It's not mine.
What's not yours?
The pin.
I've never--
[SCREAM]
This is Tomorrowland, and it was supposed
to be Disney's next big thing.
The studio was setting the project up for success.
They provided director-writer Brad Bird
with a generous $170 million budget,
George Clooney signed on to star,
and Lost creator Damon Lindelof penned the script, which
was intended to be a love letter to the retrofuturism
of the 1950s.
The film was looking like it would be a smash success.
Then the movie came out and failed.
Faster than you can say a magic pin that transports you
to another world, the film flickered
into obscurity, which brings us to the inevitable question why.
Back in 2015, Disney was in full swing of their ascension
into global dominance.
Pixar's Inside Out and Avengers: Age of Ultron
were both released in that year, as well
as the tiny little film called Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
I could show you the ways of the Force.
They were in the early stages of discussions
to buy 20th Century Fox, and things
seemed to be going pretty well for them.
They began plans to cement their mid-decade catalog
by kickstarting another live action blockbuster
franchise based on a theme park attraction.
They'd made literally billions of dollars
with the Pirates of the Caribbean,
so why not try again?
Welcome to the Caribbean, love.
Or at least, that's how Lindelof pitched it.
He was looking to create new feature films that
had original stories.
While in a meeting with a development
executive at Disney, he asked a simple question.
Why haven't you guys turned more rides into film franchises?
These discussions quickly snared Brad Bird,
who was looking to take on another live action project,
after the runaway success of Mission Impossible: Ghost
Protocol.
Mission accomplished!
These talks quickly evolved into Tomorrowland,
a throwback feature to the structure of Disney classics
like Escape to Witch Mountain with an updated
and contemporary voice courtesy of Brad Bird,
one of the most skilled and thoughtful directors currently
working.
Bird was so dedicated to the story, in fact,
he turned down the chance to direct
Star Wars: The Force Awakens in order to finish Tomorrowland.
He was convinced that the world needed new stories, that
originality was something that people wanted
and needed in their lives.
And Star Wars, while beloved, was
something that could exist without his creative efforts.
And so Disney gave it the green light.
Well, you wanted to see Tomorrowland.
Here it comes.
The story of Tomorrowland follows a young girl,
a curmudgeonly scientist, and a teenage robot
as they attempt to find a path from our world
to a secret dimension only known as Tomorrowland.
The movie is about returning to optimism in dark times,
about the strength of human will.
It's about how the only real defeat
comes when you give up and choose
not to fight for a better day.
Timeless themes that have endured over centuries.
The only issue is that the movie is boring.
The picture feels cold and disinterested
in its protagonists.
It's supposed to be this story of the timeless struggle
of being positive in the face of adversity
and how if we band together, we can solve even
the most difficult issues.
But the film is all shot in cold grays
with characters that never really seem
to connect with each other.
Sooner or later, I'm going to make you laugh.
For the first half hour or so, you're
following a young boy at the World's Fair in the 1960s
as he's trying to showcase a homemade rocket
pack that he invented.
Then after his story completes, the movie
starts again with a new protagonist in modern day.
It's a lot to ask an audience to start a film twice,
even though this boy is later revealed to be George Clooney's
Frank Walker, it doesn't make for a particularly
cohesive viewing experience.
And it's even more of a stretch to ask an audience
to go on a MacGuffin chase where our characters are
trying to fix something.
I'm sorry, what can I fix?
The way the story is structured, we
follow Britt Robertson's Casey as she's
trying to learn the secrets of a magic pin that appears
to have a power to teleport her to an alternate universe, all
the while attempting to avoid killer robots.
The film lacks a clear and audience-understood goal
for the characters.
On a primal level, the film is about maintaining hope
in the face of insurmountable odds.
However, instead of giving our characters
a goal that seems unattainable, it's
just them running around from place to place.
There's no thematic under-girding
that requires optimism.
We spend an hour and a half before they even
get to Tomorrowland.
Then another 17 minutes until we find out
that the thing everyone is trying to fix
is the planet itself.
And the climax of the film, the big finale,
is just our characters and the villain standing around
in a room monologuing to one another.
To save civilization, I would show its collapse.
For a film about the importance of acting
in support of your beliefs, the action
sure is minimal in this finale.
To make things even worse, the movie you're watching
isn't even the movie.
It's George Clooney's Frank Walker
telling the audience a story.
This layer of narrative artifice causes yet
another potential audience disengagement
point, because it makes it feel like the story isn't real.
It's not the definitive events that transpired.
It's one person's version of the events.
Who's to say Frank's even a reliable narrator?
Do you want to tell the story?
No, you're doing.
Because if you think you could tell the story better,
I would absolutely love to hear you try.
So was that the reason the movie failed?
It wasn't very good?
In part, yes.
But additionally, Tomorrowland didn't have any marketing
support whatsoever.
It's bleak to admit this, but there weren't any Happy Meal
toys or 80 ounce convenience store cups around reminding us
that the film was coming out, and the trailers
were almost non-existent.
Sure, the vague show nothing approach to building hype
had worked in the past for Lindelof,
but this was supposed to be a family romp.
If parents don't know what it is,
how are they going to know to take their kids to it?
Cloverfield had one of the most famously confusing marketing
campaigns, which had interested moviegoers
combing through the corners of the internet looking for clues.
The Blair Witch Project also had some really unique marketing
that drew audiences into the theater in droves.
So it's not like a vague marketing
campaign is necessarily a bad thing,
but it can be the wrong thing.
Cloverfield and The Blair Witch Project
are horror movies that use the audience's lack
of understanding as a way to drive the inherent scariness
of the movies.
With these films, the less you know, the better.
Tomorrowland, on the other hand, is an all ages adventure film.
It's trying to be exciting, but you
wouldn't know that if you saw the teaser
trailer for the film.
It just shows the main character running through a field
and stumbling upon a futuristic looking city.
No way.
This is hardly the thing that is going
to make us lean over our friend's shoulder
in the theater and casually whisper,
"ooh, that looks good."
You'd think that a film being a big budget family
friendly sci-fi action epic with a star studded cast
would be something you'd want to lean into.
Disney tends to really care about bringing their rides
to life on the big screen, as it helps them justify remodels
of old attractions so they and generate more foot traffic
to their parks.
This film wasn't about a single ride.
It was about an entire quadrant of the park.
It's a summer blockbuster that screams
for fathers and daughters to sprint to movie theaters.
But you'd never know that, because Disney did very
little to tell us about it.
Tomorrowland is not a train wreck of a film.
It's got fun ideas, impressive retro futurist designs,
and the bones of what could have been a great story.
But it just misses the mark on a few too many key details.
It feels like a project that was rushing to meet a deadline.
Bird and Lindelof seemed to be genuinely committed to trying
to make the project the best it could be,
and that could potentially be the issue at hand.
The film had so many ideas and themes and characters
that it never feels like it settles on the right ones
and truly develops them.
A lackluster marketing campaign doesn't
make a lick of difference if your film is great.
Maybe it means that the film will just
take a while to pick up steam.
Maybe it succeeds on video on demand due to word of mouth.
There are plenty of ways for a film to build momentum
if the quality is there.
Unfortunately, Tomorrowland's biggest issue
is that it just never really clicks into gear.
And that's it for this one.
What do you think?
Did Tomorrowland have potential?
Let us know your thoughts down below.
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