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And that's how you craft a good teaser. I knew little about this movie beforehand, and I definitely can't wait to see it after watching this trailer.

With that trailer and the one for American Sniper, I hope we're seeing a realisation from the studios that less is often more when it comes to promoting films.

So, is Tomorrowland the more family-friendly version of Bioshock: Infinite? It's coming across that way to me in the advertising!

colinr0380 wrote:So, is Tomorrowland the more family-friendly version of Bioshock: Infinite? It's coming across that way to me in the advertising!

I wish that were the case. I saw the movie today and it's a mess. I think it could be a great movie if it weren't such a terrible one. Nothing works in the film. However, the movie goes from a clumsy misstep to infuriating when the final message of the movie is revealed.

Spoiler

The movie supposes the reason why the polar ice caps are melting, millions of people are living in poverty, and international conflicts exist is because the media is broadcasting those images. And if we just change the message of those broadcasts, we'll solve those problems.

Bird's first misfire. Colossally questionable Ayn Rand politics aside, the movie feels unusually cluttered by the usual standards of his immaculate aesthetics, and while admirably ambitious, it's wildly uneven and sometimes even clumsy. It's surprisingly violent for a Disney movie, and the movie's pacing is too lopsided and its message too confused. Shame, I really wanted to like it.

This movie is indeed a mess, and the first fifteen minutes are legit awful (did Disney learn nothing from the Rocketeer?), but I kinda ended up liking this just enough to put it into the plus column. It certainly means well, and there is a clearly defined visual and conceptual aesthetic, even if the film is so confusing that we don't even understand exactly what's going on for well over an hour! A lot of ideas here, many without enough time to develop, but there's still copious spunky charm in the young female protagonist's interactions with Clooney and the little girl recruiter. Any movie that casts Kathryn Hahn and Keegan-Michael Key as villains in an elaborate action sequence is hard to ever be too mad at, really.

hanshotfirst1138 wrote:Bird's first misfire. Colossally questionable Ayn Rand politics aside,

I think these writers convincingly put to rest the argument that his films have Randian points of view:

Forrest Wickman wrote:To start with the simplest point: Brad Bird is no libertarian. Whenever he’s been asked about the perceived thematic similarities between his work and Ayn Rand’s, he has called the comparisons “ridiculous” and “nonsense.” Politically, he calls himself a “centrist,

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/cult ... uence.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

David Sims wrote:As a director, Bird might have his quirks, but his works are less eccentric. Frank Walker and the heroes of Tomorrowland are seeking not to rule the world, as an objectivist might, but merely to have their voices heard as loudly as possible. When Bird won his second Academy Award (for Ratatouille as Best Animated Feature) his charming but impassioned speech said it all.

Brad Bird wrote:I also want to thank my junior high guidance counselor for a meeting we had where he asked me, “What do you want to do with your life?” And I said, “I want to make movies.” And he said, “What else do you want to do with your life?” And I said, “Make movies.” And he said, “What if you couldn't make movies?” And I said, “I'd have to find a way that I could.” “What if movies didn't exist?” “I'd have to invent them.”

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainmen ... rd/394487/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Calling any individualist-based themes Randian is the rhetorical equivalent of calling any collectivist-based themes Leninist. The Incredibles is as Objectivist as Wall-E is communist: only if you're unwilling to see politics as a spectrum.

Numero Trois wrote:

hanshotfirst1138 wrote:Bird's first misfire. Colossally questionable Ayn Rand politics aside,

I think these writers convincingly put to rest the argument that his films have Randian points of view:

Forrest Wickman wrote:To start with the simplest point: Brad Bird is no libertarian. Whenever he’s been asked about the perceived thematic similarities between his work and Ayn Rand’s, he has called the comparisons “ridiculous” and “nonsense.” Politically, he calls himself a “centrist,

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/cult ... uence.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

David Sims wrote:As a director, Bird might have his quirks, but his works are less eccentric. Frank Walker and the heroes of Tomorrowland are seeking not to rule the world, as an objectivist might, but merely to have their voices heard as loudly as possible. When Bird won his second Academy Award (for Ratatouille as Best Animated Feature) his charming but impassioned speech said it all.

Brad Bird wrote:I also want to thank my junior high guidance counselor for a meeting we had where he asked me, “What do you want to do with your life?” And I said, “I want to make movies.” And he said, “What else do you want to do with your life?” And I said, “Make movies.” And he said, “What if you couldn't make movies?” And I said, “I'd have to find a way that I could.” “What if movies didn't exist?” “I'd have to invent them.”

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainmen ... rd/394487/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I have in fact read said article. As always, reading a film only one way is a foolish way to watch it, and I agree that there are greater complexities in his work than a simple epithet like that would suggest. More importantly, as a storyteller and stylist, I think Brad is one the top working today. His command of action sequences is superb, his aesthetics stunning, and his filmmaking superb. This said, I can only say what I see when I watch a film. I wouldn't presume to go the Mark Kermode route ("You just made it, I had to watch it!"), but I would say that a director's work doesn't have to mean for you what he says it means, nor do I always take their own word as the key text. I've seen many a film where I see something different than what I've been told the film is about. The fact the nearly of Bird's films take place in a retro 1950s fantasyland also leans towards the politics of the era. Confused themes aside though, Tomorrowland disappointed me mostly because I found that as a piece of storytelling, it wasn't compelling enough thematically or stylistically.

