Thomas Robinson and Raffey Cassidy (Buena Vista)
To face the future, we need to understand the past. This is the simple theme that drives director Brad Bird’s blockbuster Tomorrowland. The movie’s vision of the future goes back to an age when we expected jet packs and lived among streamlined mid-century modern designs and a crisp future of sans-serif fonts. It is old-fashioned Disney entertainment, preachy and safe but with design touches informed by the history of pop culture. And it has a good message for the kids, a simple but challenging solution to the world’s problems: think positive!
Teenage ginger Casey (Britt Robertson) tries to pass on some encouragement to her father Eddie (Tim McGraw), who’s going to lose his job when the local space station gets closed. Casey reminds dad of the American Indian tale he used to tell her, about a good wolf and an evil wolf. Which one will win? Casey’s father pauses before answering: “The wolf you feed.” Tomorrowland urges us to feed the good wolf, suggesting that scruffy Frank Walker (a generally unshaven George Clooney) as a cautionary tale of what happens when you feed the wrong wolf.
Tomorrowland tells the story of the wolves we feed. Frank tells his story first, of arriving at a New York World’s Fair inventor’s showcase with a jetpack he devised from an Electrolux vacuum. He presents his idea to Nix (Hugh Laurie), who tells young Frank (Thomas Robinson) to come back when the thing actually works. But Nix’s pretty young assistant Athena (Raffey Cassidy) sees a spark in the would-be inventor, hands him a pin emblazoned with a T, and lures him into the secret world of tomorrow.
How Casey gets there is a little more complicated. After being arrested for vandalizing the space station in protest of its closing, she receives that same T-emblazoned pin along with the rest of her personal effects. When she touches the pin, she’s transported to a field where, in the distance, you can see the shimmering spires of the future.
What makes Tomorrowland’s vision credible is the film’s love for the past. Art Deco rocket ships, Edison cylinders, and nostalgia peddlers all play a part in this cycle of time that circles from childhood dreams to adult disappointments and back. If the Marvel series puts the fate of the world into supercreatures that make us want to bring out the best in ourselves, this movie puts control of the future squarely on the shoulders of everyday dreamers, which according to its all-encompassing worldview includes Japanese heavy metal guitarists.
The world of tomorrow looks like a cross between the world of Disney and an Eero Saarinen airport, and makes you think that all these visions of Utopia over the years have been a product of the silky jumpsuit lobby. But the movie’s upbeat message is that whatever design fashions may come and go, the future is up to us. Tomorrowland doesn’t give you the high-octane action of the Mad Max franchise or even of The Incredibles, but it cheerily puts the steering wheel in your own hands.
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Tomorrowland
Directed by Brad Bird
Written by Damon Lindelof and Brad Bird
With George Clooney, Hugh Laurie, Briit Robertson, Raffey Cassidy, Tim McGraw
Rated PG for sequences of sci-fi action violence and peril, thematic elements, and language
Running time 130 minutes
Opens today at a multiplex near you
