Tomorrow War，这来自导演克里斯·麦凯（Chris McKay）和作家扎克·迪恩（Zach Dean），显然，拼命地想成为独立日在21世纪，但从根本上来说misunderstands the assignmentthat it’s missed the science fair altogether. The film opens with one of those five-second YouTube trailer teasers as Dan (Chris Pratt) plummets from the sky into a pool as many CG-people fall to their deaths around him. The action then cuts to December 2022, where Dan is arriving late to a Christmas party at his house. Dan is a veteran turned high school science teacher who is, we learn, denied a more official science job because he lacks private sector experience. This is just the first of many coded political moments in the movie, some of which are more subtle than others but all of which reveal a confused political outlook. Mostly,Tomorrowangles for the “brews, guns, and God” crowd of happy rednecks of which Chris Pratt is patron saint, but at times it veers into more conspiracy-flavored, right-wing territory (that makes people side-eye Chris Pratt in real life). The politics ofTomorrow Warare important because this is where the movie veers off course and fails.

But first, it actually gets a lot about the独立日formula right. There are aliens, called “white spikes”, and in the future, they have nearly driven the human race to extinction. In an extremely goofy premise, the future people have come to the present-past to gather new bodies to hurl at the aliens in the future. The twist is that they’re only taking people meant to die within ten years, to avoid sending anyone still living into the future. Time travel rules are, as always, fast and loose, but we’re playing by grandfather paradox rules, I guess. Dan, due to die in ten years, is drafted. His wife, Emmy (Betty Gilpin, deserving more and better), wants to run, but Dan is committed to go, not being the kind of guy who could run and hide. He is also motivated by his young daughter, Muri (played as a child by Ryan Kiera Armstrong), who is doomed to live in the nightmare alien future.

Joining Dan on this mission are bumbling fellow scientist Charlie (Sam Richardson), future-survivor Dorian (Edwin Hodge), A Woman (Mary Lynn Rajskub, also deserving more and better), and Hapless Guy (Mike Mitchell). There is a version ofTomorrowthat is an action-comedy in which Sam Richardson is, if not the star, then a co-lead with Pratt. Glimpses of this other movie pop up just enough to make me wonder what previous drafts of the script looked like, especially with Chris McKay, veteran of comedies likeRobot Chickenand theLEGO Movie特许经营，打电话。感觉像Tomorrow从另一部更轻的电影中捣碎到了我们得到的Go Model。然而，对于所有的亲飞行姿势，Tomorrowtakes a weird stance in which the military just gives up when the initial plan falls apart, like there’s only ONE idea in the world. If you want to honor the military with a movie, maybe don’t imply they’re a bunch of quitters? Food for thought.

独立日是一部愚蠢的电影，以威尔·史密斯（Will Smith）的魅力及其合奏演员的实力成功。Tomorrow War是一部愚蠢的电影，但普拉特（Pratt）并不像史密斯（Smith）那样迷人，这并不是真正的合奏演员，因为没有人以丹为中心。独立日遵循多个涉及多个绘图线程的字符，最终团结起来，Tomorrowis just about Dan and his family issues (JK Simmons pops up as his estranged father, and Yvonne Strahovski plays a future-person with an entirely predictable connection to Dan). And that would be fine! If the other stuff was working, a movie about a guy struggling with a legacy of estrangement amidst an alien invasion could work. But the other stuff ISN’T working, so the threads about Dan and fatherhood and legacy all fall flat.Tomorrowis at its best when Sam Richardson is doing literally anything on screen, or whenever JK Simmons appears, because he makes everything classier.

什么Tomorrowmisses about独立日that is most critical, though, is the thematic messaging of the story. Yes,独立日是一部愚蠢的屁股电影，但从本质上讲，一群不同的人聚在一起解决问题。我们热爱电影，讲述了一群不同的人聚在一起解决问题。人类对社区有冲动，我们本能地回应有关共同利益形成的社区的故事。独立日understands that and shows us a group that ranges from the president to an exotic dancer coming together to stave off an alien invasion. President Whitmore doesn’t say, “F-ck all y’all, I’ll do this myself.”他说，“我们不能被我们的琐碎差异所消耗，我们将符合我们的共同利益。”我们讲的最古老的故事是关于人们在共同利益下团结以击败威胁的人。

InTomorrow，丹有一个由随机草稿组成的小组，加入他对未来的使命。但是值得注意的是，结局并不是每个派系都齐心协力实现目标，而是丹领导未经批准的任务。我们明确地告诉我们，北约已经解散，美国军队不会有帮助，没有人愿意让联合国参与，因为他们所做的就是谈论采取行动。我在这里不是在现实世界中捍卫这些身体，而是一部直接陷入现实世界的政治紧张局势和不满意的电影本质上令人不安。让我们每个人都聚在一起，将外星人的船只视为一个人，人们会站起来并为之欢呼，但是一部电影，好家伙对团队合作的概念嘲笑，这是不必要的严峻，尤其是考虑到该情节的F-Cking愚蠢。Tomorrowis not a political thriller set in the hellscape of our highly partisan world. It’s a dumb movie about aliens that come from the future. It’s the perfect vehicle for a crowd-pleasing fantasy about a disparate group of people coming together to solve a problem. Instead, we’re told it’s impossible for that to happen and our only hope is that Chris Pratt is butch enough to shoulder the fate of humanity himself. The result isn’t just a bad movie, it’s an unpleasant one.

Tomorrow Waris now streaming on Amazon Prime.