"The Tomorrow War" is thought-provoking sci-fi at its best. As with any sci-fi this ambitious,
a few questions remain unanswered once the credits roll. Here are
just some of the questions to ponder after watching "The Tomorrow War."
While time travel can be fickle and messy, it's also intricate
and unfathomable. If humans can figure out a way to time travel, then surely
higher-tech weapons would be available for the humanity-defining war against extraterrestrials.
Dan Forester, played by Chris Pratt, and his fellow soldiers are given guns that seemingly
fire modern-day bullets, then they're thrown into battle to fight an enemy they know nothing about.
Tasked with eradicating formidable aliens multiplying at an unimaginable rate,
future humans are outnumbered and using weapons that seem like they're throwing pebbles at an
attacking animal. Luckily, Future Murik is a genius and comes up with a toxin to kill
the aliens, and Dan takes the toxin back to the past, locating the creatures when
they lie dormant and killing them before the war can take place in the future.
So if the future can build a wormhole, surely it can create better weapons? The conscripted
soldiers and civilians are expected to believe that time travel exists, while
at the same time accepting that military-grade weaponry uses the same ammo thirty years later.
In the future, the global population is in trouble because of the war against aliens.
The future responds by recruiting soldiers from the past, but not every person who's drafted
has military experience, or even knows how to load a gun. The only qualification appears to
be that draftees have to have already died by 2051, the year of the war. Two of the
same people can't exist at the same time, we are told, or else a time paradox will ensue.
"We are you. 30 years in the future."
The future has somehow created a machine that can determine if and when someone died. Oddly,
Muri Forester exists in both timelines. She's a child in the present and an adult in the future.
But why is Muri the only character that naturally appears in the present and future?
All the present-day characters that appear in the future are dead. All the future people can
appear in the past because they have yet to be born, which keeps the time paradox at bay.
On the one hand, the world's population, which is currently about 7.6 billion in real life,
is down to half a million, which means only a tiny sliver of humans are still alive.
And sure, you can probably surmise that other present-soldiers' children might be among the
future residents. On the other hand, Muri being the only character who appears on both
ends of the time-jumping seems odd, almost as if it's not a coincidence.
Future Muri Forester becomes a scientist in honor of her father.
In the future, she's the world's last hope.
However, since we watch Dan successfully lead a mission to kill the aliens once he returns
to the past, does Muri's life trajectory change? The aliens supposedly no longer
invade Earth. Which likely means that although Muri wanted to follow in her dad's footsteps,
she will no longer grow up with the same sense of urgency to become a scientist and save the world.
"If there's one thing the world needs right now, it's scientists."
Since any change during time travel can have a catastrophic effect on the timeline,
there's no guarantee that Dan grows apart from his family, dies in a car accident,
or inspires his daughter to save the world. Which, actually, might all be good things.
After Dan is drafted to fight in the war and the military places a device on his arm, the military
makes it clear that his wife will have to take his place if he decides to run. Dodging the draft is
a major offense, even in a sci-fi movie like "The Tomorrow War." That said, when Dan asks his father
James if he can take the device off his arm, this appears to be something he does with regularity.
How does the old man pull this off? Shouldn't the government have detected the devices being
taken off other people? Whom do the devices belong to? Why does James have them? While he seems like
a crafty person who lives off the grid, the movie dances around the fact that he has collected these
arm devices, despite the military telling Dan that if he runs or takes off the device, they'll find
him. That all makes it sound as if the consequence is inevitable. Not to mention, these devices must
be super high-tech, as they help enable a person to transport to and from the future.
When the military is testing Dan to see if he's an adequate soldier for the war,
a Certificate of Death is revealed that says he'll die at age 47, seven years from the
present. Because of this realization, Dan is considered a match for the future war.
Since it's implied that past events change the future, what happens to Dan
after the war is stopped? Does he still die in seven years? Also unexplained is what made him
become such a different person, becoming unhappy with his life, divorcing his wife,
and doing exactly what his father did to him, by leaving his family behind. His daughter reveals
all this information, but never delves into the motivations that made them happen beyond saying
"You just, you never seemed happy with your life."
Since "The Tomorrow War" ends on a happy note, it's assumed that Dan rewrote his future. He
won't abandon his family, and he won't get into an accident that leads to his death.
Although, how do you avoid an inevitable car accident? Just stop
driving? Would life eventually make it happen anyway, "Final Destination"-style?
What we do know is that Dan's death certificate was created, and the date of that event is still
seven years in the future. That said, Dorian's story was rewritten. Instead of dying of cancer,
he died while blowing up the alien ship. So, maybe Dan doesn't die in
a car accident, but instead Stuck in the present lands that dream science job he's always wanted?
People from the future are young in the present timeline because, as Dan and Charlie conclude,
"They haven't been born yet."
