Tomor­row­land A World Beyond

Films which feign anguish for the pre­car­i­ous future of the plan­et often sap from fes­ter­ing lib­er­al guilt in order to deliv­er a mes­sage of sac­cha­rine-slathered hope. It’s a cin­e­mat­ic no-brain­er: soft­ly remind audi­ences of their impend­ing mor­tal­i­ty, and then fire balmy solace at the screen to assure that human­i­ty will find a way, cue Amer­i­can eagle soar­ing, tri­umphant brass fan­fare, sin­gle tear, and scene.

Brad Bird’s Tomor­row­land A World Beyond is a movie which cares/​dares to pon­der whether images of the apoc­a­lypse have become ingrained in the col­lec­tive psy­che to such an extent that they now offer a kind of nor­malised spec­ta­cle. Worse, that exot­ic visions of the ulti­mate destruc­tion of the plan­et – mod­ern event cinema’s most stur­dy crutch – have become care­worn and clichéd. When the end does arrive, it prob­a­bly won’t be in the way we expect it. A floun­der­ing whim­per rather than a stu­pen­dous bang.

In line with its rad­i­cal remit, Tomor­row­land doesn’t real­ly have an antag­o­nist, nor does it deal in any con­ven­tion­al sense of per­il. It employs the icon­ic imagery of the clas­sic dis­as­ter movie, such as count­down clocks and the griz­zled old lag har­ried out of retire­ment for One Last Job, but it’s more inter­est­ed in block­buster self-analy­sis – look­ing back to the point where the trusty fam­i­ly block­buster up and skipped the tracks.

Bird and co-writer Damon Lin­de­lof have made a movie about movies, ques­tion­ing their func­tion, perus­ing their pol­i­tics, attempt­ing to con­tex­tu­alise their val­ue – if any – with­in wider soci­ety. The black pearl of its tena­cious enquiry, though, is dis­cov­er­ing what inspires and catal­y­ses peo­ple to do things that might pos­si­bly alter the course of the world. Fur­ther­more, it pon­ders whether that illu­sive moti­va­tion­al spark burned brighter in, say, the ​’60s than it does now. With its retro-futur­ist design, can-do, Bryl­creem-glazed spir­it and let’s‑go-on-an-adventure streak of lost inno­cence, Bird has made a movie which ends up being the very expres­sion of its own ingrained themes.

An ear­ly sequence takes place at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York. Pre-teen sci­ence bod Frank Walk­er (Thomas Robin­son) arrives with a rock­et pack built from bust­ed vac­u­um clean­er parts. He hopes to impress surly judge David Nix (Hugh Lau­rie) enough that he would con­sid­er part­ing with the $50 prize pot. Nix asks Walk­er to explain the func­tion of his rock­et pack, to which he responds that if some­one sees anoth­er per­son fly­ing with a rock­et pack, they too may be embold­ened to think out­side the stric­tures of the mun­dane. The con­trap­tion doesn’t quite func­tion ful­ly (a lit­tle like Tomor­row­land, if we’re being hon­est), yet with a quick tin­ker and a dash of courage, it (and the movie) end up work­ing like a dream.

The star of the show – and like­ly star of many oth­er shows in the not-to-dis­tant future – is the actor Britt Robert­son, plucked from rel­a­tive TV obscu­ri­ty and sad­dled with the weigh of a block­buster on her spindly shoul­ders. She owns this movie, pure com­ic charis­ma with the face and wide-eyed won­der of an ​’80s Spiel­berg hero­ine. And in yet anoth­er exam­ple of art imi­tat­ing life, the sto­ry itself sees Robertson’s latchkey braini­ac Casey New­ton select­ed by secre­tive future pio­neers to come and join them to build a world which will pro­tect human­i­ty against their own destruc­tive impuls­es. It’s a cyn­i­cal view for sure, but the film con­stant­ly under­cuts any­thing which might be read as polit­i­cal­ly or soci­o­log­i­cal­ly volatile.

The con­cept of Tomor­row­land itself, pop­u­lat­ed sole­ly with the best and bright­est who have been har­vest­ed by trained automa­ton chil­dren, appears to be torn from the pages of Ayn Rand’s con­tro­ver­sial Objec­tivist blue­print, Atlas Shrugged, in which the America’s top indus­tri­al­ists down their tools and aban­don their dev­as­tat­ed coun­try which is being ruined by an over­ly inter­ven­tion­ist gov­ern­ment. Its more like­ly source of inspi­ra­tion, though, derives from Disney’s own Epcot Cen­tre, a(nother) futur­is­tic ven­ture aimed at crank-start­ing the cre­ative minds of pri­vate equi­ty into build­ing an enlight­ened enclave for the soci­eties of tomorrow.

The film treads care­ful­ly enough that it nev­er comes across as espous­ing ideas in which it doesn’t real­ly believe. And that’s not to say it’s polit­i­cal­ly spine­less – on the con­trary. It’s rejec­tion of char­ac­ters who fit the arche­type of good and evil means that what its say­ing trans­lates as rich­er and more objec­tive that a sim­ple right-wing screed which gives an implic­it thumbs up to a Dar­win­ist skim­ming of elite forces.

In short, there’s a lot of stuff going on in Tomor­row­land, though the one thought that real­ly does hit home unequiv­o­cal­ly relates to Casey’s night-time dirt­bike raids on Cape Canaver­al, attempt­ing to pre­vent its dis­man­tling in the hope that our lust for inter­galac­tic trav­el will con­tin­ue. She, and by exten­sion, Bird and Lin­de­lof, lament the death of the mad sci­en­tist who’s bestowed with vast resources to fol­low any and all cre­ative whims. The film asks, ​“what if a mod­ern block­buster was made in the way that we thought event movies should look and feel like in the ​’60s?” How will we get any­thing done if peo­ple don’t have the resources to dream?

It’s a beau­ti­ful­ly direct­ed and designed romp which pos­si­bly over-reach­es in its final stages. With­in the Bird back cat­a­logue, it fits in neat­ly along­side the nos­tal­gia-hued The Incred­i­bles and The Iron Giant. Indeed, as with his Mis­sion: Impos­si­ble – Ghost Pro­to­col, Bird makes live action films which pos­sess the zip and rest­less momen­tum of dig­i­tal ani­ma­tion. In its lat­ter stages, an attempt is made to push this broad­er notion of sec­ond-guess­ing what and how peo­ple think about the world to its nat­ur­al con­clu­sion, though this is admit­ted­ly at the expense of a cer­tain flu­en­cy to the action. Bird’s sen­si­tiv­i­ty for place and his spa­cial aware­ness remains so keen that this rock-em, sock-em finale doesn’t quite deliv­er a breath­less cher­ry atop what is a nour­ish­ing, dec­o­ra­tive and grav­i­ty-defy­ing gateaux.

But this is bold, thought­ful and fear­less main­stream film­mak­ing which accepts that there can be more to a pop­corn movie than flash­ing lights, blurt­ing sub-son­ic nois­es and char­ac­ters whose job is to mere­ly string one crum­my action scene to the next. Con­sid­er­ing what it’s about, it would become some­thing of a self-ful­fill­ing prophe­cy if audi­ences don’t go and see it. We sin­cere­ly hope they do.