The Tomorrow War is a 2021 American military science-fiction action film directed by Chris McKay, written by Zach Dean, and starring Chris Pratt. It was produced by David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, Don Granger, David S. Goyer, Jules Daly, and Adam Kolbrenner, with a supporting cast featuring Yvonne Strahovski, J. K. Simmons, Betty Gilpin, Sam Richardson, Edwin Hodge, Jasmine Mathews, Ryan Kiera Armstrong, and Keith Powers. It follows a mix of present-day soldiers and civilians sent into the future to fight and stop a devastating alien swarm.
Originally set for theatrical release by Paramount Pictures, the film's distribution rights were acquired by Amazon Studios due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and digitally released on July 2, 2021, via Prime Video. With a budget of US$200 million, the film was one of the most expensive films to debut on a streaming platform. The Tomorrow War received mixed reviews from critics, with praise for the concept, action sequences, and performances (particularly Pratt and Richardson), but criticism for its derivative execution. A sequel is in development.
Plot
In December 2022, biology teacher and former Green Beret Dan Forester fails to land a job at the United States Army Research Laboratory. While he watches the televised 2022 FIFA World Cup final, soldiers from the year 2051 arrive on the playing field through a time portal to warn that future humanity is near extinction due to alien invaders: the White Spikes. In response, the world's military forces are sent to the future, but less than 20% survive, prompting a global draft. Dan, conscripted for a seven-day tour, is fitted with an electronic vambrace that tracks him and will automatically return him to his own time following his seven days.
Dan's wife, Emmy, encourages Dan to seek out his estranged engineer father, James Forester, to remove the vambrace so the family can go on the run. Dan meets with James; angry over his father having abandoned the family, he instead leaves with the vambrace intact. During orientation, one recruit, Charlie, notices the draftees are mostly older adults: Dan deduces that they were all people known to have died before 2051. Dan and the other draftees are deployed to Miami Beach, Florida in the future but are dropped at the wrong coordinates, high above the city, and most fall to their deaths.
Romeo Command orders the remaining recruits to rescue staff at a nearby laboratory. The lab staff are dead, but the team recovers their research data before the area is bombed. Dan and the survivors make it to a military camp in Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic, where Dan discovers that Romeo Command is headed by his now-adult daughter, Colonel Muri Forester. After a strained reunion, the two embark on a successful mission to capture a female White Spike, which are rarer than the males.
Muri later reveals that Dan became disillusioned after losing the research job, which caused her parents' divorce and estrangement from his daughter, just as James did when Dan was a child. Dan also learns he died in a car crash when Muri was 16. Dan and Muri, along with the captured female, are transported to the Jumplink site on a fortified ocean oil platform. They work on a toxin that targets the female, but the arrival of an enormous White Spike swarm quickly overwhelms the base.
Muri is severely injured and tells Dan to take the toxin to the past and mass produce it, believing that humanity will not survive in this timeline. Before Muri dies, the two reconcile, and Dan is successfully returned to the past with the toxin. He attempts to deliver it to the military so it can be returned to the future, but the Jumplink has been destroyed by the aliens.
After Dan tells Emmy about the future, they suspect that the White Spikes may have arrived much earlier than 2048. This is supported by finding volcanic ash traces from the Changbai Mountains and the 946 AD Millennium Eruption using a claw that Dan brought back. They conclude that the aliens were already on Earth, trapped under the polar ice cap. When global warming melted the ice in the future, it released them. The military are unable to support Dan without proof, so he asks James to use his para-military connections to transport an eight-man team to Severnaya Zemlya, in northern Russia, to search for evidence. There, they find an alien spaceship that crashed into an ice sheet centuries ago.
Once inside, they realize that the White Spikes are actually bio-weapons created by another alien species. The alien crew was killed in the crash, but the White Spikes have survived in suspended animation. The team inject the toxin into the dormant creatures, instantly killing them, but the remaining ones awaken. Team members Dorian and Hart sacrifice themselves by manually detonating the alien ship and eliminating the remaining males. A female escapes, but Dan and James track it down and kill it, preventing the future war from occurring. Returning home, Dan introduces a young Muri to James.
Cast
In addition, Mary Lynn Rajskub and Mike Mitchell portray draftees Norah and Cowan, respectively, while Seth Schenall portrays Martin, Dan's amateur volcanologist student.
Production
Development The film had been in development for several years by Skydance Media when they made a deal with writer Zach Dean. On February 13, 2019, Chris Pratt was confirmed as joining the film as the lead star and that it would be directed by Chris McKay, marking the latter's live-action debut after directing only for animated projects such as Moral Orel, Robot Chicken, Titan Maximum, and most recently The Lego Batman Movie. Pratt revealed that he would also serve as an executive producer of the film, making his debut as a producer.