However, when the wormhole closes, it appears that future soldiers are stuck in the present
as the portal can't be reopened. This is why the only way to stop the war from occurring is to find
where the aliens are hiding during the present day. So, are future soldiers stuck in the past,
even though they've never been born? Wouldn't that wreak havoc on innumerable timelines?
"The jump link just went offline, we can't send anything back."
Time in this universe is like a river that flows in one steady direction. And
the jump link places two rafts on this river, which are thirty years apart.
Both rafts continue to travel along the river, time continues to pass,
yet the jump link only allows people to jump from one raft to the other.
"Time only flows in one direction. It's like a river."
Although this concept explains why people can't time travel to different periods,
and can only travel to the period where each raft is located,
it doesn't explain how unborn people can get stuck in the past, when the future they came
from no longer happens. "The Tomorrow War" is careful not to create a time paradox, but it
avoids this question. Once Dan stops the aliens from attacking, the future is presumably erased.
People can't live in both timelines at the same time. Presumably, not all the
future soldiers die as only a handful were part of Dan's mission. So, can the unborn
soldiers who survived be born again in the future? Wouldn't that create a time paradox?
Can the wormhole open back up? If it can, what will the future look like? Can the unborn
soldiers return to their correct timelines? The future should still exist in this reality
since the portal simply closed, and it can presumably be opened again. Or does the fact
that it closed mean the future is lost forever and there is only one raft left on the river?
There's plenty of reasons why they can't make a new one immediately. The jump links are 30
years apart and keep moving forward. You can only jump from one raft to the other.
More rafts can't be built because they're held together poorly. The future barely managed to
make one rudimentary wormhole. If they weren't about to be extinct, they'd still be testing it
with lab rats. All that aside, now that there isn't a global threat, surely the scientists
will have more time to understand the wormhole, make it safer, more reliable, and expand on it.
This wormhole helped save the world, so that's not a technology that sound minds would forget.
It seems quite likely that the remaining people in the future could resurrect the tech
and once again connect to the past. If these people are intelligent enough to
create a wormhole in the first place, they should be able to do it again,
and this time, perhaps add more destinations as well.
Thanks to Dan's volcano-loving student in the present timeline,
his crew locates where the aliens are hiding. As it turns out, the aliens have
been here the whole time and dug upwards to the surface after being frozen for about a
thousand years. They are due to complete this process at some point around 2048 in Russia,
so Dan and his crew must preempt that by ambushing them in the present day. To do so,
they fly to Russia undetected, which seems like an implausible feat given that, in the film, humanity
is on the edge of collapse and rioting in the streets in the belief death will be coming soon.
James might be a very talented pilot. But seriously, how did he fly a plane into
Russia without a single person detecting it on the radar? His previously-established skills
in staying off the grid and helping others do the same is supposed to make this believable,
but it still seems to be a stretch. "The Tomorrow War" is a film about heroes who find a way to win
at all costs, but this heroism seems like it had a little movie magic sprinkled on top.
"Roger that."
After Dan's crew locates the alien ship in Russia, they break into it and discover
two dead pilot creatures hanging from the ceiling that aren't white spikes,
but they certainly aren't humans either.
Unlike the aliens they have been battling, which are carnivorous and only appear to eat
and reproduce, the pilot creatures appear more advanced. They're capable of building and flying
a ship and, it appears, keeping the white spikes safe in some sort of preserving goo. Of course,
they weren't that good at flying, however, as they most likely crash-landed on Earth.
Perhaps these creatures created the white spikes or are a mutation of them?
The audience will probably never know.
When it comes to the white spikes, countless questions remain. How did the spaceship crash
in Russia? What were they looking for? What were they running from? Was Earth even their target?
Humans have long been obsessed with possible life out there in the universe,
and "The Tomorrow War" firmly says it exists. But the more you speculate about such things,
the more follow-up questions present themselves.
The aliens may have been looking for resources, as they treated our world like an all-you-can-eat
buffet. But what would they have done once they ate every last human and animal? Remember,
it only took them three years to have us on the verge of extinction, so these guys are hungry.
Perhaps most importantly, are we really sure every last white spike was killed?
Visibility in that snow was pretty bad, and blowing up their ship doesn't guarantee their
extinction from Earth. If the female white spike was temporarily able to escape, who's to say
another one didn't unknowingly flee? Who's to say there wasn't another female white spike on board,
or even worse, a second ship buried elsewhere, perfectly giving us the premise for a sequel?
Perhaps the biggest unanswered question from "The Tomorrow War"
is what other life exists in this universe?
The white spikes have tentacles that shoot spikes, fangs that chew through human flesh
like soft cheese, and an exterior virtually immune to bullets. They are predators,
and humans weren't their first meals, which implies that they eat other creatures as well.
In all likelihood, there's another life form beyond the white spikes, and perhaps the pilots,
in the universe of "The Tomorrow War." So, while humans celebrate, they might also want to cross
their fingers, and hope that Dan Forester is around to help for longer than seven more years.
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