Yesterdays War

 While looking for something worthwhile to watch on tv, I decided to try the latest Amazon Original, 'The Tomorrow War'. Initially, I was put off by the fact that it had Chris Pratt from Guardians of the Galaxy fame as the lead, but I thought I could put up with it and fast forward the naff bits.

Pratt has also been in the Jurassic Park franchise and seems to only have the one style of acting, trying to play the hard man and failing miserably. His constant joking in Guardians and machismo in Jurassic Park are really grating, but in Tomorrow War, he adds another method acting style to his suite - the permanently surprised/bemused look. All through the film he looks like he's hamming it up and for the first half carries an expression like someone has just told him he has run the first few takes with his flies open.

But enough about Pratt, where things go desperately wrong is with the basic premise of the film. The plot involves an alien v human war, thirty years from the present, where humanity is being decimated. In a bid to bolster the armies, future military techs resort to time travel to go back in time to recruit civilians to fight the aliens. Thrown literally into the fray by a defective warp, the newbies quickly encounter a devastatingly effective alien species, which quickly eliminates the troops. Queue Pratt as the guy who can save the world singlehandedly, after being transported from a schmaltzy middle american home into a cutting edge war zone.

As usual there is a lot of buddy building, grown men screaming rage as they fire miniguns in the face of overwhelming odds, pointless self sacrifice, strong female leads achieving very little and general gung ho gunplay. On the whole, its ok for a sci fi film, with well realised aliens, but the big issue with the plot is that it doesn't have a single new idea of its own.

Screenwriters have clearly built the entire film, lego like, around Pratt as the nice guy family man thrown into jeopardy to save the world. They have clearly just cruised the dvd shelf and picked out major blockbusters from the last 30 years and lifted memes, themes, ideas, plot points and anything else they could cobble together to make a workable script.

In doing so they have borrowed from so many films to create a pastische of sci fi tropes - So far I have seen the following clear references: Alien, Aliens, Prometheus, The Thing, Starship Troopers, Life, Battlefield Los Angeles, countless time travel films and many others!

Also, it lifts scenes almost wholesale from various films, such as the 'wounded in the face of the enemy onslaught and facing off bravely till the hero gets away', 'Give me your hand, I've got you - no let me go and fall to my death', 'Dont make a sound or turn the lights on while we navigate these tight corridors until someone makes a noise and brings the aliens running after us', 'Watch me hold this delicate glass vial while I get seven shades beaten out of me, blown up and run over and still emerge with the glass intact' and the classic Tom Cruise trope 'Protagonist starts out not knowing what to do, makes a big mistake, redeems himself against unassailable odds and goes on to save the day'.

Then there's an absolute stinker of a line mid way through the film too, as Pratt delivers an overwhelmingly obvious observation following a blunderingly blunt set up, so plain that even a five year old can see what's going to happen, in his classic 'oh god my flies are open again' botox injected mask of mock surprise, in response to an army of wildly screaming aliens breaching a perimiter. At this point, had the stream not been lagging as much as the plot, I would have been reaching for the fast forward button.

So if you aren't a cynical, scowling, tight lipped pedant like me who enjoys a thinly veiled, simply plotted action flick, break out the beer and pizza and dive in.