Tomorrowland (2015) review

If I were to list my Top 10 favorite directors currently working today, Brad Bird would definitely be at the top of the list. While this former animator’s directorial filmography is rather short with only four films to his name before this year, he’s like Christopher Nolan or post-‘Alien 3’ David Fincher in that he’s yet to make a bad film. And quite frankly, all of his films are pretty much masterpieces. His directorial debut, ‘The Iron Giant’, unfortunately was a flop at the box-office when it was first released in 1999 but thankfully has gotten the attention it deserved in recent years. Thankfully his next two films were much bigger hits as he cranked out two of Pixar’s best films to date, 2004’s ‘The Incredibles’ and 2007’s ‘Ratatouille’. And in 2011, Bird made the bold leap from animation to live-action, immediately striking gold with his live-action debut, ‘Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol’. Now he’s back with Disney and teaming up with ‘Lost’ creator Damon Lindelof for ‘Tomorrowland’. No, it’s not a film that’s based off of the themed land found in most Disney parks. It’s instead a tale of optimism inspired by Walt Disney’s vision of the future, resulting in a truly original film… that at the moment is getting generally trashed by critics. This film currently has just a 49% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Well believe me when I say that this is not a ‘49% on RT’ film… far from it. It’s a bold, ambitious and, most of all, truly captivating sci-fi film that provides us something that we’ve sort of lost in recent years… hope.

During the 1964 New York World’s Fair, aspiring kid inventor Frank Walker (Thomas Robinson) tries to show off his newest invention, a jetpack, to the heads of the fair. While his creation is generally ignored, he attracts the attention of a young girl named Athena (Raffey Cassidy), who leads him to a futuristic utopia known as ‘Tomorrowland’. In the present day, optimistic teen Casey Newton (Britt Robertson), the daughter of one of NASA’s engineers (Tim McGraw), gets into trouble with the law when she attempts to prevent NASA from taking down the Cape Canaveral launch site. When she gets out on bail, she finds a mysterious pin among her things which, unbeknownst to her, was ‘given’ to her by Athena. When she touches it, she finds herself ‘transported’ to the same fantastical world of ‘Tomorrowland’. But after the pin ‘runs out of power’, she tries to find a way to ‘get back’. Her quest ends up leading her to the grown-up Frank (George Clooney), who’s become fairly pessimistic and disenchanted with the place as it is revealed that he got ‘kicked out’ some time ago. When the two of them suddenly find themselves being hunted by robotic ‘police’, Casey and Frank, along with Athena, begin searching for a way to return to Tomorrowland. Along the way, Casey soon learns that she could be ‘the one’ who is capable of fixing the future of Earth as we know it before time runs out.

First of all, let me make something clear. Despite being called ‘Tomorrowland’, this film is not about the theme park land that shares its name. In fact, I’m pretty sure that the futuristic utopia in this film is never once actually referred to by name as ‘Tomorrowland’. Not only that, but despite being inspired by Walt Disney’s ideas of the future, Disney himself isn’t brought up once by name either despite what certain advertisements of the film, especially an international trailer that made it seem like the theme park ‘was just a cover for the real thing’, may have claimed. So if you’re thinking that this is just nothing more than a ‘marketing gimmick’ by Disney to promote the company… it isn’t. Instead, ‘Tomorrowland’ is an enthralling sci-fi story based around the ideals of optimism and hope for the future, two things that have definitely been lacking in our current society in recent years.  At the same time, Bird and Lindelof also made sure not to rush into things too quickly when it came to the utopian world that they created. In other words, this film is more about the journey to the location than it actually is about the location itself. As a result, this film was solidly paced and had great build-up. I was completely engaged by it from start to finish.

On that note, let’s talk about the third act of this film, which has basically been the most divisive aspect of the film amongst critics. This seems to be a recurring thing with Damon Lindelof’s work… his endings always piss people off (see ‘Lost’ and ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’ for further proof of that). Now while I’ll concur that the final pay-off may not have necessarily been as strong as the filmmakers had hoped, personally I don’t see why this ending is ‘as bad’ as some people have been claiming it is. From what I’ve been reading online, apparently a lot of the backlash towards this ending is due to the reveal of who the main ‘villain’ is. But the thing is… I kind of already knew who it was going to be going in anyway because there were certain articles online that were building the character up as such. Ultimately, the real problem with this reveal is that the character in question only plays a generally minor role in the overall story. This character is seen at the beginning of the film and then is not seen again until the third act. So in short, this film’s villain is fairly underdeveloped. But it’s not like it ruins the movie or anything as everything else in the film more than makes up for it. It’s just like with the Marvel Cinematic Universe films and their villains. The villains of the MCU may not necessarily be the most memorable or well-written villains ever but it’s not like the films are supposed to be all about them. And to me the same rule applies with ‘Tomorrowland’. Everything else in the film is so great that I can forgive the film for not having the ‘best’ of endings.

This film just has so many great talented people working on it, both behind and in front of the camera. The latter of which is especially true when talking about this film’s excellent cast, especially its trio of leads. Of course we all know that George Clooney is going to be good in this film because, well, he’s George Clooney. And he is great in this, as he really gets into the role of the generally pessimistic curmudgeon that is older Frank while still managing to maintain his trademark charm. But it could argued that the biggest standouts of the film are actually his two younger co-stars. Britt Robertson truly shines in the role of Casey, perfectly capturing the character’s unbreakable sense of optimism while also giving her charm and spunk, which leads to some fun back-and-forth banter between her and Clooney. The other major standout is Raffey Cassidy as Athena, a total bad-ass of a character who, according to Cassidy herself in a featurette for the film, is basically ‘like a ninja’. In other words, Athena may just be the best character in the entire film. Hugh Laurie, who plays David Nix, the ‘Governor’ of Tomorrowland, is good as well though he’s not really in the film that much… which may or may not tie back to what I was talking about earlier.

So sure, ‘Tomorrowland’ may not be the absolute best-written sci-fi film ever made. I do understand that a lot of people were frustrated with this film’s third act but me personally, while I do concur that it’s a little under-developed, I don’t think that it ruined the movie at all. Everything else about the film more than made up for it. That includes, among other things, the beautiful cinematography by Claudio Miranda, the excellent score, as expected, from Michael Giacchino, Bird’s, also expected, top-notch direction, and a spot-on cast highlighted by two excellent performances from its young leads, Britt Robertson and Raffey Cassidy. But perhaps the most important aspect of ‘Tomorrowland’ is its great message of hope and optimism for the future. And let me tell you folks, based on what I see here on the internet on a daily basis, that is something that we sorely need right now. So because of this, I highly recommend, hell I implore you to go see this film. I assure you that it is nowhere near as bad as its 49% rating on Rotten Tomatoes suggests. In other words, this is definitely going to end up being one of the most underrated and underappreciated films of the summer. I know I’m going to be in the minority on this but I don’t care. Not only is this one of the best films I’ve seen so far this summer, but this is also one of the best films that I’ve seen so far this year. How appropriate then that it came from one of my favorite directors currently working today; Brad Bird. And if you can, just like his last film ‘Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol’, try to see it in IMAX because this film’s gorgeous visuals are truly a sight to behold on those big IMAX screens.  

Rating: 5/5!