The Tomorrow War: Check Out Chris Pratt’s New Trailer

The Tomorrow War promises to put a new spin on an old movie cliche. You know the one, the world is under attack by a mysterious and powerful alien species.

By Doug Norrie

This article is more than 2 years old

The Tomorrow War

The Tomorrow War promises to put a new spin on an old movie cliche. You know the one, the world is under attack by a mysterious and powerful alien species. Lowly humans finding new and creative ways to stave off what happens when those ETs start to get a hankering for what Earth has to offer. Sometimes it’s attacking their motherships. Sometimes it’s developing space fleets to go toe-to-toe. A few times they’ve hoped the aliens can’t actually live on Earth and just die. Heck we even have an infinite time loop scenario on the books. 

In The Tomorrow War humans take a different tactic, developing technology to bring back super soldiers of the past to fight off the current threat. It sounds like a military fantasy draft of sorts, with a cast of characters brought into the mix with their own particular set of skills. 

Here’s everything we know about The Tomorrow War so far.

WATCH THE TOMORROW WAR TRAILER

Finally, we have our first full look at the trailer for The Tomorrow War. This trailer gives a much better look than we’ve had so far at what you can expect from this time-traveling movie where Chris Pratt fights aliens. Check it out.

THE PEOPLE MAKING THE TOMORROW WAR

The Tomorrow War McKay
Chris McKay

Chris McKay is making his live-action directing debut with The Tomorrow War. His other work exists mostly in the animated world, first getting a breakthrough as a film editor on the major hit The LEGO Movie. This led to a chance at directing the sequel The LEGO Batman Movie which hit over $175 million at the box office and crushed with critics. And as a producer he’s had his hand in the other two LEGO movies as well.

The Tomorrow War will offer a new challenge, bringing all the high action, high intensity, big production value to a live-action setting. McKay’s other works have been well-received and creative so it stands to reason he pulls it off, but this does mark a big shift. 

The film’s script was written by Zach Dean and Bill Dubuque. Dean has credits on the barely watched Ethan Hawke film 24 Hours to Live and the underwhelming heist flick Deadfall

Meanwhile,  Dubuque has creator/ writer credits with Netflix’s Ozark but also penned The Accountant, starring Ben Affleck, Gerard Butler’s Headhunter’s Calling and the Robert Downey Jr. and Robert Duvall film the Judge. It’s worth noting that all three were relative critical disappointments, scoring 52%, 13% and  48% respectively on the Tomatometer. 

For the two of them, it’s lackluster returns now on a handful of scripts which does have a bit concerned on this latest one which could have a lot of moving parts. 

The Cast of The Tomorrow War

Chris Pratt

If The Tomorrow War‘s script-writing credits are a bit *meh*, the cast is anything but. Chris Pratt has lead billing as Red Mitchell, one of the super-soldiers brought back to fight this alien scourge. If it was hard to picture Andy from Parks and Recreation as an action star, Chris Pratt has clearly dispelled any of that with big-budget turns in the Avengers/ Guardians of the Galaxy franchises as well as Jurassic World reboot. 

The Tomorrow War

Joining Pratt on the alien elimination mission is Yvonne Strahovski who plays Serena Waterford on The Handmaid’s Tale. She plays Vicki Winslow and potential love interest for Pratt’s character. 

The Tomorrow War

There’s also Betty Gilpin who had a role in Netflix’s GLOW and who in The Tomorrow War will play another of the aforementioned soldiers. 

Simmons

And finally, J.K. Simmons will also have a role as Pratt’s father in The Tomorrow War. He rounds out a great cast which also includes comedian Theo Von, Veep’s Sam Richardson and Love’s Mike Mitchell. 

The Plot

Chris Pratt plays a veteran with a daughter he loves more than the rest of the world. When he’s drafted to fight in a war against aliens, he’s told he’ll have to travel to the future in order to save the world. If saving his daughter didn’t matter so much to him, perhaps he wouldn’t try so hard. But if Chris Pratt’s going to give his daughter a world she can live in, he’ll have to take his duties as a drafted soldier seriously, and that means he’ll have to face his own past while fighting in the future.

While the plot for the movie sounds serious, the trailer for The Tomorrow War shows off a lot of the humor you expect to see in a Chris Pratt film, alongside swarms of aliens, explosions, and special effects made for the big screen.

Early on, The Tomorrow War’s star also posted some on location shots from Iceland which is one of the settings for the film. 

But beyond that, we know very little else. What technology or functionality is able to bring these fighters from the past? What is the core of the alien threat? What kind of weapons (beyond, you know, time travel) will the humans and aliens and employ? There’s a lot to answer here and initial trailers, which haven’t come out yet, should serve to give us a much better glimpse of The Tomorrow War world and Chris Pratt’s place in it. 

Release Date

Originally set to release around Christmas of 2020, The Tomorrow War has then moved to a summer box office date of July 23, 2021 because of theater scheduling delays due to Covid-19.

Now, the plans have changed yet again. Amazon Prime Video has purchased this movie made for the big screen. You’ll be able to stream The Tomorrow War on Amazon July 2nd, 2021.