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

DON'T MISS THESE HOT SUMMER FLICKS

After the hugely successful debut last week of Avengers: Endgame, the last in the popular Marvel film series, you might expect a review of the movie from me in today’s post. But, although I thoroughly enjoyed the three-hour wrap-up of all things Avengers and the emotional return of our favorite heroes and heroines, it would be nearly impossible to do the film justice without serious spoiler-ation. If you’re a fan of the series, I suspect you’ve already been to your local cineplex and have drawn your own conclusions. If you’re not a fan, well . . .

Instead, how about we look ahead to what Hollywood has to offer this summer, both in the theaters and on your streaming screens at home? Here are a few of the films I’m really looking forward to (plus a couple of things to be on the watch for, courtesy of the website of all geek knowledge io9.gizmodo.com)

--TOLKIEN. Just when we thought the cinematic gold mine of the British fantasy genius was played out, along comes this biopic of the man himself, starring Nicholas Hoult (in quite a different role from his turn as Nux in MAD MAX: FURY ROAD). Film biographies can be deadly, but the previews suggest this one uses the more innovative approach of interweaving Tolkien’s own story with the fantasies of Middle Earth he created out of the chaos of two world wars. (May 10)

--SEE YOU YESTERDAY. No need to deal with the crowds and expense of the cineplex for this multicultural SF action flick. Spike Lee produced this little gem for Netflix, about a young African American woman who uses time travel to combat police brutality and murder. Once again, Netflix proves an open-minded venue for both SF and diversity. (May 17)

Love the T-shirt:Netflix does diversity AND SF.

 --RIM OF THE WORLD. Netflix piles on a week later with another SF film, this one from the kids-save-the-world-from-aliens category. The kids in this instance happen to be at summer camp when the aliens invade. McG (of TERMINATOR fame) directs. (May 24)

--BRIGHTBURN. So, what if Batman was right about Superman after all? Or, to put it another way, what if Superbaby landed in that cornfield and turned out to be an uncontrollable brat with evil intentions? The anti-superhero arrives with this film by James Gunn (GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY). (May 24)

--AD ASTRA. Granted, the thought of Brad Pitt in a near-space quest movie is enough to get just about any SF fan’s heart racing. But this film from director James Gray (LOST CITY OF Z) has suffered from production delays and probably won’t make its projected late-May release date. Okay, as long as the wait is worth it. (May 24?)

--GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS. Y’all know I love me some Godzilla! He’s back this time to battle all the bad kaiju and save the world, as he is meant to. That means some serious ass-whupping! But if I were a human in any city on the planet, I’d head to the hills for the duration. Godzilla tends not to watch where he’s stepping when battling other monsters. (May 31)

--MEN IN BLACK INTERNATIONAL. Chris Hemsworth as a slightly dim-witted veteran alien fighter. Tessa Thompson as the newbie. Emma Thompson as a high-ranking agent and Liam Neeson as the boss named High T. It just doesn’t get any better than this! I’ve only seen the previews and I already want to give the casting director an award!  (June 14)

--YESTERDAY. This film belongs on my list not only because I’m a Beatles fan of 50+ years, but also because it posits an alternate universe in which the Fab Four never became famous. I know! Impossible, right? The premise here is that a struggling musician wakes up one day and is somehow the only one who remembers John, Paul, George, Ringo or any of the tunes they ever wrote. He inadvertently rides to glory on borrowed wings. From Danny Boyle, the director of SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE. (June 28)

--LION KING. If you were fortunate enough to catch the live action/CGI remake of THE JUNGLE BOOK on Netflix a few months back, you will understand the excitement in advance of this new version of the Disney classic. The previews of this film are spectacular, and, like JUNGLE BOOK, you can really believe the animals are real and performing in their natural habitat. Computer graphics have moved so far beyond what we could even imagine a few years ago, anything the mind can conceive, CGI can put it on the screen. This is Broadway meets Blue Planet, and not to be missed. (July 19)

These films comprise only a fraction of what will be showing at your local multiplex or on your TV screen at home this summer, of course (and I haven’t even mentioned August). Then, too, there are books to be read, hikes to be taken, picnics to be eaten and all those other summer-y delights to enjoy. So much to do, in fact, time travel may be the only way to do it all. Better get started now!

Cheers, Donna

*Information for this post selected from, “Summer Movie Preview: 37 Movies to Watch Out for,” by io9 staff, io9.gizmodo.com https://io9.gizmodo.com/summer-movie-preview-37-movies-to-watch-out-for-1834119942

 

And from https://www.imdb.com/

MY TAKE ON THE OSCARS

Well, the Oscars have been awarded, but the controversies linger like cheap perfume in the air. The Twitterverse is still alive with outrage that this movie or the other one was chosen, this actor or another one was dissed, even that one sequined gown outshone another. It seems the only thing anyone can agree on is that no host is better than any host you can name for the ceremonies. At least we got out of there almost on time.

