I used to keep on top of major film releases but in recent years have lost my way.  Five years after its release I am just now catching up to the science-fiction alien invasion adventure The Tomorrow War, which is the type of film I would have seen right away under normal circumstances.  I don’t even remember this thing, probably because the COVID epidemic cancelled its theatrical run and it was sold directly to Amazon Prime, which I do not use.  Thus, I completely missed it.

Chris McKay’s film posits that in 2022 the world learns that aliens are overrunning Earth in 2050 and people are needed to travel forward through time and fight them to keep humanity alive.  High school science teacher Dan Forester (Chris Pratt) is drafted and given heavier duty because of his military background.  Dan survives his week in the future — most of the draftees don’t — and returns to try to work out just when and where the aliens first arrived on our planet.  Then he and his friends set out to destroy the threat before the planet’s future is doomed.

While the story is obvious and sentimental at points and derivative at others, I must give credit to the filmmakers for putting together a mind-bending time travel tale that generally works pretty well.  Every time the story seems to mire down something occurs to push it into a different direction and it recovers its momentum.  My biggest quibble is that the alien “white spikes” move so rapidly that we rarely get good looks at them.  I would have preferred that when Dan first encounters one, he sees it in a slow-motion study so that he, and we, can know how to fight it and what to avoid.  Instead, we are subjected to “Transformers”-like kineticism that overwhelms the senses and makes these beasts seem unbeatable.

The film could also have used better logic in places.  How are there so many of these beasts, especially at the big fight climax in Miami, if the beasts have eaten most of the people sent to fight them?  How have they not starved?  And why not kill the queen when that opportunity exists.  It sure would have saved a lot of lives.  The film is also decidedly anti-authoritarian, with no one trusting government authority (does that reflect the COVID times in which it was made?).  It’s a good thing that buff J. K. Simmons is around to save the day.  Ultimately this is almost good, and certainly re-watchable.  ☆ ☆ 1/2.  4 February 2026.