Movie Review: Tomorrowland

Whenever anyone talks about “the Future” there is usually a reference either to jet packs or flying cars.  At some point in our culture, those became the hallmarks of futurosity, and the concept got stuck.  No amount of cell phones, internet access, or microwave ovens could convince us we were living in what used to be the future, because we remained Earthbound.

The message of Tomorrowland is that every present gets the future it deserves.  In the 50’s we saw a nuclear-powered future with flying cars; in the 60’s we had Star Trek, with its optimism that one day a Black woman, Russian man and gay Japanese guy could work in harmony under a white male leader.  But somewhere things went wrong.

The word of the day when it comes to the future is “dystopian” (one of my favorite words, by the way).  Our prospects are bleak.  Movies give us Insurgent and Divergent; TV gives us the rebooted Battlestar Gallactica and Defiance.  As someone once said, the future ain’t what it used to be.

Tomorrowland, yet another film named after a segment of Disneyland but infinitely better than The Haunted Mansion, hypothesizes a feedback loop, as it were.  Things now are less than optimal, so we imagine a bleak future; we then decide that since the future is hopeless we might as well give up and devote ourselves to video games, twitter feeds and the candidacy of Donald Trump rather than doing anything to make things better.  One of the many disconcerting aspects of Tomorrowland is that the Bad Guy in the film makes this argument, and he is actually quite persuasive.  Maybe we have all tuned in and dropped out without the “turning on” that Timothy Leary advocated.

The plot of the movie revolves around a young girl named Casey Newton (Britt Robertson) who is mysteriously given a pin with a large blue “T” on it that, when she touches it, transports her to a futuristic city in an alternate dimension.  Deciding to track down more information (because she’s curious because she’s a scientist) she is pursued by smiling agents in black turtlenecks and helped by a precocious ten year old girl named Athena.  The audience is familiar with Athena because in flashbacks we saw her (looking the same) at the 1964 World’s Fair, where she befriended a young boy named Frank Walker, who grew up to look like a grizzled George Clooney.  Casey finally meets Frank and the two of them travel to the alternate dimension, no longer quite so shiny, to save the future.

Few other actors than Clooney could have made this work; maybe Tom Hanks but that’s it.  Clooney is an amazingly grounded actor who always seems believable even when his characters spout nonsense (if you don’t believe me, see The Men Who Stare at Goats; or don’t because it’s not that good). We wouldn’t accept this set-up as credible unless Clooney convinced us it is.  The production design is amazing, truly visionary work in creating a part of a theme park into a realized world.

The film had a “disappointing” opening weekend, grossing a mere $33 million in the United States.  Why?  Was the film too original in an age where seemingly 90% of films are remakes, reboots, or based on a comic book?  Was the film too optimistic in an age where most futuristic films are about teenagers fighting to save humanity from a totalitarian state?  Did co-writer Damon Lindelof bring too much Lost-like Rube Goldberg plotting to a story with a simple message?  Maybe a bit of all three.  Director Brad Bird does a commendable job of keeping the plot barely under control, but at times the leaps come too fast and too furiously to follow or accept.

The film deserves to be viewed, and in a theater.  It left theaters so fast after its opening weekend I had to wait for it to make it to a second run cinema. It makes me wonder what it must look like on an adequately lighted screen with decent sound.

If you missed Tomorrowland in theaters, catch it on DVD and check your cynicism at the door when you put the disc into the slot.  It is filled with ideas and energy, elements missing from most modern cinema.  Maybe that’s the ultimate irony; Brad Bird has the technology to make such an intelligent movie, but the audience’s minds haven’t caught up with the technology.