Five Reasons Why “The Tomorrow War” is One of the Most Ridiculous Movies I’ve Ever Seen in My Life
Oh my god. I just finished watching Chris McKay’s new movie The Tomorrow War (literally, the credits are still rolling) starring Chris Pratt, and have come straight here, to Medium, to document my current mental state before any of this potent rage could subside. It’s not often that a movie has the ability to make me feel this pissed off, confused, and somehow still bored, all at the same time. I feel like four separate individuals wrote this movie. I feel like one person started writing it, and then that person died, never having communicated their final vision to another living soul; and then, in a desperate attempt to honor this person’s dying legacy, a team of writers stepped in and took turns guessing which direction the script was supposed to take, resulting in the garbled mess that I just watched. If you like seeing shapes and colors move around on a screen and prefer not to think too much about it, then sure, the movie is adequate. But if, like many, you sit down in front of the T.V. with the intent of escaping your monotonous daily existence into a (hopefully) captivating plot, set into motion by a strong premise, then this is not the movie for you. Any decent movie should follow a basic set of rules and hit certain beats, but much of The Tomorrow War was nonsense that could be crumbled at its foundation by a handful of basic questions. You may think I’m being harsh, but for a movie with an audience score of 80% on Rotten Tomatoes, I went into this experience critical. It did not stack up, and I can tell you why. **SPOILERS AHEAD**
The basic premise of The Tomorrow War is that one day, a bunch of troops from thirty years in the future show up in the present, claiming they need our help (I’m going to speak in the first person from now on for simplicity). They do this by walking out of a portal into the middle of a soccer field during the World Cup, leaving spectators across the globe scared and confused. They say that thirty years in the future, we are battling an invasive alien species known as the White Spikes, and we are losing. They need our help, or rather, we need our own help (let the time travel paradoxes begin), and unless we send all of our militaries and able-bodied civilians through this wormhole into the future, all of humanity will die in roughly thirty years. Also, even if we do send all of our militaries and able-bodied civilians through this wormhole into the future, all of humanity still might die in roughly thirty years, because this mission has, like, a 99% fail rate. Whatever. Enter Chris Pratt, an ex-military middle school teacher and aspiring scientist. He has a forgettable wife and a nerd daughter, who we can already tell will follow in his sciencey footsteps. He also has an ex-military dad who he is not on speaking terms with, because he abandoned Chris Pratt when he was young (this is probably the best character in the movie, played by J.K. Simmons). Two years after the future people first arrive, Chris Pratt is drafted to serve his 7 day term in the wormhole. That pretty much sets the scene, so let’s jump into the issues:
1. Humanity is way too selfish for this premise to ever even be possible
Perhaps the most laughable thing about this whole movie is the idea that we would EVER send ANY of our resources into a future battle. Have you met a present day human? Literally anyone, from anywhere? We can’t even get people to recycle or stop smoking cigarettes, much less jump through a wormhole into a proven suicide mission to *potentially* save the elderly versions of themselves. As a millennial, I have generally accepted that I’m here for a good time, not a long time; and many of us have probably already considered the fact that the world could end in the next thirty years anyway, due to any number of cataclysmic events that we have cooking up at any given moment. But this decision isn’t even being thrown to the average person with a conscience… No, the people who would actually be tasked with complying with this would be our world leaders, otherwise known as the most greedy, sinister humans on Earth. Something tells me that if you stepped through a wormhole and asked Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin to sacrifice their militaries and civilians for a society that they would never even live long enough to see, they would laugh in your fucking face and then lock you up in Area 51 so fast it would make your head spin. But alas, somehow all of the world powers have agreed on this issue.
Which begs the question, when’s the last time that the entire world has agreed on anything? It has taken us nearly two years to begin to recover from COVID-19, a treatable virus with a 99% survival rate, and the conclusions we’ve arrived at on how to best do so are still widely in contention from country to country, and state to state. To be honest, this future war sounds like something that would be impossible to enact at a global policy level, but that a handful of billionaires might be happy to tackle in an egotistical fight to the death. Remember how excited Elon Musk was to send his little ‘escape pods’ into that Thai cave? Imagine the boner he would get if he was told that a) we possess time travel capabilities now and b) he might be humanity’s ONLY HOPE. “Forget the space race,” he’d say, “tell Jeff we’re doing the time war!”
