Premise: Civilians are drafted into a war 30 years in the future to stop an alien invasion.
The Tomorrow War is the best SciFi action movie of 1998. I'm being somewhat glib when I say that, but it's not exactly a criticism. This movie owes a lot to Independence Day. It's the kind of earnest non-franchise blockbuster that we don't see these days. It also has some of the plot contrivances that I always hope studios have let go of or evolved past.
It's a killer premise. During a World Cup soccer game in 2022 (nice international play, producers), a group of soldiers from the future reveal themselves and announce a war that they are losing against aliens. More than anything else, the future needs more people to fight the war. So, the world of 2022 begins a draft of all people to fight in the war for a week. The movie gets through all that setup pretty quickly and it's easy to go with it all as part of the price of admission. This is overtly a video game of a movie. I could go more into the plot, but some of the fun of this is the odd pacing. The story goes further than I expected and has an entire act I wasn't prepared for, even though none of it feels wholly new.
It's fair to call The Tomorrow War an amalgamation of a bunch of other action movies, but isn't that true of all action movies? Chris Pratt in the lead role is really savoring this traditional action star role. It's low on Pratt's usual jokiness. That feels very intentional on Pratt's part and it is appropriate for the movie. He can't be too jokey, because Sam Richardson takes care of that in a supporting role as one of Pratt's fellow draftees. Had Pratt been Peter Quill in this, it would've thrown the whole balance off. Yvonne Strahovski plays one of the future army commanders, and it's nice to see her back in the action genre. She's great in The Handmaid's Tale, but I will always know her first and foremost for Chuck. J.K. Simmons plays Pratt's father who is accurately described in the movie as "Conspiracy theorist Santa." Edwin Hodge has a nice supporting role as a draftee with a death wish. The only central cast member who feels wasted is Betty Gilpin as Chris Pratt's wife. It's a needed tone-setting role, but it seems weird to have someone with Gilpin's badass credentials (See G.L.O.W.) sitting at home and looking worried the whole time.
I was fine with how derivative the whole movie was. Sometimes it's fun to watch a big dumb action movie. I was annoyed with the third act though. I 100% do not understand why they didn't get military assistance for that mission. They have pretty compelling evidence to support their theory and this isn't a situation where no one believes the threat of aliens is real. How would it hurt the movie to make it a military sanctioned mission to neutralize the threat? The remote location still makes sense to have a small crew, but it means we don't have to have a scene where a general is like "Look, we know there are aliens and what you're saying make a little sense, but we're not really worried about the aliens right now. That's not for another 30 years." The logic of all that fully took me out of the fun of the movie.
I have no idea how this movie would've done in the box office. It was meant to be a big Christmas release in 2020. Paramount eventually sold it off to Amazon due to scheduling issues and a lack of faith in it. The Tomorrow War does lack the "special sauce" that turns a Stargate into an Independence Day. It probably would've done fine - like an Edge of Tomorrow. I suspect it was banking a lot on the international market. It sure feels like a movie that would've made 80% of its profits overseas and barely cracked $100 million stateside. We'll never really know, but it was a bit of a bummer having to watch it on Amazon rather than the big screen.
Verdict: Weakly Recommend
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