Disney’s would-be sci-fi action blockbuster Tomorrowland appears that it will be closer to John Carter than The Edge of Tomorrow. The film’s opening disappointed as it made nearly $41 million over the Memorial Day weekend.
While those numbers aren’t fantastic for any movie, this movie had a budget of over $100 million and didn’t do itself any favors in making back that money during its opening weekend.
The movie itself has a cool premise, all of the world’s best and brightest create a scientific utopia hidden away from the rest of the world inside an alternate dimension. The real earth is about to end and the only way it can be saved is through the alternate dimension.
This film suffers from the idea that it just needed to look cool to draw in audiences. To be fair to Tomorrowland, there are scenes that look visually stunning. The scenes of the alternate and futuristic world are imaginative and appeal to a childlike sense of adventure and wonder.
The problem is that the visuals alone cannot save a very generic save the world plot. The plot is rushed and is solved by the main characters in the last half hour of the movie.
The characters themselves are good, George Clooney gives a nice performance as a gruff, middle-aged man who has been adversely affected by the futuristic world. Britt Robinson and Raffey Cassidy give solid performances as the girl who can save the world and a robot companion respectively.
Tomorrowland is not a bad movie, but it’s nothing special. The coolest scenes from the movie are viewable in the trailer and that doesn’t bode well for a movie that spent a large budget on special effects.
The cool scenes don’t do enough to cover the generic story and are sometimes flat scenes. It won’t be a Disney classic anytime soon.
The company has other hopes with another release later this summer with Inside Out, and it appears that will be the money-maker for them this summer.
Tomorrowland is rated PG and is in theaters now.
