# The Tomorrow War (2021)



## ctg (Jul 2, 2021)

> In December 2022, biology teacher and Iraq War veteran, Dan Forester, fails to get a job at a research center. While watching the World Cup at a Christmas party, soldiers from the year 2051 arrive to warn that humanity is on the brink of extinction due to alien invaders: the Whitespikes. In response, members of the world's militaries are sent into the future, but fewer than 20% survive, initiating a world wide draft.



Note: This movie was originally meant to be released in the theatres as a Paramount Pictures product, but since the Covid-19 lockdown the release was decided to do on the Amazon Prime Platform


----------



## ctg (Jul 2, 2021)

I know it's a tall thing for me to class first class military SF, when there are so, so many in that same category but they are merely B-movies. To be honest there aren't that many good ones and certainly not the ones that are set in the near future. One example comes in my mind and that is the Edge of Tomorrow. 

When you get into it the setting is very similar, the Mary Hail attempt to win the war, one that we as humans are set to lose, because the aliens are so utterly devastating. Yet they die from bullets, so the physics works. But I'm not willing to put down the Hard SF stamp on this one as it's a bit fussy at the edges and some things has to be just let go, because of the narrative reasons.

Why? Well, personally I could have waged that war quite differently and therefore taken the narrative in completely opposite direction instead of letting things happen as they did.

The aliens are terrifying, and they are conjured from the nightmare, with some of them being quite original but in the other aspects, traditional. It's just even though they are kind of animals they show intelligence, structure and a bit of culture that is beyond the animals. Therefore they are aliens and not just alien animals and funny thing is, they also have a sort of language that we cannot decipherer. Although it comes clear when the aliens act intelligently. 

It is also noted several times throughout the movie that they are hungry and all the living things are considered as food. Except they only seem to feed on the flesh. 

In the terms of alien invasion it is a clever tactic. There's no doubt about it and supposedly their evolution chain ends with all living beings wiped out, with them being the only ones on the planet. The question is, then what? Maybe the real invaders wait another hundred years on top of the three mentioned in the movie for the last ones to die off. Or maybe they'll deploy their own weapon to get rid of the beasties. 

Whatever it is, it's not told. Therefore it's all about the invasion force and the last people on Earth, literally. Chriss Pratt does a wonderful job on playing a forty something ex SOF operator that still have his six pack abs and not a dad belly, even though the rest of the future soldiers are like everyday Jane and Joe. 

As her counterpart, Yvonne Strahovski does a wonderful part as acting ... a crucial part of the plot. In other words, she's a plot device, one that has armour until the end. One, where everyone dies. Unfortunately. 

No seconds. It was one way trip and when Chris comes back, he is haunted by what he'd learned and what he'd lost. It is almost as if he cannot fight his destiny of becoming a bitter one. One, who lost the war, by losing the mission. 

The ending and its twist are cleverly done and they feel as if the writers battled with the producers and the director, maybe even AMZ to get it done. As it has been recently the norm, everything is connected. The biggest twist is also the hardest SF fact, human life span is so small that we really don't think things in the celestial scale. 

If I would have to give this a score, I would give it 8/10. But it's not as good as the Alien.


----------



## REBerg (Jul 5, 2021)

The paradoxes inexorably raised by backward time jumps were handled simply and effectively here.


Spoiler



Forget about traveling to the past to solve problems in the present. Instead, jump to the future to research the situation, then return to the present to resolve the problem.


In addition to avoiding time travel pitfalls, this film is packed with action and quality special effects.


----------



## ctg (Jul 5, 2021)

REBerg said:


> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> Instead, jump to the future to research the situation, then return to the present to resolve the problem.





Spoiler



Why is it that they couldn't find the spot sooner? We have mapped and then refined and mapped again magnetic anomalies. The whole thing with the ship was so unbelievable, but in the narrative terms it made sense, until they somehow piled ice in Russian valley as if there was a second ice-age. Permafrost doesn't work that way. 

But as a method for survival, I think it's plausible. Look into the future, see the problem and fix it at present day before the problem ever occurs. It's just are we then splitting the time-lines and creating parallel time-lines? How would we even confirm that?


----------



## Mon0Zer0 (Jul 5, 2021)

I enjoyed Tomorrow War far more than I thought I would. As a dual allegory for climate change and the effect of war on soldiers, I thought it was quite successful. 

Narratively it's like three movies in one, and they don't always sit well together. Of the three sections I thought the first part was most successful. The second less so as it relied on Pratt to have more acting chops than he actually has. The final seemed to descend into action schlock and the final fate of the aliens made me burst out laughing. But it was never boring.


