For many people, the 4th of July is the real official start of summer. And one great summer tradition is the big action movie. So, while we wait a few more days for the release of Marvel’s Black Widow, over the weekend we got to watch Amazon Prime’s The Tomorrow War.  

How to Watch

First off, let’s point out that while in-theater movies are back, some films are still releasing on streaming services instead. The Tomorrow War is one of those, having been produced by Amazon. So, if you have Amazon Prime, you can watch the video in the Prime Video app on your TV or other device. 

What’s it About?

The story is a mix of time travel, aliens, and Independence Day. The plot has soldiers from the future arrive in 2022, letting the world know that in 30 years, a race of aliens has hunted humanity to near extinction.  The only way to defeat them is for people from 2022 to travel forward in time to fight the aliens.

Dan Forester (Chris Pratt) is a high school science teacher, and former special forces soldier. He is selected as part of a worldwide draft to travel to the future to serve a 7-day tour of duty that few people survive.  Those who do, are returned to 2022.   There are some specific rules to how time travel works, where scientists in the future have figured out how to travel back and forth within a very specific window (that exact 30 years, down to the day and hour), that keeps shifting forward as time continues to flow forward.  

We learn that only people who are no longer alive 30 years in the future can travel forward, and only those that haven’t yet been born in 2022 can travel backward. This is how they get around that whole idea of the paradox of meeting one’s future or past self that raises so many fun questions in time travel books and movies. 

The movie has fun with keeping the aliens from view until Pratt and his fellow draftees are sent forward in time. The reason being, that the people from the future believe no one will actually accept being drafted if they know what they are about to face. And, yeah those aliens are plenty scary. Big, fast, lots of teeth, tentacles, claws, they shoot barbs like bullets, and they are nearly unkillable.  Great!  

We learn that in the future, the human population is down to 500,000 people worldwide. Their only hope is finding a toxin that can kill the alien queen and all her soldiers.  As luck would have it, they are able to capture the queen and develop a toxin that will work, but the last human stronghold, where the time travel device is housed is then overrun by the aliens and Pratt’s character barely escapes back to the past with the toxin to save humanity from what’s coming.

Twists and Turns

The film looks to provide a few twists and surprises, like the fact that the leader of the human resistance, played by Yvonne Strahovski is actually Pratt’s daughter, grown-up, having attended MIT and now leading humanity’s last-ditch effort for survival. She believes the future is lost, but that Pratt can take the toxin back to 2022 and alter the timeline by being ready when the aliens arrive. The movie doesn’t try to get us thinking too hard about whether the past is already written. Instead, it’s pretty clear that the people in 2022 can change the future. 

One of my biggest problems with the movie is that when Pratt returns to 2022 with the toxin, no one is particularly interested in mass-producing it to be ready for the impending alien invasion. Instead, Pratt has to find a way to mass-produce it himself (with help obviously). Then comes the revelation, which makes sense, that the aliens are likely already on earth. The aliens in the future aren’t particularly smart and the idea of them building and piloting spaceships doesn’t make a ton of sense.  

Pratt and his crew discover a crashed spaceship in Siberia that turns out to be the source of the aliens, who break free as the ice melts due to global warming in the future. Some fun fights ensue and we end up with Pratt and his father facing off against the alien queen in a fight to the finish. Our heroes are successful and kill the alien queen, while also blowing up all the soldiers in the spaceship. The future is saved!

What’s the Verdict?

Make no mistake, The Tomorrow War isn’t a great movie. There are a lot of holes in the plot and some surprises don’t seem that surprising. But, if you like a fun action movie with aliens, time travel, and end of the world adventures, you will almost certainly enjoy the time spent watching this summer blockbuster.