wiped out most of the earth’s population, so the future humans need to conscript present-day humans to help them fight. Why can’t they just be ready when the aliens arrive, given the gift of future information? Apparently the aliens just show up in a bunch of places out of nowhere. In other words, the movie asks you to kindly not think too much about it, and I’m fine with that.
The science fiction and action elements are fun–plus, you frequently see the aliens, and they’re terrifying–but by far my favorite parts of the movie comprise of the banter between Chris Pratt, JK Simmons, and Sam Richardson (not necessarily all at the same time). Their conversations are truly hilarious, and I’d gladly watch an entire movie focused on the three of them.
If you’ve watched The Tomorrow War, what did you think? Do you have a favorite alien popcorn flick?
Oh, if you have seen the movie (or you don’t plan to watch it), I’d recommend the Screen Rant pitching meeting video for it:
That’s 138min of my life I’ll never get back.
As much as I have enjoyed Chris Pratt’s turns in front of camera since his earliest showing as the perennially clueless yet endearing Bright Abbott in Berlanti’s Everwood (2002-06), even he couldn’t rescue this confusing pap for me.
The criminal waste of talents of Australian actress Yvonne Strahovsky (Col Muring Forester; Handmaid’s Tale) and JK Simmons (James Forester; Counterpart) further cruelled the film for me.
Without giving any spoilers, for me, the denouement largely negated the whole premise of the film.
For naked, human-eating, hungry monsters I’d watch the alt cut of I Am Legend (Will Smith, 2007) before ever watching Tomorrow’s War again. For alien invasion films and TV shows, any of the Quatermass trilogy (starting in 1955), Day of the Triffids (1981), or the Tripods (1984) would be time better invested.
Tomorrow’s War was so forgettable it’s doubtful many people will even remember it existed a day after they watched it.