The Tomorrow War Review: An Enjoyable Mess

The Tomorrow War won’t win any awards or get any praise for being an amazing, original sci-fi movie. However, that doesn’t mean that it isn’t enjoyable. It gives you action, drama, suspense, and some wonderful characters to fall in love with. Despite its flaws, you’ll walk away being entertained.

Aside from the unintentionally comical use of slow-motion, the film does manage to keep you on the edge of your seat. It really excels at giving you an action-packed film.

The other highlight of the film is when it has this almost full-circle moment after Dan’s deployment ends, and he reunites with Dorian and Charlie to stop it all. When you realize that those three would be teaming up again to save the day, it’s hard not to smile.

Things and people we were introduced to earlier in the film suddenly have a bigger purpose — the ancient volcano-obsessed Martin, Dorian’s souvenir, and Dan’s father with all the planes, weapons, and general disdain of the government.

This comes at the best time because, at this point in the film, The Tomorrow War‘s faults outweigh any of its good moments, and it is starting to weigh on you. This present-day mission revitalizes it. Of course, it isn’t enough to save the film, but it gives it a nice boost of energy.

There are quite a few issues plaguing The Tomorrow War. It’s one of those films where the more you examine it, the more you’re like “wait, how does this make sense?” — it doesn’t.

The best example of this is how this war is operating. The big plan is to send un-trained civilians into the future without even telling them about the White Spikes. It’s not as if more of your soldiers would survive the deployment if they were trained properly trained on the enemy.

There’s absolutely zero focus on preventing the war from happening in the first place, which you’d think would be the most logical place to start. It isn’t like there’s a bunch of future soldiers in the present day with a wealth of knowledge about this war, ready to be questioned.

It isn’t until Dan is concerned about saving future Muri that he starts to research the White Spikes and pull from what he learned on his jump. Somehow absolutely no one thought to do that up until that moment, and then the government doesn’t even see the point in trying to locate and kill the White Spikes in the present day.

This leads us into discussing another big problem. For some reason, The Tomorrow War feels the need to turn this war into a life lesson for Dan to make sure he appreciates his family, as the ridiculously cringy voiceover in the final moments of the film proves.

There shouldn’t need to be a familial tie to make someone want to prevent aliens from wiping out mankind, and honestly, the film doesn’t need to force this storyline and moral onto us. But, The Tomorrow War does, and it’s to the film’s detriment.

Dan is brought into the future because somehow a random person would refuse to take back a toxin that would prevent everything.

Logic dictates that someone with no ties to the future would be the best candidate to take it back, but instead, we’re supposed to believe Dan is the best man for the job. He obviously won’t care that he’s dooming his adult daughter, who he just got to know, to die.

But, The Tomorrow War is determined to sell us a heartwarming family storyline, so it has to all be about Dan making sure the future is safe for Muri.

And this doesn’t even take into account all the info-dumping you have to endure during the film.

It comes at you rapid-fire, and, unfortunately, you need to catch it all to be able to follow what’s going on. Not only is it necessary to orient yourself, but some of the info dump comes back into play when Dan is trying to stop the war from happening.

The Tomorrow War won’t be the best movie you’ve seen recently, but it’s not one that you’ll feel as if you’ve wasted your time on.

Stray Thoughts and Lingering Questions

• I expected to love Chris Pratt in this role more, but he doesn’t quite shine in the leading role.
• How exactly does the toxin survive the jump back? It looks like it was protected by nothing other than Dan’s hand, and he violently lands on concrete.
• The White Spikes remind me of Stranger Things‘ Demogorgon.
• Why not send at least one person with military experience per jump group?
• I was convinced that Charlie would die a horrible death; I’m happy he doesn’t.
• Their explanation for how their version of time travel works doesn’t make a ton of sense but points for talking about paradoxes, I suppose.

What did you think of The Tomorrow War? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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The Tomorrow War is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

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