The Tomorrow War

Originally set for theatrical release by Paramount Pictures, the film’s distribution rights were acquired by Amazon due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and digitally released on July 2, 2021, via Prime Video. With a budget of US$200 million, the film was one of the most expensive films to debut on a streaming platform. The Tomorrow War received mixed reviews from critics, with praise for the concept, action sequences, and performances (particularly Pratt and Richardson), but criticism for its derivative execution. A sequel is in development.

Dan, along with the other draftees, are sent to Miami Beach in the future to face White Spikes, only after a malfunction causes them to appear 500 feet above the surface instead of the 5 they were told, resulting in many casualties, with the survivors landing in a pool on the roof of a skyscraper. Their commander then gives them orders over the radio to rescue nearby lab personnel before military forces firebomb the area. The draftees find all the personnel dead but recover their research. Dan survives the firebombing with two fellow draftees, a scientist named Charlie and multi-tour veteran of the future war named Dorian. Dan awakens in a forward operating base in Puerto Plata overseen by his daughter, Colonel Muri Forester, now an adult here in the future. She tells him there is a toxin that kills male White Spikes, but not the female queens, and asks for his help capturing a female White Spike so she can refine the toxin to be fatal to the whole species. She also reveals to Dan that in the past, he became disillusioned after failing to get his research job, which led him to divorce his wife and abandon his family, much like James did to him as a child. He then died in a car crash when Muri was sixteen.

After capturing a female White Spike, they head to DEEPSWELL-9, an offshore oil platform with a JumpLink facility. Muri successfully develops a toxin lethal to the queen, but they can’t mass-produce it due to the destruction of resources in the future. She sends Dan back to the past with the toxin, hoping to prevent the future war. The base is overrun by a massive swarm of male White Spikes in a coordinated effort to protect their queen; Muri is killed in the battle just as Dan is warped back to the past. Contact is subsequently lost with the future, indicating that the JumpLink was destroyed and the war in the future is lost.

Upon his return to the past, Dan delivers the toxin to the military for mass production, then returns home and shares his experiences with Emmy. Together, they discover that the White Spikes arrived on Earth earlier than 2048, based on ancient volcanic ash found on a White Spike’s claw. Dan and Charlie consult with Dan’s student, Martin, an amateur volcanologist. They determine that the White Spikes have been on Earth at least 1,000 years, ever since the “Millennium Eruption”. Dan leads a mission to Russia with Charlie, Dorian, the stranded future soldiers, and his father, who flies everyone there in his plane. They find the alien ship frozen in the ice beneath the Academy of Sciences Glacier and surmise that global warming will free them in the future. Additionally, the frozen bodies of a bipedal reptilian alien species are also found on board, causing the group to deduce that the ship had crash-landed on Earth, by accident and that the White Spikes were biological weapons engineered to wipe out the native population of a planet to allow the reptilian aliens to colonize. The group injects the lethal toxin into several White Spikes, hypersleeping in bio-pods. This kills them almost instantly but also awakens the rest of the colony, who begin to attack. After awakening, the queen White Spike escapes.

Dorian and the future soldiers sacrifice themselves to blow up the ship as Dan and his father pursue the queen. After a fierce battle, Dan kills the queen with the toxin, ensuring humanity’s survival. Knowing that the war is averted, Dan brings his father home to meet Muri for the first time, determined to avoid making the mistakes that the future Muri told him about.