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The Tomorrow War

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Watch The Tomorrow War with a subscription on Prime Video, rent on Fandango at Home, or buy on Fandango at Home.

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Chris Pratt ably anchors this sci-fi adventure, even if The Tomorrow War may not linger in the memory much longer than today.

It isn't the most surprising time-travel movie, but a satisfying story and plenty of entertaining action make The Tomorrow War well worth a watch.

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Romeo Command

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Chris Pratt took all the clout and popularity he amassed from starring in the “ Jurassic World ” and “ Guardians of the Galaxy ” franchises and used them to make ... “The Tomorrow War,” a blandly derivative and overlong sci-fi thriller.

Originally scheduled pre-pandemic to premiere in theaters, it’s now arriving on streaming through Amazon Prime Video, but it’s hard to imagine that watching this on the big screen would have improved the experience significantly. With his first live-action feature, “The LEGO Batman Movie” director Chris McKay stitches together several overly familiar elements in unremarkable fashion: a bit of time travel, a horde of relentless alien invaders, a rag-tag band coming together to stop them, some unresolved father-son issues and a few misfit sidekicks to provide comic relief. The supposedly original script from writer Zach Dean offers very little that’s innovative or inspired.

Amid all this hackneyed madness is Pratt, straining to tap into dramatic chops he simply doesn’t have. He can be wildly charismatic zipping through the Marvel Cinematic Universe as the cocky Peter Quill, or he can be an engaging action hero handling dinosaurs as the brave Owen Grady. He’s also an infectious charmer in “The LEGO Movie” series as the voice of sunny Emmet Brickowski. But playing a bland suburban dad struggling to save his family—and all of humanity—isn’t Pratt’s strong suit. It gives him no room to swagger.

And then once he gets thrown into the mayhem of jumping forward in time to stop the marauding aliens, his frequent wide-eyed, mouth-agape expression inadvertently calls to mind that famous Pratt meme from his pre-hunky days on NBC’s “Parks and Recreation.” Then again, we’d probably all react that way to being thrown 30 years into the future and then dropped from the sky into a high-rise rooftop swimming pool, as Pratt’s character is in the film’s opening sequence.

Human visitors from the year 2051 have traveled back in time to the present day to warn us that an alien invasion has besieged Earth, and civilians must leap ahead three decades to help fight them—that’s how decimated the population has become. Among them is Pratt’s Dan Forester, a mild-mannered high school science teacher and Iraq war veteran. While he’s reluctant to leave his wife (an underused Betty Gilpin ) and bright, nine-year-old daughter (the self-possessed Ryan Kiera Armstrong ), he’s also proclaimed at the film’s start: “I am meant to do something special with my life,” as so many mediocre, middle-aged white men have before him. This is that thing.

Before he gets zapped, though, he must confront his estranged father (a seriously buff J.K. Simmons), which provides an opportunity for overacting and an indication of the histrionics to come. And as he’s getting fitted with the armband do-hickey that will transport him to the future for his week-long tour of duty, he learns he’s going to die in seven years anyway. Among the other soldiers in his troop are the nervous tech nerd Charlie ( Sam Richardson of “Veep”) and the wisecracking weirdo Norah ( Mary Lynn Rajskub ). There’s not much to any of these characters.

What they’re all forced to confront upon arrival, whether they’re ready or not, is an army of albino creatures known as White Spikes. They scamper and gnash, have tentacles that strangle and slash, and they make a staccato growl like the sound you hear in “ Predator .” They also look extremely cheesy, either individually or en masse. There’s something jumpy not only about the way they move but also about how the giant action scenes are edited. They have a slick, incessant mania to them that’s distancing. It certainly doesn’t help that everything is smothered with a barrage of gunfire and Lorne Balfe ’s overwhelming score.

Through it all, Pratt runs, grunts, shoots or yells “Nooo!” in slow motion. A lot. And that’s some of his more believable work here. Less impressive are his scenes with Yvonne Strahovski as the no-nonsense colonel delivering orders; she connects with him, in part, because of his military background. The “Handmaid’s Tale” standout is also the actor who emerges the most unscathed from this slog, delivering clunky, expository dialogue within this wild setting with surprising understatement. Pratt, however, seems outmatched opposite her.

In the last half-hour, “The Tomorrow War” finally gives in completely to its “ Alien ” influences, with ear-splitting shrieks and blood and yellow-green fluids squishing and spewing everywhere. It’s as if a ballpark condiment bar became sentient and turned evil. This is the point at which things finally teeter over into so-bad-it’s-good territory, but by then, it’s too late. And anyway, in the future, no one can hear you scream.

Now playing on Amazon.

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series "Ebert Presents At the Movies" opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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The Tomorrow War (2021)

Rated PG-13

140 minutes

Chris Pratt as Dan Forester

Yvonne Strahovski as Romeo Command

J.K. Simmons as Slade

Betty Gilpin as Emmy

Sam Richardson as Charlie

Jasmine Mathews as Lt. Hart

Edwin Hodge as Dorian

Mary Lynn Rajskub as Norah

Ryan Kiera Armstrong as Muri

Chris McKay

Cinematographer

Roger Barton
Garret Elkins
Lorne Balfe

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The Tomorrow War (2021)

User Reviews
The wife's realization of the one thing that will let them find the aliens was just lazy writing.
They needed a Volcano expert and the best they could do, with humanity's future at stake, was a high school volcano aficionado.
The hero's father happened to be a government-hating airplanes pilot, just because one of such will be needed near the end.
The toxin that they worked so hard to get killed like 5 of the aliens, the rest were just blown up, that was hilarious.
After finding the alien ship, they couldn't wait a couple days to make a plan, or at least get enough people and toxins for all the aliens in the ship, instead of storming inside and killing half of them. Guess what happened with the other half? Maybe if they brought some proof, after people saw time travelers in the soccer world cup's final match, they probably wouldn't think they were crazy.

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The Tomorrow War review: Chris Pratt fights for the future in enjoyably absurd action flick

The Tomorrow War sets its time-jump coordinates somewhere between 2050 and 2022, though hanging in the panicked gun-smoke air is the distinct whiff of many big-screen dystopias (dystopii?) gone before: a vapor trail of Interstellar , a fragrant chunk of Starship Troopers , a fun-size War of the Worlds . If the movie (on Amazon Prime Video this Friday) works better as a lightly batty comedy than a tentpole thriller, that's probably down to logic and budget, in that it doesn't seem to have a lot of either. But it does, in its cheap-and-cheerful way, have fun.

Erstwhile Star-Lord Chris Pratt has been demoted here to the body of an ordinary earthling, a woolly-cardiganed suburban dad and high school science teacher named Dan Forester. His wife ( GLOW 's underused Betty Gilpin ) and daughter (Ryan Kiera) both support his bigger dreams beyond the classroom, but a startling announcement in the midst of a televised World Cup match puts the brakes on pretty much everything. An alien invasion is coming, and the concerned citizen-warriors of 2050 have traveled back in time to deliver both a dire warning and a recruitment ad: The only way to prevent total annihilation 28 years hence is to start fighting back like, yesterday.

To do that they'll need to feed all the circa-2022 bodies they can into the rudimentary beam-me-up machine that is their only portal to the future apocalypse. And so Dan becomes one of millions drafted into compulsory service — and discovers a group of suspiciously graying fellow recruits, among them 24 's Mary Lynn Rajskub and Veep 's Sam Richardson. Their soft-belled midlife demographic doesn't make much sense for soldiering, but it does track for the paradoxes of time travel; the risk of ripping some kind of hole in the universe by running into yourself is considerably less if you'll almost certainly be dead 30 years hence.

With a few scant hours of training — essentially, "here's a big gun, and good luck" — the amateur troops are deployed for their seven-day stint in an end-times hellscape ruled by skittering homicidal insects whose sole purpose seems to be survival, and whose main food group for fueling up is people. Dan, naturally, becomes de facto leader thanks to his long-ago days in Special Forces, and is soon leading a rescue mission directed by a future-world commander ( Yvonne Strahovski , of The Handmaid's Tale ) who may have — as you might have guessed by the first two minutes of the trailer, or any passing familiarity with the laws of story synergy — a more personal connection to his past.

The aliens themselves are revealed so early and often that they hardly register on any real terror Richter scale: big ugly bugs with rows of razorblade teeth, pincered claws, and the herky-jerky movements of a CG starter kit. The action, as frantic and insistent as it is, lives largely in extended bursts of video-game chaos and deathless lines of dialogue like "Someone get a harpoon on that tentacle!" Which is a lot more fun, frankly, than the script's nonsense mythology and its earnest stump speeches on family and loyalty and One Man to Save Them All.

Director Chris McKay ( Robot Chicken , The Lego Batman Movie ) has forged his career in absurdist comedy, and the movie is best when it lets its weirdo flag fly, whether that's J.K. Simmons as Dan's hippie dropout dad riffing on the sexual temptations of Stevie Nicks or Richardson's geology professor–turned–hapless recruit, doing the best he can to make sense of a world where he's forced to handle semiautomatic weapons instead of old rocks and research grants.

Eventually the storyline dissolves into soft-focus sentiment and a final, snowy set piece whose execution is so patently ludicrous a 1970s Bond villain might file for intellectual property rights (though the climate-change message is sneakily on point). Until then it's enough, almost, just to watch Pratt & Co. race and banter and blast their way through Tomorrow 's futures past. Grade: B-

(Video courtesy of Amazon)

Screen Rant

The tomorrow war review: standard sci-fi story elevated by aliens & action.

The Tomorrow War boasts an interesting setup and solid performances by the cast, but it still comes across as unremarkable, if standard, genre fare.

Since having his big breakout with Guardians of the Galaxy , Chris Pratt has headlined his fair share of big-scale genre blockbusters, with The Tomorrow War being his latest endeavor. Prior to Amazon acquiring the film for a streaming release, the plan was for the sci-fi movie to get a traditional theatrical release. Considering The Tomorrow War's premise and VFX-heavy action, it's easy to see why it was intended to play on the big screen. However, shifting to a streaming service may have actually been beneficial for the film, as it doesn't truly stand out from the crowd. The Tomorrow War boasts an interesting setup and solid performances by the cast, but it still comes across as unremarkable, if standard, genre fare.

