Brandon Fibbs · @bfibbs
3rd Jun 2015 from TwitLonger
A TOMORROWLAND REVIEW/RANT (WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD)
It gives me absolutely no pleasure to say this, but #Tomorrowland is, by and large, a failure. A beautiful failure, to be sure, but a failure nonetheless. The film deftly balances rich nostalgia and sparkling futurism in a rousing example of passionate, visionary filmmaking. It can and should be viewed as an all out assault on cynicism and apathy, an antidote to our culture’s current fetishistic obsession with apocalyptic dystopias (#TheHungerGames, #Divergent). It elevates a world of adventure and optimism, the sort of future we once predicted for ourselves and tried to mold in our now-defunct world fairs. However, as admirable and essential as these attributes are, they are tossed aside at the last minute, when they matter the most, as “Tomorrowland’s” intoxicating, gee-whiz velocity sputters, falls from the sky and comes crashing to the ground.
The problem starts right out of the gate. “Tomorrowland” cannot settle on who its main character is. Is it Casey Newton (the brilliant, perfectly cast #BrittRobertson), the idealistic young teenager who spends her days at school battling her teachers’ cynicism and her nights trying to prevent the demolition of NASA’s space shuttle launch pad service structure? One day, she finds herself in possession of a pin capable of transporting her to another dimension where a utopian city awaits. Is the city real or just a vision? Casey spends the majority of the movie trying to figure out what the visions mean and why she was chosen for them in the first place. Complicating matters are squads of killer robots out to vaporize her. Her only help is Athena, a young girl who is much more than meets the eye, and holds the key to all Casey’s questions.
Or is the main character Frank Walker (#GeorgeClooney), who we are first introduced to as a young boy (in some of the film’s best moments) when he rockets (literally) into Tomorrowland, only to be exiled years later for reasons not entirely made clear, growing into a middle-aged, curmudgeonly hermit? While the film eventually and unfortunately settles on Frank (in a film clearly stating that the children are our future, why build up a young heroine who is never given anything heroic to do?), it does so despite the fact that Casey has been the central character for the bulk of the film. It’s as if the filmmakers started out making a movie for and about kids and then changed their minds half way through.
“Tomorrowland’s” prologue and first act is phosphorescent, a tour de force of ambitious and imaginative storytelling. The city of Tomorrowland is a place of unbridled possibility and, as with Casey and Frank, we too want to spend all our time there. It is a place where science is so advanced, it manifests more like magic. However, two brief sequences are all we see of the place, and we feel all the more cheated because of it. I know, I know, the final third of the film is set there, but it’s not exactly the same place, is it? And that’s the problem.
It’s astonishing how a rancid third act can contaminate all that comes before it. “Tomorrowland’s” wonder and awe, so blindingly on display early on (and only slightly less in the paranoid thrilleresque second), completely vanishes in the dark and pessimistic third. Here we learn that the world is literally days away from ending, all because humanity no longer cares about inventive problem-solving and having hope for the future, but has settled into a rut of pessimism and futility, not just accepting our inevitable extinction without so much as a raising finger to stop it, but actually celebrating it; turning it into a sort of perverted, self-hatred entertainment. (There is a pointed subtext about how our media is consumed with and delivers only a steady diet of nihilism and gloom). At this point, the tone of the film changes drastically, and perhaps this is the point, but it also poisons the goodhearted well.
“Tomorrowland” seems to suggest that those sounding the alarm about everything from climate change to cancerous race relations are actually making things worse, turbocharging the world’s pessimism and accelerating our eventual self-destruction. In the world of tomorrow, just acknowledging the sizable challenges humanity faces means you’re part of the problem. While I very much appreciate the idea that, at some point, one stops wringing one’s hands and steps up to make a change, one cannot fix what one doesn’t recognize is broken. To claim Paul Revere is no different than mad King George’s redcoats is just plain ludicrous. We cannot and will not enact any sort of lasting, substantive change with propagandistic advertisements and bumper sticker slogans. Dreams and imagination, absent of any sort of anchors, remain no more than abstract, theoretical, and hollow platitudes. Is not empty hope as corrosive and ultimately unserviceable as easy despondency?
These indictments notwithstanding, some critics have accused “Tomorrowland” of being too preachy, of sermonizing when it should have been storytelling. While it is much easier to stomach a sermon when you agree with its content (as I do), my position is not that the film fails because of its moralizing (if you recall, wizard writer/director #BradBird’s #TheIronGiant is pretty preachy too and it’s a gargantuanly beloved classic), but rather because it does not, when it matters most, live up to the ideals it espouses.
For a movie all about creativity, imagination and hopefulness, “Tomorrowland” displays little to none in its final act. Throughout the narrative, we are led to believe that our young protagonist, brimming with hope and optimism—manifesting itself as an almost spiritual force—and an off-the-charts IQ, is going to save the planet. But Casey doesn’t come up with some sort of ingenious solution predicated on the use of her prodigious mind. Her sanguinity and faith in a brighter tomorrow doesn’t move any minds or mountains. Instead, the climax of the film is literally solved with ray guns, explosives, and tachyon technobabble—substituting brawn over brains—just like pretty much every other summer blockbuster out there. This is more than just an originality letdown, it is a fundamental failing of the show’s primary conceit, an abortion of the film’s very DNA. It proves to be a fatal and irrevocable hypocrisy.
It utterly boggles the mind why #DamonLindloff continues to get any work in Hollywood. The writer of #Lost and #Prometheus has what can only be described as a habitual, pathological, obstinate inability to finish anything strong. A master of the spellbinding setup, he is either incapable of or unwilling to provide a satisfying payoff in anything he writes. It has now become a predictable career cliché. He has absolutely no follow through, like a long distance runner who begins a marathon at a blistering sprint but crosses the finish line physically shattered and well behind the competition who knew to leave some in the tank for the final lap. While Bird’s (#The Incredibles, #Ratatouille) fingerprints are all over the best parts of this film, one wonders what he might have accomplished without Lindloff’s meddlesome and mediocre contributions.
I have often said that truly awful films are nowhere near as discouraging as films that squander clear potential. To have something and misuse it is a far more egregious insult than to never have had it at all. “Tomorrowland” can be rightly celebrated on several fronts: in an industry of sequels and remakes, this is a wonderfully original work. It boosts a female lead (at least for most of its running time) and features a number of stellar child actors. And it’s message of hope and optimism is in dire need today; a mantra about which of two wolves—one representing darkness and despair, the other light and hope—will survive (answer: the one you feed) is estimable. But how can a film insist we live up to vaulted ideals for which it cannot even be bothered to reach?