Christmas 2022, soldiers from the future arrive to warn us of a global conflict that threatens the entire human race. In response, the governments of the world initiate a draft and begin sending waves of troops into the future to fight.
If you're thinking this all sounds kind of like The Terminator, only in reverse, you wouldn't be far wrong. In fact it seems to draw inspiration from several classic franchises, including Alien. Even with a slightly different take on the whole time travel thing - don't worry, this isn't like Avengers: Endgame - The Tomorrow War is a pretty standard sci-fi/action movie. As you can imagine it's all a bit bleak; alien invasion, human extinction - yep, sounds bleak. But the movie does have a fun side - like every time Sam Richardson picks up a weapon. This is an alien invasion/time travel movie, after all, so if we're not having a little fun, what are we doing here?
All of the usual questions and paradoxes apply as our hero; Iraq war veteran and high school science teacher Dan Forester (Chris Pratt), and a raggedy band of fighters head into the future to save the world from some rather horrible looking aliens. Seriously, you're better off not questioning the dodgy time travel theory. The man best known for playing Starlord in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, unsurprisingly, makes for a pretty likeable lead. He even manages to shake off some of the goof usually associated with his performances, keeping just enough to bring a rather human quality to his character.
And he's not in it alone. Pratt is surrounded by a great supporting cast, including Yvonne Strahovski as the future commander with an interesting connection to the past, Sam Richardson as the scientist who is hilariously out of his depth in any combat situation, and Edwin Hodge as the grizzled veteran. But the best relationship to come out of The Tomorrow War - in fact, it's absolutely the best part of this movie - is between Dan and his estranged father James (J.K. Simmons). Pratt and Simmons together is a tremendous pairing, the banter alone is electric. In fact, it's a real shame that Simmons doesn't have a bigger role.
Despite being a fairly generic sci-fi/actioner for the most part, the movie can at times be rather tense, even frantic, and when you see the aliens you'll understand why. They are both scary and hideous to look at - the creature design is fantastic. A change of underwear would definitely be the least of your worries, if you ever came across one. When Pratt's character comments that one of the aliens stinks, you can practically smell it. Thanks to some very good CGI, the interactions between the human characters and the aliens looks very real too. There are times when the two sides get very up close and personal, and at no point does it look like an actor going up against a tennis ball on a stick.
Once it gets going, events tick along at a fairly frenetic pace, with the battle scenes feeling pretty chaotic. The action - which obviously includes a lot of gunfire and explosions - is exciting, although not exactly groundbreaking. Firing your weapon on 'full auto' and actually hitting what you're "aiming" at, without ever reloading, seems to be the very low bar this movie wants to set. That's right, The Tomorrow War is not without its clichés - something for which the movie actually mocks itself. There's nothing quite like a movie filled with cheesy one-liners, big bravado, lots of gunfire, and absolutely no reloads. Hilariously though, things only get more ridiculous when the movie tries to circumvent some of these well-established staples of the action movie genre.
It's not exactly groundbreaking, but The Tomorrow War is a fun and exciting sci-fi/actioner - even if it does need more J.K. Simmons. Hopefully the intention here is not to make a franchise. On its own the movie is a lot of fun, but it could quite easily turn into another worn out franchise. We do not need another Alien 3!
7/10
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