In The Tomorrow War , soldiers from the year 2051 travel back in time to alert humanity about a deadly war against aliens known as "Whitespikes." Due to heavy losses, they call upon people to jump decades into the future and help the cause. Army veteran and current high school science teacher Dan Forester (Pratt) is one of the citizens drafted into active service. Vowing to do what he can to save the world and his family, Dan goes to 2051 to see if there's a way he can help end the war for good.

Related: The Tomorrow War Cast & Character Guide

As a director, McKay is best-known for animated efforts like Robot Chicken and The LEGO Batman Movie , but he demonstrates solid chops making the jump to live-action tentpole fare here. The Tomorrow War features a number of well-crafted action sequences, and even though they may not raise the bar in terms of genre thrills, they're still exciting to watch. Each one contains tense and suspenseful moments, and the action's easy for viewers to follow. The Whitespikes are suitably terrifying sci-fi villains, punctuated by good creature design. They're a step above generic sci-fi aliens and prove to be a scary presence throughout the film. McKay smartly builds up to an eventual reveal (similar to Jaws ), making the Whitespikes' first appearance work to greater effect.

Where The Tomorrow War struggles a bit is with the script, written by Zach Dean. The film does have an interesting premise and it tries to sneak in some social commentary (particularly on the issue of global warming), but it rarely digs beyond the surface in the exploration of its themes. This makes the story, which is partially a mishmash of previous sci-fi movies, play out as more of a by-the-numbers plot, rather than being something special. Still, The Tomorrow World deserves credit for its world-building, as Dean has crafted a universe that could be worth exploring in future installments. Some viewers may be able to spot logical inconsistencies, but overall The Tomorrow War 's plot works as a serviceable foundation, and it does have a handful of touching moments designed to tug at the heartstrings. Dan's dynamic with his daughter Muri (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) is the film's emotional core.

In terms of the acting, Pratt does a riff on the usual action hero character viewers should be familiar with by now. His everyman persona works as a gateway into The Tomorrow War's world, but Pratt's arguably outshined by the supporting cast. In particular, Sam Richardson is a definite standout as Charlie, one of the civilians Dan fights alongside with. Charlie is a fun fish-out-of-water character, responsible for levity and laughs. J.K. Simmons also makes the most of his screen time as Dan's estranged father, James, giving the part necessary gravitas another actor may not have. That said, a number of characters in the film aren't fully fleshed out, feeling as if they're there to simply fill out expected roles in a movie like this. Admittedly, The Tomorrow War isn't aiming to be a deep character study, but it doesn't have a wholly well-rounded ensemble audiences can truly get attached to.

As evidenced by The Tomorrow War breaking Amazon Prime streaming records, the film is achieving great success on the platform. This is the kind of big-budget movie that may have gotten lost in the shuffle at the box office in a traditional moviegoing year, but it's right at home as a streaming release where audiences can watch it from the comfort of home. The Tomorrow War is a fun entry into the sci-fi/time travel genre, though the pieces never add up to something all that memorable. Those who are interested in the film should check it out, as The Tomorrow War is certainly worth a watch one day this summer - even with a number of high-profile releases making their way to theaters.

Next: The Tomorrow War Official Movie Trailer

The Tomorrow War is now streaming on Amazon Prime. It is 138 minutes long and is rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action, language and some suggestive references.

Let us know what you thought of the film in the comments!

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Chris pratt in ‘the tomorrow war’: film review.

The actor plays a time-traveler fighting to save humanity in Chris McKay’s Amazon sci-fi adventure.

By John DeFore

John DeFore

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A sci-fi war movie involving time travel and copious daddy issues, Chris McKay’s The Tomorrow War has so much going on that even its protagonists get rushed: Ordinary civilians who’ve been drafted to go fight alien monsters in the future, they only get a few days’ military training before facing the (very scary) enemy. Fortunately, their leader comes pretrained: As a biology teacher who also led troops in Iraq, Chris Pratt ’s Dan Forester is the right man for the moment, even if the moment won’t come for another 30 years.

Action-packed and family-centric in a solidly commercial way, the pic may be missing that certain something that would have made it huge in theaters (its planned theatrical debut was scrapped by the pandemic), but it will be plenty entertaining as an addition to Amazon’s streaming menu.

Full credits

Distributor: Amazon Studios Production companies: Skydance Media, Lit Entertainment Group, New Republic Pictures, Phantom Four Films Cast: Chris Pratt, Yvonne Strahovski, J.K. Simmons, Betty Gilpin, Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Sam Richardson, Edwin Hodge, Jasmine Matthews Director: Chris McKay Screenwriter: Zach Dean Producers: Jules Daly, David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, David S. Goyer, Don Granger, Adam Kolbrenner Executive Producers: Rob Cowan, Bradley J. Fischer, Brian Oliver, Chris Pratt Director of photography: Larry Fong Production designer: Peter Wenham Costume designer: Betsy Heimann Editors: Roger Barton, Garret Elkins Composer: Lorne Balfe Casting directors: Deborah Aquila, Tricia Wood

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The Tomorrow War May Be Dumb, But It’s Also Fast, Loud, and Fun

There are two types of people in this world: Those who will see a film like The Tomorrow War (now out on Amazon Prime Video) and run for the hills, screaming, “Dear God! The stupid! It burns!” Then there are those who will see a film like The Tomorrow War , in all its idiotic glory, and give little yelps of joy. I sometimes fancy myself more the first type of person, but who am I kidding? I took one look at The Tomorrow War ’s dopey premise and knew I was all in. The tree of cinema must be refreshed from time to time with the popcorn-scented manna of movie stars traveling through time to fight aliens.

Is Chris Pratt a movie star, though? He’s certainly done well with both his Marvel and Jurassic World outings, whatever we may think of the films themselves. But there has been a disconnect: Even as he’s fashioned himself over the years into a wisecracking, low-rent Harrison Ford type, as an actor Pratt tends to give off a more earnest and relatable dim-bulb vibe. He’s not a sly, above-it-all jokester. There’s a certain struggling-with-basic-concepts quality to the way he furrows that brow, an I’m-not-sure-what-to-do-with-myself physicality to his movements. These aren’t bad things; quite the contrary, I think they’re secretly at the heart of his Everyman appeal. And they work to his advantage in The Tomorrow War , even though he’s technically playing someone who is supposed to be extremely smart, possibly even brilliant. The film opens on his bewildered face, mid-fall, as he plummets into a pool in a nondescript, war-torn futuristic landscape. And he basically keeps that befuddled expression throughout the picture, which nicely reflects our feelings about what we’re seeing, too.

Pratt’s character, Dan Forester, is an Iraq War vet and high-school science teacher struggling (and failing) to find a better job for himself in the film’s present of 2022. He has big dreams, but no way to achieve them, and the only person to believe in him wholeheartedly is his 9-year-old daughter, Muri (Ryan Kiera Armstrong). That opening flash-forward is a hint of what’s in store for Dan, however. Twenty-eight years into the future, the world has been overrun by a terrifying race of creatures known as the White Spikes. Humanity is on its last legs, and in a final gasp of desperation, the people of 2050 have reached out to the past — to the year 2022, specifically — to recruit more humans to travel into the future and help fight the alien invaders. (If you already have questions, you might want to steer clear of this picture.)

Within a year, the world’s armies have been depleted and a global draft has been instituted. Those chosen are sent into the future for seven-day periods; the survivors are then sent back, most of them with horrifying stories about what they saw and experienced. Dan’s wife, played by Betty Gilpin, is a therapist whom we see working with the traumatized survivors of the Tomorrow War. When Dan is called up, she urges him to avoid the draft — she knows what horrors await him on the other side of the century.

The imminent death of humanity three decades into the future has sapped the spirt of the present: Riots break out, protests flare up over the fact that we are fighting and dying in a war that hasn’t even started yet. All the kids in Dan’s class appear to have given up on life itself. That the screens in his classroom are flashing factoids about climate change — about loss of habitat and the melting of the glaciers — are not coincidental. The Tomorrow War may be dumb in lots of ways, but it’s savvy in how it connects its sci-fi despair over a dying, somewhat distant future to our real-life despair over what our next several decades might look like. (This idea becomes even more pointed in the film’s final act, but let’s not spoil that.)

The anticipation of what 2050 will look like is built up nicely, and once Dan gets there, The Tomorrow War becomes a gonzo, breakneck, CGI slaughterfest, as he and his untrained, unprepared crew are tossed into the midst of a battle that’s basically already been lost. The White Spikes are genuinely terrifying beasts — ghostly, tentacular, giant insectoids with beak-like mouths filled with fangs, who swarm like supersonic zombie flies. (These things would give Cthulhu nightmares.) Watching them lay waste to assorted soldiers and vehicles in the background of nearly every shot does a number on us; we half expect them to be outside our own windows, chowing down on the neighbors.

The film unfolds as a series of rapid-fire video-game-like scenarios: You have to find this group of people, then retrieve this object, then get this other object out of this place before it’s too late, then blow away this many monsters in this amount of time, etc., all without getting eaten yourself. Ordinarily, that would be cause for concern — tedium and repetition are corrosive to action movies, as Army of the Dead reminded us a couple of months ago — but the film adds variation, urgency, and humor. Director Chris McKay was previously part of the teams that gave us The LEGO Movie and its subsequent iterations , so he knows to keep things light and fast. It helps too that a decent number of supporting parts are played by comic actors like Sam Richardson, Mary Lynn Rajskub, and Mike Mitchell, which also reminds us not to take any of this too seriously. (And let’s not forget that Pratt himself had his breakthrough role on Parks and Recreation ; his sensibility is inherently comedic, even when he’s doing serious parts.)

I’m not sure if this next bit is a spoiler; it occurs before the halfway point of the film, but proceed at your own peril. At the head of what remains of humanity’s forces in the future is Colonel Forester (Yvonne Strahovski), who we soon learn is, in fact, Dan’s daughter Muri, all grown up and kicking ass. She has organized this project to reach into the past, and she has sought the youthful spirit of her dad out after all these years, to help her with humanity’s last stand against the White Spikes before all hope is lost forever.