----------



## ctg (Jul 5, 2021)

Mon0Zer0 said:


> The final seemed to descend into action schlock and the final fate of the aliens made me burst out laughing. But it was never boring.



That is true. It was never boring and like with the Edge of Tomorrow I can watch it again, and possibly find new things. But frankly, what you said about the it feeling like a trilogy I was thinking that they're definitely going to write another one, because this cannot be the end. There has to be something more even if this chapter was closed. 

In the Independence Day saga they reached out further and developed that narrative, which could serve as a premise for a repeat in the second, but in the same time they'll have a chance to alter the picture and provide a twist or three in the narrative.

But I doubt that there is going to be second even though the Edge of Tomorrow is getting continuation. To be honest, it's up to the Paramount if they want to expand the IP.


----------



## Danny McG (Jul 5, 2021)

This idea of recruiting soldiers to fight in a future war puts me in mind of an old(ish) sci Fi book.
They set up recruiting stations in various cities throughout history and the soldiers end up in a future war.
Was it by Van Vogt maybe?
Anybody know what I'm waffling on about?


----------



## ctg (Jul 5, 2021)

Danny McG said:


> They set up recruiting stations in various cities throughout history and the soldiers end up in a future war.



You mean the classic Old Man's War?


----------



## ctg (Jul 5, 2021)

The Old Man war premise is the same. Future war that needs to be won, and the people they recruit are old like in this movie, except in the Old Man's War they get new bodies, new lives to fight those 'future wars.' In the terms on production, it's going to be more expensive than this one and in the same time, more complicated to produce, but with what have now it's possible, if the Hollywood sees fit to invest money into it.


----------



## Danny McG (Jul 5, 2021)

ctg said:


> You mean the classic Old Man's War?


Nah
That's old guys getting augmented green bodies.
The one I'm thinking of they recruit and train and then time portal to a major warzone....a bit like *these* *savage futurians* in ferocity - the enemy recruits by kidnap and brainwash....a bit like in *a plague of* *demons*


----------



## ctg (Jul 5, 2021)

Danny McG said:


> The one I'm thinking of they recruit and train and then time portal to a major warzone....a bit like *these* *savage futurians* in ferocity - the enemy recruits by kidnap and brainwash....a bit like in *a plague of* *demons*



I am coming empty, but it feels like something that would have hit the Mil SF audience big style.


----------



## Toby Frost (Jul 5, 2021)

Ah, no, that was something else I was thinking of.


----------



## ctg (Jul 5, 2021)

@Danny McG

Is it this one?



Spoiler


----------



## tde44 (Jul 5, 2021)

I don't mind giving a bit of leeway to sci fi or fantasy but for me there was just a lot of problems with this movie.



Spoiler: premise problems I have with this movie.



Sending soldiers into the future with only a few days of training?

Equipping soldiers with inadequate firepower even though they knew the enemy - most of the rifles/carbines seen/carried by the soliders were not very powerful calibers...there are many more powerful rounds available to the military today let alone those used for hunting.

Having a bio weapon that works against the males but waiting to deploy it until they can get the females we well? Since it appeared most of the killing/protection of the aliens was done by the males why wouldn't you at least diminish their numbers first?


----------



## ctg (Jul 5, 2021)

tde44 said:


> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> Sending soldiers into the future with only a few days of training?





Spoiler



Not all of them, but yeah, you're pressing the right issue. The whole "we are not telling you because you wouldn't want to deploy," felt fabricated. I think if they would have used the media to recruit volunteers in a style shown in the StarShip Troopers it would have been more effective. But they didn't and they reflected our own culture of "need to know" information. 

It was kind of explained by sending only "dead" people into the future. But the thing is, the people came from already bad situation and there was no way of making it better, except that they still had access to the main military technology and it was effective against the invaders.

That's why I said I would have written it differently. 



tde44 said:


> Having a bio weapon that works against the males but waiting to deploy it until they can get the females we well? Since it appeared most of the killing/protection of the aliens was done by the males why wouldn't you at least diminish their numbers first?



The truth is that they didn't had a method to disperse that bioweapon. It was not going to be effective against the whole global population and some of them might had developed resistances. In the same time, they didn't really had time to study the alien evolution and how it would adapt to the situation, where a major part of their population suffers a great number of casualties. Would the females produce something that can overcome the weaponised effects? 

I know that there are huge holes, but in the narrative structure it works and the end result wasn't an apocalypse.


