Tomorrowland (2015)
Directed by Brad Bird
Bound by a shared destiny, a bright, optimistic teen bursting with scientific curiosity and a former boy-genius inventor jaded by disillusionment embark on a danger-filled mission to unearth the secrets of an enigmatic place somewhere in time and space that exists in their collective memory as "Tomorrowland."
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What critics say influenced Tomorrowland
In some respects, Tomorrowland is reminiscent of another Disney movie, 1991's The Rocketeer, in that it has a retro-futuristic vibe that won't be for every taste, but which provides enormous entertainment for those who can get into it.
When young Frank (Thomas Robinson) is zooming around Tomorrowland in his homemade jetpack, there are shades of The Rocketeer, a sense of wide-eyed wonderment not seen much since Steven Spielberg's 1980s heyday, and even the "kids are smart, adults are dumb" theme of E.T. and The Goonies.
There are many nods to Saturday family adventures like The Rocketeer , and quite a few to the bicycle-riding kids of ET .
Frank's hologram guard dog is cooler than his jetpack, which looked a lot sweeter in 1991's "The Rocketeer."
As praise goes, Tomorrowland has moments of retro-tinged visual splendor that suggest a more technically advanced version of some of Joe Johnston’s films, particularly The Rocketeer , that eternally underappreciated Disney effort.
But director Bird (“The Incredibles,” “Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol”) is such a master of momentum, and has such a way with gadgetry that the film’s two-plus hours whiz by, with elements of “The Terminator,” “Hugo,” “The Rocketeer” “The Wizard of Oz” and countless other films flashing past.
Porque Disney no se guardó su propia avaricia corporativa y mete por ahí comerciales de Star Wars entre tiernas referencias a otros grandes hitos de la ciencia ficción cincuentera.
Comedy fans will smile — briefly, anyway — at the sight of Keegan-Michael Key and Kathryn Hahn as a pair of geek enthusiasts who run a Houston shop crammed with classic sci-fi movie memorabilia (cue obligatory nod to the recently Disney-acquired “Star Wars” franchise).
Not only is the film named after one of The Magic Kingdom's most popular areas (although any connection beyond the title and a few visual cues is tenuous), but there are plenty of references to Disney's newest property (Star Wars).
The scenes of Casey in a retro sci-fi shop (run by Kathryn Hahn and Keegan-Michael Key) are a blast, if for no other reason than the chance to scour its shelves for collectibles from Bird’s breakthrough, “The Iron Giant,” as well as Disney-owned properties including “Star Wars” and “The Black Hole.”
And considering the recent successes of space-themed properties like Guardians of the Galaxy (created by Marvel, now owned by Disney), Toy Story ’s Buzz Lightyear (Pixar, now Disney), and Star Wars (Lucasfilm, now Disney), Tomorrowland certainly makes more sense to green-light than, say, It’s A Small World After All.
No future for you, except the seemingly inevitable one where all this prime real estate is overtaken by new Star Wars and Marvel rides.
By this point the viewer is likely to understand all too well how she feels, as “Tomorrowland” increasingly suggests a version of “The Wizard of Oz” that, despite numerous attempts at liftoff, never quite manages makes it over the rainbow.
Imagine jumping back and forth between Kansas and Oz in “The Wizard of Oz” with several key characters out of sight for long stretches and you get the picture.
But director Bird (“The Incredibles,” “Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol”) is such a master of momentum, and has such a way with gadgetry that the film’s two-plus hours whiz by, with elements of “The Terminator,” “Hugo,” “The Rocketeer” “The Wizard of Oz” and countless other films flashing past.
The production design is first rate with visual nods from everything to Disneyland to “The Wizard Of Oz” to the 1964 NY World's Fair, where the movie of begins.
Although Tomorrowland's ambitions are right up there with Back to the Future and The Wizard of Oz, the plucky Floridian played by Britt Robertson in the time-hopping Disney adventure is unlikely to be remembered in decades to come - or even in months to come, once the next teenage dystopian fantasy inserts itself into movie houses.
Tomorrowland, which is directed by the great animation maestro Brad Bird (The Incredibles, Ratatouille), reminded me a bit of the kinds of films I grew up on—smart, wide-eyed, live-action family films like Back to the Future, War Games, and E.T.
Although Tomorrowland's ambitions are right up there with Back to the Future and The Wizard of Oz, the plucky Floridian played by Britt Robertson in the time-hopping Disney adventure is unlikely to be remembered in decades to come - or even in months to come, once the next teenage dystopian fantasy inserts itself into movie houses.
Robertson and Clooney are well-matched as a 21st-century spin on Back to the Future 's Marty McFly and Emmett Brown, and Cassidy has such a strange presence that you never get tired of watching her.
Robertson spends the entire film being awed and spunky, wondering along with us just why she's been deemed so special (she dumbfounds her teachers asking how to reverse global disasters and generally 'knows how things work'), but Tomorrowland's awe-inspiring inventions all feel recycled from other, better and interestingly, much older films ("Back to the Future" and "Westworld" come to mind along with anything influenced by Jules Verne).