It’s a silly twist, but it works, not only because the movie has already tenderized us with all that running and exploding and dying, but also because Strahovski and Pratt have interesting chemistry: She seems to know too much, and he seems not to know anything at all. So, it’s Edge of Tomorrow meets Interstellar meets Aliens meets Tenet meets Independence Day , with their brains removed. But it’s still tremendous fun, because this thing moves . Let’s face it: If it slowed down, the audience might start asking too many questions. The Tomorrow War is just as stupid as it needs to be.

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Summary In The Tomorrow War, the world is stunned when a group of time travelers arrive from the year 2051 to deliver an urgent message: Thirty years in the future mankind is losing a global war against a deadly alien species. The only hope for survival is for soldiers and civilians from the present to be transported to the future and join the f ... Read More

Directed By : Chris McKay

Written By : Zach Dean

The Tomorrow War

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Dan forester, yvonne strahovski, colonel muri forester, j.k. simmons, james forester, betty gilpin, emmy forester, sam richardson, jasmine mathews, edwin hodge, ryan kiera armstrong, young muri forester, keith powers, major greenwood, mary lynn rajskub, mike mitchell, alexis louder, rose bianco, seychelle gabriel, chibuikem uche, david maldonado, kasandra bandfield, lawyer draftee, gregory weeks, hard working draftee, critic reviews.

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Movie Review – The Tomorrow War (2021)

July 1, 2021 by Robert Kojder

The Tomorrow War , 2021.

Directed by Chris McKay Starring Chris Pratt, Yvonne Strahovski, J.K. Simmons, Betty Gilpin, Sam Richardson, Theo Von, Jasmine Mathews, Seychelle Gabriel, Alan Trong, Chibuikem Uche, Alexis Louder, Mike Mitchell, Edwin Hodge, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Keith Powers, Felisha Terrell, Melissa Saint-Amand, Gary Weeks, Rose Bianco, Gissette E. Valentin, David Maldonado, Olaolu Winfunke, Piper Collins, Matthew Cornwell, Eric Graise, Ashlyn Moore, Christina Bach, and Jared Shaw.

A family man is drafted to fight in a future war where the fate of humanity relies on his ability to confront the past.

It’s a relief that The Tomorrow War doesn’t get lost in a barrage of futuristic mumbo-jumbo explanations regarding the specifics of humans going 30 years into the future to help fight back against an alien invasion. There are certainly questions to be had involving the interactions between past and present (some of them answered), but the direction from Chris McKay ( The LEGO Batman Movie ) and Zach Dean’s screenplay is wise to focus on multi-generational effects and rifts, specifically between the Foresters who have a history of military backgrounds. There’s an earned central theme of second chances on both a smaller human scale and the global extinction scale that, while never necessarily deep, collides in a straightforward and crowd-pleasing spectacle way that’s not afraid to embrace its ridiculousness.

Chris Pratt is Dan Forester, a former soldier that developed a passion for biology out in the field. Leaving that life behind in pursuit of his passion doesn’t go as planned for various reasons. For starters, he doesn’t meet the required experience for the job he is counting on. Then there’s the world suddenly thrust into turmoil from the arrival of those from the future warning of the impending attack, putting in motion worldwide recruitment for the titular future war. While the concept of a world united entered into a global draft has been done before, it’s executed slightly differently here in a manner that plays to Chris McKay’s comedic strengths.

Many of these recruits are not experienced soldiers, but rather average Joes working office jobs, let alone having some form of weapons training. Due to the urgency of resistance, there’s also no time to put anyone through introductory courses, forcing Dan to pair up and look after a combination of warriors (Edwin Hodge playing a cancer-stricken man who would instead go out on the battlefield than a hospital bed) and rookies (Sam Richardson as the head of an energy company). Surprisingly, the attempted humor Chris McKay goes for within the dynamic doesn’t always land (it usually comes across as at odds with the seriousness and suspenseful presentation, even when Chris Pratt is occasionally cracking jokes), but the unlikely heroes approach relatively works anyway because the characters are likable, and due to the impressive staging of the action sequences that are putting every special-effects dollar to use to create something visually bombastic.

Some of these set pieces are built on fear of the unknown (it’s worth applauding that the film holds off until around 45 minutes in before unveiling what the male gender of this strange species looks like, and even longer for the much deadlier females), others play into chaotic destruction and explosions galore. In contrast, the climactic battle is one of preparation and tactics with an exciting banger of a final fight. Without saying much, there’s a moment where it seems like the heroes have won, except they haven’t, and it sucks the life right out of Dan with Chris Pratt subtly dropping to his knees from fatigue and desperation, wondering what more can be done.

That’s also not to say that The Tomorrow War is only worth seeing strictly for carnage between humans and aliens; more that these filmmakers understand delivering on that front will heighten the impact of predictable emotional beats surrounding this family in both the present and future. Dan is reluctant to return to military life before deploying into the future (imaginatively done through an inverted purple-glowing portal relying on rushed technology that doesn’t guarantee people will land safely on the other side). As a result, he’s encouraged by his wife Emmy (Betty Gilpin) to make amends with his estranged ex-military turned government conspiracy theorist father (J.K. Simmons) that abandoned him, someone capable of unlocking the tracking mechanism ensuring Dan serves his seven-day stint in the future. Needless to say, the meeting doesn’t go off peacefully.

Dan also has a bright young daughter named Muri (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) that also happens to be a commander in the future war (now played by a supremely badass Yvonne Strahovski) who has taken after his love for biology, racing against time to develop a toxin capable of wiping out the alien race. Naturally, this revelation is a jolt to Dan’s mind, but there is no time for bonding or processing past, present, and future. As Dan tries to save his world by protecting the future world, it also becomes clear that he was selected to fight in the war for a greater purpose, which is also a somewhat apparent reason, but the strong performances, well-paced divulging of information, and few quiet downtime segments inject some heart alongside the intensity of survival.

Admittedly, there are plenty of instances where logic, plausibility, and continuity between timelines come into question. That’s also pretty much a given for anything dealing with time travel and multiple timelines. However, The Tomorrow War sticks to the essential details while allowing its charismatic ensemble and extravagant action to stand out at the forefront so competently that it’s easy to overlook how it works. It’s pleasant to watch a time travel war movie against aliens more concerned with characters and fun rather than obsessive details on plot mechanics. Don’t put The Tomorrow War off until tomorrow.

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★

Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd , or email me at [email protected]

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The tomorrow war, common sense media reviewers.

Scary monsters, explosive violence in sci-fi actioner.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

To be the best, you have to do what no one else is

A veteran is depicted as a hero and a leader. A yo

Terrifying attacking alien monsters, with fangs, d

Married couple kisses.

Strong language includes "d--k," "hell," "s--t," "

Coors beer is shown prominently.

A couple of moments of drinking.

Positive Messages

To be the best, you have to do what no one else is willing to do. We all deserve a second chance. Teamwork is a clear theme. What you learn in school matters and has a real life application.

Positive Role Models

A veteran is depicted as a hero and a leader. A young girl who's interested in science follows her passion and makes a positive impact in the world. Women are depicted as strong and commanding. Lead actors are White; most of the supporting roles are actors of color.

Violence & Scariness

Terrifying attacking alien monsters, with fangs, deadly spikes, and multiple appendages. Heavy artillery directed at monsters, with seemingly endless ammunition. Explosions, bombs, intense war violence. Dead bodies; sympathetic characters are killed. Rough falls, with harsh impacts. Bloody wound, blood smears. Humans are battered, broken, and munched on by aliens; bodies are saved for later. Humans are almost constantly in peril.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Strong language includes "d--k," "hell," "s--t," "ass," "goddamn," "son of a bitch," and "f--k." Exclamatory use of "Jesus" and "God."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Drinking, drugs & smoking.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The Tomorrow War is a sci-fi action movie starring Chris Pratt as a man who's sent to the future to fight a war against aliens that are on the verge of destroying humanity. Make no mistake, this is a creature feature -- and the monsters are fanged, spiked, and terrifying. And the war violence is intense, with nonstop gunfire/heavy artillery, explosions, and weapons use, though it's all shown in the context of fighting against an invasive species that's literally eating the human race into extinction. A bloody wound is shown, as are blood smears and corpses. A married couple kisses, there's a little drinking, and one scene has a character saying "s--t" over and over for comedic purposes (there's also one "f--k"). Lead characters are White, but the supporting cast is more diverse. Overall, characters are from all walks of life and make positive contributions with the skills they have -- including women who are assured leaders and kids who love science. Pratt's character, Dan, is ex-military, and the story highlights the value of what he learned in the armed forces. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Community Reviews

Parents say (7)
Kids say (41)

Based on 7 parent reviews

Common sense bias

Fun sci-fi action thriller has gory monster violence, what's the story.

In THE TOMORROW WAR, Dan Forester ( Chris Pratt ) is a military veteran-turned-high school teacher/father who's recruited by time-traveling soldiers from the year 2051 to join them in fighting a war they're currently losing against invading space aliens. Forester will have to reckon with his past in order to help save the world -- and, more importantly, his daughter. As people fight back to save humanity, guns with endless bullets spray faster than it's even possible to count.

Is It Any Good?

Animation director Chris McKay brings the science back to sci-fi while delivering a shoot 'em up monster movie that seems tailor-made for action fans. McKay knows kids -- he's behind The Lego Batman Movie . And he knows older teens, having directed much of Adult Swim's Robot Chicken series. His knack with comedy is also on display in The Tomorrow War, combined with other factors that will appeal to older tweens and teens. First, there's Pratt, who's a consistent draw, even if he isn't quite as funny and relatable here as he is in Guardians of the Galaxy . Second, McKay uses his animation expertise to create ghastly human-eating aliens that will wow kids -- just make sure they're old enough not to have nightmares. Plus, kids are shown to be really smart, making significant contributions to the solution. And Forester is a cool high school science teacher, bringing viewers back to the classroom, where he lays the groundwork for elements that will play out later.