----------



## Dave (Jul 5, 2021)

Spoiler






ctg said:


> ...if they would have used the media to recruit volunteers in a style shown in the StarShip Troopers it would have been more effective.





ctg said:


> ...It was kind of explained by sending only "dead" people into the future. But the thing is, the people came from already bad situation and there was no way of making it better, except that they still had access to the main military technology and it was effective against the invaders.





I haven't seen this yet, something I'll have to rectify, but I have read/watched a great deal of time travel related stories. You say that this is realistic but given the amount of conspiracy theories believed or held in the world today, I don't know if either the original premise or those suggestions would work. I can't be political here, but look at the public reaction to certain present political, environmental and immunological crises. How bad does something need to get before it is acknowledged as a problem? And how much worse again before any action is taken to ameliorate? 

If a bunch of soldiers turned up and said, "In the future you are all going to die! Come with me if you want to live!" I think 50% of the population would say that it was fake and look for the secret camera. Among the other 50% there would be a majority who would demand extra "proof," and a large number that would say we are in a different timeline and it will never happen to us. Then there are those who would say that it must be God's will, and to bring it on. By the time committees of politicians have discussed it, then it will already be too late.


----------



## ctg (Jul 5, 2021)

Dave said:


> If a bunch of soldiers turned up and said, "In the future you are all going to die! Come with me if you want to live!" I think 50% of the population would say that it was fake and look for the secret camera. Among the other 50% there would be a majority who would demand extra "proof," and a large number that would say we are in a different timeline and it will never happen to us. Then there are those who would say that it must be God's will, and to bring it on. By the time committees of politicians have discussed it, then it will already be too late.



They solved that problem by having a global draft. Not just Americans and it was addressed as a global problem. And when you went in, they probed your future and therefore they only sent so called dead people. But there also lies the timey-wimey problem, because they didn't probe the whole life beforehand and found out if the the person was important or not.

But in the terms of time-travel I think that the life-draft solution is plausible, maybe even doable, but we haven't seen the event in the real-life. I also wouldn't classify this as a TT movie, even if there is time-travel involved. It just doesn't get into it to be a major factor. It's more of an event that acts as a plot device.


----------



## Dave (Jul 5, 2021)

Firstly, you're right, it did pretty much cover everything that I said at some point, so I can't complain about that.

One little nit pick: In 2022, they say that arrival of people from the future causes a stir among world leaders. Among the picture montage, you see one of Teresa May. Teresa May? Does she have a future as a world leader? Anyway, you said the film has been in production for a number of years so I guess they missed that.


ctg said:


> As it has been recently the norm, everything is connected.


I saw that by the end, but all of that character building with the daughter and the grandfather seemed unnecessary at the beginning, with so little plot, and only a drip-feeding about the alien threat. There was a lot of exposition, especially at the start. Too much exposition maybe without some story to hang it on. Actually, it felt like a First-Person-Shooter game and I wondered if it was originally meant to be a game? That or the director comes from a game developing background? Or, maybe they thought that this kind of structure would be liked by the game-playing audience and would attract them. 

To me, being an old-fashioned book and film person the structure felt odd. There were definite stages throughout the film that could be levels in a game. 



Spoiler



At the beginning, after the exposition, there was the get the vaccines part, then the escape the building and get to the jump point avoiding the red smoke. At each level you learnt something more about the aliens. I actually thought to myself, 'if these aliens are armoured why don't they fire at vulnerable parts like the eyes,' at which point someone comes up and explains that you need to shoot at the neck and belly, just as would happen in a game.



I didn't dislike it though:-

The way the Colonel and her identity was introduced was very well done.


REBerg said:


> In addition to avoiding time travel pitfalls, this film is packed with action and quality special effects.


Yes, and of a very good quality. I couldn't see the CGI joins. 


Mon0Zer0 said:


> As a dual allegory for climate change and the effect of war on soldiers, I thought it was quite successful.


Yes, I saw both those themes, and it wasn't done heavy-handedly either.


tde44 said:


> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> ...


That was explained though. It wasn't the plan to send them without training and the best troops and firepower had already been lost. They were losing the war both in 2022 and in 2052. They had only three weeks left. It was a desperate last attempt to get a working toxin, that was all.


Mon0Zer0 said:


> The final seemed to descend into action schlock and the final fate of the aliens made me burst out laughing. But it was never boring.


Yes, it all changed in the last half-hour and it could have been any bombastic action movie, probably starring Bruce Willis, and with a team that disobey orders, or take matters into their own hands in order to save the world. 

It also had a little original _Alien_ thrown in there for good measure. However, the idea that the Whitespikes were planet clearers for the dead pilot aliens was raised and then rejected almost as quickly.

