Here’s the good news: as opposed to the “first” trailer, this new trailer for Amazon’s The Tomorrow War has a lot more going on. There are more explosions, more devastation, more of Chris Pratt’s pre-war family life, more scenes of our bleak, alien-infested future, and more. The bad news? Despite all the new footage, it doesn’t seem any more exciting.
Honestly, the movie looks like a generic mash-up of Predator, Alien, and Terminator. The “Tomorrow War” portion of the movie looks mainly like a bunch of people walking around the future alien holocaust, holding guns, occasionally shooting at things. We barely get a glimpse of the aliens, other than they scuttle like Xenomorphs and make the same clicky noise Predators do. Various things explode. There’s nothing shown here that looks unique or even distinct enough to latch onto. As for the “today peace” portion, where Pratt hangs around with his family until getting drafted, I know we’re supposed to get invested in Pratt’s character, but I just can’t. Maybe you can:
I think the problem is Chris Pratt, who feels like he’s in an entirely different movie than everyone else. He constantly wisecracks in his standard Pratt operating procedure in a movie where every other character seems to be deadly serious about the seriously deadly predicament they find themselves in. Even as a keyed-down version of Star-Lord, Pratt feels wildly out of place in this movie, and you can’t help but feel everyone else in the movie is thinking, “Man, I wish this arsehole would just shut up.” It also doesn’t help that our first introduction to Pratt’s character is him braying like a jackass, which really sets the tone for everything else that follows.
Here’s the official description: “In The Tomorrow War, the world is stunned when a group of time travellers arrive from the year 2051 to deliver an urgent message: Thirty 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 (Chris 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.”
Hopefully, the movie will be better than its first two trailers suggest. It’s got a killer cast; in addition to Strahovski and Simmons, there’s Glow’s Betty Gilpin, 24‘s Mary Lynn Rajskub, Veep’s Sam Richardson (whose droll, subdued performance manages to actually be humorous), and The Legend of Korra’s Seychelle Gabriel, among others. And it’s directed by Chris McKay, who’s never done a serious, straightforward sci-fi action blockbuster like this, but did very good work on The Lego Batman movie.
Public Service Announcement: The Tomorrow War does not premiere tomorrow, despite what you may have heard. Instead, the movie will premiere on Amazon Prime on July 2, many tomorrows from now.