And make no mistake: What The Tomorrow War is really about -- the message that slides in subtly underneath the movie's splashier elements -- is that what you learn in school matters and has a real-life application. In fact, at one point, the film more or less says this clearly. And hopefully kids will pick up on it, because there's not one line of dialogue here that's wasted. If we see someone reveal a key character trait or hear them say something, it will pay off later. Of course, a tight script doesn't necessarily mean that the film makes sense ; it definitely takes leaps in logic. It's also too long, and it ends in a moment of preposterous ridiculousness. But teens may well not care, enjoying it for what it is: a chaotic, video game-like retaliation against an alien coup with a nice father-daughter story layered on top.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the violence in The Tomorrow War . How does the fact that much of it is directed at alien creatures instead of humans affect its impact? Does changing their blood color to yellow make it less upsetting?

How do the characters use their individual skills to succeed as a team? Why is teamwork an important life skill?

How do you think you'd fare if you were suddenly dropped into a battlefield with a gun? Some experts believe that future wars will take place in the lab rather than the battlefield. How does that idea play out in the film?

What would you say are the movie's takeaways? What is it trying to say about second chances?

Movie Details

On DVD or streaming : July 2, 2021
Cast : Chris Pratt , Yvonne Strahovski , J.K. Simmons
Director : Chris McKay
Inclusion Information : Female actors
Studio : Amazon Studios
Genre : Science Fiction
Topics : Space and Aliens
Character Strengths : Teamwork
Run time : 140 minutes
MPAA rating : PG-13
MPAA explanation : intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action, language and some suggestive references
Last updated : April 5, 2023

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Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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DVD & Streaming

The Tomorrow War

Action/Adventure , Drama , Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Content Caution

In Theaters

July 2, 2021
Chris Pratt as Dan Forester; Yvonne Strahovski as Col. Muri Forester; Ryan Kiera Armstrong as young Muri Forester; J.K. Simmons as James Forester; Betty Gilpin as Emmy Forester; Sam Richardson as Charlie; Edwin Hodge as Dorian; Jasmine Mathews as Lt. Hart; Keith Powers as Major Greenwood; Theo Von as Dixon Hart; Mary Lynn Rajskub as Norah

Home Release Date

Chris McKay

Distributor

Amazon Studios

Movie Review

Jesus told us to not worry about tomorrow, for “tomorrow will be anxious for itself.”

But sometimes, tomorrow’s anxieties invade today. And those anxieties can be pretty hard to ignore.

Take, for instance, one lazy evening in the not-too-distant future. Dan Forester, a former special-ops soldier and current high school biology teacher, had just settled down to watch a World Cup soccer match with his daughter, Muri, when—in what you’d think would be a first for World Cup competition—soldiers from the future zapped onto the field and stopped play.

They’ve come from the year 2051, they say, a time when absolutely no one cares about World Cup matches. Alien invasions have a way of shifting one’s priorities, and aliens have invaded in a big way. In fact, humanity itself—fighting for its life—is hanging by a thread. The last man, woman or child will be killed and eaten in, oh, 11 months or so. Tops. Unless, that is, the war effort gets a transfusion of new soldiers from the past.

That’s a pretty tall order, but humanity steps up to the challenge. Waves of soldiers from the past (but Dan’s present) are sent back to the future—and summarily mowed down. The planet unites to create a global draft, but that doesn’t go much better. A standard tour of duty lasts for seven days—and just 30% of those who spend a week in the field ever come back.

Those are the odds that Dan faces when his number comes up. He has just a three-in-10 chance of making it back to see his wife and daughter again. He flirts with making a run for it. But in the end he accepts his commission and agrees to fight—and fight desperately for humankind’s future.

But Dan and his new comrades don’t have much time, no matter how you slice it. A week of basic training is cut short when leaders learn that a critical scientific base is under attack. The link to the future is destabilizing, and they’ll have to make the jump now—whether they’re ready or not.

Dan’s team is told to expect a drop to the ground of around five feet, maybe 10, once they hit the future. Instead, Dan and his compatriots materialize hundreds of feet above the burning rubble of Miami. And they’re all falling .

Fight aliens? Why, their first real fight is against gravity itself.

Tomorrow will be anxious for itself. But tomorrow came sooner than everyone expected.

Positive Elements

Saving the world equals good, right? And we see lots of people risking, literally, everything to save that world. It’s not easy for anyone to look into the future’s gaping maw of doom and declare that there’s hope yet to be found in its inky depths. And many, indeed, give up—saying that nothing matters. But Dan and the movie’s other heroes never give up. And that’s a pretty good lesson.

But setting aside the movie’s global scope and apocalyptic stakes, The Tomorrow War is as much about family as anything.

When we first meet Dan, he’s a conscientious husband and father—but a bit dissatisfied with his career. The time jump gives Dan a chance to learn a little bit about his future self, and he learns how that dissatisfaction led to some pretty bad mistakes, that he wasn’t always the husband or father that he should’ve been. Armageddon, oddly, gives him a second chance to do what’s right—not just on a global scale, but on a personal one, too. He discovers that the most important things in his life weren’t the job he coveted or the success he deserved, but his wife and daughter.

He confesses to someone that he’s not so much worried about saving the planet from aliens but protecting the future of his daughter. “If I have to save the world to save her,” he says, “I’m … gonna do it.”

He’s also given a chance to patch things up with his own estranged father, too.

Spiritual Elements

You’d think that facing genocidal aliens would warrant a prayer or two. But unless you want to count the movie’s premise that Earth is not unique in holding intelligent life, you’ll find no real signs of faith or religion here. The only real reference we’re given to spirituality at all is that the White Spikes, as the aliens are known, rest every seventh day. Naturally, humans call it their “Sabbath.”

Sexual Content

Someone jokingly wishes that Stevie Nicks would appear out of nowhere with a jar of baby oil. We hear a joke about the size of someone’s privates.

Violent Content

The aliens are called White Spikes for painfully literal reasons. They have two tentacles to go along with their four fearsome limbs and mouth full of kitchen-knife-sized teeth. And those tentacles? They shoot spikes. The aliens attack basically anything that moves. As an officer tells Dan, “We are food. And they are hungry.”

We’re told that by the time Dan hits the future, just 500,000 humans are left on the planet—and we see that count go down plenty. White Spikes kill people using their projectiles (sometimes going in one area of the body then protruding from another), their teeth (sometimes literally tearing people apart or swallowing parts of bodies whole) or just by throwing poor people around. The aliens leap on helicopters, pulling them down to crash in lethal fireballs; they run into military vehicles like bowling balls into pins—ripping open doors to pull the helpless soldiers out. And they don’t discriminate in what they eat: From a distance, we see them chase and attack a herd of horses. Sometimes, the aliens kill people and leave them hanging, apparently to devour later.

People die in other ways, too. Explosions take out many. The unexpected fall I mentioned in the introduction kills plenty more. (We see some bodies bounce off of still-standing buildings on the way down, and mangled corpses litter the ground.) Yes, 2051 is desperate indeed. Many of the soldiers who do return from their future tour of duty come back missing limbs and suffering incredibly torturous mental scars—so much so that Dan’s wife (who’s a PTSD counselor) says some can barely speak.

But the White Spikes are not invulnerable, and their deaths can be—if you can believe it—even more grotesque. Some are perforated by hundreds of bullets, their skulls slowly being pummeled away by the onslaught. Some seem to melt (via a special-but-apparently-rare toxin), their skin and muscles sloughing away from the skeleton like melted Jell-O. One falls off a cliff and seems to explode on the rocks below.

We also learn that the civilians sent into the future are, technically, already dead by 2051 (and thusly recruited as to not disturb the time-space continuum, it’s assumed). We also learn how some of those people died.

Crude or Profane Language

One f-word and at least 50 more s-words—the majority of which are uttered in less than a minute by one character running from a White Spike. We also hear “a–,” “b–ch,” “d–n,” “h—” and “p-ss.” God’s name is paired with “d–n” three times, and Jesus’ name is abused twice.

Drug and Alcohol Content

After a tour, someone drinks heavily in a bar. Another character drinks during a critical procedure. We see a beer bottle in the background of a scene or two.

Other Negative Elements

During the soccer match, Muri talks to her dad about tuberculosis, and how the germs are found in the dirt “with worms and poop.” We hear about a character’s separation and divorce. There’s some discussion about using time travel as a way to profitably bet on the Miami Dolphins.

The Tomorrow War is about aliens. It’s about family. But maybe it’s mostly about hope.

That’s something that seems in short supply, even in a world pretty much devoid of tentacled, flesh-eating monsters. Sometimes we can look at culture and wonder how everything went so wrong. And then, of course, we think of what the Bible says, and we remember.

Christians have hope, of course, that no matter what happens, everything will eventually be OK. God is in control , we say—but sometimes even if we know this to be true, it can be difficult for us to feel that truth. We live in a world of violence and viruses, of anger and pain and grief. Many characters in the movie give up in the face of their own story’s difficulties. And sometimes, we can feel like giving up, too.

It’s why I appreciate the simple morality in play in The Tomorrow War —the sharp call to do what’s right, and to do what we must, in trying times.

One character tells Dan to not worry about pulling other people to safety: They’ll die anyway. Dan’s not having it. “We’re here to save people,” he says. “We have to try.” He’s told there’s no reason to fight; the war’s termination is terminal. Dan, and others, refuse to back off. They embrace Ecclesiastes 9:4: “He who is joined with all the living has hope …”

The Tomorrow War has other issues as well as hope. The story races forward at such a breathless pace that sometimes it forgets to make sense of itself. The carnage here can push the PG-13 threshold, as can the language. This is a frenetic, bloody mess in some ways.

But in that mess, you have moments of moral clarity about what is worth valuing in the world—and what is worth fighting for. And that makes The Tomorrow War strangely resonant today.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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MOVIE REVIEWS

Review: ‘The Tomorrow War’ Uses Good Premise & Chris Pratt To Make Decent Sci-Fi Movie

Jul 2, 2021, 12:40 PM

BY ANDY FARNSWORTH, KSL NEWSRADIO

SALT LAKE CITY — Keeping track of all the hopeful-blockbuster movies that were originally supposed to come out in 2020, but whose release dates were delayed by the COVID pandemic, has been an adventure in and of itself. “ The Tomorrow War ,” a science fiction/time travel/action movie starring Chris Pratt , is one of those films that’s had quite a journey of its own.

