THE TOMORROW WAR: ALIENS IN OUR FUTURE

The Fourth of July here in the U.S. marked the official kickoff of summer movie blockbuster season. And whether they’re brave enough to visit your local multiplex, or still watching at home, there’s plenty to keep science fiction fans occupied.

Like a battle with aliens in the future in THE TOMORROW WAR, now showing on Amazon Prime Video. This SF monster mashup is steered by LEGO movie franchise director Chris McKay, written by DEADFALL’s Zach Dean, and stars Chris Pratt, veteran actor J. K. Simmons, Yvonne Strahovski (Handmaid’s Tale), and a host of talented Black actors who miraculously do not die in the first thirty minutes! THE TOMORROW WAR, an alien-blasting actioner with a surprising amount of heart, was originally filmed for the big screen by Paramount and Skydance Films, but its release was delayed due to COVID, and the film was sold to Amazon for $200 million for a small-screen debut this past weekend.

This film is fun in a lot of ways, but I have to start by saying its founding premise has holes big enough to fly a spaceship through. Few SF writers or filmmakers get time travel right, and this one is no exception. Here we are expected to believe that 30 years in the future, bloodthirsty aliens have invaded the Earth and humanity is losing a war with them, to the extent that only 500,000 humans remain to fight the good fight. Our descendants discover a way (don’t ask for details) to go back in time to the present to recruit some of our billions of inhabitants to fight for them/us.

At first, they just take military troops, but even all the world’s armies aren’t equal to the challenge. So, a worldwide draft is instituted to feed the war machine fighting the aliens. The term of service is a short seven days, but only 30 percent of those drafted come back, and those that do suffer from severe physical, mental, and emotional trauma.

The military gives their new recruits no training, not even a helmet or boots. Just sends them through a wormhole to the future to be “White Spike” (alien) fodder. There are other details about the time travel, but, as Jim Kirk always said, they’d only give you a headache. It’s only when you just forget trying to impose any kind of logic on the time travel aspects of this film and instead take it as a straight-up humans vs. aliens shoot-em-up, that THE TOMORROW WAR starts to rise above its B-movie status.

Chris Pratt, often the Everyman hero in these kinds of films, plays Dan Forester, an Army Special Ops veteran hoping for a career in chemical engineering but reduced to teaching high school chemistry to support his wife and young science-crazy daughter Muri. Dan is—inevitably—drafted to fight the aliens. He briefly considers dodging the draft, an act which would require his estranged father’s help to remove the tracking device attached to his arm. He hasn’t spoken to the old man (played with gritty gusto by J.K. Simmons) for years, blaming him for abandoning the family when Dan was a child. The elder Forester tries to explain he left due to the symptoms of his PTSD from Vietnam, but Dan will have none of it (or of the old man’s attempts to make amends and get to know his granddaughter). In the end, Dan resigns himself to his service, refusing at first to take any help from the man someone later calls “conspiracy Santa” because of his beard and off-the-grid wackiness.

Chris Pratt leads his team against the aliens.

The fight between father and son, and the emotional costs of battle that can extend across generations, is an unexpected theme running through THE TOMORROW WAR. When heroes are busy killing bad guys, no one thinks about the toll it takes on them once the fighting is over. Yes, we have serious movies that address the issue (THE DEER HUNTER, ZERO DARK THIRTY), but it’s a rare thing to see a blockbuster film aimed at a mass audience devote screen time to the consequences of what we are all asking the heroes to do—that is, go out there and face the uber-violent monsters.

At one point, the heroine, Colonel Muri Forester (yes, that Muri Forester, as an adult, played by Polish-Australian actor Yvonne Strahovski) explains the aliens’ motivations: “They have no use for prisoners or government, technology, money... nothing. We are food. And they are hungry.” So you can imagine what it must be like to fight them and what kind of scars that leaves.

And, it turns out, [spoiler alert] when Dan meets his grown daughter in the future, now the kickass commander of the anti-alien fighting forces, she is aloof and cold. Eventually the truth comes out—when he’d returned from his draft service, he’d been unable to readjust to civilian life. He’d abandoned his family just as his own father had—and for the same reasons. Yikes!

That’s the most surprising element of the plot, though not by any means the only one. Of course, we have the usual “assembling of the team” aspect that is common to any action film. But in this case, the team includes a higher than usual percentage of Black, female, and older members.  Edwin Hodge and Sam Richardson stand out, as does Alexis Louder and Mary Lynn Rajskub (of 24). All these actors last longer than you might expect, as does big-bodied actor Mike Mitchell, and all are given worthy deaths when the time comes.