The film was initially named Ghost Draft, and the film was revealed to be about a husband and father who is drafted to fight a future war where the fate of humanity could rely on his ability to correct issues of the past. The film was described as a dark and emotional sci-fi action epic about a generation of people who get drafted to go 30 years in the future to fight a losing war against aliens. Because the initial concept for the film was considered too dark, it was decided to lighten the treatment, hoping that the requested $20 million production would be approved to make a more marketable family-friendly film.
The film was originally set to be distributed by Paramount Pictures with the intention of giving the film a theatrical release. The film was delayed for seven months due to the COVID-19 pandemic, though, which forced theaters to close, leading to Top Gun: Maverick taking the release date, and the delay of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. In April 2021, the distribution rights of the film were sold to Amazon with a cost over $200 million. McKay commented, "It's a movie that we wanted to go theatrically obviously, that was the intent and how we shot it — we shot it like a big movie, we didn't hold back. I know it can play in theaters; I've seen it play in theaters; it's a big, loud, exciting movie, but there's a tradeoff. We're in a world right now where [with] a big original sci-fi movie, there's a bunch of known properties that are coming in for a landing in theaters weekend after weekend. To be able to be a filmmaker who can have a dialogue with audiences in 240 countries at one time... that's also a very exciting proposition and I feel very lucky."
On July 18, 2019, Yvonne Strahovski was confirmed to be joining the film's cast. J. K. Simmons, Betty Gilpin, Sam Richardson, Theo Von (who later left the project), Jasmine Mathews, and Keith Powers also joined the cast in August, with Mary Lynn Rajskub, Edwin Hodge, and additional cast joining in September. On November 10, 2019, Pratt shared a photo of the filming on his Instagram with several actors who also appear in the film, and revealed that Paramount Pictures had officially retitled the film The Tomorrow War. Although it was not confirmed, the film likely had its name changed to ensure a Chinese release, due to the country having banned several films about ghosts and zombies.
Creature design Creature designer Ken Barthelmey was confirmed to be the designer for the film's aliens. In early 2019, production designer Peter Wenham hired him due to his ability on his previous works. Barthelmey created over 67 different concept ideas for the aliens, taking inspiration from the Tripods of the War of the Worlds and the Sentinels from The Matrix. The aliens were described as vicious creatures that attack and eat everything in sight, so needed a compelling design that conveyed the hunger and intelligence of these creatures. The crew also wanted the aliens to have different abilities such as fast swimming and flying. This information eventually led Barthelmey to the film's final design. Additionally, Barthelmey came up with the idea of spike-shooting-tentacles, which became a major feature of the design.
Filming Filming began on September 1, 2019, in Lincolnton, Georgia, the historical city in the central Savannah River area. The film was also shot at the Graves Mountain area in 2019. The battle scenes depicting a future Miami were filmed in downtown Atlanta and Buckhead, Georgia, using both CGI and live pyrotechnics to create the postapocalyptic setting.
Chris McKay revealed that he wanted the film to feel real rather than hyperstylized and to shoot on location and limit the amount of greenscreen used, which is the reason he chose Iceland for the scenes in Russia at the glacier Vatnajökull. The crew revealed that they eventually filmed at the top of an icy glacier. Chris Pratt revealed that while filming, they were told that a couple froze to death after falling through a fissure, but they still decided to take the risk hoping to impress the audience. The film wrapped filming on January 12, 2020. On July 1, 2021, the film was confirmed to have an estimated production budget of $200 million.
Visual effects The supervisor of the visual effects of the movie was James Price, while Randy Starr was recruited as the producer of the visual effects. For the effect of the time jump, Chris McKay wanted the time travel of the film to be unique in the film, with Price stating, "We looked at images of the northern lights and the view of Earth from space, and at one point, I showed images from the Hubble Space Telescope because there is something kind of intimate and mysterious about them". The visual-effects staff decided to create a force field that forms above the draftees right before they jump in time. With the time machine activated, the travelers would slowly rise up and eventually be sent at the future. To capture the effect, the visual-effects team ran tests using an underwater cloud tank to simulate time displacement. However, VFX supervisor JD Schwalm decided to use a practical wall of smoke. The smoke was made to be thick enough so the camera could not see through it, and then a stunt coordinator rigged the actors on wires and flew them through the wall of smoke. CGI electrical currents were provided in postproduction so the screen can represent the actors materializing out of thin air.
Music
On August 6, 2020, Lorne Balfe was confirmed to be the composer for The Tomorrow War. Balfe had already collaborated with director Chris McKay on the score for the 2017 animated comedy movie The Lego Batman Movie. The soundtrack album was released on July 2, 2021, by Milan Records.
Release