32 | New Scientist | 17 July 2021
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FOOTBALL fans, don’t you just
hate it when yobs invade the
pitch? Schoolteacher Dan
Forester (Chris Pratt) is watching
soccer on television with his
daughter Muri when heavily
armed soldiers fall from the sky,
ruining a perfectly good goal.
They have their reasons.
Where they are from, 30 years
in the future, alien invaders
have all but exterminated
humanity. They have come
to invite volunteers from their
past – our present – to join the
fight. For the first time in history,
a TV blares shortly afterwards,
all humanity is gathering to face
“a common enemy”.
Dan is understandably
reluctant to be picked up in a
rapidly instituted “global draft”.
He has a young family to look
after, and anyway, he has served
his time. A former officer in the
US Army, he has been trying to
get hired as a medical researcher.
He is a gifted scientist, but combat
has left him with the “wrong sort”
of leadership experience.
A way to cheat the draft
beckons, but having to aska favour of his estranged dad – the
inimitable J. K. Simmons in full
survivalist mode – proves a pill
too bitter for Dan to swallow.
And that is how Dan ends up
in the future with a rag-tag band
of ill-trained civilians wielding
futuristic guns bigger than they
are. Their tour of duty only
lasts a week, and (spoiler alert),few will survive it, among them
Charlie (Sam Richardson), too
affable to die, and Dorian (Edwin
Hodge), too traumatised for the
script to jettison before his heroic
moment in the third act, by
which time The Tomorrow War
has degenerated into a sort of fan
mash-up of Ridley Scott’s Alien
and John Carpenter’s The Thing.
While dodging aliens, Dan runs
into his daughter Muri, now a
30-something army commander,
and learns what is by now self-Fighting for our future in the future After being recruited by soldiers from 30 years
in the future, a former US army officer has to take on an alien invasion. The real
message in The Tomorrow War doesn’t lie far below the surface, says Simon Ings“ The Tomorrow War
delivers bite-size
gobbets of motivation,
jeopardy and
redemption on cue”Film
The Tomorrow War
Chris McKay
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Yellow Blue Tibia
Adam Roberts
A good enemy is a joy
forever; this is Joseph Stalin’s
view in this alternate history.
In 1946, he gathers sci-fi
authors to dream up an
external threat that will hold
the Soviet Union together.Film
Starship Troopers
Paul Verhoeven
This disconcerting satire
on militaristic thinking
(be careful who you cheer
for) used Robert Heinlein’s
gung-ho 1959 novel of the
same name for its plot
and Nazi propaganda
films for its look.evident: the war against the
alien White Spikes (they are
white; they fire spikes) is
already lost. Yet Muri may
have something that Dan
can take back to his own time
to pre-empt the crisis.
The Tomorrow War wears
its social message on its sleeve.
For “future war”, read “runaway
climate change” – the subject
of an almost constant barrage
of incidental and overheard
dialogue for the film’s first
half hour.
Aliens are a way better common
enemy than climate change.
They are solid, visible and icky,
particularly the ones designed for
this film. Fresh from work with
both Marvel and DC, concept
designer Ken Barthelmey cuts
loose with critters that are a sort
of dog-based, pony-sized flea
armed with twin organic
bazookas.
The Tomorrow War is like a
cuckoo clock: its precision is its
point. The script delivers bite-size
gobbets of motivation, jeopardy
and redemption precisely on
cue. (Dad and daughter fall out.
Son and dad bond. Dad and
daughter... oh, you know how
this goes.) The actors have nothing
to do beyond standing tall,
reacting to the LED wall.
I enjoyed The Tomorrow War.
It did, though, leave me wondering
exactly what it means that we
are making monster movies
about the end of the world.
I wouldn’t say it is a bad thing,
necessarily, but it is an odd thing.
And while we may like to think
that we can meet an invisible, slow,
inexorable existential challenge,
30 years in our future, White
Spikes may be more our level. ❚FR
ANK^ MAS
I/P
AR
AMOUNT
PICTURE
SDan (Chris Pratt, left)
ends up in the future,
trying to save EarthThe film column
Simon Ings is a novelist and
science writer. Follow him on
Instagram @simon_ings