After releasing an all-too-brief teaser, Amazon has dropped the full trailer for The Tomorrow War, the sci-fi action blockbuster which imagines a devastating world in which Chris Pratt is humanity’s only hope. And Betty Gilpin plays his wife who stays at home with the kid while Pratt time-travels to battle aliens??? Not casting Gilpin as the lead and making Pratt the stay-at-home dad is, in the parlance of Pretty Woman, a big mistake. Huge.
Directed by Chris McKay, The Tomorrow War also stars Sam Richardson, Yvonne Strahovski, Edwin Hodge, J.K. Simmons, Jasmine Matthews, and Mike Mitchell (aka Mr. Slice, aka Spoonman). With that lineup, there’s gotta be more laughs than what’s in the trailer. Here’s the official plot synopsis for The Tomorrow War, which premieres July 2 exclusively on Amazon Prime:
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 fight. Among those recruited is high school teacher and family man Dan Forester (Chris Pratt). Determined to save the world for his young daughter, Dan teams up with a brilliant scientist (Yvonne Strahovski) and his estranged father (J.K. Simmons) in a desperate quest to rewrite the fate of the planet.
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Crazy how Pratt went from beloved Schlub on the AV Club boards to history’s greatest monster so fast.
Even if it weren’t for the other baggage, dude’s role choices have been boring AF, except for Star-Lord.
Rumor has it that he enjoys kicking dogs in the face and once punched Ruth Bader Ginsberg in the face.
Punched RBG? Bullshit. He tried and she threw him into an arm-lock and knocked his ass to the floor.
it’s really not! he got corny! also this movie looks like shit!
Palling around with reactionary christians will do that.
Palling around Nothing more damning than Guilt By Association.
You’d be surprised how easy it is not to be friends with bigots.
Apparently, it’s nearly as easy as blaming him for what he didn’t say.
Good thing I’m not dinging Pratt for what he didn’t say, eh?
Just proclaiming him guilty by association, then.
You know what? I feel you, I really do.But we’re several decades past the point of litigating every tiny little loophole. And we’re tired. So if you’re going to hang with bigots, fuck you and the horse you rode in on.Because life is short and there’s plenty of non-bigoted pastors. Especially in California.
As a Catholic who is also a liberal, I guess I need to be shunned as well then.
Your religion has nothing to do with it. That’s what the ‘reactionary’ modifier was for.I know plenty of Christians who support LGBTQ rights, starting with my wife.
We don’t know that Pratt doesn’t support LGBTQ+ rights. We just know that he goes to a church that is anti-LGBTQ+. Captain Splendid also goes to a church that is anti-LGBTQ+ (as does our president, by the way, and probably a lot of politicians and celebrities.)
“We don’t know that Pratt doesn’t support LGBTQ+ rights.”Correct.“We just know that he goes to a church that is anti-LGBTQ+.”My entire point. he could have chosen hundreds of other churches, but he didn’t.“Captain Splendid also goes to a church that is anti-LGBTQ+”This is incorrect. The last time I was in a church was about ten years ago for someone’s funeral. I’m not a Christian.
Sorry, I looked at it wrong. I meant Harry Dean Learner, who you said is good because they go to a Catholic church but aren’t anti-LGBTQ+. The Catholic church is anti-LGBTQ+, though. So, why is Harry Dean Learner OK, but Chris Pratt is not?FYI, most Christian churches are anti-LGBTQ+.
Harry never said anything about going to church, just that he was a Catholic.
What a weird distinction.
Not really. It’s entirely possible to consider yourself part of the faithful without attending a church. Just as an example, William Wordsworth preferred to commune with God out in nature, and not surrounded by other people in a building.
It really isn’t, particularly as more congregations adopt entirely un-Christlike behavior and chase political power.WHOLE lot of people out there living Christ’s teachings while avoiding the poison that is many congregations.
I mean, maybe if he didn’t hang around with homophobes and follow conspiratorial bigots like PragerU people would still like him…
I mean these days you can’t really find any corner of AV Club that covers pop culture without a painfully strong political bent. It’s just what the site is now. The attitude is that if you find someone’s opinions are immoral or distasteful, then it needs to be brought up constantly. I don’t object to the editorial team being liberal, I just object to them being so hamfisted about it (in the same way that the offensively conservative rags are hamfisted about their opinions). I’ll not defend Pratt nor his church (though from what I can tell the church is a much milder thing than people are claiming), but as commenters have so often told me, if I don’t like it, I should probably find somewhere else to get my movie news.