In the opposite corner we have the aliens, called White Spikes due to their nasty habit of shooting bone darts at their human opponents (not to mention their ripping teeth and their tentacles and their ungodly speed and their swarming numbers!). Not only are these some creatively creepy ETs, they’re some sneaky ones, too. In one of the film’s best twists [more spoilers], they didn’t just arrive in a fleet of spaceships one day and land on the D.C. Mall. They crash-landed into a glacier in Russia circa 1000 A.D. as cargo on a ship hauled by some other species a la ALIEN. Were they meant to be a planet-clearing weapon? Prisoners? We’ll never know, because the pilot of the spaceship died and, of course, no one is looking for a ship’s log.

Global warming eventually thaws the White Spikes out of their icy crypt, allowing them to spread undetected until it’s too late to stop them. They overrun the Earth, destroying humans, livestock, wildlife, and the lot, until, desperate, the last of humanity calls on the past for help.

I won’t tell you how the heroes come up with a plan to save the world. But I will tell you that the last 30 to 45 minutes of the film are exciting, ridiculous, glorious fun. And the solution won’t make your head hurt!  Yay!

Not only that, but the emotional ending of the film for Dan and his family is just as satisfying. Yay, again!

Yes, THE TOMORROW WAR may be too long and derivative and full of plot holes and we probably won’t remember it as a classic of the genre. But the aliens are memorable, the human characters are diverse and substantive, and the subplots are twisty and surprising. Do we really need more in our summer blockbusters? I think not. Spend some time with your popcorn and a beverage in front of this one. You won’t regret it.

Cheers, Donna

DESPITE CRITICS, PASSENGERS DELIVERS A GREAT RIDE

Science fiction romance demands a delicate balance that is not easy to achieve. For the romance to work, the hero and heroine must have a fiery chemistry that will attract an audience right away, and a bond that will survive all the obstacles we devilish authors can throw in their paths. For the science fiction to work, the world we create must be both believable and intriguing, expanding our readers’ minds in some way as they follow the story.

And if that balance is difficult to achieve on the page, just think how hard it must be to accomplish on the big screen, where it is so easy to overwhelm an audience with special effects on the SF side and neglect the much smaller-scale human interaction of the romance (MAN OF STEEL, OBLIVION, any superhero movie with a female love interest). After all, any number of great science fiction movies come to mind when the subject comes up. But only a handful of science fiction romances make the grade—AVATAR being far and away the best of them.

That’s why I was so excited to see PASSENGERS, currently in theaters, starring Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence. Here is a film that satisfies on the SF side, with beautiful visuals of a lovely interstellar ship and of the stars themselves, with an external plot that is driven by familiar space-going emergencies. And yet, the romantic arc between the very appealing hero and heroine is central to the story, and, indeed, inseparable from it. Finally!

Pratt and Lawrence have just the right chemistry for this job, with the able catalyst of Michael Sheen in the role of a robotic bartender who serves as a sort of informal counselor to both parties. We are enchanted with their romance and root for them as a couple, just as we would in any rom-com. We want them to succeed together, despite the dark secret at the heart of their love’s origins, and in defiance of the challenges that inevitably come.

Of course, that dark secret (which I cannot reveal here for spoiler-y reasons), has thrown the critical world for a complete loop. PASSENGERS has been excoriated by the critics because of the ethical dilemma posed by this plot twist, which has been described as “icky,” “stalkery” and “misogynistic.” This from the same people who see the moral dilemma posed by a childless couple hiding the baby they found on a beach from its natural mother (in THE LIGHT BETWEEN OCEANS) as high art.

This central moral question only makes PASSENGERS a much more interesting film, raising it a level above the usual space opera. The audience leaving the theater has more to talk about than just whether Pratt and Lawrence were good together or whether the special effects in the nul-grav swimming pool scene were cool or not. Viewers must decide for themselves whether what Pratt’s character did was justified or right or not; whether Lawrence’s character reacted realistically or as they themselves would. And, finally, they must determine whether the couple’s final solution to their external dilemma—a lifetime aboard a ship originally meant to be only a sleeper transport to a distant colony planet—is a good one.

As a romance reader, dark secrets and slightly stalkery behavior are really nothing new to me, either. Paranormal romance, in particular, is rife with such tropes. In fact, PASSENGERS could be said to combine SF’s well-known “Adam and Eve” trope with PNR’s “fated mates” trope to good effect. And no harm done. 

Science geeks will no doubt point out, too, that artificial gravity produced by spinning the ship would not cut out suddenly when the power went out. Thus the coolest scene in the movie (in my opinion) is scientific BS. Okay. It still looked awesome. I give it an “A” for conceptual effort.

PASSENGERS deserves much better than it’s been getting from mainstream reviewers. Go see it on the big screen and enjoy the best SFR film since AVATAR.  PASSENGERS is definitely a GO!

Cheers, Donna

  

LAURIE AND DONNA GO BACK TO THE JURASSIC

This week Spacefrieghters crew members Laurie Green and Donna Frelick begin a new occasional series, reviewing the latest SF films in their best Siskel and Ebert style. First up: JURASSIC WORLD.

