The Good but Not Great Tomorrowland

Writer/director Brad Bird has had an auspicious career. He was a consultant for The Simpsons for eight years during that show’s creative zenith. From there he moved to the big screen where he wrote and directed 1999’s The Iron Giant, a beautifully hand-drawn Cold War story that’s an allegory about how we have the power to choose our own destiny. Then Bird joined the digital age and began working for Pixar where he was responsible for the fantastic one-two animated punch of The Incredibles in 2004 and Ratatouille in 2007. Having won two Best Animated Feature Oscars for those films, he then transitioned to live action directing Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol in 2011. While it’s not my favorite of that franchise, it did turn out to be not only the highest grossing Mission Impossible film ever but also the highest grossing Tom Cruise movie of all time.

With that kind of track record, Bird had a blank check for his next project. He could literally do anything he wanted. And naturally he chose what any red-blooded American would – jetpacks.

Bird’s latest film Tomorrowland begins at the 1964 World’s Fair. Boy genius Frank Walker has brought the jetpack he built from an Electrolux vacuum cleaner and spare parts to an invention competition. He meets scientist David Nix who is unimpressed as well as a mysterious girl named Athena who is impressed. She slips Frank a small lapel pin with the letter “T” on it. Frank follows Nix and Athena into Disney’s “It’s a Small World” ride and is soon transported to, you guessed it, Tomorrowland. I don’t mean the theme park in Disneyland, but rather a gleaming, futuristic city in an alternate dimension. We learn later that a kind of supergroup of geniuses – Thomas Edison, Jules Verne, Gustave Eiffel, and Nicolai Tesla --  discovered this alternate dimension and decided to create a place dedicated to creativity and scientific advancement free from politics and greed, a kind of genius utopia.

Fast forward to the 21^st century where we meet another young genius, this time a teenage girl named Casey Newton. She’s smart, hopelessly optimistic, and only a little obnoxiously precious. She also encounters Athena, who is still the same lovely 12 year old girl Frank Walker was crushing on in 1964. Spoiler alert: Athena is a robot programmed to seek out dreamers and visionaries. She found Frank Walker in the 60s and now she’s found Casey Newton. Athena brings Casey to Frank who is now bitter and utterly cynical having been exiled from Tomorrowland years before. We learn that Tomorrowland didn’t work out, that all the optimism and hope fizzled, AND that our own world is within days of ending in apocalyptic disaster.  Casey, Frank, and Athena have to battle the now inexplicably evil David Nix for the fate of the future.

For someone with Bird’s track record, should be a glorious, sweeping, nerd heartwarmer that sends you out of the theater uplifted and inspired. Unfortunately, the film is like young Frank’s early jetpack – cool and ingenious in some ways, but ultimately doesn’t achieve the heights it intends. It is as though the filmmakers were so interested in paying tribute to so many sci fi eras and inside jokes that they forgot that the climax needed to make sense and that questions needed to be answered. The film references steampunk, 50s and 60s gee-whiz rocketships and rayguns, 80s and 90s comic book nostalgia and a hundred other things that will make the nerd in your life squeal with joy. But it doesn’t really cohere into more than the sum of its parts. It’s good but not great.

The movie got a sluggish start at the box office considering the amount of marketing that led up to its release. It’s not a failure by any means, but sadly, this personal labor of love for Bird doesn’t measure up to the greatness of his earlier work.

A Few Words About Sci Fi and Things to Come

I once read that there are really only two kinds of science fiction movies: gleaming tower and burning garbage can. Of course, it’s reductive to say that there’s only two kinds of any genre, but it’s an interesting idea. Gleaming tower sci fi envisions the future as a bright place. Cities are tall and sparkling. Everything is made out of polished steel, white concrete, and mirrored glass. People drive flying cars, wear snazzy futuristic jumpsuits, and joke with each other about buying that condo on Neptune. 

Burning garbage can sci fi sees a future in which things are bad. Some kind of apocalypse has happened and the few survivors left stand on the corners of overgrown streets warming their fingerless-gloved hands over a garbage can fire. People live in ruins and wear rags. Dental hygiene is bad and everyone talks about “the before times.” 

One version is hopeful and perhaps naïve while the other is pessimistic, sometimes punishingly so. I suppose science fiction futures are like any other future, whether it’s ten years from now or the thought of going into work on Monday – we simultaneously look forward to it and dread it at the same time.

Interestingly, one of the very first big screen sci fi movies ever made was both burning garbage can and gleaming tower. Things to Come was released in 1936 and was written by H.G. Wells himself, the author of The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, and The Invisible Man. The film takes place in the allegorically named Everytown, a bustling small city in England. It opens at Christmas in 1940 and everyone is talking about the imminent war looming in the near future. Some of the townspeople fear it while others dismiss it, saying war stimulates the economy and is good for national morale. Of course, any time a character says, “Oh it won’t be that bad” it’s usually way worse. And it is. War strikes Everytown in an unusually visceral air raid sequence in which the town in bombed to a smoking ruin.

