The befuddled look on Chris Pratt's face in the opening shot of The Tomorrow War is an accurate reflection of how viewers may feel while watching the Chris McKay-directed sci-fi action film. While there's the seed of a strong idea in Zach Dean's screenplay, The Tomorrow War almost immediately botches the execution and is largely incoherent. Overall, its plot holes and logical inconsistencies take over the course of its bloated 140-minute running time.
The shaky narrative would be less distracting if the characters were more interesting, but Pratt's Dan Forester is the least convincing high school science teacher since Mark Wahlberg in The Happening. Dan is a military veteran who dreams of creating scientific breakthroughs, but he can't land a job in the private sector. All of Dan's mundane concerns become somewhat irrelevant when, in December 2022, a portal opens in the middle of a World Cup soccer game bringing soldiers from the year 2051 into the present. They announce that in their time, humanity is on the verge of being wiped out by aliens known as "white spikes."
With the future human population of Earth at just 500,000, there aren't enough people left to fight the aliens; so, these emissaries from the future have arrived to recruit humans from the past as infantry in their war. Improbably, all of the governments of the world immediately agree to create a global draft to send present-day people to die fighting aliens. No one questions or investigates the time travelers' claims and the institution of worldwide military conscription is established in a single line of dialogue from a TV news anchor.
It seems like a poor strategy for fighting the war and there's nothing in the plot to indicate that sending thousands of unprepared people through time to fight an unknown threat is effective. When the movie cuts to a year after the time travelers arrive, the present-day world is gripped with despair. People are still steadily being drafted, even though only 30 percent of them survive the weeklong tour of duty in the future and the ones who return are often horrifically maimed and suffering from PTSD. Despite all this sacrifice, the war against the aliens is worse than before and the people of the future are closer to being wiped out.
Enter Dan. "I am meant to do something special with my life," he says to his wife after failing his latest job application, just before the time travelers arrive. He's played by Pratt, so of course, the outcome of the war will somehow hinge on this schoolteacher and failed scientist. Dan is drafted and sent to the future, but while his fellow soldiers have to spend their entire tours running for their lives from the deadly white spikes (despite receiving essentially no preparation), Dan is whisked away to the military's command center.
There, he teams up with Col. Muri Forester (Yvonne Strahovski), who is the adult version of the daughter that Dan left behind in the past. Muri is working on a toxin that would kill off the white spikes once and for all and Dan's job appears to be to sit next to her and encourage her. Like the time travel aspect in the film, Muri's toxin is another sci-fi high concept that makes no logical sense within the context of the movie if you consider it for more than a few seconds.
The entire third act, which takes place in the present and involves Dan teaming up with his conspiracy theorist father (J.K. Simmons) and two veterans of the future war -- a timid scientist played by Sam Richardson and a hardened badass played by Edwin Hodge --, renders the previous missions irrelevant. It presents a solution that should have been obvious from the start. The fact that it's taken nearly two hours to see this is especially infuriating, no matter how many somber speeches the characters give about the value of sacrifice and solidarity.
In the middle, there's a bunch of loud, chaotic action as Dan and his teammates fight against the white spikes, which are sort of creepy but mostly just look like every other dangerous alien from a sci-fi thriller in the past 30 years. As he did in the Jurassic World movies, Pratt conveys seriousness mainly by squinting a lot, and he lacks the swagger and sense of playfulness that make him an appealing action hero in the Guardians of the Galaxy movies.
McKay previously displayed a self-aware sense of humor about action-movie conventions when he directed The Lego Batman Movie, but his work here is anonymous and flat. Most of the comic relief falls to Richardson, who is amusingly nervous but mostly seems out of place.
Strahovski is better at playing the steely warrior than Pratt, but she and Pratt never establish any believable father-daughter chemistry. The Tomorrow War contorts its plot to an absurd degree, turning a story about aliens annihilating humanity into a family drama -- drawing in Simmons as Dan's distant father and Betty Gilpin as Dan's blandly patient wife to increase emotional stakes. "I'm not a hero. I'm just trying to save my daughter," says Dan, even as he's the only person to see the obvious way to save humanity and end the unwieldy movie.
Starring Chris Pratt, Yvonne Strahovski, Sam Richardson, Betty Gilpin, J.K. Simmons and Edwin Hodge, The Tomorrow War premieres Friday, July 2 on Amazon Prime.