Is there a pop culture news site that is intelligent, insightful, and enjoyable and– most importantly– prioritizes that sort of discourse over pushing an agenda? I’d drop this site from rotation immediately if I find something like that.
Not that I’ve found. Frankly the only reason I haven’t stopped coming here is because I quite like a few of their reviewers and think they provide valuable commentary. But I’m realizing I’m actually more tense and angry after browsing this page than I am without it, so this should probably be my time to exit. All my pop culture outlets have migrated towards political activism (PCHH, Slashfilm, etc.) so that might just be the trend of things.
Oh please god, I hope you find it so you can, you know, fuck off forever with the other simpleton-whiners.
He divorced Anna Faris, he’s one of history’s greatest monsters.
I’ve never been a fan, but it is funny how he’s become one of the BAD celebs and so it’s okay for the shill websites to trash him now
Some celebrities have received a new lesson on why you don’t work with people like Chris Pratt
Is it the movie sales or are you trying to equate him with…I dunno, Kevin Spacey? Be more specific.
He’s the new Val Kilmer?
It’s because we found out more about him and learned that he fucking sucks!
wow, really disappointed with the way this looks. considering the absurd bench of comedy talent i was hoping this would look funny and maybe be a little subversive, especially since pratt can be really funny in an ensemble.shame it just looks like a generic military shooter with an overqualified supporting cast. i’ll reserve judgment until it comes out, but looks real boring to me.
The aliens look like CGI white tiger scorpion spiders? That could be, uh, fun? And not at all a boring slog oh god who am I kidding …(Also same thought, re: the comedy talent. I was hoping to catch a glimpse of Mary Lynn Rajskub.)
even the trailer seemed to be phoning it in, like they just dumped the movie footage into a Trailer 9000 machine and called it a day.
Here’s what I’m really curious about: What is this mysterious country that is apparently going to emerge within the next year, somehow also qualify for the 2022 World Cup, AND take Brazil to a 3-3 draw?
this is my only criticism of the trailer.
This film could be sort of smart if it turned out the “twist” was it was all a trap by the future generation to basically “cull” humans they find undesirable and didn’t lead to much in that 30 year time given how they’re drafting untrained idiots when draftees are normally given at least basic training but I think that’s too smart for this “straight to streaming” film like all those other sci-fi films that were mediocre at best scripts they found lying around and dumped straight onto platforms like Netflix or Amazon.Like a better concept for this dumb film would be to use their time travel to go back to find all the best veterans and soldiers from recent previous wars, almost like Travellers where they grabbed people who were about to die to use their bodies without altering the established timeline too much, train them into ultimate baddasses in some safe pocket in years before the war began like taking them to prehistoric North America for a five year boot camp, and then deploy them but again this would be too smart for this crap script.
Also, I have to assume there’ll be something to “logic” their way out of this, but wouldn’t taking a 30 year head-start (or more!) on preparing for the invasion make way more sense than wiping a portion of the population (and any potential contributions they might make) off the timeline?
I mean this film just doesn’t work because if they do go into the future to stop the chain of events from occurring (which is what they’re suggesting is the case) then they will also more than likely stop the events that led up to the invention of time travel to begin with, meaning the future annihilation would still occur because without said time travel the draftees would never have been sent to stop the annihilation.
Time travel only makes sense if you use alternate timelines. Even then, it’s iffy, but it’s the only way it makes any sense at all.
I’m sure there’s some kind of late-act twist that will explain why humanity has taken a seemingly totally bananas approach.
Ah, you see, in a very clever late third act twist, they’ll discover that the queen alien has a psychic connection to all of the others and taking her out with a well-timed shot (that only Chris Pratt can do, that he learned from playing video games) will cause all of the other aliens to just die. Victory!
When this script was originally sold years ago as Ghost Draft, I could have sworn the “grabbing the best veterans from past wars to fight in the future” was a part of the premise. I’m guessing the premise probably got changed around the time the title did.
It horrifyingly looks like the draftees materialise in midair and it’s sheer luck that you land somewhere that you can at least have a chance to get started as opposed to instantly plummeting to your death from the get-go.
right? was i supposed to think that looked cool? better hope you land on a skyscraper! no wonder 70% of them die.