It was originally supposed to hit theaters on Christmas Day 2020, but production delays bumped its release date to late July 2021. It was then pulled from the release calendar altogether for a while. When it resurfaced, Amazon had purchased the distribution rights and is now releasing the movie just in time for the Fourth of July weekend on Amazon Prime.

In “The Tomorrow War,” Pratt plays a high school science teacher and Army veteran named Dan Forester. He and the rest of the globe are shocked when soldiers from the year 2051 appear right in the middle of the World Cup final to tell of a war against an invading species that humans are losing. In response to their plea for help, the world’s governments institute a draft and begin sending present-day soldiers and regular citizens into the future for one-week deployments to fight.

When Dan gets drafted, he decides to go despite the objections of his wife ( Betty Gilpin , best known for Netflix’s “GLOW”) and their young daughter, in part because of some ominous information he learns while being processed for service. Once he does arrive in the future alongside other conscripted people, he must use all his skills to try and stay alive through the week to make it back to his family and with luck help some of his less skilled squad mates survive.

Without spoiling anything, Dan finds out he might also be able to help his commander in the future ( Yvonne Strahovski , famous for “The Handmaid’s Tale” & “Chuck”) find a way to defeat the creatures once and for all.

“The Tomorrow War” boasts a solid premise that was enough to draw me in. I love a good sci-fi/action movie, and time travel is a bonus. While the movie does have familiar elements of many other sci-fi, post-apocalyptic and/or time travel movies, it still does a pretty good job handling its own story without feeling like a straight re-tread of those other films.

This is director Chris McKay ’s first-ever live-action movie (he also directed the “LEGO Batman” movie) but he does a great job of using camera angles, sound and story to create a real tension throughout, especially when it comes to the creatures. One of his best choices was the slow reveal of what the humans in the future were fighting against, ratcheting up the tension, fear and dread that the viewer feels along with the characters on-screen. The special effects on the aliens are pretty decent as well, it doesn’t appear that the production budget was skimpy here.

But the main thing I took from “The Tomorrow War” was a reminder of why Chris Pratt is a bona fide movie star. He just oozes likeability and charm when he wants to, while also convincingly carrying the action scenes. It never ceases to amaze me that the goofy Andy Dwyer from “Parks and Recreation” is a legit, A-list action movie hero. Surprisingly, he’s not even the funniest guy in the movie, either. That honor goes to Sam Richardson ’s character Charlie, who gets almost all of the best lines and nearly steals the show. But in case you were worried, Pratt does have his own funny and clever moments as well.

The rest of the cast is solid, but Pratt & Richardson really stood out. J.K. Simmons was also good as Forester’s father, but sadly not used on-screen nearly enough.

Despite how familiar it feels, “The Tomorrow War” is a solid sci-fi movie that’s worth the effort to seek out and watch, especially for fans of the genre. There are some plot threads left dangling and some characters and scenes that I would have liked to be explored a little more in-depth, but it doesn’t really detract from the overall experience. Besides, who knows if there won’t be an extended version released someday.

The biggest frustration about this movie might be simply that it would look so great on the big screen but you can’t watch it there. It certainly would have been worth a theatrical release, had that been Amazon’s plan. Instead, the film is exclusively streaming with your Amazon Prime subscription. Amazon Prime is a $15-per-month service that gives subscribers access to a big library of free movies & TV shows, as well as free shipping on most orders from Amazon.com.

“The Tomorrow War” is rated PG-13 for sci-fi violence and gore. It’s mostly alien gore but some people get killed too. There’s also plenty of adult language. I think it’s all going to be a bit much for younger kids and wouldn’t recommend they watch it. The movie is 2 hours & 20 minutes long, but at least you can pause it if you need a bathroom or food break since it’s streaming.

FINAL RATING: TWO & A HALF OUT OF FOUR STARS

Hopefully, you & your family found this review helpful! Andy Farnsworth is the movie and pop culture guy for the KSL 5 Today morning news show and also hosts the Fan Effect podcast for KSL NewsRadio . Check out some of his other in-depth reviews of movies and streaming TV series on KSLTV.com

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THE MOVIE CULTURE

The Tomorrow War Movie Review & Summary: This Sci-fi Blockbuster Creates Thrill With Almost Everything

The Tomorrow War is a Sci-fi blockbuster, directed by Chris McKay. It has a phenomenal cast and an incredibly intriguing idea which serves as a base for its tremendous action sequences.

The Tomorrow War Movie Plot

The Tomorrow War is all about a war with the future. More specifically, the aliens who invade earth in the future. Dan and his team have to proactively work together in order to come up with a solution which could end it for good and in turn, save humanity.

The Tomorrow War Movie Cast

Chris Pratt as Dan Forester
Yvonne Strahovski as Romeo Command
J.K. Simmons as James Forester
Sam Richardson as Charlie
Betty Gilpin as Betty Forester

The Tomorrow War Movie Review

The Tomorrow War is a Science Fiction which forces the protagonists to go into the future to prevent a war from happening in the past. It packs a great concept and some really well choreographed and anxiety inducing action scenes, but sadly, the same can’t be said about its utilization of the concept and how it weaves a narrative out of it.

Chris Pratt is the heart and soul of this movie, and we follow him as he fights these monsters from the future and for most part, all of them are fighting a losing battle. Somewhere in the story of this battle lies a deep and emotional fatherly impact wherein one person selfishly goes to the future in order to prevent his daughter from falling to that same horrid fate.

I would have liked a more concise narrative which flowed better, almost like Edge of Tomorrow and even though the action in this is at par, if not better, the story still lags behind.

We follow the character of Dan (Played by Chris Pratt) in The Tomorrow War. He has lived a simple life, working a decent job as a teacher, but his real talent for science and chemistry lies wasted. In spite of trying so hard to acquire a job which aligns with his deepest passion, his bad luck forces him to go back to school.

So one fine evening, a football stadium in the US gets invaded by a portal and what comes out of it are humans, but from the future. They proclaim that an alien species has invaded the world and the only way to prevent it is to stop it in the future and end the conflict for good.

The prevalent dynamic of kids and youngsters being forced to go in the war is turned upside down as now it is the adults who have to go into the year 2051, for a week, and kill as many monsters as they possibly can. Some are there because of their own personal volition and the others are forced against their will. Each living man and woman is turned into a soldier, and for one week, their life is controlled by a thin fate.

The Tomorrow War Movie: Breathtaking Action Set Pieces

The Tomorrow War has some insane action sequences which don’t just create fights for the sake of it. Everything feels planned and they fit the narrative that the movie is trying to establish. From that entry into 2051 right into a swimming pool with heads bashing on the ledges, the floor and many who completely miss the pool, the brutality of this situation comes into the picture.

It becomes increasingly clear as to how unprepared and desperate the population is that they have no option whatsoever to stop those accidental deaths. Moreover, they don’t even reference those deaths and it just becomes another workplace accident like the thousand other workplace accidents that might have already taken place.

It is dark and not without its stakes. Dan’s experience as a Navy Seal is what keeps him going and promotes him as the self-proclaimed leader of the group as he tries to get the group out of the building, and into the war.

Monsters feel like a blend of Edge of Tomorrow and a Guillermo Del Toro creature, yet they still carry their own gimmicks and character. The one thing that I found really unique and badass was their ability to shoot projectiles from their claws and watching those mini blades stab people in full velocity felt really fresh and unlike anything I have seen before. Their Presence feels menacing and works terrifically as a way of building an incredible amount of tension and anxiety.

Chris Pratt Talks About Producing, Working in CGI and The Element of Fatherhood in ‘The Tomorrow War’

The Tomorrow War Movie: A Rather Muddled Climax

Coming back to the action sequences, my favourite one has to be when they try to trap one of the creatures in a pit in the middle of an infested landscape. The CGI and the visual effects flows so smoothly with the choreography of the sequence and watching Chris Pratt singlehandedly tackle this ginormous hunk of a creature with his honed skill set was spectacular.

And obviously, all of these scenes wouldn’t have been the same without that fantastic score by Lorne Balfe. It creates a sense of victory as they get away from an island full of aliens, but it also makes you emotional as characters have to watch their closest allies and children die in front of their eyes.

The concept however, carries a lot of plot holes in itself. It was to be expected that even the most original ideas carry flaws, but the main issue The Tomorrow War succumbs to is its inability to effectively weave the narrative together. It falls prey to some pacing issues and the tension and anxiety it builds with the better part of the movie get lost in its hazy climax.

The slope of excitement which went upward throughout the movie, comes falling down as the climax doesn’t manage to justify the glamour it dished us before. Not just the climax but the events leading up to it feel sudden and unrealized, and quite frankly, silly.

It tries to jumble between light-hearted plot arcs and the yada-yadas of Sci-Fi and it doesn’t necessarily succeed in balancing them. The Father Son portrayal of Chris Pratt’s and J.K. Simmons’s character takes priority, but my investment in Dan’s and his daughter’s relationship was far greater than his and his father’s relationship, so I ended up feeling weirdly confused with the direction that it took.

The other minute plot holes are many in this film, but again, picking out plot holes in a time travel movie is like barking at a moving car, it serves no purpose. Some films do it better, some films do it weird, and The Tomorrow War kinda tips towards the prior.

The Tomorrow War is still an amazing Science Fiction which is epic for almost the entire runtime. Chris Pratt gives a terrific performance as he successfully jumbles between playing a badass soldier and a broken father and son. It is bound to be a treat for die hard Chris Pratt fans, and the connoisseurs of Science-Fiction will have a fairly good time with the build-up of the movie, however I can’t really say the same about its final act. It is a proper blockbuster which will definitely serve as a bang for your Amazon Prime Video Membership.

The Movie Culture Synopsis

Chris Pratt rules The Tomorrow War with one of his best performances till date in a Sci-Fi offering. Chris McKay takes a wild jump from directing animated movies to a full-fledged blockbuster which definitely serves its purpose. It hits hard and amazes you at many points, even when the story gets muddled as it reaches the end.