2. We could not have utilized our resources any worse if we tried
Okay congratulations, somehow you’ve convinced our governments to send forth their troops, scientists, and P.E. teachers into the wormhole. What now? I guess the logical next step would be, at the very least, to get them suited up in some high tech armor and equip them with futuristic weapons designed for killing aliens, right? Maybe tell them a bit about what they’ll be up against, so that they can prepare themselves mentally and physically? No, no, that makes way too much sense. Seriously, we might as well have blindfolded these draftees and spun them around a bat 10 times before dropping them from the sky to their deaths. When asked by the draftees why they hadn’t been shown any footage of the White Spikes, the future troops replied with something along the lines of that they were “too scary.” I have a question: when the fuck did scaring the draftees become a concern? You’ve already ripped them away from their families, told most of them when they’re supposed to die, and fused a portal-jumping/tracking device onto their anatomy. That ship has sailed.
All of this aside, though, I can’t get over what a wasteful use of our manpower this strategy was in general. Wouldn’t it have been smarter to use our limited time traveling capabilities to pull everyone out of the future, which was already fucked, and instead use their knowledge and resources to stop the catastrophe at the source, in the present? We literally have thirty years to figure out how this happened and nip it in the bud, or at the very least prepare our present defenses for the future threat. But if we have committed to sending half of our global population into a future onslaught, how has society continued to otherwise exist as normal? Everyone is still going about their daily routines and is just like “oh no, the mailman died in the wormhole, no more mailman :( ” No. Every single thing should be about this war. School should be replaced by a militarized equivalent; our technology, science, and defense budgets should be wholly dedicated to stopping this threat, until it is vanquished. We either need to commit 100%, or remove ourselves from the equation entirely, because right now we are being incredibly wasteful with the human lives that we claim to so desperately need.
3. They tried to do way too much with the emotional storyline
Chris Pratt and his platoon make it to the future, narrowly avoiding death on impact by landing in a swimming pool, and are instantly thrust into a last-ditch rescue mission to save a team of scientists/their vials from a nearby lab. Oh, and did I mention that there’s an air strike on the way, because we have no other choice but to blow up this specific area — which could contain humanity’s last hope — right this moment? I feel like I’m playing Gears of War; there’s no way this is an actual movie plot. It gets better though, because the lieutenant talking Chris Pratt through this mission turns out to be none other than his daughter, Muri (dumb name), thirty years in the future. She is now a very impressive and well-regarded scientist, who has basically been leading what remains of the world through this whole foolhardy operation. She and Chris Pratt have it out about how he supposedly abandoned her several years after his return from the wormhole, in a present he hasn’t experienced yet, but they agree to work together to save the world. Really quick, sorry, but I need to say something: Maybe I’m just sick, but I find it weird when two hot actors of the same age are supposed to be playing a father and daughter. My ape brain wants to see them make out, and I’m confused how I’m supposed to feel about their interactions, which lessens the impact of their heartfelt scenes. Whew. Thank you for letting me get that off my chest.
Muri and Chris Pratt determine that there’s basically one female White Spike whom all of the males are protecting, and that by capturing her (lol) and concocting some sort of toxin from her DNA, they could travel back to the present and save the world. Cool. Somehow they pull this off, but not before Muri is killed by an alien. Chris Pratt, seeming almost determined to make sure that this was all in vain, stays with her as she dies, nearly dying himself before his jump-link zaps him back to the present. Now his mission is to use this toxin to save the world, so that the future where his daughter dies tragically does not actually happen.
The only problem is, upon their return to the present, the wormhole is destroyed (what timing!), and all communication with the future is severed. This, for some completely nonsensical reason, means that the government is done caring about this issue — yes, the very issue that we previously decided was important enough to send 50% of our world military and general population to their deaths for. So Chris Pratt turns to none other than his dead-beat, conspiracy theorist, quip-loving father for help. I don’t hate this, because as I mentioned J.K. Simmons was my favorite character in this movie, but I’m just kind of emotionally exhausted at this point. Is this a father-daughter movie? A father-son movie? A movie about attempting to change our characteristic destinies? Please, for the love of god, pick a lane.