I see it as a cut dream sequence from Detroiters, where you think it’s Tim’s dream (with Chris Pratt as him), which is sad, but it’s really Sam’s dream, which is sad but in a deeper way.
really, if you were just dropping rando’s in their street clothes with random weapons, why wouldn’t you start by going to north korea? they have by far the largest number of military personel on the planet (somewhere in the neighborhood of 7 million or 50 per 1k citizens) and they already train to fight an assymetrical war against a technologically superior enemy.
can’t get american military funding for your movie that way.
the DRPK would kidnap a much higher caliber actor than pratt to star if you set it in pyongyang though
Major lack of Mr. Slice in this trailer.Also, Yvonne Strahovski is one hundred-percent playing the future version of the daughter, right?
Oh my god, you’re totally right.
My wild guess: Pratt doesn’t learn her true identity until just before or after she eats it late in the second act, and that’s what motivates him to lead a last-ditch mission to an earlier time period that could stop the war before it started (hella warmed-over Interstellar stylez.)
“Not casting Gilpin as the lead and making Pratt the stay-at-home dad is, in the parlance of Pretty Woman, a big mistake. Huge.”Yup
New boot goofin’.
Sure , why cast a huge action movie star as the lead in your action movie when you can get a b list tv actress ?
Because Gilpin’s a better actor, and based on the company he keeps, a better person.Also, the worst Chris’s star is definitely on the wane, and based on the trailer, this movie isn’t going to help.
A better actor eh? That means a lot to action movie fans. They prefer serious thespians like The Rock and Vin Diesel.
Honestly, she’s been much better than him at action sequences too.
why cast a guy trailing the edge of irrelevancy when you could cast the beloved star of a cult hit?
Pratt has starred in 2 marvel movies , was in the last 2 avengers movies (one of which was the 2nd biggest movie of all time) , has another 3 marvel movies lined up plus starring in the terminal list (much anticipated adaptation of best selling thriller series). I get you don’t like him but to say a cable tv actress best known for a show that was cancelled after 3 seasons would be a bigger draw with action movie fans is a bit silly.
Because Gilpin has more charisma in her left buttcheek than Pratt has in his whole body.
Or, to put it as one of Gilpin’s characters would:‘You fucked up, biiiIIITCH!’
With Amazon taking over MGM studios I want to remember THIS is the kind of output Amazon is going to be putting out as a major studio player now.
Remember, Paramount co-produced it and was originally set to distribute it theatrically, but sold the rights to Amazon after the original release was delayed due to COVID. (I guess nobody told the studio execs that Paramount+ was in the works when they cut that deal.)
and Mike Mitchell (aka Mr. Slice, aka Spoonman)Woooooooooooooooo!
As opposed to someone having the balls to FINALLY adapt Haldeman’s The Forever War. Gutless cowards.
the whole supporting cast is bananas but I’m gonna watch this on day one with the hope that Sam cracks a million jokes from the criminally underrated DETROITERS.
You just know Chris Pratt is the Chump of the Week.
possibly chump of the century depending on how the time travel function works lol!
Will only watch this to support Mr. Slice.
God damnit, Britt, MUST you be such a fem-cunt piece of shit?
I’ll watch Chris Pratt do anything. Why is everyone hating on him in this comment section, he is adorably charismatic.
I stopped paying attention about 45 seconds into that trailer and started fantasizing about a good version of this movie where Sam Richardson is the lead and Samuel L. Jackson plays his estranged father (no offense to J.K. Simmons, but I think he could stand to take a break from his recent habit of taking every dogshit role he’s offered).
APPARENTLY HUMANITY IS CAPABLE OF MASS TIME TRAVEL, BUT STILL USING OLD-STYLE SLUG THROWERS TO FIGHT WITH. I THINK I UNDERSTAND WHY THEY ARE LOSING.
i thought gritty salt of the earth american men holding solid projectile firearms was the answer to eveything
No Mr. Slice in the preview? Wow
0:03 the girl with the blonde hair in the white blouse when she’s got her head turned slightly to the right she’s Meg Foster from something she was in before she was in They Live she was already a famous actress from television dark hair pulled back into a ponytail like on the little girl just the palest blue eyes pinprick pupils the hairstyle is 1960s movies early 1970s television young woman in her twenties with long blonde hair
If you have not seen Yvonne Strahovski in “Chuck” please watch that show, she is amazing in that show.
Yay!
I literally only know about this movie because of the Doughboys