Tomorrowland: A World Beyond

*HERE BE SPOILERS*

I feel pretty sorry for Tomorrowland, its heart is in the right place, it's got a good message at its core and isn't afraid to really state that message in plain, confrontational terms. It's also got moments of dizzying invention that should have slapped a big ol' smile on my face, but, alas, I found myself constantly at a distance from the film and I think that's down to some fundamental choices in how the film was put together.

Sure sure, there are other issues I would happily get my claws into if given the chance, but I really wanted to focus on one thing that bugged me about Tomorrowland...

Whose Story Is It?

The film begins with Frank Walker (George Clooney) talking to camera, occasionally we get glimpses of a countdown clock, some images of civil unrest, but he's making a poor show of getting whatever point he's trying to make across. A voice off-screen both berates and encourages him, it's Casey Newton (Britt Robertson), and she prompts Frank to tell us about when it all began for him.

We then have a flashback to the New York World's Fair in 1964, a young Frank (Thomas Robinson) presents an invention to Nix (Hugh Laurie). Nix isn't impressed, but Athene (Raffey Cassidy) is enchanted by Frank's optimism, so she helps him get access to the titular Tomorrowland. A haven for imaginations and inventors, a promise of a better future today, etc.

Then, once it's fore-shadowed (again with Clooney addressing the camera) that things didn't pan out with Tomorrowland the story-telling gauntlet is passed to Casey, who tells her story, beginning with a rather awkward flashback to her as a small child, then on to her sabotaging attempts to demolish a NASA launch platform.

Cold Opening.

What first bugged me about the film's opening is that it gives away the film's ending.

Now, I know this is a PG family film, so good will probably triumph over evil, but it's not beyond the realms of possibility that Frank could have sacrificed himself to save Tomorrowland, or the like. In fact, one of Athena's decisions late in the film is caused by the fact that she thinks - for a split second - that Frank has been killed though we, as an audience, know that's not true.

We know that good will triumph, that the countdown clock behind the narration won't cause our annihilation (at this point we don't know exactly what it's counting down to), that all will be well, even to the extent that Frank and Casey will get on with one another.

All of this diminishes the impact of the journey we're about to embark upon.

Casey's Story.

This should - to begin with - be Casey's story, this gives us a grounding in a famliar world, our world, a world that has given up on imagination and makes Casey seem like even more of a bright optimistic spark in amongst the grey apathy all around her.

Rather than waste time with Frank addressing the audience we could spend a little bit more time getting to know Casey, her outlook, and the way the film sees the world - especially its attitude to media portrayls of the future.

Perhaps, if you want to start the film excitingly, you could open with the advert for the blockbuster apocalypse film we see advertised in the background of various shots. Then, whilst this disaster-flick destruction takes place on screen we pull back to reveal it's a television, perhaps being watched by Casey's little brother, emphasizing how dangerous it might be to fill youngster's heads with visions of doom, but we pull back further, out the window where Casey is working on some project, a rocket launch.

Her Dad comes out, says something like; "Casey, aren't you a little too old for that?"

Casey: "Oh, it's not mine, it's Nate's science project."

Dad (yelling into the house): "Nate, come out here and do you're own homework!"

Casey: "Actually, Dad, you're an engineer, why do you think..."

And so on, with the Dad explaining how he got fired, how someone sabotaged the launch platform - in this version we haven't seen Casey do it yet - and then the two work together on the rocket, fixing the problem together.

Anyway, we get to the space platform and Casey sabotages it again, the film proceeds as is, except this time we haven't had Frank's backstory at all so when Casey touches the pin and sees Tomorrowland we share her giddy rush because we're BOTH experiencing it together for the first time, and it's such a change from our present day (another issue being that the 1964 World's Fair was such an exuberant, heightened reality that it didn't feel like too much of a shift in design when we went to Tomorrowland) that we're equally as eager to return.

Frank's Story.

We shouldn't get to Frank's story until we meet him, in fact, the perfect place for it would be as they're travelling in the rocket ship from Paris about to journey to the Tomorrowland of now.

At this point in the film Frank is beginning to believe in Casey a little, and he could open up here and tell her the story of how he wound up discovering Tomorrowland as a young boy. This would give us a glimpse of Tomorrowland at the peak of its creative wonder just moments before we wind up in the Tomorrowland of now, making the contrast even more jarring and unsettling, it'd also make sense of the boy we glimpsed on the projector-like device in Frank's house and also Frank's long and complex relationship with Athena.

I think structuring the narrative in this fashion would have given the film a few more surprises, everything seemed so strangely devoid of discovery, which is odd for a film about adventuring, and holding off on meeting Frank - either as a man or boy - until later in the film, getting to know Casey (and the film's view of our world) first would have benefited the story and its impact.

Maybe allowing the film to allude to the problems we're facing today in a more subtle fashion than the slightly clunky school lesson montage.

I think it was for these reasons, rather than accusations that the film is preachy, that it's been receiving mixed-to-negative reviews, which is a shame as it does display those highly imaginative flourishes that typify all of Brad Bird's work, yet its in the delivery of the plot and characters that the film oddly becomes undone.

There's a great film tucked away inside Tomorrowland as it is, and I think a little bit of tinkering would've helped push that to the surface - even if some of the film's other problems perhaps existed in earlier stages of production.