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When young Frank (Thomas Robinson) is zooming around Tomorrowland in his homemade jetpack, there are shades of The Rocketeer, a sense of wide-eyed wonderment not seen much since Steven Spielberg's 1980s heyday, and even the "kids are smart, adults are dumb" theme of E.T. and The Goonies.
There are many nods to Saturday family adventures like The Rocketeer , and quite a few to the bicycle-riding kids of ET .
She’s a spiritual cousin to the astrophysics-obsessed Murph in Interstellar , who gets suspended for telling other kids the truth about the moon landing and grows up to be Jessica Chastain, solver of impossible equations.
“Dark,” à la Christopher Nolan’s Batmans, is out, and the Audacity of Hope is in—as in Nolan’s Interstellar, in which Matthew McConaughey’s ex-astronaut states “It’s like we’ve forgotten who we are: explorers, pioneers, not caretakers.”
I won’t be the first person to observe that “Tomorrowland” is strikingly similar, in terms of theme and narrative structure and other elements, to Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar.”
While rooted in the Disney theme park milieu to a distracting degree at times (one entrance to Tomorrowland is inside “It’s a Small World,” for example), Tomorrowland is so utterly committed to ol’ Uncle Walt’s senses of human endeavor and wonder that it becomes a poignant bit of nostalgia, a family-friendlier version of Interstellar ’s argument that we no longer dream of much more than survival in the face of escalating circumstances.
It is, in some ways, a two-hour act of furious clapping for Tinker Bell to wake up — or a kiddie adaptation of "Interstellar," an earnest reminder that America once innovated ...
In many ways Tomorrowland is a spiritual partner to last year’s Interstellar .
When young Frank (Thomas Robinson) is zooming around Tomorrowland in his homemade jetpack, there are shades of The Rocketeer, a sense of wide-eyed wonderment not seen much since Steven Spielberg's 1980s heyday, and even the "kids are smart, adults are dumb" theme of E.T. and The Goonies.
With all the hype and mystery around the film, marketing it was always going to be difficult and something that seems to have gotten lost in the mix is that this is mostly a kids action movie along the lines of ‘80s movies like Explorers or The Goonies.
The new generation needs their The Never Ending Story , The Goonies and The Princess Bride too.
Taking its name and inspiration from the futuristic themed area at Disneyland , Brad Bird's latest blockbuster mines similar territory to his earlier films The Iron Giant and The Incredibles , a pair of dazzling animations that expertly blended heart, spectacle and nostalgia.
In his own slangy, rugged-individualist way, Bird matches Miyazaki repeatedly for imagination and virtuosity in animated films like The Iron Giant (99), The Incredibles (04) and Ratatouille (07), and in his live-action Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol (11), which lightly mocks the central concepts of Mission: Impossible movies (hairbreadth escapes, unlikely disguises) while also spectacularly fulfilling them.
At least one sequence in the film will go down as one of the year’s best setpieces: A sudden laser-gun showdown between one of the protagonists and the two clerks at a cluttered movie memorabilia store, in which Bird manages to squeeze in visual homages to practically every science-fiction picture you can think of (as well as his underrated gem The Iron Giant).
Almost all of his movies, from The Iron Giant to The Incredibles to even Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol are set in or inspired by a “simpler” time defined by optimism and miraculous technology.
His animated The Iron Giant and The Incredibles were flavored with the future by way of the '50s and '60s, combining Cold War paranoia with the arrival of an alien robot and showcasing prime space-age design and gadgetry in a suburban superhero setting.
But more to the point, there's no separating Bird from Tomorrowland: it might share the name with a large segment of the Disneyland and Magic Kingdom theme parks and thus be part of the Disney corporation's endless game of "brand extension", and it might be a phenomenally overpriced summer tentpole, but this is no director-for-hire job; this is absolutely a movie made by the director of The Iron Giant , and much of what some people find annoying about it thematically derives directly from that fact.
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It's more Hook than Close Encounters , but there's little doubt what Bird was aiming for; as homages go, this one's not as successful as J.J. Abrams' Super 8 .
Yet Bird seems to have learned the hard way what Abrams did in Super 8: the aesthetics are easy to ape, but one should never underestimate the value Spielberg places on tight, clear, logical storytelling.
Like J.J. Abrams’ “Super 8” (2011), this film wants to honor a past style but can’t quite crack the code to what made it tick.
(To Tomorrowland ‘s minor credit, there’s no tearful scene that explains where mom is and she never shows up in a locket like in Super 8) .
Hay en su historia guiños a Super 8 (2011), de JJ Abrams, producida por Steven Spielberg, y Volver al futuro (1985) de Rober Zemeckis, pero carece de la empatía que desprendían los personajes de aquellos dos filmes.
There’s a Joe Dante-like kick to many of the subsequent sequences: a comic book store strewn with pop-cultural detritus from Forbidden Planet to Planet of the Apes to Star Wars is the site of a bull-in-a-china-shop showdown between Casey and two laser-toting androids.
The utopia of Tomorrowland is based on the attraction in Anaheim and recalls the work of Jules Verne and Sixties cartoon The Jetsons , and some of the machines we meet are essentially hi-tech versions of Forbidden Planet ’s Robby the Robot.