The Tomorrow War

The Tomorrow War
Starring Chris Pratt, Yvonne Strahovski, J.K. Simmons, Betty Gilpin
Directed by Chris McKay

Alien invasion films are nothing new, and neither are films dealing with time travel. "The Tomorrow War" tries to blend these two subgenres together to provide an action-packed spectacle, but it just turns into an overly long caricature of what it wanted to be. Instead of pulse pounding suspense, action, and blowout effects, the film instead gives overly long performances, generic action sequences, and CGI that's often as bad as a SyFy Original when seen from afar, and not even the charisma Chris Pratt oozes could save it from mediocrity.

Former Green Beret First Sergeant Dan Forester (Chris Pratt) is now living his mundane suburban life with his wife Emmy (Betty Gilpin) and daughter Muri (Ryan Kiera), and is now working as a science teacher at a local high school, yet he still believes that he can offer something to better humankind. While watching a soccer game, a portal opens and soldiers from 2051 come through it with a dire announcement: in the future, an alien species has invaded Earth, and has almost totally decimated the population. They need civilians from the present to travel to the future to help fight the aliens, or else humanity will be extinct.

Dan is recruited to join the war effort, but has second thoughts and goes to his estranged father, anti-government survivalist James (J.K. Simmons) to get his tracker off, but ultimately relents and decides this will be what he can do to help humanity - and his daughter - in the long run. After being teleported to the future, he finds that the aliens (called White Spikes) have all but taken over the world, due to their combat skills and their ability to shoot deadly daggers from their appendages. He's brought to the Colonel's office, who reveals that her name is Muri Forester (Yvonne Strahovski), Dan's now grown-up daughter. She discovers a way to defeat the aliens by finding the alien queen and creating a toxin that will destroy the aliens before the war even begins, but it could cost her her own life - as well as doom mankind for good if it fails.

There's countless films that center on alien invasions, and pretty much all of them have the same hallmarks: an average man answers the call to achieve the impossible, a seemingly unstoppable foe that's more numerous than the heroes, a small collection of survivors who by all means shouldn't even be alive, your generic sidekick comedic relief, and unresolved family drama that tries to add heart to the soulless endeavors. "The Tomorrow War" has all of this in spades, as it seems that's all the film has to offer - weakly. Unlike classics like "Independence Day," this film will fall from your memory after you turn it off, and the only thing you'll remember from it will be Chris Pratt's performance that will also blend in your mind where you'll wonder if this was the film you remember him in, or one of the others where he plays the same type of character.

With aliens having taken over the planet in the future, the only way to stop them is to come to the present to take people to the future to help fight. Even thinking about it for a second doesn't make a lot of sense, except merely to add numbers that will easily be taken out the moment they hit the ground - and that's exactly what happens. When you draft housewives, overweight video gamers, and multitudes of other people with zero military experience and transport them into a seemingly unwinnable war, there's no other outcome that could happen, so the entire premise of this film seems pointless. Throw in the fact that a glitch happens when Dan's group gets sent to the future, and it just compounds the nonsensical nature of the film.

The aliens themselves are somewhat impressive up close, but when they hoard upon the scene in the multitudes, the CGI looks incredibly poor and comparisons to the mass zombie attacks in "World War Z" come to mind. Yet these aliens aren't pushovers - they're heavily armored, equipped with deadly daggers that they shoot from the multiple appendages, and seem to have a knowledge of fighting that makes them an impressive foe indeed. Yet, ultimately, they become just the background noise to the family dynamics that director Chris McKay tries to shove down our throats, but fails due to Pratt's charismatic nature.

That being said, Chris Pratt is an excellent choice to play lovable heroes like Star Lord or Owen Grady, but here his aloof goofiness is a detriment rather than an aid. There's moments where he's interacting with his future daughter when it's supposed to be serious and heartfelt, but it becomes more of a generalized conversation between two people, with Yvonne Strahovski trying her best to keep it as serious as possible. The film tries to trumpet this as what makes it different from other films (how many films have you seen where a father goes forward in time to interact with his now older daughter? Yeah, I can think of a few) but it turns as generic as the rest of the film.

"The Tomorrow War" blends classic alien invasion films like "The Thing" and "Alien" into a conglomerate that is bloated and cliched, where the performances don't attune to the severity of the situation.

The Score: B+