The Tomorrow War: A Fun Letdown

Plot Summary

30 years into the future, an alien race called Whitespikes causes the extinction of humanity. People all over the world are being drafted to fight in the future to prevent the destruction from happening. Biology teacher and former soldier Dan Forester is drafted and finds himself in the future working with his adult daughter Muri to fight the Whitespikes. The team develops a toxin from the female Whitespike that is substantially stronger than the males. The aliens attack the oil rig where the team is, leading to Muri's death while Dan is sent back to the present, the Jumplink to the future now being severed for good. Dan then finds a bright spot when he realizes that the Whitespikes have been on earth all along, having been later thawed out by global warming. They were also brought there by other aliens to wipe out other planets before their ship crashed on earth. Dan and some soldiers, along with his estranged father James, go to Russia to the site of the ship. After battling the majority of the aliens and killing them, Dan and James battle the female until Dan shoves the toxin down her throat to kill her, effectively eliminating the threat in the future. The war is prevented and Dan is able to return home to his wife and daughter.

Chris Pratt

Role: Dan Forester

Main character and father of Muri. He's set on a journey to the future to redeem a toxin that kills the alien "Icespikes"

Yvonee Strahvoski

Role: Muri Forester

Daughter of Dan Forester. Lead general and fighter against the Icespikes.

Betty Gilpin

Role: Emmy Forester

Mother of Muri and Wife of Dan

J.K Simmons

Role: James Forester

Father of Dan and millitary weaponry specialist.

Jasmine Mathews

Role: Lietenant Hart

Lietenant from the future that comes back to warn the world of the Icespikes

Same Richardson

Role:Charlie

Unqualified drafted soldier and comedic relief

❮

❯

The Tomorrow War

PG-13, 2021, Sci-fi/Action

52%

Tomatometer

76%

Audience Score

It isn't the most surprising time-travel movie...

but a satisfying story and plenty of entertaining action make The Tomorrow War well worth a watch. The plot and writing behind the time travel concept isn't concrete and in some points of the film can seem to fall back on the core ideas setup before hand. But, the riveting action sequences followed by the amazing VFX of the enemy icespikes really make up for the rather lackluster writing.

Entertaining, but... such a stupid plot.

Time travel movies are fun, aliens are fun and Chris Pratt is fun to watch. But, there's a limit to stupidity. You can't leave a 2-hour-something film with these huge plot holes and these silly moments of dialogue unchecked. Why do the studios approach their audience in that un-intelligent way? I find it unfair and as a viewer, I believe we deserve more. It's actually a pity because they took so much time to build up the characters, explain the story, the enemy and the time travel properties in the first 30-45min, but then...what happened? HUGE plot holes and a couple of odd dialogue moments which literally make no sense. Don't want to spoil it; you will know when see these. Some good points: CGI is good and the aliens seem bad enough. Score is also alright and helps the pace of the film. And in fact, there are some impressive moments in the film, e.g the landing to the future...but once you finish watching this film you will understand the silliness of the story. Regardless, I can recommend it for a lazy Sunday but don't expect something special. Just switch off and enjoy. 6/10 the story could have been better..

Good old fashioned fast-paces man vs alien fun...

Now, as I sat down to watch the 2021 action sci-fi movie "The Tomorrow War", I was told not to expect too much from the movie, and that it was a watchable but shallow movie experience. Needless to say that I watched the movie anyway, as it was a movie that I hadn't already seen. Actually I hadn't even seen the trailer for the movie, so I virtually knew nothing about the movie or what it was about, aside from it having Chris Pratt on the cast list. And I must say, now that I have seen it, that writer Zach Dean and director Chris McKay actually managed to churn out something that was very enjoyable and entertaining for me. And it was the type of movie that fell right into my preference of movies. The storyline told in "The Tomorrow War" has an interesting concept idea. Sure, this is not rocket science, nor something that requires a whole lot of thinking on the audience part, but it is the type of movie where you lean back well into the chair, munch on the popcorn and enjoy the action and fighting on the screen. So essentially, this is some good old fun. Actually, while the storyline is sort of simplistic, I must admit that I actually found it to be entertaining enough. There are some good aspects to the storyline and it definitely makes for adequate entertaining. As for the acting in the movie, well I was entertained. And I will say that they definitely had a good ensemble of actors and actresses on the cast list. Chris Pratt was nicely cast for the lead role and it was nice to see him in a movie such as this. And I was thrilled to see J. K. Simmons in the movie, just a shame he wasn't given more screen time, because he had a great character in the movie and he was just bringing the character to life so marvelously. Edwin Hodge and Jasmine Mathew were also very nicely cast for this movie. "The Tomorrow War" is packed with amazing visuals, and that really brought the movie to life so well on the screen. And yeah, I must admit that I was really enjoying what I saw on the screen, because the CGI team behind this movie were just spectacular. So when you sit down to watch "The Tomorrow War" you will be in for some amazing special effects. And needless to say that the creature design was also something I really enjoyed. As a movie viewer not overly keen on sci-fi movies, I will say that "The Tomorrow War" is one of those action sci-fi movies that proves to be incredibly enjoyable, much akin to movies such as "Starship Troopers" or "District 9". I went in with little expectations from what I was told, but I went out with a sense of properly being entertained for more than two hours. My rating of "The Tomorrow War" lands on a seven out of ten stars.

Painfully stupid...

The special effects and in this movie are good. A lot of money went into this and it is clearly well made. Unfortunately it seems to have been written by people who were either joking or morons. I don't need a movie to be brilliant to enjoy it. I don't even need it to be plausible. I do however need it to at least look like it's trying to give me the outline of something that could make sense. There is too much stupid in this movie to give an exhaustive list but my top 3 annoyances are: 1) With the benefit of 30 years notice of an alien invasion and a time travel portal that can seemingly transport an unlimited amount of people and material both ways, we are meant to believe the best solution the entire world could come up with to fight the aliens is to hand civilians with no training guns and then batch drop them into the alien hordes in their hundreds of thousands to be slaughtered. 2) When the aforementioned civilians are being slaughtered 10 mins after arriving in the future, instead of being struck dumb with terror, they still have time for plenty of wisecracks. 3) The ending... oh the ending. Just when I thought peak stupidity had been reached, after consulting a child in high school class (I kid you not) for the solution the 'heroes' decide not to involve governments of the world and end the alien threat all by themselves with Chris Pratt killing the final alien in hand to hand combat.

Sources

Rotten Tomatoes IMBD Reviews Movie Web IMBD Official Spoilers.com Reddit Hypixel Variety The Gaurdian IMG Common Sense