I did also wonder why they hadn't come better prepared with guns that could fire needles containing the toxin.



ctg said:


> I doubt that there is going to be second even though the Edge of Tomorrow is getting continuation. To be honest, it's up to the Paramount if they want to expand the IP.


Do you think they would continue the time travel element? Or continue in some other way?



Spoiler



Because they've made the Whitespikes low-intelligence canon fodder it would need to be the spacecraft pilot aliens who returned. But they've been around for 1,000 years already, so one would have to ask why now. The global warming aspect was a great idea for a premise in this film.





ctg said:


> Is it this one?


Danny is thinking of a book. I haven't read it but think I've heard of it. However, _The Old Guard_ was a very good but under-rated film. There aren't enough films that consider the ethical consequences of immortality. _Highlander_ didn't cover it well.


----------



## ctg (Jul 5, 2021)

Spoiler






Dave said:


> I actually thought to myself, 'if these aliens are armoured why don't they fire at vulnerable parts like the eyes,' at which point someone comes up and explains that you need to shoot at the neck and belly, just as would happen in a game.



It would be super, super difficult to get the eye shot when an alien attack dog is coming at you, full speed. Even at the distance, the belly and neck are more doable. Eye, mouth and other vulnerable spots are so difficult to hit, especially when you're about to soil yourself ... for second time. 

But I get what you're saying, the action was a bit on the usual tropes side, rather than them pushing the envelope as they did in the Edge of Tomorrow. Personally I would have written long, more complicated fight scenes and in places it felt that they had more material but it had ended in the cutting room floor. 

However, I did like that they didn't all act soldier like, but more so like a normal people in a desperate situation. They showed that they could fight for their lives, but not do much else. The stair scene was a perfect example of that and I loved how that black dude went absolutely mental and couldn't hold his mouth shut.  




Dave said:


> Do you think they would continue the time travel element? Or continue in some other way?



Some other way, but still the enemies would be superior, meaning that it would be a Tomorrow War but it wouldn't have the time-travelling element, unless they'd need to build it to do the warning again. I personally though that either the fleet would come back after detecting a strange signal coming from the wrecked ship or the opponent, who shot the ship would come to investigate. There is even a possibility that it wasn't the only ship.

Regardless what it would be, it would be us vs the superior enemy.  Maybe the most SF twist would be to make a first contact after the event closed down and they would integrate themselves to society to launch the scheme again. This time with them watching from the orbit and we knowing them being there. 

Third movie twist would be then them vs some other superior opponent while we are on our knees. But all of that also sounds like something that has been done before. It's up to them if they want to make it more complicated or stay on the trusted-and-tested plan.

If they would want the TT element, then the second movie would have to show us building the TT device or having it ready for just in case. Nobody hasn't done Time-Travelling Alien Invasion movie.


----------



## J Riff (Jul 6, 2021)

maybe The Forever WAr, by J. Haldeman ? 
'Realistic' time travel stories merely avoid blatant paradoxes, they are never actually believable. I find it hard to believe this movie is any different than others, but can't find it yet.


----------



## J Riff (Jul 8, 2021)

_Total Spoilage >>>> alert_******* stop reading if yer gonna watch it.  >>>>>>>>>>>> ok, this thing is flat as a pancake, but has every action cliche imaginable innit! The little girl... is gonna figure out how to destroy the aliens, and dad and grandpa are gonna do the killin', thats obvious right away. The time paradoxes or 'timelines' are left hanging by ending the movie with the drawn-out bloodbath killing of the last alien, ending with a lot of bullets, then punches and kicks.... . The ETs are typical nasty tentacled reptilians ya gotta shoot a whole lot of times to kill...uhh, in the future... where humans have invented time travel but nothing resembling, say, a laser that could just cut them down like wheat. The visuals borrow heavily from _The Thing, Alien, The Great Wall_, and other staples. So does the plot. The obvious 'time' trick is gonna be '_it never happened'_ ..since the ETS have already killed most human life in the future.. .so that's wot transpires and it ends just poof. It's an action shoot-em up starting with 'whitespikes' appearing at around forty min. in... and feels like a high budget TV movie takeoff on 'science fiction' movies of the eighties. Zero tension here, despite all the action and dramatic dad-daughter-in-the-future scenes. You gots the 'crash landed' spaceship frozen in the ice for thousands years... with the bad ETs as cargo... you got people with popguns blasting away at huge slavering beasties while cracking lame jokes, and a small team of heroes who go into to save the world at the end.... and of course yer genius high school kid who figures it all out for them, and a happy ending. Absolutely no mention of who why or what the ETs in the ship might be... or how they survived thousands years frozen, or what the timetravel tech is...etc.  Worth a look for the visuals.