LAURIE SAYS:

Okay, everybody ready? A one and a two . . .

I enjoyed the latest edition of the Jurassic franchise for what it was meant to be--a fast-paced, action packed, gaspfest. With visually stunning sets, some cool new tech, and a few new beasties--including the seemingly unstoppable new designer monster, Indominus rex--it was quite a ride. If that's what you're looking for in your quest for summer Sci-Fi entertainment, it completely fills the bill.   

Set twenty-two years after the original Jurassic Park folded and on the same island--Isla Nublar, off the coast of Costa Rica--this reincarnation of the doomed predecessor has been successfully operating for a decade. (DUH da daaaa)

Though some of the plot ploys bordered on annihilating suspension of disbelief, *spoiler shield* (highlight the following space with your cursor to read) such as Velociraptors who could be clicker-trained or the extremely macho stunt of riding a motorcycle amidst a pack of hunting Raptors without a healthy barrier of steel between human handler and said predators, *lift shield* I still give it a "GO."

However...

If you're expecting a deep debate on genetic engineering or the cataclysmic failure surrounding the last attempt at a prehistoric zoo, you won't find it here. You also won't find any character development whatsoever, which only the first movie of the franchise attempted. What you will get is a lot of thrills, a few intriguing twists, a plethora of prehistoric eye candy, a not-so-well developed romantic side story, and the required Poor Little Cute Kid Factor thrown into the mix for sympathetic effect.

Chris Pratt certainly makes a charismatic though sometimes TMTL (Too Macho To Live) hero, though this viewer found his female romantic interest far less deserving of a happy ending. The villains (including one character who harks back to the original Jurassic Park) were utterly two-dimensional and mustache-twirling.

All-in-all, Jurassic World is worth the price of a ticket if you're on the hunt for a fun and flashy big budget film but not a deeply moving theater experience.

DONNA SAYS:
 

Well, I’ll agree with Laurie that JURASSIC WORLD was an entertaining way to spend a hot afternoon. I mean, what’s not to like about watching a T-Rex and an even bigger, toothier dino-creation called Indominus Rex duke it out in what’s left of the puny humans’ “amusement park”? Bring on the CGI and more popcorn!

Chris Pratt is well on his way to becoming the latest go-to guy in action heroes. The role of Owen, the park’s dino-wrangler and resident Voice of Doom (absorbing some of Jeff Goldblum’s purpose in the original JURASSIC PARK, but without the snarky humor), is a good fit for Pratt. He does well in all the physical stuff, looking heroic without looking like Dudley Doright. But I did miss the smart-alecky edge that made GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY so much fun. Owen is a very serious fellow. Especially when, as Goldblum’s character put it, all the “running and, um, screaming” starts, as it inevitably must when humans do stupid things.

And here is where I suppose I must part with Laurie. JW is nowhere near the thrill ride JURASSIC PARK was so many years ago, despite advances in film technology that should have made it more so. It is the same old story line recycled for the nth time: in our arrogance we overreach our ability to control the technology we create and it destroys us. That we’ve seen this same scenario of genetic manipulation and denial played out almost to the last detail before on this same damn island just seems a bit ridiculous. Did we learn nothing the last time, people?  But, okay, forget the story setup, did the film’s producers think no one had ever seen the first movie? Or the second? Or, God forbid, the third?

Now THAT'S a dinosaur . . . movie!

What made the first movie a classic was Stephen Spielberg as director. Spielberg is a master filmmaker, one who studied the art of creating suspense from another, earlier master, Alfred Hitchcock. He understood that it wasn’t the sight of a huge monster thrashing around that scared the bejesus out of you—it was the idea of that monster stalking you unseen in the dark. Think of the scariest moments of the original film—T-rex stomping closer and closer while the kids huddled, trapped in the car; the velociraptors hunting the hidden kids in the kitchen. Mostly we saw the kids’ terrified faces. The dinos were secondary. The same techniques were used to great effect in JAWS. We hardly saw the big fish until the final few minutes of the film (which was just as well, given the limitations of the shark model Spielberg was using).

All of that suspense is completely missing from JURASSIC WORLD. Director Colin Trevorrow, with only minor films to his credit, is clearly out of his league here. Both in terms of plot and technique, everything is out in the open, most of it in broad daylight. Is it fun to watch? Sure! Would I watch it again? Shrug. Much rather see the original again for the tenth time.

So, mission call? I’d say JURASSIC WORLD is a GO, but don’t expect much beyond some mindless summer fun.

(Watch this space for more GO-NO GO reviews of this summer’s hottest SF blockbusters from Laurie and Donna! Next up: TERMINATOR: GENESIS)

Cheers, Donna and Laurie