I took time out Saturrday to watch The Tomorrow War, which is a movie presented by Amazon Prime, starring Chris Pratt. The basic idea is that there has been some sort of alien invasion in the future that was working and the human race had been reduced to about a half million people. Somehow the future humans had opened a portal into the past and were now recruiting people from the past to fight in the future in an attempt to save humanity. Well, that is a bit confusing but that’s what the movie is about.
MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW:
Chris
Pratt is a former special operations soldier, Don Forester because, apparently,
the military has no regular soldiers anymore. He has a nice little family, but is
recruited for future duty. We learn that the survival rate for these recruits is
about thirty percent. We learn that the tour is one week in the future and when
those 168 hours are up, the soldier returns to his “home” time automatically,
no matter where he is or what shape he is in.
And
here’s where I become annoyed. They recruit the people, from all over the
planet, including, it would seem, those who had no military service, who have
never handled any sort of a weapon, and who are not necessarily in peak
physical condition. They’re just civilians who have been living their lives,
aware of this war in the future but not overly concerned about it because it’s,
well, in the future and they’ll never live to see that future. They have no special
skills, no special knowledge that would help defeat the enemy, but are sent off
to fight that enemy anyway.
They
are given automatic weapons, but no real instruction on the care of those
weapons. They wouldn’t know how to safely clear a jam, they have no fire
discipline, and have no idea about target acquisition. In the real world,
handing an automatic weapon to an untrained soldier would result in many, many
friendly casualties. Never mind that, just throw them into the fight in the
future and hope for the best. I will note here that fire discipline isn’t a
concern because like all Hollywood weapons, the shooter has an infinite supply
of ammunition.
During
the first fight, as they’re blasting away at the creatures running at them,
shooting off bits and pieces of the alien body with little effect, a veteran
tells them that only hitting the soft underbelly is fatal. Wouldn’t you think
that someone would have mentioned this important bit of intelligence before
sending them into the fight. Not to mention giving them weapons that would be
effective against the aliens. Wasn’t in one of the old Doctor Who
episodes when the general of Unit wished they would meet an alien presence that
wasn’t immune to bullets?
Don
finally meets his daughter, Muri, in the future who is now a graduate of MIT
and a colonel, in the Army, I think. She was annoyed with him for what he did
to the family some years after he had left to fight in the war, which tells us
at that point he survived the 168 hours he’s in the future. Of course, we
already knew that given what he was told during his induction that he would die
in seven years, which was why he could be recruited. So much for suspense.
There
is a special mission to capture the brain bug, whoops, I mean the queen that is
capable of creating thousands of beasts and that is an even more aggressive
than the male versions. They helicopter over to the underground lair of the
queen. Now, down below, we find soldiers who have, somehow, managed to get
ropes on the queen and are attempting to drag it out where they can stuff it in
a cage.
I’m
thinking, ropes?
Really?
You
don’t have a better plan… not that one was needed because they eventually
succeed but only after they are kicked around in a way that would have killed
most people.
The
whole point is that they have developed a toxin that is affective against the
males, but not so much the females. They need a female creature to find a
formula that works… which, of course they do just before Don slingshots back to
his own time.
Rather
than killing the queen after developing the toxin, they keep it alive. It seems
to be in some form of telepathic communication with hoards of the males. Of
course, there is a major assault in which the humans are being overrun. Don
can’t get Muri to the lab where they could manufacture the formula. Instead,
she is killed just before he returns to his own time. There is a truly moving
moment as they talk, heart to heart, because she is dying, but who cares? We
understand time travel.
Oh,
I don’t mean that we don’t care about the character, I’m saying that he is
about to return to his time where his daughter will be alive and he can warn
her about all this. No one ever thinks about those sorts of things. If he KNOWS
when and where she dies, he can prevent it.
Anyway,
he falls back into his own time with a vial of the toxin and then, someone
figures out that all they have to do is find the point where the aliens first
came to Earth. (Okay, it’s his wife, Emmy, but that’s not important now.) They
can prevent the war. The clue is on a tooth or claw or something from one of
the aliens and frankly, I don’t care what it was. It contained a bit of
volcanic ash that identifies the crater from which it was ejected. The ash and
the tooth. Some high school kid has the information they need about the volcano
because why would you consult a volcanologist when you can talk to a high
school kid about it. Anyway, the volcano is in Russia and it’s on to Russia
because the movie isn’t long enough yet.
With
the solution to the war at hand, with the ability to save, literally, billions
of lives, the Earth governments aren’t interested in the plan. You have a guy,
actually, a bunch of them, who have returned from the future, they know what it
will take to keep the war from happening, but no one will listen to them. They
are forced to take on the mission by themselves, flying in a C-130, into
Russia, avoiding the radar and other sensors available to the Russians and
ignoring the fact the C-130 doesn’t have the range to get there without
refueling. They do arrive, however. They find the alien ship…
And
now we know why the alien creatures don’t seem bright enough to cross the
street let alone interstellar space have space travel. They were brought along
to clear the Earth-based life from the planet so that these alien sentient
beings can colonize… do a detect a subtle message here?
At
any rate, they find the ship, they enter, and then let the queen escape. They
didn’t want to destroy the ship. Think of the technological advances that could
be made. But, then, there are so many of these creatures on it, they have no
choice. The secret of interstellar flight is lost again, just as it was in The
Thing from Another World. To quote the journalist in that move, “What a
bunch of butterfingers.”
Of
course, they have to chase down the queen in a fight that is ridiculous to
watch. Here is this beast with huge teeth and claws and strength that is far
superior to those fighting it. The bullets of their high-powered rifles are
ineffective and I’m thinking, why didn’t they bring something along that would
put that creature down for good. I’m thinking a grenade launcher or a fifty cal
or something with a little bit of real power.
And
that is the point. I have lost my sense of disbelief. Rather than being swept
up in the story, I keep seeing the flaws in it. I don’t grant the writer and
the director the privilege of creating a world that I will accept for the
story. There are just too many gaps in the plot. Too many missed opportunities.
And no reason, once they located the queen in the future world, they didn’t
just nuke it. They look for a toxin to kill it, but I’m thinking if you know
where it is, the nuke will take care of it because it is clear that these
aliens aren’t wizards. They are, basically, animals and you would think that
someone in that future war would have figured that out. And yes, there is more
than one queen (which is the term I use but they don’t) but they found one, why
not the others?
But
here’s where we are. Don, his father, and some other guy, have killed the queen
in their time and destroyed the ship, which means they won’t escape into our
world, so there is no war. It ends at that point and Don’s daughter doesn’t die
in the future as she did earlier in the movie.
I
won’t go into the other problems with all this. Okay, just one more. Don knows
that he’s going to be killed in a traffic accident in seven years. Since
they’ve already made one change in time, can’t he make another and avoid the
traffic accident? Just wondering.
So
now that I have picked this apart, let me say this. I did enjoy the movie and
some of that joy was picking it apart. I didn’t mind the virtual signaling that
went on because it was more subtle than it is in some other movies (really, Anne
Boleyn as a black woman, BBC?). The special effects were good, but I just wish
someone had invented a weapon that would have allowed our soldiers to put down
the aliens with a single shot rather than having to shoot them to pieces
(which, eventually worked so that the movie wasn’t even faithful to its own
devices).
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