From there, the movie follows the residents through the decades as the city devolves into a burning garbage can Dark Ages-style village with old cars being pulled by teams of horses and the person with the most guns in charge. But in true H.G. Wells fashion, science and technology ends up saving the day. A futuristic airplane suddenly lands in the village and the pilot tells the villagers that a brotherhood of engineers and mechanics has banded together to outlaw war and create a worldwide government.

 There’s some conflict but eventually science wins the day and there’s a long, elaborate montage depicting the creation of massive underground cities made of, you guessed it, gleaming towers, white walkways, and lots of glass. The film ends in far off 2036 with an Adam and Eve couple shooting into space to fly around the moon and a long, windy speech about the nature of man and the importance of scientific progress.

 I’m not going to lie – as a story, Things to Come is ponderous to say the least. The dialogue is all pompous speechifying and the message anti-war, pro-science message is about as subtle and artful as a baseball bat to the knees.

What makes Things to Come worth seeing, however, are its special effects. The use of ornate miniatures, clever camera work, and things like rear projection and superimposition make the more futuristic sequences excellent examples of early practical special effects. It’s even more impressive considering the film was released in 1936 which means it came out closer to the end of the Civil War than to 2015.

So if you saw Mad Max: Fury Road last week or are planning on seeing Tomorrowland this week, you might want to give Things to Come a try and see where all those gleaming towers and burning garbage cans came from.

Avengers: Age of Ultron

Writer/director Joss Whedon’s super power has always been his ability to take standard genre schlock and give it a sharp, bantery wit and real emotional heft. He takes characters and storylines you’ve seen a thousand times and makes them compelling and human. He did it with vampires and the supernatural with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He did it with the space opera and westerns in Firefly and Serenity. And, of course, he did it with superheroes in Marvel’s the Avengers. Part of the reason the movie made a billion and a half dollars worldwide is that audiences cared about the characters as much as the special effects. 

So the question is, could Whedon maintain both the wit and humanity he established in the first film with the inevitable bloat that happens with superhero sequels? First of all, think of sequels in general. Count how many of them that are as good as or better than the original. Now ask yourself what you’re going to do with all those extra fingers you didn’t need to count. Second, think about super hero sequels specifically. No matter how much money the first one makes, producers always seem to think the next one is going to be the last and so they need to stick in every villain, every jokey reference, and every plot twist they can. I’m thinking specifically of the Spiderman sequels that tried to jam in anywhere from two to four villains per movie and how those lumbering, overstuffed productions killed that franchise – twice. 

So in Avengers: Age of Ultron does Whedon pull off the balancing act between Hollywood bombast and the humor and humanity that are his trademark? 

Yeah, more or less.

In his zeal to protect the world, Tony Stark uses a new artificial intelligence program called Ultron to help his army of robot policemen/soldiers protect the world more effectively from the various cosmic dangers that are always looming in comic book movies. 

 Ultron evolves and decides that the best way to protect the world is to save it from the destructive, war-like humans that infest it. It’s sort of like HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey if HAL was a nine foot flying robot with James Spader’s venomous, sneering voice. Ultron builds himself a massive army of mini-me robots and does his best to eradicate the human race. Our friends the Avengers along with new characters the Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, and the Vision work to stop him.   So the movie does have a new villain and three extra heroes in addition to the original six from the first time around. The story spans the globe and actually features a bigger, more danger filled final battle than the alien invasion finale of the last one.

So the size and scope are definitely bigger this time, and yet amid all that, Whedon hasn’t forgotten one of the basic rules of good storytelling: in order for audiences to care about a character that character has to want something and want it bad. And there has to be an obstacle in the way. That’s the heart of any good story.

 What’s great about Avengers: Age of Ultron is that every character wants something, and despite the spandex and armor and god-like powers, those desires are powerfully human. Like anyone, the heroes want love, they want to trust and be trusted, they want forgiveness for their shortcomings. They want to help and not cause more damage than they prevent. Even the rage-filled, murderous robot villain of the title is driven by things that most people understand – jealousy, inadequacy, a desire for what seems to him to be a better world. Whedon’s characters want and they spent the movie negotiating those sometimes prickly, inconvenient desires while simultaneously trying to save the world. 

There’s plenty of fan-boy comic book awesomeness to go around, but the reason why this movie is more than just explosions, cool special effects, and one liners is that the characters are flawed, hungry humans first and heroes second. Joss Whedon and his super powers save the day again.