The time-traveling “The Tomorrow War,” set
largely in an alien apocalypse future, is a kind
of throwback.
Summer sci-fi spectacles like this — a sprawling,
slightly sloppy, sometimes serious, often
knowingly ridiculous extravaganza — aren’t
quite the regular commodity they once were.
“The Tomorrow War” isn’t as silly as Will Smith’s
“Independence Day,” but, just the same, it’s Chris
Pratt’s chance to punch some aliens.
Pratt, star and executive producer of “The
Tomorrow War,” used his box-office muscle to
push forward the film, directed by Chris McKay
and scripted by Zach Dean. Originally intended
for theaters, McKay’s film got sucked into a
future shock of its own during the pandemic
and was sold to Amazon. It debuts on Prime
Video this Friday. “The Tomorrow War” is by no
means the first popcorn movie to go straight to
the home, but it’s still one of the popcorn-iest.
For those looking for that kind of summer-movie
escape, “The Tomorrow War” should fit the bill. It’s
tonally scattered and massively implausible. But
in movies with aliens, time loops and machine
guns, those are more features than bugs.
Pratt stars as Dan Forester, a military veteran
turned high-school science teacher. He and
his wife, Emmy (Betty Gilpin) have a young
daughter named Muri (Ryan Kiera Armstrong).
The world, though, gets a rude interruption
when, in the middle of a televised soccer game
(presumably because “The Dark Knight Rises”
already did cataclysm in a football stadium), a
portal opens on the field and out walks futurist
soldiers with a message: In 30 years, an alien
invasion will consume the world. To defeat the