THE TOMORROW WAR - Chris Pratt Sci-Fi Blockbuster - July (Amazon)

[AndyDursin]

This expensive sci-fi thriller was headed to theaters, ended up on Amazon Prime instead.

At least it's not another sequel!

As per the logline: the world is stunned when a group of time travelers arrive from the year 2051 to deliver an urgent message: 30 years in the future mankind is losing a global war against a deadly alien species. The only hope for survival is for soldiers and civilians from the present to be transported to the future and join the fight. Among those recruited is high school teacher and family man Dan Forester (Pratt). Determined to save the world for his young daughter, Dan teams up with a brilliant scientist (Yvonne Strahovski) and his estranged father (J.K. Simmons) in a desperate quest to rewrite the fate of the planet.

[AndyDursin]

Full trailer:

[Monterey Jack]

5/10

Bleh. Haven't we had enough of masses of skittery, CGI beasties slithering over the tops of walls while they get shot down videogame-style? Nearly 25 years ago, Starship Troopers dazzled me by the sheer volume of computer-generated beasties it unleased, but now, a movie like this opens approximately once every three weeks, so for a movie of this type to distinguish itself in any way, it needs a dash of...personality to hack through the thicket of clichés. And even Chris Pratt – who was such canny, out-of-left-field casting in the first Guardians Of The Galaxy – can’t enliven the weary proceedings much. Is it technically well-made? Sure, for what it is. But like The Great Wall about five years back, the culminative effect of the various attack sequences grow numbing, with not enough variety in the action setups and generic characterizations not giving the sparse human elements much to hook into.

But hey, Chloe from 24 is in it.

[AndyDursin]

I'll get around to it but this looks horrible. But then again so does Black Widow (sorry MJ!) and basically everything else this summer.

Lost in this discussion about movie theaters dying is that the death sentence was already being written with all the garbage CONTENT Hollywood is regurgitating by the boatload. Look at nearly every Warner Bros. movie that was sent to HBO Max. Most of it trash. Or COMING 2 AMERICA or the Jack Ryan thing with Michael B. Jordan or this, big budget movies sold to Amazon.

Just junk all around, leading to people staying home -- or avoiding the content altogether.

[Eric W.]

This was... eh.

Chloe didn't have a long part but you need to see her shooting this big machine gun screaming at the top of her lungs. This thing is almost worth watching just for that.

[Monterey Jack]

[Eric W.]

This really could have and should have been more than what it is.

[AndyDursin]

I'd give it a 6.5 light pass for sci-fi fans. As in, if you want to see it, I think the movie does enough to make it worth a viewing.

Yes, it's stupid and predictable -- frankly it didn't even need to involve time travel, seeing as the movie doesn't do much "jumping" (likely to not confuse non-English viewers) and just uses the future setting as a plot device. Beyond saving the world, the movie's main dramatic "emotional" component -- that the Chris Pratt character becomes a loser in his present and has to learn "what's important" -- doesn't work at all because we never see his character in that way. He even gets irritated at one point while the Yvonne Strahowski character keeps informing him (and her identity is as obvious as the second she appears on-screen) of his fate, and it matches the viewer's frustration because we never see Pratt as "that guy". Thus, all of that component comes off as purely contrived and hollow.

At the same time -- I can't say I was ever bored or wasn't compelled to finish it. JK Simmons is amusing as usual and the aliens -- some weird chicken-like creature that's a hybrid of the Quiet Place and Aliens -- are superbly animated. It's all derivative of a million other movies -- like every other modern studio release --- but the end where Pratt and Simmons do battle in the snow with one of them is bat-bleep nutty and, damn it, I liked it. If only more of the film had been a bit more bonkers and offered more of that, the film might've been actually good, but I still found it moderately entertaining in spite of its obvious shortcomings.