Movie Review: Tomorrowland

Disneys’s Tomorrowland announces its intentions from the jump. As the Disney theme swells and we expect to see Sleeping Beauty’s Castle, we instead see the skyline of the film’s titular genius enclave. Instead of a shooting star that crests the highest tower of the castle we see a figure flying a jetpack. Much has already been written about this film has hinged on its deliberate and explicit comparison to its forward looking contemporaries, films like Fury Road, which portray the future as wasteland, and while it is true that this is a film deeply (perhaps hopelessly) invested in a more whimsically optimistic future, it is as much a (pointed) meditation on the future of Disney as it is on the future of the Earth.

The film is cut through with a sense of frustration. Workability and Wonder are the dual poles around which all of the action centers. In an early moment, Hugh Laurie asks a young boy who has invented a jet-pack why his invention is important. The boy points out that if people are walking along and a boy flies by on a jet-pack it will “inspire them, and doesn’t that make the world a better place?” Laurie’s response drives to the heart of the issue. “If it doesn’t work, it won’t inspire anyone.” Later in the film, George Clooney demands of Britt Robertson, who insists on knowing how each new marvel she encounters works, “can’t you just be amazed and move on?” Well, no. Actually she can’t. Neither can we.

Moments like this make it hard not to think of Disney’s recent all-in gesture towards another boy who flies around on a jet-pack, Tony Stark. In the aftermath of The Age of Ultron, the question that runs through Tomorrowland is an active one. If Marvel (which is owned by Disney) produces films that don’t work as films (as many reviews of Ultron have suggested), are any of us that impressed by the spectacle? There was something about Ultron that felt vast and empty, like the abandoned spaceport where Clooney and Robertson find themselves upon their arrival in Tomorrowland. Ideas, the film reminds us, are hard. It is easy to rest on creative laurels. Unfortunately this becomes a refrain, and for long stretches Tomorrowland descends into telling us, rather than showing us. While the final product is better than average, I suspect there is a great film laying somewhere on the cutting room floor.

While the performances of Clooney and Laurie are excellent, Tomorrowland rides or dies on the performance of Robertson and she is able to sustain the film through long stretches that feel directionless. Though she is too frequently made to serve as the mouthpiece of a kind of pop futurism, her performance gives the audience an access point to appreciate the spectacle. The best of the Marvel films have similar characters and moments. The best scene in Thor, for instance, doesn’t feature Chris Hemsworth’s hammer wielding god of thunder at all. It instead lets the audience watch Natalie Portman and Stellan Skarsgard watching Thor. This is a principle as old as spectacle itself. The residents of the Emerald City in The Wizard of Oz are no more impressed by their home than you are by yours. It takes a Dorothy Gale to truly appreciate it. Robertson is good enough in this film that she will get other opportunities. I would love to see what she is capable of doing with more nuanced material.

Rating 2.5/4