The Tomorrow War

The Tomorrow War
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Kategori : 2021 action Amazon Prime Chris Pratt J.K. Simmons review Sam Richardson sci-fi The Tomorrow War Yvonne Strahovski Stream thousands of movies and TV shows free INCINEMAX

***DISCLAIMER*** The following review is entirely my opinion. If you comment (which I encourage you to do) be respectful. If you don't agree with my opinion (or other commenters), that's fine. To each their own. These reviews are not meant to be statements of facts or endorsements, I am just sharing my opinions and my perspective when watching the film and is not meant to reflect how these films should be viewed. Finally, the reviews are given on a scale of 0-5. 0, of course, being unwatchable. 1, being terrible. 2, being not great. 3, being okay. 4, being great and 5, being epic! And if you enjoy these reviews feel free to share them and follow the blog or follow me on Twitter (@RevRonster) for links to my reviews and the occasional live-Tweet session of the movie I'm watching!  The upcoming sequel is, I assume, The Day After Tomorrow War.

The Tomorrow War – 3 out of 5

When the trailer came out for this Amazon Prime exclusive sci-fi action feature, I wasn’t really that impressed.  The Tomorrow War looked fairly uninspired and like it was just a bunch of generic science fiction ideas all mushed together into something that looked like it played out in a very cliché and very predictable fashion.  As the trailer played out, I made my guesses about how the movie's outcomes and, after I recently sat down with, all those guesses turned out to be 100% accurate.  That doesn’t necessarily make it a bad movie…just one that offers no surprises and limited entertainment value.

Sam Richardson is the factor that convinced me to check this one out.

The device literally does nothing for the time
jump.  They just put people in this as a joke.

In 2022, a teacher with a background in the military named Dan Forester (Chris Pratt) is watching the World Cup with his daughter when the game is stopped by an unlikely event.  Time travelers interrupt the game to inform the world that creatures have invaded and have left the human race on the verge of extinction.  They’ve travelled to the past in order to recruit new soldiers to help them fight these monsters.  Forester ends up finding himself being drafted and ends up serving, despite the pleas of his wife (Betty Gilpin).  While in the future, he comes across someone very close to him (Yvonne Strahovski) and she holds the key to stopping the war; however, tragedy strikes, and Forester is sent back in time before the plan to end the battle gets enacted.  Now he must team with his fellow soldiers Charlie (Sam Richardson) and Dorian (Edwin Hodge), and his estranged father (J.K. Simmons), in order to stop the war from ever happening in the first place and guaranteeing a future for his family.

These poor creatures just want to eat the human population in peace.

Right off the bat, I found myself laughing at the idea that the population of today would do anything to protect the world of tomorrow.  Climate change is literally a threat that is showing itself now and will leave our society in ruins tomorrow but the most powerful people in the world don’t want to do anything about it because it could potentially mean cutting their profits by a few bucks and they would much rather just see that their money and power protects them and kills the poor when this world becomes uninhabitable.  That’s how I know that the world we see in The Tomorrow War is entirely fictitious because if it was a true representation of how our world operates now, the powerful would have told the time travelers to take off because unless they can profit of it, they would have no interest in protecting the future.  With that tangent aside, The Tomorrow War is a film that I won’t argue is overtly or entirely bad but isn’t wholly great either.  Thanks to its ridiculously predictable story and story elements that feel like they are a blend of random sci-fi tidbits we’ve seen over the course of several decades, the end product is fine enough to give it a shot to when you can’t think of anything better to watch.

"We come from the future and the future is in danger.  Our world is on the 
verge of destruction--"
"Fuck off, future folks!"

It was cool to also see that Mike Mitchell
and Mary Lynn Rajskub were also in the movie.

Like I previously stated, I won’t argue that this movie is entirely bad because it definitely has some elements working in its favor.  For one, the cast is great.  Chris Pratt is leaning away from the humor aspect (which is actually a good thing, but I’ll get to that in a second) and going more towards being a sympathetic father role and, for the most part, he does a good job with it.  Sam Richardson is doing a great job at bring truly amusing moments and his character of Charlie is incredibly relatable in the feature (Pratt being more on the somewhat serious side only enhanced the humor Richardson brought and also didn’t feel like there were two competing comedic players).  Also, J.K. Simmons is in the film and that guy never phones it in.  The man just has this undeniable presence that he brings to literally any scene and any moment he is in he just commands attention.

I love J.K. Simmons.  I hope it is never revealed that he is actually
a scum bag.

The film also has some legit great action sequences.  I won’t argue they are super memorable, but they were exciting and fun.  Ultimately, though, the strongest thing this movie has working in its favor is setting up the action and conflict.  In fact, the first hour of this film has this great pace to it and does this incredible job of setting up the characters and establishing what is happening.  The part of this segment of the film that shines the brightest is when the company that Dan is a part of first travels ahead in time.  Predictably, something goes wrong and a wrench is thrown in the gears and the results is very exciting and promises some great things ahead.  Sadly, the film sorta just starts the cruise control at this point…

"Nobody told us about the creatures when we boarded this cruise!!!"

After this excellent opening, the film just kinda starts to coast and it gets predictable to the point it was kinda stupid.  Every twist and turn, every moment of development to the characters, and even lines of dialogue become grossly foreseeable.  While this element is definitely annoying, it still didn’t make the film bad…it just made things meh.  There’s always a certain level of familiarity with all kinds of stories but if said familiarity isn’t presented in the just right way, the predictability feels almost egregious or, at the very least, tedious.  The Tomorrow Warpresented its “twists” like they were earth-shattering but, in reality, they were seen coming a mile away…because, like I said, this movie feels like it is taking story elements from a lot of other sci-fi movies.  If the film took these moments and showcased them as another stretch of the road rather than a surprising turn, it might have improved this film a little bit but taking extremely anticipated moments and pretending that they were these “gotcha!” moments made the product a little silly.

"Hi, you'll see my reveal coming a mile away.  Hell, you probably guessed
it from the trailer."

The Tomorrow War, ultimately, felt like a phoned-in sci-fi feature.  If there was a quota for genre films, this one felt like it was made in order to meet that quota and it was an idea hastily thrown together at 4:30 on a Friday.  It has some great stuff to it like a fantastic cast, great special effects, and the first hour is genuinely entertaining and exciting but it dips badly after that initial hour and spends too much time feeling like it is taking ideas from other films and trying to pass off its predictability like it is actually surprising.  I wasn’t bored with it, I just found it to be a serviceable experience that was good enough for a one-time viewing.  I definitely didn’t think it deserved a sequel…which it is getting.  So, judging but this and the even more mediocre Army of the Dead getting more movies, it is plain to see that streaming services don’t care if you like what they put out, as long as you are watching it proves to be enough for them.