The Tomorrow War
The Tomorrow War is a 2021 American military science-fiction action film directed by Chris McKay, written by Zach Dean, and starring Chris Pratt. It was produced by David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, Don Granger, David S. Goyer, Jules Daly, and Adam Kolbrenner, with a supporting cast featuring Yvonne Strahovski, J. K. Simmons, Betty Gilpin, Sam Richardson, Edwin Hodge, Jasmine Mathews, Ryan Kiera Armstrong, and Keith Powers. It follows a mix of present-day soldiers and civilians sent into the future to fight and stop a devastating alien swarm.
Originally set for theatrical release by Paramount Pictures, the film's distribution rights were acquired by Amazon Studios due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and digitally released on July 2, 2021, via Prime Video. With a budget of US$200 million, the film was one of the most expensive films to debut on a streaming platform. The Tomorrow War received mixed reviews from critics, with praise for the concept, action sequences, and performances, but criticism for its derivative execution. A sequel is in development.
Plot
In December 2022, biology teacher and former Green Beret Dan Forester fails to land a job at the United States Army Research Laboratory. While he watches the 2022 FIFA World Cup final, soldiers from the year 2051 arrive through a time portal to warn that humanity is on the brink of extinction due to alien invaders: the Whitespikes. In response, the world's military forces are sent to the future, but less than 20% manage to survive, prompting a global draft. Dan receives notice of draft for a seven day tour, and is fitted with an electronic vambrace that tracks him. Dan's wife Emmy asks him to remove the vambrace with the help of his estranged father, James Forester, but Dan becomes angry with him for abandoning him in his childhood and leaves without removing the vambrace. Dan and the draftees are sent to Miami Beach, Florida, in the future, but few survive, having been dropped at the wrong coordinates, high above the city.Romeo Command orders the remaining recruits to rescue the staff from the nearby laboratory. The team discovers the lab staff dead, but recovers their research before the area is bombed. Dan and the survivors make it back to a military camp in Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic, where Dan learns that Romeo Command is actually his daughter, Colonel Muri Forester. She asks him to accompany her on a mission to capture one of the female Whitespikes, which are rarer than the males. They find and capture the female, only to have the Whitespike males descend on her position.
Muri finally reveals to Dan that in the past, he became disillusioned after failing to secure his research job, which led to his divorce and abandonment of his family, just as James had done to him as a child. He then died in a car crash when she was 16. Dan and Muri find themselves transported to the Jumplink, which is situated on a fortified oil platform in the middle of the ocean. They work on a toxin that targets the female, but the Whitespikes launch an attack on the base.
Muri is severely injured and asks Dan to take the toxin to the past, expressing that humanity was never going to survive in this timeline. They reconcile, and Dan successfully returns to the past with the toxin to mass-produce it. He attempts to deliver it to the military so it can be sent back to the future, but discovers that the Jumplink is offline, having been destroyed by the Whitespikes.
After explaining to his wife what happened in the future, they deduce that the Whitespikes did not arrive in 2048, but much earlier. Dan and Dorian investigate the Whitespike's claw with Charlie and discover fragments of volcanic ash from a volcano in the Changbai Mountains during the Millennium Eruption. They theorize that Whitespikes were already on Earth and global warming caused their release when they thawed and emerged from beneath the polar caps. He turns to the military for aid, but they cannot support him without proof. He asks his father to transport an eight-man team. Dan leads a mission to Severnaya Zemlya in northern Russia to test his theory, and finds an alien ship in an ice sheet.
Once inside, they realize that the alien ship is not actually a Whitespike ship, and that the Whitespikes were cargo for the deceased alien crew. They inject the toxin into the dormant Whitespikes, killing those injected, but it awakens the remaining Whitespikes. Dorian and Hart decide to sacrifice themselves by manually detonating the alien ship once they realize it is the only method of containment, but the female manages to escape. Dan and his father track down the female and manage to kill her, preventing the future war from occurring. Dan reunites with his daughter and introduces her to her grandfather.
