Review by C.J. Bunce
There is plenty to like about The Incredibles’ director Brad Bird’s 2015 release, Tomorrowland, now available on Blu-ray, DVD, and digital media. Tomorrowland has a great, positive message about the potential of thinkers and dreamers, and it showcases a beautiful future world, but somehow it just doesn’t dazzle like it could. Still, enough positive vibes and ideas are steeped into this film that the right person watching this movie will find it to be inspirational.
One of the best features is a decommissioned robot named Athena (that we’d label an excellent borg except we’re not sure biological elements or living matter may be part of her) played by young actress Raffey Cassidy (Cassidy played the daughter Beatrice in Season One of Mr. Selfridge). In every scene she is so perfect in her role that her diction and appearance might convince you she will be shown later as an adult played by Emily Blunt (that doesn’t happen, but she’s a dead ringer).
Sadly Tomorrowland struggles with what kind of movie it wants to be. Is this a fantasy or science fiction movie, or both? Visually the Tomorrowland parallel world scenes feel much like the mix of sci-fi and fantasy from classic Flash Gordon–a great component of the movie watching experience. But you must watch more than two-thirds of the film before being able to grasp a clear plot, and get fully immersed in that other world. To get where the story is trying to get plenty of world building is apparently required. It’s unfortunate because Tomorrowland couldn’t address a more interesting subject: Why didn’t the future we envisioned 60 years ago come to pass? (Where are our jet packs?!)
It’s a question science fiction writers wrestle with all the time: If I am going to predict a future technology or development, how many years from now should I say it will be achieved? And will it come about at all at any time? If you peg the breakthrough in your own lifetime, you may be left to face criticism when that date finally arrives. See Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, James Cameron’s Terminator series, all of those Philip K. Dick novel adaptations, and more recently, Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis’s Back to the Future II predictions–many got elements of the future right, but many didn’t.
