Premium Episode 136: The Tomorrow War (Movie Night) Sample
Time travel. Science. A worldwide military draft. The disbanding of NATO. Chris Pratt. Aliens. Guns. We examined the latest Amazon dropping.
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Welcome, listener, to Premium Chapter 136 of the QAnon Anonymous Podcast, the QAA Movie Night, the Tomorrow War episode.
As always, we are your hosts, Jake Rogatansky, Julian Field, and Travis View.
This week, we are covering a new movie.
This is something of a novelty for us, something that has come out in the same year that we're recording.
I don't think we've ever done that in the past, but we had to take a look.
It's come out in the same month, actually.
The same month, there we go.
We are really trying to be topical, we're really trying to get the listens by covering a Chris Pratt vehicle that in about 2 hours and 20 minutes or something like that attempts to tell the story of time travel, war and militarism, and of course, pretty cool aliens.
So, you know, I bet we're going to have all kinds of different opinions of this.
It was very much an Amazon Studios production in every sense of the word.
A kind of pastiche of genres workshopped into Oblivion, but nonetheless, in my opinion, fascinating for what it can reveal about How we see ourselves today, it feels like it tells on the zeitgeist, accidentally, which I liked.
The Tomorrow War was released on July 2nd of this year on Amazon Prime Video.
Oh yeah, the silver screen, baby!
The movie was directed by Chris McKay, known for the Lego Batman movie,
episodes of Robot Chicken, and Moral Oral.
This is his sort of first big-budget sci-fi movie, even though he was an editor on previous Lego movies,
which are, you know, huge, huge budgets as well.
So he's no stranger to working with heaps upon heaps of CGI.
The Tomorrow War's budget is estimated at around $150 million.
I would call the color palette of this movie bisexual club vomit.
So the movie was produced by Skydance, which is David Ellison's production company.
For those who do not know, he is the son of Larry Ellison, who is the co-founder and chairman of Oracle.
The film is also produced by David S. Goyer, who wrote Dark City, Blade, Batman Begins.
He did the story for Dark Knight.
I mean, a shit ton of major movies.
The film was penned by Zach Dean, who has a surprisingly small amount of credits, so let that be a lesson to all you screenwriters out there.
You can be a relatively nobody, and if you write a hot script, you can land Chris Pratt, J.K.
Simmons, and Yvonne Strakowski.
You can get a perfectly good piece of writing chopped up and, like, reconstituted so the heart no longer beats, and it just kind of drags itself, mangled, across over two hours.
Yeah, if you, you know, if you take A Quiet Place and Edge of Tomorrow and you get them to fuck, and the resulting child, you just spoon-feed it lead instead of anything nutritious, you can create this monstrosity and get it released by Amazon exclusively.
Oh, well, you know, for once I'm gonna defend a movie, you know, again, like, this is the kind of movie- This is surprising.
I didn't, I didn't like this one so much.
I like the movie because I think it's a movie you could actually study in school.
You could look at it and you would understand our era in so many fucking ways.
It wouldn't be a good experience or you wouldn't say this is a good movie by a good director, but nonetheless, it's not useless.
Disagree.
If I was forced to watch this in high school or middle school, I would be like, that was the best day of school of the year.
Yeah, it's fun, right?
And I'm saying, like, the story actually has some legs.
There were some really good plot twists.
I think, like, really, if you look at the text behind this, I bet there was originally a piece of coherent cinema, potentially.
And then, of course, just every part of the aesthetic and the kind of, more or less, all of the acting.
Obviously, because J.K.
Simmons is in here saving us all from... And I also love Devoin Strakhovski in it, I have to say.
And I loved Sam Richardson who played Charlie, who's like the dorky black guy who's like the biologist.
I thought that he was like really natural and funny.
So the release for The Tomorrow War set somewhat of a precedent in the entertainment industry.
The film was originally made by Paramount and was set to premiere in theaters on July 23rd of this year.
But the COVID-19 pandemic forced them to push their release date.
After a couple more pushed release dates because of the worsening pandemic, Paramount just straight-up sold the movie to Amazon for somewhere around $200 million.
Now, this is an insane deal because the studio essentially said, fuck it.
We're not going to gamble on a new IP in the theaters.
We can unload this, put zero money into advertising, and make a cool 33% profit.
It's a game changer in terms of how blockbuster films are released.
And I personally believe that this is a good thing, because it will allow new, somewhat original ideas to see the light of day.
Oh yeah, if this is what the system is yielding, then yes.
But I'm saying that as an accelerationist that wants all culture to collapse on itself.
Alright, so without further ado... THE TOMORROW The film opens in the present day with Dan Forrester, played by Chris Pratt, a veteran who has long ago traded in his green beret for a house on a quiet street somewhere in the suburbs of America.
We see right away that Dan is totally put upon.
As he walks up to his front door, he's juggling a case of beer and other groceries for a rockin' Christmas party taking place at his house.