4. The time travel science was frail at best
Another irritation of mine was the unshakable feeling that the writer lacked a basic understanding of how time travel works. During their first active duty briefing, Chris Pratt and his new friend discovered that the reason why mainly older people like themselves were being drafted, was because you could only go into the future if you were already dead in the future (presumably to avoid some sort of paradoxical self-confrontation). But we were also told that only 500,000 people remained in the future. So if my math serves me, that would mean that 99.99% of the earth’s population was already dead in the future, which would mean we could’ve sent just about anyone into the wormhole. Also, I mentioned that when Chris Pratt returned from the future with the secret sauce that could save everything, he was completely written off because “the portal link has been destroyed.”
What???!?!?
We literally have no need to communicate with the future anymore, we already have the solution! If anything, the future troops were holding us back with their harebrained schemes and sassy attitudes… I’m glad the wormhole closed, now we can actually work on a solution in peace. I just can’t believe that Chris Pratt and his rag-tag team of misfits would be the only people to realize that the mission was not worth cancelling — a decision which was more driven by emotion than logic anyway. Communication with the future is completely unnecessary if you have the power to eradicate that future entirely via present action. Anyone should know this, especially someone writing an entire movie about time travel.
5. The ending completely invalidated the rest of the movie
Now that the government has decided that this war is no longer their vibe, Chris Pratt must take things into his own hands to save the future. He teams up with some friends from his wormhole troop and enlists the help of a 13-year-old volcano enthusiast from his class to determine that the White Spikes’ ship, which is currently lying dormant, is located somewhere in Russia. J.K. Simmons, having been a pilot, agrees to fly them there himself, and the 6ish of them immediately set off to handle this problem, without telling anyone where they’re going or what they’re doing. This of course means that, if they die on their mission, none of humanity will know that the White Spikes are there, or how to stop them, and this will all have been for nothing. Cool. I truly cannot get over the fact that a science teacher, middle schooler, tech division manager, and ex-military conspiracy guy were the only people on Earth to ever consider the source of the alien invasion, and were willing to stake the future of the human race on the belief that they could take care of it themselves. They also decide that they need to go to Russia right now, despite the fact that the White Spikes will not pose a threat for another thirty years. Thus, they actually risk bringing about the End of Days thirty years early by doing this. Whatever!
The group arrives on the scene and discovers a ship full of sleeping aliens, who they begin stabbing with toxins willy-nilly. This awakens the other White Spikes on the ship, including the female, who they should have identified and stabbed first, but didn’t. She gets away, but they manage to blow up the ship containing the rest of the White Spikes, killing them all. PAUSE. You’re telling me that we spent this entire movie working on a toxin, for a problem that could apparently be solved with explosives? Why couldn’t we just fly over the alien nest and kabloom it without the toxin?? This would have been much safer for our people as well, but honestly, I just want the movie to be over at this point. Chris Pratt and J.K. Simmons chase down the female near the edge of a cliff, where they proceed to box each other — No, not Chris Pratt and his dad — Chris Pratt and the queen White Spike. They literally engage in hand to hand combat, which, if I’m honest, was one of the more enjoyable parts of the movie for me, because I actually laughed. Chris Pratt manages to get the toxin in her, and she dies while falling off a cliff. The day is saved.
The movie finally ends, but not before Chris Pratt could deliver what was possibly the worst monologue I have ever heard. It was straight out of an anime; it seriously would’ve hit so much harder if I dubbed it over in Japanese:
“I never told [Muri] about our seven days together. Nor how in a future that now will never happen, she changed me, forever. I’m never gonna leave her. I will never leave this family. Because my best future, it turns out, was always right in front of me.”
Call me crazy, but somehow I never quite bought into the idea that the cardigan-wearing middle school teacher was going to leave his family. This angle was really just another stupid thing we had to deal with amidst an already hectic plot. To me it kind of felt like they were trying to replicate the father-daughter storyline from Interstellar, but much less successfully.
Overall, The Tomorrow War is a ridiculous movie riddled with plot holes and logical fallacies, and held together tenuously by some strong action scenes and scary monsters. I would give it a 4/10.
One thing I do know for certain is that, if we ever face extinction at the hands of an alien race, the people I’m not calling for help are Chris McKay, Zach Dean, and Chris Pratt. I still think we stand a better chance putting Elon at the helm, at least we would get some good memes out of it.
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