Watching this on the biggest screen possible will definitely blow you away with its sheer scale and scope, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who is looking for a mix of mindful and mindless action.

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Paola Cortellesi in There’s Still Tomorrow.

There’s Still Tomorrow review – resoundingly sentimental drama in postwar Rome

Paola Cortellesi’s directing debut, in which she also stars, depicts gruelling domestic abuse before finding its way to startling redemption

I talian actor and singer Paola Cortellesi has been breaking hearts and box office records on her home turf with this directing debut. It’s a richly and even outrageously sentimental working-class drama of postwar Rome, a story of domestic abuse whose heroine finally escapes from misogyny and cruelty through a piece of narrative sleight-of-hand that borders on magic-neorealism, performed with shameless theatrical flair and marvellously composed in luminous monochrome. The film pays homage to early pictures by De Sica and Fellini, and Cortellesi’s own performance is consciously in the spirit of movie divas such as Anna Magnani, Sophia Loren and Giulietta Masina.

The scene is Rome just after the end of the second world war, when American GIs were a presence on the streets and Italian women had just been given the right to vote – though exercising it while under the baleful eye of the film’s misogynist menfolk is another matter. Cortellesi plays Delia, a woman who is being regularly beaten by her brutish husband Ivano (Valerio Mastandrea). He makes her slave around the house, skivvy to his cantankerous bedridden father (great stuff from veteran comic turn Giorgio Colangeli), and do odd jobs around the city, the cash payment for which she has to hand over at the end of every day. Their teenage daughter Marcella (Romana Maggiora Vergano), who sees how her mother is being brutalised and humiliated, is made to sleep in the same bedroom as her two brattish kid brothers, and when she receives a proposal of marriage from a well-off local boy, she, like her parents, is thrilled – at first.

Delia also has admirers: a GI is concerned by her bruises and an old flame, now working as a mechanic, wonders what might have been. But aside from this, Delia has a piece of paper she’s keeping secret. Is it a love letter? Some legal document that might somehow get her away from this terrible prison? Not exactly, but Cortellesi keeps us on the edge of our seats with some nailbiting suspense which finally fuses the personal and the political in a way which, though a bit of a cheat, hits a resounding final chord. This is storytelling with terrific confidence and panache.

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Zendaya, the history of tennis movies and family life for astronauts | Streamed & Screened podcast

Lee National Newsroom
May 1, 2024

Zendaya has come a long way since becoming a favorite of tweens thanks to "Shake It Up" and "K.C. Undercover" on the Disney Channel.

She has starred in the not-PG HBO hit "Euphoria" and has appeared in a pair of "Spider-Man" movies, the two "Dune" films and "The Greatest Showman." Now, Zendaya is starring in the sports drama "Challengers," which has quickly become a hit.

In this week's episode, we talk about the film as well as other movies about tennis, which don't necessarily stack up with other sports features.

Also, would you head into space if given the chance?

Co-host Bruce Miller also has an interview with Dr. Cady Coleman, a former astronaut, and her son, Jamey Simpson. They talk about the problems of separation for astronauts and their families. They’re featured in “Space: The Longest Goodbye,” which airs May 12 on PBS.

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Streamed & Screened is a podcast about movies and TV hosted by Bruce Miller , a longtime entertainment reporter who is now the editor of the Sioux City Journal in Iowa and Terry Lipshetz , a senior producer for Lee Enterprises based in Madison, Wisconsin.

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3 rd May 2024

Following the warm reception of her debut film in 2018, Soudade Kaadan is releasing her latest feature Nezouh . “Nezouh” means displacement, and it’s what the protagonists of this story fight against.

Set in war-torn Damascus, the film narrates the struggle of a population through the narrow filter of one family. A husband and wife, Mutaz and Hala, are the last ones standing (save one family) in their now deserted neighbourhood. They carefully ration their last provisions and attempt to revive an electricity generator as their young daughter Zeina doodles away in her bedroom. Mutaz has resolved never to become a refugee, and he takes on every challenge that comes their way with patriarchal pride, if not arrogance. But even he begins to lose hope when missiles perforate the walls and ceilings of their house. While catastrophic, this incident holds a silver lining for young Zeina: the hole in her bedroom’s ceiling leads to her meeting the boy next door and allows her to explore a world she never dared step into before.

Nezouh is a coming-of-age story, but looming in the background is the constant threat of missiles destroying everything in an instant. The sense of impending danger gives the characters a unique air of fatalism and courage; their feelings are heightened and their reactions become bolder. The film does have moments that don’t flow as smoothly and where the acting feels less natural, but overall it succeeds in delivering a sense of despair that carries within it a bright spark of optimism in spite of everything. There are some lovely shots and a touch of magic realism, mostly connected with the idea of the sea – a symbol of freedom and hope awaiting the city-dwelling protagonists in the far distance.

Kaadan explores the prelude to the refugee experience with great empathy for her characters, whether they want to flee or stay. It’s a bittersweet and fascinating story that, like other recent movies detailing the refugee experience, needs to be seen and heard in order to better grasp the complexity of being displaced. It’s a reminder that what many merely see as a tricky sociopolitical phenomenon can be divided into millions of heartbreaking personal stories.

Nezouh is released in UK cinemas on 3 rd May 2024.

Watch the trailer for Nezouh here:

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The Tomorrow War Review

02 Jul 2021

The Tomorrow War

Chris McKay 's first film as director was The Lego Batman Movie , a film which hilariously undercut DC’s most self-serious superhero by turning him into a preening, microwaved-lobster-eating plastic toy with lines like, “I also have huge pecs and a nine-pack.” It was an animated action movie — for kids! — laced with parody and satire. McKay’s first live-action film isn’t quite the same proposition: it’s a big, blundering, CGI-heavy action sci-fi that works within its genre mould rather than outside it. The Tomorrow War is not entirely without a sense of humour, but as with its noisy, show-offy action sequences, it feels broader, made for the widest audience possible in a way that might inadvertently alienate them.

Emblematic of this tension is Chris Pratt , whose character is a none-more-generic action star: hunky, chunky and chiselled, certainly, but lacking anything distinctive or compelling for us to get behind. Pratt easily sells the ex-military side of his character (it recalls his early role in Zero Dark Thirty ), but never quite convinces in his later career as a nerdy science teacher. When he’s given free rein to crack wise and arch eyebrows in the Guardians universe, he’s electric; when he’s effectively the straight man, as he is here, his natural charisma is a little dulled.

There seems to be uncertainty in terms of which tone to strike. At times, it’s suffocatingly serious: Pratt is faced with daddy issues for maximum emotional motivation — as if the extinction of humanity wasn’t enough to get him out of bed. Dialogue arrives smothered in clichés (“You and me... we’re going to save this world — together,” smoulders Pratt at one point), without ever managing to sprinkle the necessary irony or self-awareness for leavening.

The humour hit-to-miss rate is alarmingly low.

Other times, perhaps conscious of how po-faced it’s all getting, some comic relief is shoehorned in, from capable performers but with mixed results. Sam Richardson, of Veep and I Think You Should Leave fame, brings a puppyish sweetness to his sidekick Charlie (“I think we’re going to be best friends,” he says to Pratt’s character at one point, entirely earnestly), and it’s undeniably refreshing to see non-military beta types being conscripted into the future war. But the humour hit-to-miss rate is alarmingly low.

Shot loudly and expensively, the action has its moments (a slow-motion descent into an apocalyptic alien hellscape is a highlight, even if you feel the CG rendering behind it) and Pratt clearly relishes the opportunity to have at least one Cool Guy Explosion shot. But the aliens here have nothing to them that we haven’t seen before, slithering and screeching onto the screen like the bastard love-children of Venom and the Mimics from Edge Of Tomorrow . With a final act set on a glacier, the pacing starts to feel glacial too; it is approximately half an hour longer than it should be. Even in this final act, there are glimmers of a more promising film. But like tomorrow itself, it never quite arrives.

Movies | 26 05 2021

Movies | 27 04 2021

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Movie Review: Civil War

Published 12:00 pm Thursday, May 2, 2024

By Lauren Bradshaw

E ven with a title like CIVIL WAR, writer/director Alex Garland’s latest blockbuster isn’t as political as you may think. Instead, it is a jarring semi-horror film that spotlights what could happen in the United States if differences in politics, opinion, demographics, etc. continue to create schisms that escalate into violence. But even more than that, the film is a love letter to photojournalism, particularly war photographers, highlighting the dangers they put themselves through to serve as a conduit between the ground truth and worldwide audiences… even when their work is largely ignored or not taken seriously.

The film drops us into a broken United States. The time is unclear, and so is the political landscape. What is apparent, however, is that the seemingly authoritarian President’s (Nick Offerman) government is at war against the “Western Front”, a California-Texas secessionist movement that broke into open conflict. And despite the President’s confident rhetoric, the Western Front forces are closing in on him. Veteran war photographer Lee (Kirsten Dunst), a reference to famed war photographer Lee Miller, is on the ground in New York City, taking pictures of what violence looks like at the local level. But for her and fellow photographer Joel (Wagner Moura), they want to be closer to the front lines; their goal is to get to Washington, DC to interview the President before the Western Front forces take over the capital (and presumably kill him).

But the journey is going to be a difficult one. They will have to traverse dangerous areas where their journalist credentials may make them more of a target. When burgeoning photographer/cub reporter Jesse (Cailee Spaeny) and Lee’s longtime mentor Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson) join the car, it only adds to the stress. Lee finds herself in a mentor position for Jesse; and while she may be hesitant to admit it, sees glimpses of her younger self through Jesse’s risk-taking tendencies and instinct for the right picture. On the way to the White House, the foursome cover various shoot-outs between unknown forces; sometimes the people fighting may not even know their enemy’s affiliations. And while the plan may be to leave Sammy and Jesse at the Western Front’s staging ground in Charlottesville, Virginia for their own safety… it may not be that easy.