----------



## ctg (Jul 8, 2021)

J Riff said:


> Absolutely no mention of who why or what the ETs in the ship might be... or how they survived thousands years frozen, or what the timetravel tech is...etc.



How would you have fit in that info?


----------



## ctg (Jul 8, 2021)

I know that the people want more and maybe they even see bigger things in the Military SF than what I do. However, we have to remember that at lot of time is going to be spend in the action and it's not just a couple of scenes. 

The Tomorrow War can never been as good in SF as for example Arrival or Contact. There is no time for a philosophical conversation, no time to construct some SF thing when a lot of that time is devoted to pure action. Even if you compare it to the original Terminator, the concept is the same and at the heart it's not pure Science Fiction. 

In the action terms I could have approached Extraction and kept the whole thing relentless from the very beginning to the end. But it didn't as it allowed us time to know the characters and even give them some growth. What we don't know is what ended in the cutting room floor, because there are great many scenes where it feels that they shot more, but it wasn't good enough to put in or it would have cocked up the pacing. 

Overall I liked it and I figured out that the topic is riling people. So if the mods want, please alter the title so that it'll only shows the name.


----------



## Dave (Jul 8, 2021)

I'll change name to remove "First Class Military SF in Near Future" though that's your view and you are entitled to it as the thread starter. Personally, I would expect a "First Class Military SF" to be something more gritty like a Vietnam or Afghanistan war movie, _but with aliens_. This is much too light-hearted. As I said it was more like _Deep Impact_ or _Armageddon Day_ or _Die Hard_ with aliens, or maybe _Independence Day_. It wasn't _Hurt Locker_ or _Hamburger Hill_ or _Full Metal Jacket_.

As for explaining Time Travel:
 - I think time travel to the past is always going to be fantasy - so it will never be hard SF, and not trying to explain it with some kind of technobabble is fine with me.
- I can see how time travel to the future might be possible - both in relativistic ways and possibly others - but never back again.

As for explaining the aliens on the ship being alive:
 - the Whitespikes were obviously in some kind of chrysalis state or suspended animation or cryogenic "pods" - I didn't need further explanation. I did think that studying this in case they came again, there is a second ship, etc. might have been a good idea, but they were under attack so couldn't.
 - the crew/pilot alien corpses should have decomposed more in 1000 years, even in a spacecraft under the ice. Is there any explanation possible or was it just ignored to help the narrative?


----------



## ctg (Jul 8, 2021)

Dave said:


> he crew/pilot alien corpses should have decomposed more in 1000 years, even in a spacecraft under the ice. Is there any explanation possible or was it just ignored to help the narrative?



Icemammoths, icemen and so on. Those are organic matter that has preserved itself for a long time in a permanent freeze. Thaw them and they'll start to rot. But recently there was that news piece about the 14 000 year old single cell organism that sprung back to life when they thawed it. 

The whole explanation action would be cutting away from the action time. To be frank and I thought about this when I made my original review is that I could have talked about the missing bits and their importance. Thing is we have had so many TT's and alien invasions that repeating lines and concepts becomes meaningless. 

The Continuum never really did explain how they did travel in time, but it was established that in the far future things weren't good and they need to intervene in the past in order to set the future right. That is the very basic TT plot in so many series and films, even in the books. 

I wrote my TT plot different and I wrote it in the multiverse perspective, where one world showed the other that they were in much worse place than the prime world. And that the Traveller wanted to set it right, to help this alternative world to become a better place. 

Even though I haven't published the last part Danny can say the same thing as he copy-edited it at the end, and I haven't had the money to do the cover. But in the heart of all that story is Mil SF and TT, and personally I don't consider it as a first class as its so complicated and if it would be ever filmed they would have to cut something of things out, because it wouldn't serve purpose in the film narrative. 

Maybe Paramount will do a directors cut of this and release it fuller, even if it kills the pacing. I think this movie deserves to be made better, because it has that potential, but it was never realised.


----------



## REBerg (Jul 8, 2021)

Dave said:


> As for explaining Time Travel:
> - I think time travel to the past is always going to be fantasy - so it will never be hard SF, and not trying to explain it with some kind of technobabble is fine with me.
> - I can see how time travel to the future might be possible - both in relativistic ways and possibly others - but never back again.


How about forward as far as you need to go (for story purposes), but back no farther than your point of origin?


----------



## Dave (Jul 8, 2021)

ctg said:


> Icemammoths, icemen and so on.


If was that cold inside the spacecraft then why didn't our heroes freeze? It didn't seem that cold to me. Maybe it was the "warm" glow from the "pods" but it appeared warmer than outside. Wouldn't the "pods" be frozen solid too?