As my Faithful Readers, you know I’m in the multiplex almost every week of the year. Honestly, someone in Hollywood should pay me—I may well be the Last Traditional Moviegoer. So, I have opinions, most of which I’ve managed to keep to myself until now. But the volume of negative reaction to some of the Academy’s decisions this year has gone over the top, like a lot of our national discourse these days, and balance is required.

As Jim Kirk says a famous alien author will someday write: Let me help.

GREEN BOOK as Best Picture: I’ll admit right up front that I loved this movie. I loved the old-school narrative “road trip” structure; the acting was brilliant, showcasing two actors at the top of their game; the dialogue was funny in spots, touching in others; there are at least four visually and emotionally memorable scenes. I saw the film twice and got more out of it at each viewing, always a telling characteristic of a great movie. And the moral of the film—that we can learn from each other if we will only move past the stereotypes we have of other people—is a lesson we need to learn in these fraught times. The point is made with a light touch in this film.

Much of the criticism of GREEN BOOK revolves around its point of view. The screenplay was written primarily by Nick Villelonga, son of Tony “Tony Lip” Villelonga, the character Viggo Mortensen plays in the film. In 1962, Tony Lip was an out-of-work bouncer hired by African-American classical pianist Dr. Donald Shirley to drive him on a three-month tour of the South. Both of these men were extraordinary personalities in their own right—Tony Lip went on to be an actor (“The Sopranos”) and a chef; Dr. Shirley was an acclaimed musician in both jazz and classical music—but it happened that Tony’s son wrote the screenplay, and Hollywood director Peter Farrelly picked it up. Thus GREEN BOOK is a story about two men crossing race and culture to become friends in a time when that was not an easy thing to do. (That last point is too often forgotten in an age when some people insist “racism no longer exists.” We need a reminder.)

 Critics, both within the black community and outside it, have complained that this predominantly white perspective skews the story and robs it of its truth. They argue that Dr. Shirley deserves to star in the story of his own life—that of a brilliant gay black man succeeding despite all the many roadblocks thrown in his way. While I don’t disagree, I think that would have been a much less interesting film, a one-dimensional film, like so many of the movies made these days. Like our music or our reading choices or our Netflix options selected for us by an algorithm based on what we watched last night, films are more and more made for niche audiences—teenagers or gay audiences or world market audiences (ie. lots of action, little dialogue).

GREEN BOOK was written to appeal to a wider, if a more traditional audience. Black and white. Gay and straight. As Tony Lip himself says in the film “It’s a . . . (Latin shrug) complicated world.” 

Of course, the film’s director, Peter Farrelly, complicated it even more with his sleazy past, and Viggo Mortensen took himself out of Best Actor contention by stumbling in the early days of the PR for the movie. Still, GREEN BOOK deserved the Oscar, especially when you look at the competition.

BLACKKLANSMAN: This is probably Spike Lee’s best film to date, so it was a shame it didn’t do better at the Oscars. But this true story of a black FBI agent who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in Colorado in the 70s had one drawback: it hit you over the head with its message in an emotionally effective, but ultimately preachy ending of real footage from the Charlottesville riots. A little would have gone a long way, but Spike is not known for restraint as a filmmaker.

BLACK PANTHER: As all SF fans know, this would have been a long shot anyway, but BP wasn’t even the best Marvel had to offer. Yes, it had a great cast, an admirable black hero and some kickass female warriors, but the effects were lacking and the story only average. Bring on WONDER WOMAN.

ROMA: I can’t even begin to tell you how disappointed I was in this autobiographical outing by Alphonso Cuaron. ROMA’s housekeeper heroine literally goes nowhere, while the family she works for falls apart. A metaphor for Mexico? The world? Who knows? I agree wholeheartedly with Stephen Spielberg that Netflix movies should not be eligible for Oscar contention. They are television movies. Oscar-eligible films should be made for the big screen.

A STAR IS BORN: This was a fantastic film, with two great actors (Lady Gaga, what a surprise!) showing amazing chemistry. But it was a third-time remake in the classic style, making it difficult to award the Oscar. Definitely see the film, though!

BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY: I’m not a fan of Queen so I didn’t see this one, but from all I read, this film was a mess except for Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury. And what did I say about niche films? 

THE FAVOURITE; VICE: Again, I’m showing my prejudices here, but these historical niche films were not up my alley, so I didn’t see them. A lesbian farce set in 17^th Century England and a biopic about Dick Cheney, no matter how good the acting, will just not be on my list. But, hey, they may sound like fun to you, so enjoy!

I fully expect that some of you will disagree with the opinions expressed here. Let’s discuss!

Cheers, Donna