Hold on to your butts on this one! It is a fast-paced, save-the-World high stakes, monster Action/Drama flick.
The Tomorrow War, directed by Chris McKay, was released July 2nd directly to Prime Video after Amazon purchased the film from Paramount Pictures. They sold it and skipped theaters due to the pandemic but was supposed to be one of the higher end Blockbuster movies to release this summer.
I can say, this movie was absolutely meant to be enjoyed in the largest and loudest theater out there. It is too bad that experience was nixed since the strongest attribute for The Tomorrow War is its epic action level and great cinematic production.
That, and the monsters…which, we’ll get into.
If you look around at reviews and ratings, The Tomorrow War is regularly being compared to the classic Independence Day alien invasion Blockbuster from 1996. I can agree with that given the way the movie flows and plays out, the character development and focus, and there are a lot of unbelievable things that happen for the Humans to survive a catastrophic end to their existence. But that’s what makes these movies a great joy to watch.
I would also throw Aliens, The Thing from 1982, District 9, and Battleship all into the bubbling pot with Independence Day to which The Tomorrow War is relatable. Aliens because of some of the battle scenes with the creatures and some of their mannerisms and movements. The Thing because they travel to a frozen wasteland for a final showdown, where I believe there’s a straight nod to the 1982 Horror Sci-Fi film as the characters stand above a gaping hole observing an alien spacecraft, which is buried in the snow and ice.
The storyline itself is quite wild. Zach Dean, the writer of The Tomorrow War, seemingly new to the game, has only two movies under his writer’s belt prior to this one, according to IMDB. Even though the movie is outlandish in its plot, it does just fine for an alien invasion, end of the world, thrill-ride.
Dan Forester (Chris Pratt), is a former U.S. Special Forces Agent, now working as a Science Teacher at a High School but is looking to land the largest job of his career within the private sector. As he, his family, and friends watch an Internationally televised soccer game, a supernatural anomaly occurs as armed forces appear out of a purple electrical force field, a portal, right in the middle of the playing field.
The mysterious troop’s leader explains that they have arrived from 30 years in the future, and that there’s a war raging against inhuman creatures that are ravaging Earth and destroying mankind. The portal was created by the humans in the future, and only have around 11 months until the monsters of unknown origin wipe out all of humanity.
Pretty grim outlook, but the saving proposal is that a world-wide Draft is put together by World leaders. This would send civilians of our time into the future to fight the war. Queue the riots, war protests, and absolute chaos that would come from such an action!
This leads us to our main character in Dan Forester, who, you can guess, gets drafted to ‘The Tomorrow War’. There are some very touching moments with Dan and his family, primarily in his relationship with his daughter, which comes into play later in the movie after he is transported to the future, through the portal.
Dan and his group of draftee companions are immediately thrust into action, cutting their already-short training period to almost nothing. It’s amazing any of the civilians survived at all when given no time at all to learn a thing. But…it all adds to the drama.
We are quickly introduced to the enemy. Which is one of the cooler monster/alien designs I’ve seen in a couple of years. The creatures destroying humanity are tough as hell, brutal, hungry, and nearly unstoppable. With hive and swarming mentality, it’s easy to see why they are such a devastating enemy. Plus, they make awesome sounds!
The Tomorrow War moves along at a quick pace through very tense and dramatic scenes. There is a race against time as the humans of the future try to find a weakness in the enemy in order to have any fighting chance of survival. And thus, Dan and Col. Muri Forester (Yvonne Strahovski) become the focal point in finding the answers through capturing a Female Alien, one bad mofo of a beast. The movie intensifies from here to a climactic showdown to round out the movie.
To wrap this up, my Bloody raw feelings:
The Tomorrow War is pretty generic on a Sci-Fi genre scripted level, but really hits home and shines with the constant action, great alien creation, and great acting from the majority of the cast. Unfortunately, the one exception I thought was Chris Pratt. He seemed to have the same expression and reaction through the entirety of the movie. I loved him in Guardians of the Galaxy, but in The Tomorrow War, I felt like he was the weakest link. His greatest moments came through with his daughter as those were heartfelt and polished scenes. There is an extremely high level of intensity throughout the movie, which almost made me forget that the movie was well over 2 hours long. It could’ve been shorter and still could’ve reached its full intention.
There were some political and world climate messages made, but it really didn’t spend much time or go too in-depth with their point. This lessened the effectiveness of the points being made. It’s like they tried to fit too much into this already jam-packed movie and ran out of bandwidth. With the PG-13 rating the gore in the movie only comes through in alien gore, there's not much language, and no sexual content involved. True PG-13 alien action flick....much like Independence Day!
By the way, J.K. Simmons was badass in The Tomorrow War. He played Dan’s father, James. Also, Sam Richardson added decent comic relief and played a likeable character.
If you like intense action drama, with alien world domination, this one is perfect for you.
The Tomorrow War
Released: 7/2/2021
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Action, Adventure, Drama
Running Time: 2 hours 20 minutes
Director: Chris McKay (The Lego Movie, The Lego Batman)
Writer: Zach Dean (24 Hours to Live, Deadfall)
Stars:
Chris Pratt as Dan Forester (Guardians of the Galaxy, Jurassic World, The Lego Movie)
Yvonne Strahovski as Col. Muri Forester (The Predator 2018, Stateless, The Handsmaid’s Tale)
Sam Richardson as Charlie (Werewolves Within, Detroiters, Veep Series)
J.K. Simmons as James Forester (Invincible Animated TV Series, Juno, Whiplash)
Betty Gilpin as Emmy Forester (The Hunt, Glow Series, Isn’t It Romantic)
IMDB Rating: 6.7 out of 10
Rotten Tomatoes: 54%
Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score: 80%
Metascore: 45 out of 100
Streamable on these Apps w/ Subscription at time of Blog Post: Prime Video Exclusive
Rentable on these Apps at time of Blog Post: N/A
The Tomorrow War Official Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPistcpGB8o
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