The Tomorrow War is the latest sci-fi action film from Amazon, bought from Skydance. I have to say I enjoyed this more than I expected as none of the trailers caught my attention. It doesn’t feel like a streaming film but is meant to be seen on the big screen.
The world is stunned when a group of time travelers arrives from 2051 to deliver an urgent message: Thirty years later, humankind is losing a global war against a deadly alien species. The only hope for survival is for soldiers and civilians from the present to be transported to the future and join the fight. Among those recruited is a high school teacher and family man Dan Forester (Chris Pratt). Determined to save the world for his young daughter, Dan teams up with a brilliant scientist and his estranged father in a desperate quest to rewrite the fate of the planet.
I was very impressed by the direction of Chris McKay in his first live-action project. Before this film, he had only worked in animation, being best known for directing The Lego Batman Movie and many episodes of Robot Chicken. The Tomorrow War has some great action sequences, and he made great use of his 200 million dollar budget. This felt like a film meant for the big screen as it’s the definition of a popcorn flick. His work on this has me excited to see what he does with his upcoming Nightwing film. The film has a cliche plot device that many of these future/time travel films tend to have, but thankfully it worked for me as it added an element that I enjoyed.
Chris Pratt once again shows that he is a MOVIE STAR. He does a great job at anchoring the film with his incredible scene presence. The best thing about his path into this stage of his career is that he already had the charisma and comedic chops before he had a look, which, when mixed, have worked wonders for him. For some, they’ll say he is playing the same role he always does, and I get that, but he plays it so well that I didn’t mind.
Yvonne Strahovski was excellent. She gave the best performance in the film for me. Her character gets some terrible lines, but the emotions she evoked in them made them work better than they should have. For most of the film, I felt J.K. Simmons was being wasted, and it got me mad. They had him rocking a great beard and looking like an overall badass but sidelined him till the third act. Thankfully once he gets in on the action, he was used to how I had hoped he had been the whole film.
My man Sam Richardson was fantastic, a complete scene-stealer. He does a great job infusing the film with so much of its humor, having the movie’s funniest lines. I wish he would have been in it a lot more, as I loved his quirks. Edwin Hodge plays a staple of this kind of film, the veteran who has multiple tours under his belt. He plays the role to perfection and gets one of the better dramatic scenes in the movie.
The editing wasn’t good as the film has some significant pacing issues. The film was 138 minutes, and there was no need for it to be that long. There were many times I found myself bored, especially during the first act, which took forever to get going. There is a lot of filler, and a pleasant 30-minute trimming would have done wonders, as I feel there’s a great film in a 100-minute cut.
While I think the concept was exciting, it wasn’t well executed. The time travel elements aren’t explained very well, and they expect us to understand them. I was hoping for more exposition. Instead, Zach Dean, who wrote the screenplay, filled it with so much cliche action film dialogue such as “I’ll be back” and “We kill them all,” among others, that I couldn’t help but roll my eyes.
Lastly, on my negatives was how wasted Betty Gilpin is. I’m a massive fan of GLOW and feel she does almost every project she is in better, but her character serves virtually no purpose other than just being a wife. Based on how much of a badass she was in The Hunt, they could have had her get in on the action.
Many other sci-fi films used this style of story better, such as Looper and Edge of Tomorrow, but my low expectations were a significant factor in me enjoying it more than I expected. So despite the critical issues I did have with the film, I won’t call it terrible, just very generic and a missed opportunity to stand out from the pact. If you’re into sci-fi action films, watch The Tomorrow War. It will satisfy your appetite for action scenes.