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Civil War is an ensemble film, but Dunst is the glue that holds everything together. The quiet moments of her character Lee reflecting on her past experiences in overseas conflict zones and the monumental devolvement she is seeing in her own backyard pack the biggest punch. Others may have played this stoic character as just that, a one-note, emotionless “tough female character”. But her performance is full of complexity, which is shown in the life experiences written across her face, in her eyes as she’s taking in her surroundings during a fire fight, and in the words of caution she offers to Jesse about being the next generation of war photographer.

The film’s relentless intensity never lets up or overstays its welcome. In some action movies, the constant explosions get to be a bit monotonous after awhile, but I was fully on the edge of my seat the entire time. It also helped that the brilliant sound design, elevated through the IMAX theater’s Dolby speakers, made it feel and sound like the bullets were really flying over my head. It created a visceral experience in the theater, making you feel like you are behind enemy lines along with the main characters.

I know there is criticism for the film’s unclear political landscape. Admittedly, it is never really understood why California and Texas (of all places) would come together as the Western Front to secede from the United States. It also quickly becomes apparent that in a wartime environment, the distinction between “bad guys” and “good guys” are muddled, but I think that is the whole point of the movie. Once a country devolves into localized violence, rule of law and community go out the window. In one key scene, an unseen sniper is shooting at Lee’s group and some bedded down militiamen. The militiamen are less concerned with whose “side” the sniper is on… because, well, the bigger issue is that he is shooting at them period.

To me, the film’s initial conceit of Texas and California joining together to secede from the United States is the flashing sign that this film exists in a fantastical world, not something that we can directly compare to today. And maybe the criticism of the film’s lacking political stance is more a reflection of our desire for films to always choose a side, when the bigger message is about differences and being so quick to choose sides is what may get us to this place.

I have been a fan of Garland’s since his directorial debut, EX MACHINA, which is one of my favorite movies of the last ten years, and I will always be seated for one of his films; CIVIL WAR is no exception. It is a provocative thrill ride that artfully uses its lack of a singular political focus to make a statement itself, imagining the ways in which societal fractures risk magnifying our personal and communal fragility.

My Review: B+

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Movie Review - We Grown Now

Marlon Wallace
May 1, 2024
May 1, 2024 Updated 19 hrs ago

After World War II, the city of Chicago built public housing for low income and minority people in the northern section, which came to be called Cabrini-Green. Over the decades, those housing projects fell victim to neglect and crime. It got so bad that by the mid 1990's, the buildings, particularly the high-rises, began being torn down. There have been several films or TV shows that have been set there, including the Norman Lear sitcom Good Times (1974). There haven't been too many films or shows otherwise that have been coming-of-age stories set in Cabrini-Green. In general, there haven't been that many coming-of-age stories involving African American or minority youngsters. This film, written and directed by female filmmaker Minhal Baig, isn't groundbreaking or revolutionary, but Baig does an extremely effective job of telling a coming-of-age story, particularly of a boy and his family, in this specific place.

Jurnee Smollett ( Lovecraft Country and Underground ) stars as Dolores Johnson, a single mother of a boy and girl, living in an apartment in one of the high-rises of Cabrini-Green in 1992. She and her kids live in the same apartment in which Dolores grew up with her parents. Her father has since passed, but her mother named Anita, played by Emmy-winner S. Epatha Merkerson ( Lackwanna Blues and Law & Order ), is still alive and resides with them. Dolores has a job, but she's struggling to take care of her kids and their grandmother. Anita suggests Dolores ask for a raise, or a higher paying job, but Dolores is nervous that she could be fired and left with no income.

Blake Cameron James ( The Sound of Christmas ) co-stars as Malik Johnson, the son and eldest child of Dolores. He's still in elementary school, probably 10 or 11-years-old. He goes to school everyday and he hangs out with his friends, finding ways to entertain themselves in this so-called ghetto. One of those ways is something called mattress jumping or just "jumping." What kids will do is pull old mattresses from beds in abandoned apartments, drag them down to the playground, pile them on top of each other and see who can jump the best on them.

Malik has mastered this game. He obviously loves his family and friends. He likes to laugh and joke with his schoolmates. He likes Cabrini-Green, mainly due to the relationships he has there. Yet, it starts to become clear that Malik wants more than just the life laid out in this ghetto. He dreams about more. This film isn't as blunt about it as something like A Raisin in the Sun (1961), which is very direct about its poor Black characters wanting to escape their situation, of wanting that dream deferred. This film is instead more about Malik's main friendship and how it comes at odds with that so-called dream deferred. It comes at odds mainly due to their different reactions to a shocking moment of violence at Cabrini-Green.

Gian Knight Ramirez in his feature debut plays Eric, a classmate of Malik who lives in the same housing project, one floor away. He's also the same age. He's not as much of a dreamer. He's not as hopeful. In fact, Eric doesn't think he'll ever get out of this ghetto. He thinks he'll die there. He's also not of faith. He likes having fun and hanging out, but he gets a bit hardened after the community is hit with that aforementioned moment of violence.

I viewed this film after watching Simon Steuri's How I Learned To Fly (2023), a film that focuses on two young Black boys in a more desperate situation. Steuri's film had a moment that reminded me of Doug McHenry's Jason's Lyric (1994). Both Steuri and McHenry's films involved a tragic shooting as the inciting incident. There's a tragic shooting here, but it's not the inciting incident for Baig's film. Baig does do something similar to Jason's Lyric in that both the 1994 flick and this one deal with the psychical effect of a tragic shooting on two Black boys in two different ways. Jason's Lyric tracks the long-term effects. This one doesn't, but how the friendship is affected in the short-term is effective and powerful in that it made me cry.

Lil Rel Howery ( Free Guy and Get Out ) plays Jason, the father to Eric. The main criticism with him is that the film treats him as an afterthought. There was perhaps more stuff with Howery that didn't make the final cut of the film. Obviously, the home life of Malik and his family is the focus, but, given how much Malik's friendship with Eric is crucial, the little we get of Eric's father, Jason, feels frustratingly insufficient.

Rated PG for language.

Running Time: 1 hr. and 33 mins.

In theaters.

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Why Are Movies so Bad at Making Civil War Look Scary?

The filmmaker has made it clear that “Civil War” is a warning. Instead, the ugliness of war comes across as comforting thrills.

A photo illustration with scenes from “Civil War.”

By Ismail Muhammad

Early in “Civil War,” the writer-director Alex Garland’s dystopian blockbuster, a plucky young journalist named Jessie recalls an event called the Antifa Massacre. You can picture the eeriness that Garland must have assumed that phrase would conjure: familiar words, filtered through his apocalyptic vision, projecting today’s ideological rancor into the future. His film is an invitation to imagine what might emerge from America’s political divisions if we don’t back away from the fractious disaffection that has characterized most of the 21st century. But it is also vague about what the Antifa Massacre, or any of the war, actually is. Who was massacred? Who did the massacring? What were the stakes?

All we know is that America has descended into a chaotic conflict: California and Texas have united to battle an authoritarian Loyalist government, while other states have gathered into various alliances. Beyond that, “Civil War” obscures the war’s political and social contours. One senses that, for Garland, the ideological dimensions are beside the point, a distraction from what he hopes is a searing vision of a future nobody wants.

To that end, maybe, he has cast “Civil War” as an antiwar movie in the tradition of Elem Klimov’s “Come and See,” a 1985 fever dream about Nazi Germany’s invasion of Soviet Byelorussia. The power of “Come and See” lies in its images, which depict war’s depravity with the unsparing clarity of prophecy. One 10-minute scene forces us to watch a carnival of violence as German soldiers, who have gathered civilians into a church, set it aflame. Garland intends a similar revelation. In interviews, he and his cast have made it clear that they see “Civil War” as a warning. You can practically hear him whisper through every frame: This could happen here .

François Truffaut once said that every film about war ends up being pro-war: Whatever a director points his camera at, even violence, becomes appealing, or at least intriguing. To make an effective antiwar film, a director must find a way to unsettle this relationship between image and titillation. I think often about the 1966 Italian thriller “The Battle of Algiers,” which depicts Algerian resistance to French colonial rule. It is, generally, a triumphalist take on the power of liberatory violence, and it has proved popular among armed insurgents. There’s a mournful, cautionary undercurrent, though, that sometimes overwhelms its heroic story. In one scene, two women smuggle bombs out of a ghetto and into French cafes. One leaves hers beneath a bar, and we wait while the camera cuts from one French face to another: a flirting couple, a sullen baby, a laughing barkeep, a waiter who looks directly at us. In that long wait before the bomb goes off, we are tricked into a moral accounting of political violence’s toll on human life. The movie reminds us that our attraction to violence also threatens to destroy the society we depend on, plunging us into a Hobbesian state of nature.

This balancing act depends on depicting the social costs of war on the lives of civilians — something contemporary films about war on American soil have struggled to accomplish. “Civil War” follows Kirsten Dunst as Lee, a war photographer traveling from New York to Washington with her gonzo bro colleague Joel, hoping to photograph the president while Joel interviews him. They’re joined by Jessie and Sammy, Lee’s mentor. What unfolds is essentially a road-trip movie that shuttles this quartet from one apocalyptic set piece to another. They are journalists, but they do no reporting on the tragedies they encounter on the way to their big scoop. They don’t meet many people, and when they do, they are rigorously incurious. They arrive at a refugee camp, yet make no attempt to interview any refugees. Why are two soldiers shooting at another amid a Christmas display? Joel makes only a cursory effort to find out. These are war journalists with a strange lack of interest in covering the war’s victims or America’s shredded social fabric. Garland’s vision is almost entirely restricted to destroyed buildings and corpses.

Sam Esmail’s “Leave the World Behind,” based on Rumaan Alam’s 2020 novel of the same name, takes a similar approach. Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke play two Brooklynites headed with their children to a vacation rental. They don’t get to relax very long before the home’s owner shows up with his daughter to deliver news of a blackout over in the city. The two families are soon engulfed by a crisis they can perceive only in pieces: Emergency broadcasts take over the airwaves before power goes out; a high-pitched, disabling tone occasionally sounds. We eventually understand that we’re witnessing the opening stages of a civil conflict. This, too, is a warning about social fragmentation, but Esmail restricts his attention to two upper-middle-class families, mostly ignoring the war taking place offscreen.

