There is a good question to be answered in this film. Is Chris Pratt, at forty years old, a star who can pull off an entire movie? The answer will be given by the feature film, Tomorrow's War, which was originally due to be released in cinemas but has been moved to online services.
First, fans of the famous Guardians of the Galaxy will be introduced to the film's story. During the 2022 World Cup finals in Qatar, soldiers from the future show up to tell present-day humanity that mankind will die in the future and that they need not only soldiers, but ordinary people to help win the war on Earth through a week of time travel.
Thanks to the fact that the main character Dan Forester (a teacher), a soldier by profession, has experience in battles, he becomes one of the heroes of the future.
The plot of the movie is very simple, just watch Independence Day, Tomorrow World and other movies that have enemies as aliens and you can have a good movie. It's all about the screenwriter not making a lot of time paradoxes and coming up with a lot of technical nonsense.
Zach Dean has made a film full of screenwriting clichés for big-screen debutant Chris McKay. The first important element is the father-daughter relationship, the second the father-grandfather relationship. The implication is that family is the most important thing the characters have.
The second element is that it's not the future that matters, but the present, where what you do now to improve the future is important.
These two elements of basic story structure are not enough to make a good movie. A director tries to create a story arc out of an introduction, a stasis and a conclusion, but the introduction, the introduction to the main characters, is the most boring thing a film can have, it's quite long. An hour passes before we get to the main point of the film (i.e. the future war). The main story, which is actually an updated father-daughter relationship against the backdrop of war, is only good in the action scenes. And after a week (for the main characters) of the story, when the most important thing happens in the future, we have an alternate present with a change in the future that doesn't reach the qualities of the story in the middle of the film.
Maybe some parts of the story should have been scrapped or changed to make the film less of an ordeal when the ending, which also goes into the future of humanity, wasn't so lengthy, boring and, most importantly, illogical .
And now for the question, can Chris Pratt really pull off the whole film? He can't, unfortunately he doesn't star in the film and his acting, especially with the father-daughter-grandfather relationship, reaches its limits. He's still just a „dork“ who can't be trusted with his wartime experiences, and unfortunately, he can't be trusted to love his family that much either.
The other roles are played by J.K. Simmons, who deliberately relegates himself to the role of the cool grandpa who's in charge, and Yvonne Strahovski, who at one point shows more acting than the famous Chris. Add in a bunch of other actors we wonder: „Where have I only seen them?“ In the show…
Unfortunately for the new War of Tomorrow, it's a good thing it didn't go to the cinemas. It wouldn't have made much money. It would have been mediocre, so people who like to watch TV at home would have enjoyed it. You can find the film on Amazon Prime.
Photo © Amazon Prime Video
Original release of this article July 7, 2021 – Kritiky.cz