He's the ultimate millennial, with his earbuds in, pitching ideas to a potential employer that could not give two fucks about him.
Yes, that's what defines his role in this, is anxiety.
He is always either crying or anxious, or trying to make sure that the group is happy.
It is really the ultimate millennial protagonist.
So, right off the bat, we get some background on Dan's situation.
He's a high school biology teacher, he's got a fairly chill wife, played by Betty Gilpin, and he feels completely abandoned by his father.
On the TV in the living room, a soccer game is ongoing.
And the soccer you see is so clearly acted.
I had to rewind several times to check that they weren't just using renderings from, like, the snow engine for FIFA.
Hey, Forrester!
Hey, sorry.
We are out of Christmas napkins.
Maybe we have time just here for the booze, or happy 70th birthday.
Happy 70th.
Babe, I'm on hold right now.
They're trying to track down Arthur.
Right now?
This is happening.
Right now.
I'm gonna punch you in your unfortunately very handsome face.
This is the call, though.
I'm in the final round.
This is real work, an actual lab.
It's my dream!
Well, Mary's dream was that you watched the game with her.
Oh, hi!
I promise I'll be back before the end of the game, okay?
What's this?
Um, that's your dad sent Mary a Christmas card.
Can we talk about it tomorrow?
Babe, we'll talk about it tomorrow.
Yo!
What?
Aaron, I have to talk to you.
He's just trying to be a grandpa.
Well, I think he forfeited the right to meet his granddaughter when he abandoned your husband.
Babe, no one's eating my tuna Santa.
When I come back, I'm gonna have a new job, and I'm gonna eat all of your tuna Santa.
Arthur, come in.
Yes, sir.
Well, I had leadership experience.
I ran combat missions in Iraq.
It experiences everything.
Well, I had leadership experience.
I ran combat missions in Iraq.
Does that translate, though?
Sure comes in handy teaching high school.
Listen, you're a great candidate.
The only thing you're missing is private sector experience.
Which, we have to say, is an important part of what we're looking for.
Guys, guys.
And that's why we had to make a tough choice.
We found someone else.
His background, and education, he's just a better fit for us.
Sorry, Dad.
Then he proceeds to smash his folder up against the trash can, have just an absolute bitch fit, which again was a weird, strange behavior for someone who was a Green Beret.
No, because he's the millennial CIA, the millennial Green Beret, the millennial army.
Everyone has generalized anxiety and wears flannels and cries all the time.
Only a millennial would make a tuna fish dip shaped like Santa Claus and then complain.
that nobody's eating the tuna Santa. So anyways, absolute loser. This is your classic 2020s flawed
hero who is incredibly charming and handsome but also doesn't really have time for his family.
But people do need to start talking about the spec ops to science teacher pipeline.
Right, this is also, I mean, you can tell that they're- Such a big thing.
They're kind of sort of laying in some exposition here, setting up Chris Pratt's background as a Marine, which will, of course, come in handy later when the tomorrow war kicks off.
So after this moment, Dan collapses on the couch with his adorable daughter, who's reading a science encyclopedia.
She relays to her dad that she's been reading about the scientists who discovered... She's reading the Wikipedia entry for science.
Yeah, and she's reading about the scientists who discovered the tuberculosis vaccine.
So you already know, QAnon folks are going to hate this film.
We will get into that later.
I hate to use the term virtue signaling, but it is such clear virtue signaling.
All the stuff around the vaccine.
Oh yeah.
So then, we get to our inciting incident.
As one of the soccer players has broken away and is headed towards the goal, he's frozen in his tracks as a giant portal opens up in front of him, and dozens of armed military personnel fly out of it.
The crowd screams in horror and begins to flood out of the stadium.
The soccer players, however, don't seem too bothered and they all kind of linger on the field as the troops move past them, securing the stadium.
The last person out of the portal is Lieutenant Hart, played by Jasmine Matthews.
She tries to calm the crowd down by telling them they're from the future.
We are you.
30 years in the future.
We are fighting a war.
Our enemy is not human.
And we are losing.
In 11 months time, all human beings in the future will be wiped from the face of the Earth.
Unless you help us.
We need you.
Our fathers, mothers, And grandparents, we need you to fight beside us if we stand a chance at winning this war.
This is a joke.
You are our last hope.
So right then, at the end of her speech, the title card of the film flies in, and I'm a big fan of late title cards in movies.
I don't know, it makes it feel kind of more like a video game, I guess, or it makes you feel like, oh man, all that setup to the title, like, this is gonna be epic.
I don't know, what do you guys think about that?
No, I think it was well-timed.
But, you know, what I really took away from this is that this is such a, I don't know, kind of a Q Boomer fantasy.
We have this fresh-faced kid come out and then look at the old people saying, our fathers, our grandfathers, we need you old people.
To come and save us, children.
To be operators in the future.
I've been waiting for this my entire life.
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