During my rainy day of rest yesterday I watched the new Amazon movie “The Tomorrow War” and liked it a lot. It was a classic humanity-vs-aliens movie with a few nice twists. Chris Pratt did a good job just being his likable self, and the supporting cast were all good. In particular, Yvonne Strahovski and JK Simmons did a great job with their roles. In addition to the nice plot twists, one big mystery is how the hell did JK Simmons get so jacked up at age 65? He looked like a weight-lifting biker…he’s either a CGI creation or an inspiration to guys like me.

SPOILER ALERTS

The first big plot twist was the writers’ take on time travel paradoxes. They maintain that paradoxes can be avoided by simply not having two copies of any person in space-time simultaneously. So, the only people who can travel forward are those who will be dead in the target timeline. And the only ones who can travel backward are those who have not yet been born in the target past date. It makes a certain amount of sense though it is extremely anthropocentric. The implication of that, if it were a fact, would be that human consciousness defines reality. And that doesn’t make much sense in a universe where you have other sentient beings, namely horrific man-eating aliens.

There’s another 2-3 plot twists around the aliens that I won’t get into, but I liked them. They tied some loose ends up nicely.

The other big plot twist was the time-bending father-daughter relationship between Pratt and Strahovski. As the father of a daughter, it was uplifting and heartbreaking. Well-written.

All-in, I liked this movie a LOT. IMDB critics generally hated it, but…discount that. Many of the reviewers/commenters hated the same plot twists and paradoxes that I liked. The whole point of watching a movie is to suspend your disbelief, to escape from reality, so why pick apart a fantasy story based on it not being “real”? It’s a return to militaristic space opera movies like “Independence Day” with some memorable characters. And a few new takes on a very old trope.