Cast
In addition, Mary Lynn Rajskub and Mike Mitchell portray draftees Norah and Cowan, respectively, while Seth Schenall portrays Martin, Dan's amateur volcanologist student.Production
Development
The film had been in development for several years by Skydance Media when they made a deal with writer Zach Dean. On February 13, 2019, Chris Pratt was confirmed as joining the film as the lead star and that it would be directed by Chris McKay, marking the latter's live-action debut after directing only for animated projects such as Moral Orel, Robot Chicken, Titan Maximum, and most recently The Lego Batman Movie. Pratt revealed that he would also serve as an executive producer of the film, making his debut as a producer.The film was initially named Ghost Draft, and the film was revealed to be about a husband and father who is drafted to fight a future war where the fate of humanity could rely on his ability to correct issues of the past. The film was described as a dark and emotional sci-fi action epic about a generation of people who get drafted to go 30 years in the future to fight a losing war against aliens. Because the initial concept for the film was considered too dark, it was decided to lighten the treatment, hoping that the requested $20 million production would be approved to make a more marketable family-friendly film.
The film was originally set to be distributed by Paramount Pictures with the intention of giving the film a theatrical release. The film was delayed for seven months due to the COVID-19 pandemic, though, which forced theaters to close, leading to Top Gun: Maverick taking the release date, and the delay of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. In April 2021, the distribution rights of the film were sold to Amazon with a cost over $200 million. McKay commented, "It's a movie that we wanted to go theatrically obviously, that was the intent and how we shot it — we shot it like a big movie, we didn't hold back. I know it can play in theaters; I've seen in play in theaters; it's a big, loud, exciting movie, but there's a tradeoff. We're in a world right now where a big original sci-fi movie, there's a bunch of known properties that are coming in for a landing in theaters weekend after weekend. To be able to be a filmmaker who can have a dialogue with audiences in 240 countries at one time... that's also a very exciting proposition and I feel very lucky."
On July 18, 2019, Yvonne Strahovski was confirmed to be joining the film's cast. J. K. Simmons, Betty Gilpin, Sam Richardson, Theo Von, Jasmine Mathews, and Keith Powers also joined the cast in August, with Mary Lynn Rajskub, Edwin Hodge, and additional cast joining in September. On November 10, 2019, Pratt shared a photo of the filming on his Instagram with several actors who also appear in the film, and revealed that Paramount Pictures had officially retitled the film The Tomorrow War. Although it was not confirmed, the film likely had its name changed to ensure a Chinese release, due to the country having banned several films about ghosts and zombies.
Creature design
Creature designer Ken Barthelmey was confirmed to be the designer for the film's aliens. In early 2019, production designer Peter Wenham hired him due to his ability on his previous works. Barthelmey created over 67 different concept ideas for the aliens, taking inspiration from the Tripods of the War of the Worlds and the Sentinels from The Matrix. The aliens were described as vicious creatures that attack and eat everything in sight, so needed a compelling design that conveyed the hunger and intelligence of these creatures. The crew also wanted the aliens to have different abilities such as fast swimming and flying. This information eventually led Barthelmey to the film's final design. Additionally, Barthelmey came up with the idea of spike-shooting-tentacles, which became a major feature of the design.Filming
Filming began on September 1, 2019, in Lincolnton, Georgia, the historical city in the central Savannah River area. The film was also shot at the Graves Mountain area in 2019. The battle scenes depicting a future Miami were filmed in downtown Atlanta and Buckhead, Georgia, using both CGI and live pyrotechnics to create the postapocalyptic setting.Chris McKay revealed that he wanted the film to feel real rather than hyperstylized and to shoot on location and limit the amount of greenscreen used, which is the reason he chose Iceland for the scenes in Russia at the glacier Vatnajökull. The crew revealed that they eventually filmed at the top of an icy glacier. Chris Pratt revealed that while filming, they were told that a couple froze to death after falling through a fissure, but they still decided to take the risk hoping to impress the audience. The film wrapped filming on January 12, 2020. On July 1, 2021, the film was confirmed to have an estimated production budget of $200 million.