I was expecting a lot more from Tomorrowland. Brad Bird has been involved in so many good movies in the past, all of which have had fantastical or futuristic elements. Damon Lindelof gave us an amazing first season of Lost (though it was downhill from there as the layers were peeled away). George Clooney is an A-lister who is super reliable and who usually picks his projects well. All the parts seemed to be here for a great movie, or at the very least an interesting one.
But instead of being something memorable, Tomorrowland is entirely forgettable. I really don’t understand how things went so wrong but for a movie about possibilities, there was a distinct lack of imagination or innovation involved in Tomorrowland. It is totally formulaic and by-the-numbers. Which doesn’t make it a bad movie, and it’s not a bad movie, but it left me feeling that an opportunity was missed here.
Going in, I thought the premise was solid one but the way it was handled left me not only wanting more but wanting something entirely different, something closer to what I thought this movie would be after having seen the trailer many, many times in the last six months. I don’t want to spoil things so I can’t really be more specific than to say that Tomorrowland was not at all what we saw in the trailer. And that would have been okay if handled differently but the end result here is that we only end up spending a very small amount of screen time in Tomorrowland when all is said and done, but the scenes of Tomorrowland in the trailer were what I wanted to see lots and lots of.
That’s why the way it played out was so disappointing. It left me feeling a lot like Lost did, now that I think about it.
Tomorrowland gets a rating of 6 child-sized jetpacks out of ten.
From Brad Bird, I wanted to be amazed. I wanted to be immersed into a dazzling universe. I expected to be. I expected to have fun. And at times it was almost a chore. Just because I kept wanting to say, okay, be done with this, move on to the amazing part! But there was no amazing part.
LikeLiked by 1 person
What a shame! I’ll still probably watch it though.
LikeLike
Near the beginning, George Clooney says “When I was a kid, the future was different” and I got really excited by that. Like, I could relate to that sentiment and I felt like you could feel possibility in that statment. And I loved the scene with him as a kid, it was so sweet and fresh and made me think about a time when inventors were so jazzed and now we have what – Dragon’s Den? It made me sad. And it made me think we were in for a great movie, but then it kind of went nowhere.
LikeLiked by 1 person
aw, this is disappointing as the trailers look awesome 😦
LikeLike
I know! I mean, I had no idea what it would be about, but I wanted to see it. I’m pretty sure half the reason I’m so hard on it is that it fell so far from my expectations.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Well am going to have to do it, as 90 odd minutes looking at George Clooney is, after all, 90 minutes of looking at George Clooney 😀 but my expectations will be zero, other than the 90 minutes of looking at George Clooney. 😀
LikeLike
This is disappointing; I think that the trailer and all of the other factors that you have outlined in the opening paragraph gave us all promise. I know that the film is not doing too well with the critics labelling it “lackluster”. I’m curious enough to still give it a watch but I don’t think I’ll be making the trip to the cinema now!
LikeLike
Was looking forward to this but reviews, including yours, are making me think I’m better off staying home. Come to think of it, I have never been a fan of Disney’s Tomorrowland. The least interesting place at Disneyland if you ask me.
LikeLike
Disney, and its film division, more often than not appears to survive on Pixar films to bring originality to life. But I do Iconfess to having had high hopes for Tomorrow Land, based on Brad Bird (The Incredibles), and a couple of Disney successes of late Tangled, and Frozen. Yet it seems (Hollywood) in general (especially films from the big name studios) rely far too much on sequels (known money), and formula to carry the box office. Fear grips them when something new is tried, and now if Tomorrow Land fails, Hollywood will get cold feet again. The trailer held promise, but I suspect the trailer offered what they hoped the film might have been.
LikeLike
Epic fail on this one. Poor story, huge potential but lacking in nearly everything. Characters were wrong, the girl was too over the top, Clooney was miscast, Tomorrowland itself was misrepresented in trailers and the coolness of it we only got to briefly experience, for something that should have been more Oz it turned out to be more Pirates 4. The action sequences and the idea was sound, it was just poorly created, and this sux because Brad Bird rocks!!
LikeLike
You’re right on target here and I’m still mad about it!
I’m sure San Andreas will make up for it, though. Right?
LikeLike