REBerg said:


> How about forward as far as you need to go (for story purposes), but back no farther than your point of origin?


Anything is possible with some future tech that seems like magic but I don't see how you can return to something that has past. It has already happened. You could go into an alternative reality as @ctg just mentioned in his post, but that is not your own past, it is a different past. Anyway, all this is discussed at length in other threads here and is totally hypothetical. Good to discuss, but stupid to argue over.

As for travelling to the future, special relativity says that is possible. There have also been experiments where time for some particles was slowed down in relation to time for some other particles so that when they were put together again, one set were older. However, doing that in practise for a human or reaching relativistic velocities in a spacecraft are not possible, so it is all science fiction.


----------



## ctg (Jul 8, 2021)

Dave said:


> If was that cold inside the spacecraft then why didn't our heroes freeze? It didn't seem that cold to me. Maybe it was the "warm" glow from the "pods" but it appeared warmer than outside. Wouldn't the "pods" be frozen solid too?



I don't think it was ever that cold in the ship. The pilot definitely died from it and the freeze prevented him from rotting, but they didn't show the ship long enough for us to have a good gander. All of the insides looked like a soundstage props and they were super clean unlike the one in the Aliens. Five thousand years and time will do tricks. 

Why the freeze had not destroyed the cargopods? Why it had not spread further if the hull had been pierced? Science would say that there would be loads of ice inside the ship and it would be freezing. But it would also tell that in Siberia it wouldn't be that thick. It wouldn't be a glacier. 

By the definition it's frozen subsoil and that is what they searched. The prediction of the melt phase. And that ship should have been laying in the impact crater.


----------



## ctg (Jul 8, 2021)

Another interesting thing about the ship and the Authoritatives narrative was to hide it in the secrecy. They didn't tell the public what was really happening in the future, because reasons. And they honestly lied about the incident at the end. Does that sound familiar to anyone?


----------



## ctg (Jul 9, 2021)

> I understand discussions are in place to bring the whole creative gang back both in front of and behind the camera including director Chris McKay and screenwriter Zach Dean; and stars Pratt, Yvonne Strahovski, Betty Gilpin, Sam Richardson, Edwin Hodge and Oscar winner J.K. Simmons. Paramount is also involved in the sequel; the studio originally attached to distribute the first film theatrically.











						‘The Tomorrow War 2’: Amazon & Skydance Already In Talks For Sequel Reteaming With Chris Pratt, Director Chris McKay & More
					

EXCLUSIVE:  In response to this past weekend’s hugely successful global streaming debut of The Tomorrow War, Skydance and Amazon Studios are in discussions, I hear, on the development of a sequel t…




					deadline.com


----------



## Parson (Jul 12, 2021)

I wasn't overly impressed. But if you are just looking for a movie with lots of action, with little reflection and which is heavy on SF tropes, you might enjoy this one. --- If they hadn't explained how apex predators with no technology had managed to arrive on earth from the stars, like they did at the end (yes I know there are some problems with the explanation) I would have really been down on this movie.


----------



## .matthew. (Jul 12, 2021)

Watched it the other night and it kept my interest. It wasn't a great movie and lots of really dumb stuff...

They only draft people a week in advance. Why not draft millions and train a proper army?
Why only send soldiers in for a week? They didn't explain it sciency-wiencily.
They gave them low calibre weapons that did nothing to the aliens. High calibre and underslung grenade/shotguns?
They can send anything back that would fit in the big staging areas. Why not send tanks that would be basically indestructible?
What went wrong with their deployment? Just plot makes them fall from high up.
Why is the entire world economy not on a war footing? They should be making munitions like mad.
Why isn't the plan to just stockpile and prepare for the invasion in advance?
Those gunships that just hover super close to the aliens. They can't shoot from further away and be safe?
The aliens run, climb walls, glide, swim really fast, and can apparently just hack through steel??? Pick one!
Why have a bombing run on the city but not have proper air support when they go to capture the queen?
Why ignore the theory the aliens were in Siberia? Pretty sure sending a handful of soldiers wouldn't pose a problem.
With all that said, it was entertaining. Not a movie I'd put in a top 100 list though, probably not even top 1000.


----------



## Vince W (Jul 13, 2021)

After planting my mind in neutral I was able to get through it. Dozing off for a while helped.


----------



## Parson (Jul 13, 2021)

We are a tough bunch! It's actually playing very well. It's been streamed millions of times. --- However we are  just about exactly where the critics were ..... "Not so bad, but certainly not great."


