Lucas Versantvoort / June 1, 2015
It’s always interesting to see a director, known primarily for his
animated fare, to direct a live-action film. Granted, this isn’t his first
rodeo; he’d already directed Mission
impossible: Ghost Protocol. Tomorrowland,
in a nutshell, is a film about hope, specifically about hope for the future. As Frank Walker (George Clooney) tells us
in his opening monologue, back in his day, the future was different; everyone
looked at the future with optimistic glee. And yet, at some point, optimism
turned to pessimism and the future turned bleak. Tomorrowland then is Brad Bird’s way of saying, ‘let’s put away
Orwell’s 1984 and make a brighter
future for ourselves.’ A nice sentiment for sure. Unfortunately, the film
attached to this sentiment has some fatal flaws.
We start our journey
with young Frank Walker showing his unfinished jetpack at a science fair. It’s
rejected but a young girl, Athena, sees something in him and tells him to
follow her group through the theme park using a special pin. He sneaks on a
ferry, enters a tunnel and due to the pin ends up in Tomorrowland. We then cut
to the present to a new character, a girl called Casey Newton (played by Britt
Robertson, aka I-can’t-believe-it’s-not Jennifer Lawrence). Like the young
Walker, she shares an enthusiasm for the future, outer space in particular. She
eventually finds a similar pin like the one Walker was given in her belongings.
When she touches it, she’s instantly transported to Tomorrowland. But the pin
has a limited amount of power and so, Case has to find another way of getting
there and it isn’t long before she crosses paths with Athena, an older Frank
Walker and a gang of killer robots seeking to prevent them from going to
Tomorrowland at all costs.
I’ll start with the
bad: the plot is a bit of a mess. This isn’t so much due to poor writing as a poor
narrative structure. But then again, since one of the film’s writers also wrote
and created Lost, I can’t say I’m
surprised. I mean, we first follow young Walker who we then leave behind to
follow Casey who then stumbles from scene to scene before finally meeting
Athena and old Frank Walker and only then
are the film’s villain and the main goal slowly revealed. Mind you, at this
point we’ve only got about 20-30 minutes to go.
This means that there’s only two
things that keep you interested: Casey’s desire to go to Tomorrowland and the
action set pieces. The film does a good job of first introducing you to
Tomorrowland and then taking it away, leaving you to share Casey’s desire to
return. As for the action, it’s pretty inventive and fun. If you’ve seen the
trailer, you’ll probably know what to expect: lots of lasers, time warps and so
on. The enemy robots are a funny bunch too, particularly the leader, Dave Clark
(Matthew MacCaull) who has this robotic grin on his face that just cracks me
up. It’s like Schwarzenegger’s Terminator smile, only funny. I like some of the
in-jokes as well. There’s a fight in what I think is a comic book store with
all kinds of memorabilia strewn about, referencing Planet of the Apes, Star Wars,
etc. When the fight breaks out, composer Michael Giacchino makes musical references
to those films’ scores. It’s pretty neat if you can spot them.
So there’s a lot to like: inventive action,
humor, the works. But it’s the lacking sense of structure that drags the
experience down. You can only share Casey’s desire to travel to Tomorrowland
for so long before you start questioning the point of it all.
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