‘The Tomorrow War’ Review: Large Scale, Small Impact
While ‘The Tomorrow War’ contains impeccably shot action sequences, its main story quickly fizzles out in underdeveloped territory.
Chris McKay’s latest film, “The Tomorrow War”, pulls the audience in quickly by opening smack-bang in the middle of Dan Forester (Chris Pratt)’s jump to a dystopian 2051, where a war against aliens will soon bring the end of the human race. It smartly teases what’s to come with its large-scale doomsday aesthetic, reminiscent of Roland Emmerich’s disaster pictures. Unfortunately, it quickly starts to fizzle once it spews exposition about the war and uses a flashback to explain how Forester was drafted in the fight to save humanity. We know this: he has a special relationship with his daughter (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), akin to Cooper and Murph from Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar”, doesn’t want to talk to his father (J.K. Simmons), and his wife (Betty Gilpin) knows the trauma he will endure if he comes back from the war—since only about 30% of conscripted soldiers will survive. Even without seeing what happens during the war, we can already fill in the gaps: he’ll likely meet his daughter in the future, find a new purpose to save her, and reconcile with his father. Guess what? All of that happens without an ounce of originality. This results in an overlong but undercooked sci-fi actioner that’s visually enthralling but doesn’t really do much to impress.
Of course, Chris Pratt exudes his signature Peter Quill-like charisma that makes his on-screen presence extremely palpable, particularly during a scene in which he’s forced, against his will, to join the war. It’s a sequence that perfectly blends his wry humor with an overall sense of pure cluelessness that makes us truly wonder if he ever has a chance to survive the war. And once he jumps to the war, everything is terribly bleak: bodies are sent in the wrong location, and many of them land on concrete floors, streets, and ledges, which kill them instantly. The film’s cold open is magnificently shot by Larry Fong, who once again showcases why he’s one of the greatest cinematographers working today. He fills the frame of 2051 with an overall sense of dire pessimism about the war, yet its flame-lit skies are magnificent to look at, and even when everything seems to go wrong, the world is at least going out in style, with large-scale CGI explosions, red smoke and slow-motion to boot.
Most of the film’s action sequences are lots of fun to watch, mainly due to Fong’s incredible eye for the visually eye-popping. His cinematography here isn’t as refined and dynamic as when he works with Zack Snyder, but it certainly amplifies the scale of the battle, as the computer-generated “white spikes” aliens not only look cheap but don’t feel inherently menacing. Sure, they can kill soldiers instantly with their spikes, but it never feels prescient to get rid of them. Their design, and the fact that they kill every disposable character is why they seem unimportant. Every main character survives the battles without a scratch or a mild injury, and there’s never a moment in which you feel that Dan, Charlie (Sam Richardson), and Dorian (Edwin Hodge) are going to die. There should always be a moment when the hero makes a life-or-death sacrifice that saves the world but almost (or straight-up) kills him. That never happens. Instead, we’re stuck with faux stakes involving his relationship with his daughter (now played by Yvonne Strahovski), who discovers a toxin that will kill the aliens. Strahovski does have her fair share of memorable screen-time with Pratt, but her character’s overall part in the story feels unimportant, because if Dan can save the human race by finding the Alien ship and killing them before the ice starts melting, then guess what? He doesn’t die, and the world doesn’t die (including his daughter).
To “amp up” the stakes, screenwriter Zach Dean uses a classic mistake that was amplified in Christopher Nolan’s “Tenet” - such as having at least one human character to save for the battle against the aliens to feel important - but it doesn’t really matter once you realize that Dan rewrites history if he murders every alien in their ship. This is where “The Tomorrow War” truly starts to falter: with a dull and weightless climax set inside a spaceship and mountains of snow, without a moment of true character growth. Yes, Dan reconciles with his father in the most unnatural way possible. The paternal figure usually sacrifices himself for redemption in typical films with a rifting father/son relationship. The son immediately regrets not spending time with him when he was alive. Typically, we’d know what made their relationship falter, but in “The Tomorrow War”, it’s nonexistent. There’s one scene that briefly shows a “rift,” but not enough for us to think it’s important.
There’s no emotional weight attached to the film, making everything feel insignificant. That insignificance is only exacerbated by the film’s non-ending, in which everything is finally alright with the world: Dan will live, his daughter will live, the world won’t end, and he was finally able to save his dad and reconcile with him. Don’t you love an apocalyptic premise that wraps up so quickly it can’t wait to get to the end credits? The “aftermath” of the war is a small throwaway line and a voice-over narration that supposedly acts as “character growth” when Dan realizes he’ll never leave his family because everything’s fine now.
It’s such an anticlimactic way to end a somewhat watchable film: Chris Pratt, J.K. Simmons, Yvonne Strahovski, Edwin Hodge, and Betty Gilpin are all fine here, even though Simmons feels incredibly underused for the amount of emotional weight he has to carry. That’s why it falls rather flat on his face once the audience suddenly must care about a relationship that never gets explored and/or deepened. The film’s runtime is 140 minutes: surely, there must’ve been more time to set up a rifting relationship before getting into a purely visual feast for the eyes in its amazingly tactile action sequences. Character needs to come first before action; otherwise, you only have a “shell” of an enjoyable film, which is what “The Tomorrow War” is. It wants to dazzle with its sumptuous imageries and large-scale thrills but can’t make the audience care about its central characters.