----------



## ctg (Jul 13, 2021)

.matthew. said:


> They gave them low calibre weapons that did nothing to the aliens. High calibre and underslung grenade/shotguns?



Everyone was allowed to bring their own guns and ammo, because reasons. I'm also pretty certain that we would have kitted differently, but it's just how much weight you'd want to carry around when the aliens were so mobile? There are holes throughout the movie, but a lot of them are explained away in the narrative. It's just a lot of us are looking at this with Hard SF glasses firmly on and don't allow things to settle as the whole situation is so alien to us.

Do we really know how we would act in a same situation?


.matthew. said:


> Why is the entire world economy not on a war footing? They should be making munitions like mad.



Because doing it in the past could affect the situation in the future. If you think this in TT terms, they would have branched a new timeline and most probably they did through this intervention. In some timeline the aliens won and we did everything we could to stop them. But that is not addressed because everyone in the future is dead and they did a hard reset in the present day.

So, essentially everything is back to normal, but there is going to be a follow up movie.



.matthew. said:


> Why isn't the plan to just stockpile and prepare for the invasion in advance?



They did, but the explanation isn't long enough. They did everything they could but they couldn't find anything. No ship, nothing until it was too late and then it was really too late. What we don't know is where they got the science and engineering plans for the TT device?



.matthew. said:


> Why have a bombing run on the city but not have proper air support when they go to capture the queen?



Think this in writing terms and in the terms that you'll have to provide the threat and match it up with the tension. In the numbers wise they probably were using all the pilots they could have their hands on to do a shortie in Miami and they still probably had to support other places as well.

I think the film fails to explain all the fronts and how much action were happening around the globe. All we could see is that they were willing to risk their equipment to get things done. All the helicopters, cars etc could be sacrificed.

So, in that sense both the direction and the writing fails, as they give us situations with shiny machines and not with beaten up, shredded vehicles with people doing Hail Mary actions. In the Terminator they showed people in a real desperate situation, where in this one they were all shampooed and had a makeup, while riding shiny vehicles.


----------



## .matthew. (Jul 13, 2021)

ctg said:


> Everyone was allowed to bring their own guns and ammo, because reasons. I'm also pretty certain that we would have kitted differently, but it's just how much weight you'd want to carry around when the aliens were so mobile? There are holes throughout the movie, but a lot of them are explained away in the narrative. It's just a lot of us are looking at this with Hard SF glasses firmly on and don't allow things to settle as the whole situation is so alien to us.
> 
> Do we really know how we would act in a same situation?


We could look to WW2 where basic training was shortened - to 35 weeks. Not 1 week. It was brutal training to make them physically strong and know how to shoot and work as a team. This would be even more important if they'd already sent the trained military men that they could and they'd all died.

Plus, more effective weapons to use would increase the odds of survival. Ever played a wave defence game? You don't try to outrun the fast enemy, you make a wall of lead and rain down hell.



ctg said:


> In some timeline the aliens won and we did everything we could to stop them. But that is not addressed because everyone in the future is dead and they did a hard reset in the present day.


It sounded to me like they came from nowhere and overwhelmed a disunited planet, breeding quickly etc. In this timeline, though we would know they came from Russia and could have had the world's forces ready to concentrate on the first 'outbreaks' as and when they came up rather than dealing with the hundreds of scattered hives.



ctg said:


> What we don't know is where they got the science and engineering plans for the TT device?


Very good point that I missed. They did sort of imply they designed it and if it wasn't an emergency they'd still be using rats though, so I'll give them a pass on that one.



ctg said:


> I think the film fails to explain all the fronts and how much action were happening around the globe. All we could see is that they were willing to risk their equipment to get things done. All the helicopters, cars etc could be sacrificed.


True, but that final mission to capture the queen was seen as their last chance so surely they'd send everything they could  I mean they sent like half a dozen people down the hole...

But yea, as an action movie it wasn't too bad, but it was certainly no Terminator la first


----------



## ctg (Jul 13, 2021)

.matthew. said:


> Plus, more effective weapons to use would increase the odds of survival. Ever played a wave defence game? You don't try to outrun the fast enemy, you make a wall of lead and rain down hell.



I know what you mean and the movie comparison to that is the StarShip Troopers. In the games that is an effective tactic, but things can get overrun and with these beasties, taking multiple rounds, chewing off their own limps and still putting on the warfaces that is something that can break man's mind. Cause terror.

These aliens were terrifying. When they showed the half sunken carrier, I though what could have taken down a fleet, but then they showed the horde taking down the sea fort and at that point things got very iffy, in writing and directional point-of-view. 

