“Tomorrowland” is inspired by Walt Disney’s utopian vision of the future, and director Brad Bird’s new film is the journey we take to get there.
We make our journey with Casey Newton (Britt Robertson), a present-day teenager who is watching her hopes and dreams be literally torn apart before her eyes. Her dream is to visit the stars, but the NASA launch site near her home is about to be decommissioned. Inconveniently enough, this will also put her engineer father (Tim McGraw) out of a job.
But “Tomorrowland” is about hope. So one evening a mysterious recruiter named Athena (Raffey Cassidy) gives Casey an even more mysterious pin. The pin acts as a sort of dimensional portal; by touching it, Casey is transported to an alternate utopian reality, complete with futuristic buildings, efficient public transportation and a sleek space program.
Sadly, the pin can only offer a sneak preview of Tomorrowland, so Casey has to recruit the help of Frank Walker (George Clooney) to actually get there. Frank has been exiled from Tomorrowland, and has bad news for Casey: the utopia she saw has more than a few dystopian flaws.
Some of these flaws take the shape of robots determined to keep Frank and Casey from crossing the dimensional void. But our heroes are just as determined, and as they fight their way through exciting set pieces as diverse as rural America and the top of the Eiffel Tower, only Frank understands what is waiting for them when they get there.
Robertson plays Newton with the same kind of spunk she’s brought to other roles (though, if you’ve seen her other roles, you may find it increasingly difficult to buy the 25-year-old actress as a teenager). Clooney does George Clooney things, and Keegan-Michael Key shows up for another scene-stealing cameo.
“Tomorrowland” acts as a compelling counterpoint to the myriad post-apocalyptic nightmares we’ve been seeing on the big screen in recent years. Thanks to young adult dystopian franchises like the Hunger Games and Divergent and adult epics like the new “Mad Max” film, there seems to be a post-apocalypse for everyone in the family.
All of these films explore humanity’s struggle to find hope for the future, and “Tomorrowland” adds an interesting voice to the conversation.
Frank tells us Tomorrowland was the brainchild of various late 19th century visionaries like Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla. The idea was to create a place where creativity and idealism could be pursued without the constraints of politics or economics. But the untethered pursuit of science winds up backfiring, and as is so often the case with utopian societies, dystopia is waiting in the wings.
Luckily none of this gets so ponderous that it completely derails the movie. It gets a little preachy at the end, and some audiences might be surprised that so little of the film takes place in the Oz-like future world we see in the trailers. But “Tomorrowland” makes for a fun and exciting adventure.
Considering its target audience, the biggest downside to “Tomorrowland” will be its PG-stretching violence. Our heroes may be fighting robots, but even if there’s a lack of blood and gore, the brutality of the battle scenes might be too intense for younger children.
For many moviegoers, though, “Tomorrowland” will provide enough kinetic eye candy to hide its weaker points. We may all be living in the Marvel Cinematic Universe these days, but "Tomorrowland" has a few interesting ideas of its own.
“Tomorrowland” is rated PG for action violence and some profanity.
Joshua Terry is a freelance writer and photojournalist who appears weekly on "The KJZZ Movie Show" and also teaches English composition for Salt Lake Community College. Find him online at facebook.com/joshterryreviews.