Both movies assume that treating the details and causes of war as MacGuffins will train our attention on what is horrifying about war itself. To that end, they give us visions of mass destruction: a terrorist bombing, an interstate choked by scorched vehicles, dead bodies littering a beach. But even if we were to imagine that civil conflict’s terror lies in the spectacle of explosions and leveled buildings — rather than the psychological abyss that faces ordinary citizens — the images in these thrillers don’t show audiences much that frivolous summer blockbusters haven’t done countless times before. In the climactic battle of “Civil War,” a bazooka blasts the Lincoln Memorial as a helicopter whirs overhead. Perhaps this will trigger sober reflection for some. For others, I suspect, it will scan as completely familiar — about as solemn as the aliens’ destruction of the White House in “Independence Day.” This is not Garland showing audiences the consequences of violence; it is Garland offering them comforting thrills.

We find ourselves back at the problem Truffaut suggested. Is there a way to deploy the tropes of the blockbuster without making war look, if not cool, at least impressive? One “Civil War” trailer highlights reviews that deemed the film “thrilling” and “jaw-dropping,” with one critic raving that it features “the best combat ever.” The film’s own promotion registers that people are finding something desirable in its portrayal of violence. It is not putting us on notice that war will force us to do horrifying things to one another, things that we are not prepared for. What it offers verges on a sales pitch: This could be pretty fun . We find ourselves like Joel, who, looking at two unspecified forces exchanging artillery fire in the distance, says it arouses him.

The best moments of “Civil War” come when we see that the ugliness of war lies not in large-scale destruction but in its magnification of our divisions, from cultural differences to mundane jealousies. When Jessie investigates two people strung up by their hands behind a gas station, an armed man tells her they’re looters — then adds, haughtily, that one of them didn’t talk to him much back in high school. Later, Jesse Plemmons gives the film its most unsettling turn as an opportunistic mass murderer who takes our heroes hostage. “What kind of American are you?” he asks, brandishing a rifle.

It’s the film’s most concrete illustration of the way dehumanizing rhetoric can make us inhuman, and it leads to Garland’s most nauseating, Boschian image: Jessie struggling to escape from a mass grave of the man’s victims. Otherwise, though, Garland simply doesn’t bother to imagine how his war would corrode American life. There are already people here who imagine a civil war would be satisfying; some are depicted, in passing, in this film. None of them will see anything here to convince them a war would be any more grotesque than the fantasies they had going in.

Above: A24; Netflix; Murray Close/Miller Avenue Productions, via A24; Chris Winsor/Getty Images; Marcia Straub/Getty Images.

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‘Civil War,’ ‘Independence Day’ and Hollywood’s tradition of blowing up D.C.

Movies and video games frequently annihilate this city of symbols. here’s when it truly works..

This article contains spoilers for the movie “Civil War.”

T he Western Forces descend on Washington.

Tanks and soldiers flood the District, helicopters loom above the low streetscape. The Lincoln Memorial, now a garrison, is destroyed by rocket fire. The invading army’s final target? The Oval Office, where an authoritarian president has lost control of everything. Combat journalists wade through the battlefield so the world can finally see, with horror and relief, how the United States has fallen.

That is how writer and director Alex Garland films the climax of his dystopian thriller “ Civil War .” In it, he envisions a fractured nation: Texas and California have seceded and the Mid-Atlantic is a giant war zone. Critics have split over the movie’s scope and intentions, and whether Garland is playing with fire by invoking real-world political tensions while keeping the particulars blurry. Put me in the pro camp: A meditation on conflict’s tendency to exhilarate, horrify and compromise, “Civil War” teems with terror and suspense. As the protagonists travel circuitously from New York to D.C., they strain to remain impartial as they encounter unimaginable scenes on American soil: armed skirmishes, a mass grave. And then, finally, the destruction of a whole city — this one.

The decimation of Washington in “Civil War” hits you in the gut, which is actually kind of weird. Filmmakers love to destroy Washington. We see them do it — for the wrong reasons — all the time.

A city of symbols has something very important going for it: It’s also a city of shorthands. Pulverizing Washington — sacking it, wrecking it, roughing it up a bit — tells audiences that they’ve just witnessed a cataclysmic, unfathomable loss, a blow to the American spirit. But the most harrowing scenes of D.C. getting ethered — the ones that connect on an emotional level, like in “Civil War” — are from films that want to do more than use the monuments for pyrotechnics practice. Boots on the ground, the suggestion of a real city, are the only way to create intimacy and human stakes.

The most famous offender: “Independence Day,” the massively popular alien invasion film from 1996, in which a flying saucer fires a death ray directly onto the White House. Los Angeles and Manhattan get zapped too — but have some actual humans in the streets, including Harvey Fierstein’s “Oh crap”-sputtering New Yorker . In D.C., any catastrophic loss of life is incidental; the president and his entourage are whisked away from the White House just in time. No thought for those living nearby, no quantifiable loss of life, not even a tourist on Pennsylvania Avenue. Director Roland Emmerich might as well have blown up a dollhouse. In fact, that’s what he did .

That exploding White House is an impressive feat of practical effects, a money shot that intrigued audiences from the movie’s first trailer. But the shallow nature of “Independence Day” can be felt in how often the sequence has been remixed. The shot is a literal punchline in an Austin Powers movie . If you go to the Alamo Drafthouse movie theater in D.C., there’s a statue of Bill Pullman as the president he played in the film. It’s trivial. You cannot fathom “Civil War” lingering in the popular imagination as kitsch, because Garland wants to shake his audience, not have D.C.’s destruction amount to little more than movie magic.

Other, similarly cavalier examples abound. Tim Burton’s “Mars Attacks!” (1996) includes a cheeky sequence in which aliens use death rays and UFOs to juggle the Washington Monument until it can fall on a Boy Scout troop. For these cartoonishly evil Martians, that comes with a pay bump, as undoubtedly does dropping a chandelier on the first lady. Like Emmerich, Burton was borrowing Washington’s symbols for his own purposes — in his case, really handing it to elites — but at least his frantic, over-the-top film doesn’t register as glib.

More affecting is the mediocre sci-fi thriller “ The Invasion ” (2007), which is restrained in its assault on the District. But it is a frightening depiction of the city losing its grip, because it presents a ground-eye view of aliens taking control. I barely remember the film, but I have not shaken the image of people flinging themselves off the roof of Union Station.

How about superhero movies? “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” includes a giant hovercraft crashing into the Potomac River (the filmmakers had to digitally widen the waterway for their climactic shot). “X-Men: Days of Future Past” has a scene where the mutant Magneto levitates RFK Stadium from the banks of the Anacostia, then drops it onto the White House South Lawn. Like “Independence Day,” these sequences are technically impressive, but they need a human touch. Before Magneto lifts the football arena, he at least has an exchange with a worker — a human, who lives here! — who can only stand by and watch, powerless.

Blockbuster filmmakers like Emmerich aren’t seeking out character beats when they demolish the District and that’s not why we see his movies — or the decades of chase movies, fight movies, disaster movies and monster movies that ignore the human toll of the carnage they depict — anyway. These scenes are often made with impressive skill and craft, but unless there is a sense of humanity or loss, they’re can’t truly abhor or thrill. We can see an empty, technically proficient exercise when superstorms wreck D.C. in “The Day After Tomorrow,” or Cobra tanks roll toward the Capitol in “G.I. Joe: Retaliation.” Almost all these scenes offer a distant view of the Capitol, rather than the street-level panic they would actually inspire. They don’t hit. The only drawback to finding some humanity in the District would be that directors might become less eager to annihilate it.

W here is the destruction of D.C. affecting? In video games.

Released in 2008 by Bethesda Softworks, the sci-fi role-playing game “Fallout 3” is set in a post-nuclear Washington, D.C. Players wander the National Mall and surrounding areas, known in the game as “The Wasteland.” Memorable dungeons to explore included Metro stations and Smithsonian museums, where players encounter zombies, mutants and giant insects. Ads for “Fallout 3” appeared around the D.C. Metro in 2008, showing the Capitol destroyed by a nuclear blast, and it was disturbing enough that a Washington Post reader wrote a letter to the editor complaining, “The people of our city do not need a daily reminder that Washington is a prime target for an attack. We do not need a daily reminder of what our worst fears look like.”

I wonder what that reader would have made of the 2019 action game “ Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 .” It is set in the near-future and envisions a Washington, D.C., where a genetically engineered virus obliterates the population, so it is up to an elite force of well-armed warriors to stop the city from being taken over by roving street gangs. Like “Fallout,” this game includes shells of famous landmarks, and yet it is the little details where the game finds its haunting verisimilitude. If the player wanders the map, they will find digital reproductions of every business and storefront. Promotional material for the game elaborates how developers used GIS data to get its setting just right, whether it’s each tree lining the Mall or the precise location of the Chinatown gate. The game’s developers even hired locals. Kelly Towles, an artist whose work can be found all over the D.C., contributed in-game graffiti that felt especially accurate to locals like me who are used to seeing his murals all over downtown.

I’ve lived in D.C. since 2006 and have sunk an embarrassing number of hours into both games. It was strangely comforting to wander the National Mall in “Fallout,” wondering whether the Metro could provide adequate shelter during a nuclear blast. In “The Division 2,” I could visit my old office and my favorite local cinema. That game became extra-eerie during the pandemic. In spring 2020, riding my bike through the abandoned streets of D.C. made me feel like a member of the Division, and made me see how the developers stumbled into something singular by making the game about how people might realistically attempt to survive in the actual D.C. When my player wanders into the Air and Space Museum or near the Tidal Basin for a protracted, desperate shootout, the game attains an emotional resonance that often eludes the medium.

“Civil War” does similarly right by this town. Before the Western Forces and the combat journalists can enter the White House, they have to make it past soldiers guarding the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Garland imagines the EEOB protected by large concrete walls designed to repel on-the-ground troops — but it’s honestly not that much more intense than the security theater that visitors encounter in real life when they visit the building for a work event. A city of symbols, sure, but one that can hold multiple meanings. A city you hate to see go boom.

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