So, let's have a think about the grand old tradition of movies based on Disney attractions. The first one that comes to mind would probably be Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. Forget about all the godawful sequels, if you can, and you might just find yourself remembering a superior action flick with fun performances, clever visuals and a suitably swashbuckling storyline. Face it: you might hate the company, but the movie itself is actually pretty damned good.
Of course, for every Pirates, there's a Country Bears (haven't seen it), a Haunted Mansion (impossibly stupid even when viewed through the haze of hallucination-grade flu) and, inevitably, about a million overlong, overly smug Pirates sequels.
So, where does Brad Bird's Tomorrowland fit in? I've read review after review praising its overwhelming optimism, its positive messages and its engaging characters. I'm all about the positivity and, honestly, I'm also all about the sort of slick visuals you get with an enthusiastic team of creatives and a healthy budget. The movie looked as though it might deliver a healthy dose of cute retrofuturism, and while I'm always going to maintain at least a slight degree of cynicism about anything from the House of Mouse, I held high hopes that it was going to be a blast.
...I suppose I'd better start by saying that I don't hold the cast responsible. Of the three leads, George Clooney and Raffey Cassidy are both great, whilst as main protagonist Casey Newton, Britt Robertson displayed an effortless, artless charm that won me over during the opening scene while she was still only present in voiceover form. Looking at the supporting players, meanwhile, Hugh Laurie manages to entertain as the nominal villain of the piece despite being woefully underwritten, whilst Thomas Robinson lends the younger version of Clooney's jaded inventor a fire and a sweetness that initially seems to set the tone for the entire movie.
The art direction is spot-on, too, as you'd expect from Bird, with his track record for successful animation. It's sleek but colourful, the sets all soaring, curved spires that seem to embody the endless, hopeful reaching of the optimists and dreamers that the film suggests will inherit the earth.
You're probably sensing a but coming, but I'm not going to bother with even that degree of subtlety.
Bluntly put, Tomorrowland made me feel the sort of deep, existential queasiness that I find difficult to adequately pin down in words. It champions society's elite without even really acknowledging that the rest of the world exists, much less matters.
Bird posits that the world should belong to the optimists without taking into account that large chunks of society don't have anything to be optimistic about. Sure, Casey always sees the bright side - it's made plain from the film's earliest scenes that she's a genius who succeeds at everything she tries. What reason would she have not to feel confident about her own future? The general suggestion by the end of the movie is that the rest of the world just needs to pull its socks up, an argument that's inevitably made by the people on top when they're trying to justify their position by blaming those underneath.
This in itself is unpleasant enough, but it's also underpinned by levels of graphic (albeit bloodless) violence that exceeded those in the more overtly action-oriented Avengers: Age of Ultron. It felt almost like a streak of sadism to me, a joy in maiming and destruction that seemed like a confirmation of my gloomier suspicions about the movie in general and its director in particular. If Tomorrowland is a film about our societal and intellectual superiors, shouldn't the climax have involved something a little loftier than punching and explosions?
I could rant at length about the story being a confusing mess, too, but honestly, that's the least of the movie's problems, or the viewer's. Think about it: would you really have wanted Brad Bird to provide a coherent manifesto for the future he clearly dreams of?
Better to be thankful for small mercies, I guess.
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