When you compare WhiteClaws against the Xenomorph Alien, these are more terrifying as there's literally nothing you can do to stop them. Nuking might have helped, but it would've also caused irreversible damage. It's just I think that by knowing that they'd been frozen, maybe the Nuclear Winter would have worked for our advantage. 

The rebuilding afterwards would be a bi... a super tough thing to do. 

In the terms of the second movie, the ship, the bodies and the science has to play bigger role. And if they go with the TT, either they need to explain it, or make it an event. But they could also play the invasion card, and make the next one more like an ID4 that we needed. Not the one we got.


----------



## .matthew. (Jul 13, 2021)

ctg said:


> When you compare WhiteClaws against the Xenomorph Alien, these are more terrifying as there's literally nothing you can do to stop them. Nuking might have helped, but it would've also caused irreversible damage. It's just I think that by knowing that they'd been frozen, maybe the Nuclear Winter would have worked for our advantage.


What about Xenomorphs made from WhiteClaws!

I didn't consider nuking, but that would actually be a viable strategy in Siberia as they show themselves. Remember that with forward planning they could have set up hundreds or thousands of watchtower type things to spot them the moment they appeared. After that, boom goes the nuke. 

And I'm fairly sure we've tested thousands of nuclear weapons (at least 500 in the atmosphere) so a few more wouldn't hurt


----------



## Parson (Jul 13, 2021)

I'd bet the sequel only deals with time travel in the general sense. A new timeline has been created, and this time a few of the Spikes have escaped (less likely), there was another wrecked ship (more likely), or in the life time of the main characters another ship shows  up and the battle has to be fought again, and this time the ship builders are involved (most likely).


----------



## BAYLOR (Jul 20, 2021)

J Riff said:


> _Total Spoilage >>>> alert_******* stop reading if yer gonna watch it.  >>>>>>>>>>>> ok, this thing is flat as a pancake, but has every action cliche imaginable innit! The little girl... is gonna figure out how to destroy the aliens, and dad and grandpa are gonna do the killin', thats obvious right away. The time paradoxes or 'timelines' are left hanging by ending the movie with the drawn-out bloodbath killing of the last alien, ending with a lot of bullets, then punches and kicks.... . The ETs are typical nasty tentacled reptilians ya gotta shoot a whole lot of times to kill...uhh, in the future... where humans have invented time travel but nothing resembling, say, a laser that could just cut them down like wheat. The visuals borrow heavily from _The Thing, Alien, The Great Wall_, and other staples. So does the plot. The obvious 'time' trick is gonna be '_it never happened'_ ..since the ETS have already killed most human life in the future.. .so that's wot transpires and it ends just poof. It's an action shoot-em up starting with 'whitespikes' appearing at around forty min. in... and feels like a high budget TV movie takeoff on 'science fiction' movies of the eighties. Zero tension here, despite all the action and dramatic dad-daughter-in-the-future scenes. You gots the 'crash landed' spaceship frozen in the ice for thousands years... with the bad ETs as cargo... you got people with popguns blasting away at huge slavering beasties while cracking lame jokes, and a small team of heroes who go into to save the world at the end.... and of course yer genius high school kid who figures it all out for them, and a happy ending. Absolutely no mention of who why or what the ETs in the ship might be... or how they survived thousands years frozen, or what the timetravel tech is...etc.  Worth a look for the visuals.



It sounds a film jam packed with warmed over Science fiction cliches.


----------



## Dave (Jul 20, 2021)

BAYLOR said:


> It sounds a film jam packed with warmed over Science fiction cliches.


Very difficult to come up with a new idea that has never been done before. Most films and books build upon ideas from previous films and books. Doesn't everything do that, whether it's creative like a song, or architecture or science? I think what makes a good film is the way it is all put together - _Star Wars_ (the original film) is "a film jam packed with warmed over science fiction clichés" too, but woven into a cloth so well that it looked like a new suit. I thought the most interesting thing about this film was the way the story was told - as I said already, it felt like a first person shooter game - and while I found that initially quite odd, it made it different, and it made it new.


----------



## Rodders (Jul 20, 2021)

There's nothing wrong with cliché.


----------



## Rodders (Sep 8, 2021)

I saw this today and Netflix threw money at it, didn't they. It had a great cast and great special effects and i enjoyed it, but i don't think i'll watch it again. 

I don't know, i think found it to be a little silly. All i could think of throughout the movie is why don't you just go to where the outbreak is? I also thought that they were aliens was a bit of a let down in the plot.


----------



## BAYLOR (Sep 10, 2021)

Rodders said:


> There's nothing wrong with cliché.



A well done cliche is acceptable.


----------

