Amazon Prime's The Tomorrow War Is Awful, But What Can We Learn From It?
- Will Johnson
- Dec 9, 2021
- 5 min read
Updated: Dec 21, 2021
Amazon's multi-million pound blockbuster was such a commercial success that a sequel is already in the works, yet there's a raft of things that make this film objectively awful and it raises big questions about the future of home streaming cinema and the rise of Amazon as a production company.
Warning – contains some mild spoilers
I wasn't expecting The Tomorrow War to be particularly good, but rarely have I been so frustrated, annoyed and embittered by a film. To summarise the plot: thirty years in the future humanity is losing its battle against an alien invasion, and soldiers from the future travel back in time to draft civilians to travel into the future and help them fight the aliens. If that synopsis sounds immediately problematic to you, then you’re right. Some films do time travel really well, but The Tomorrow War is definitely not one of them. It doesn't take long before it becomes evident this is all a metaphor for humanity's fight against climate change, but the plot issues are obvious before the film has barely begun. The metaphor itself is also weirdly dropped around two-thirds of the way through as it turns out the aliens have a direct causal link to climate change. This could have been an interesting twist, but instead it feels patronising, as if the audience might not have got the metaphor so it's best to just tell them instead.
I also find it in rather bad taste to conflate climate change action with a ruthless and oppressive global military draft in such a vapid way. It's an idea which actually raises many interesting questions that could’ve made for a fascinating dystopian thriller, yet the film skips through this with sporadic news reel montages that only briefly question the morality of such a measure, yet alone the logic of it. And here lies the primary issue with The Tomorrow War, because while suspension of belief is something an audience has to accept with any fiction film, suspension of logic is something entirely different. Regardless of the time-travel paradoxes which are flippantly brushed off, it makes no sense to bring civilians to the future when that effort travelling back in time could be spent preparing for the war or even trying to prevent it. This is something the film occasionally mentions, but only ever in a muddled and inconsistent way. It's not just the initial set-up either; throughout the film characters constantly make completely illogical choices and often contradict themselves, while the script itself is so confused that at one point it seems to completely forget plot points that were made just moments before.
The Tomorrow War was written by Zach Dean whose two previous films, Deadfall and 24 Hours To Live, were not particularly well received either critically or commercially. The film was directed by Phil McKay who is best known for his work on Robot Chicken, and whose only big screen direction so far is The Lego Batman Movie. The film cost an estimated $200 million to make, and with such a huge budget it seems odd that the people chosen to create the core of the film were an unproven writer and a director with minimal live action experience. I wonder why the producers were prepared to take such risks.
Interestingly, despite framing it as an Amazon Original, The Tomorrow War was not actually made by Amazon. Instead they brought it from Paramount, who for reasons reportedly relating to the pandemic decided not to continue with the release. Outside of China, The Tomorrow War has been strictly reserved for streaming on Prime. Whilst this model makes it hard to pin down commercial success in the usual way by comparing budget to box office takings, success can be judged by the fact the opening weekend saw it receive the most views for an Amazon Original production, and just days after it's release a sequel was confirmed to be in the works.
There's two questions to raise from this. Firstly, would it have done so well in the cinema? Potentially yes, because it is ultimately an action-thriller starring Chris Pratt, a big box office draw. The critical reviews were mostly mixed, with the performances praised but the concept shunned as derivative, so not really enough to put many people off. However, films that release in the cinema often rely as much on word of mouth as they do marketing and critical praise, and considering how baffling and off-putting the plot is, I do feel that it wouldn't get that many recommendations from people who had seen it in the cinema. It's recommend rating on Prime was 53% at time of writing (which coincidentally or not is also the same score it has on Rotten Tomatoes), however this comes from people sitting at home having already paid for a subscription that includes many other things, not from people who have paid separately to see this in the cinema. It's true that the visuals and the drama might have played out on the big screen in a way which would encourage more response from an audience, but that still doesn't get around the film's inherent and immediate flaws.
Secondly, does this film need a sequel? From a narrative perspective, absolutely not. The story is entirely self-contained and any notions of character depth, concept extension or world building are completely played out across the films two and a quarter hour length. I struggle to imagine a way that a sequel could produce anything more of value from this story, unless it tackled the ethical, political and existential issues of climate change or the global military draft, something I doubt would produce the kind of commercial numbers Amazon and Paramount are looking for. It's not the first film to provide a sequel purely for commercial gain, and I'm sure it won't be the last, but there's something about this that feels even more cynical than most.
Amazon's artistic endeavours seem to run on a model which isn't focussed on the individual success of a single production. It doesn't really matter if The Tomorrow War made Amazon a profit in and of itself, because as a blockbuster that they can promote and market as part of their brand, it will help draw more people in for a Prime subscription whether or not they actually watch it. The aim then isn't actually to release a good film, but simply an attractive one, and that is a worrying thing for the movie industry. If a traditional production company like Paramount couldn't make a success out of The Tomorrow War but Amazon can, how long before their model becomes the norm? And if artistic success is no longer a concern for Amazon, how long before more film companies start following them down this path?
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