Mr Sausage wrote:Calling any individualist-based themes Randian is the rhetorical equivalent of calling any collectivist-based themes Leninist. The Incredibles is as Objectivist as Wall-E is communist: only if you're unwilling to see politics as a spectrum.

I'm not saying that because of "individualist themes" (though critics have bandied about how action films are "fascist" for decades. I'm saying that because The Incredibles essentially revolves around a group of characters who have to hide their superhuman powers to fit into society at large because they are literally superior to the average person and Tomorrowland is about a cabal of exceptional people who hid away from society and work out ways to fix it for us. "Fascist?" "Randinan?" Probably not. But a little bit suspect thematically. My problem with Tomorrowland isn't its perceived politics or message though. It's that I think that it's narrative is clumsy and that the film doesn't work as well as I'd hope. An "individualist" message is not bad, and one that tells young people "Commune with Shakespeare, Dante, Verne, Edision, and the greatest minds in human history" is a positive message, not a negative one ! That's something I'd encourage it to teach kids. I just find it's idea that "we used to hope back in the 1950s" to be a little naive. But then, if I wanted a story that talked about the underlying sociopolitical reasons for everything, I should be watching The Wire and not a sci-fi action film .

hanshotfirst1138 wrote:I'm not saying that because of "individualist themes" (though critics have bandied about how action films are "fascist" for decades. I'm saying that because The Incredibles essentially revolves around a group of characters who have to hide their superhuman powers to fit into society at large because they are literally superior to the average person and Tomorrowland is about a cabal of exceptional people who hid away from society and work out ways to fix it for us. "Fascist?" "Randinan?" Probably not. But a little bit suspect thematically.

Just so we're clear: are you saying that you no no longer support the following claim in your original post?

Colossally questionable Ayn Rand politics aside, the movie feels...

Mr Sausage wrote:

hanshotfirst1138 wrote:I'm not saying that because of "individualist themes" (though critics have bandied about how action films are "fascist" for decades. I'm saying that because The Incredibles essentially revolves around a group of characters who have to hide their superhuman powers to fit into society at large because they are literally superior to the average person and Tomorrowland is about a cabal of exceptional people who hid away from society and work out ways to fix it for us. "Fascist?" "Randinan?" Probably not. But a little bit suspect thematically.

Just so we're clear: are you saying that you no no longer support the following claim in your original post?

Colossally questionable Ayn Rand politics aside, the movie feels...

I'm saying that I found them at least a bit suspect. I think they lean towards being Randian, but I accept that you could soft-peddle that or interpret it differently, and that some have pointed out to me than alternate interpretation which I think has validity.

Now I'm confused. First they are outright Randian, then they are probably not Randian at all, now they favour Randian politics. Your position changes with every post. I'm not totally sure what your stance is in the most recent post: as politics is a spectrum, does "lean towards" mean more right than your preferred politics? Or anything right of centre? Lying just to the left or right of Rand's politics?

I think it would clear a lot of things up if you explained exactly what parts of the movie's politics accord with or approach objectivism.

More simply, I think the movie never quite came to grips with the story it was trying to tell, and the themes were confused as a result.

hanshotfirst1138 wrote:More simply, I think the movie never quite came to grips with the story it was trying to tell, and the themes were confused as a result.

Isn't it even simpler to admit that your quip about Rand was just convenient rhetoric, inherited fully formed, and that you hadn't actually given it any thought?

Mr Sausage wrote:

hanshotfirst1138 wrote:More simply, I think the movie never quite came to grips with the story it was trying to tell, and the themes were confused as a result.

Isn't it even simpler to admit that your quip about Rand was just convenient rhetoric, inherited fully formed, and that you hadn't actually given it any thought?

Well, yes, but that'd require me to admit that I was wrong, and that wouldn't be any fun, would it ?

This is a strange film. It starts off full of wonder and goes surprisingly dark, to a murderous extent! I can understand some of the Ayn Rand comparisons made above, as it is taking place in a world in which the elites (however defined, and mostly defined by robotic algorithms by the sound of it!) are siphoned off into a futuristic society (literally occupying a different dimension in space - co-existing but damningly separate from the real world) where they can push the boundaries of technology to the limits and remain ahead of the real world whilst controlling the release flow of new technological marvels through things like World's Fair shows! Which also serve as recruitment trawls!

I must admit that I had some of the same Rocketeer thoughts as domino in the early sequence, but I liked the almost callous sense of danger to that 1960s sequence where the girl asks the boy to follow her into a new world - it all ends well but it certainly tests out whether the jet pack works, as if it did not there would have been a number of fatal moments in that scene! Similarly in the present day scenes with our new heroine testing out the badge that transports her between the two dimensions while she is constantly moving in space through the real world - what was to stop her wandering out into the middle of traffic in the real world whilst she was marvelling at all of the Tomorrowland sights? (We even get a bit of that at the end of the sequence as she is being beckoned onto the rocket as her time is running out, struggling to get to it before she switches back and is wading out into the middle of a lake. I'm open to it meaning nothing but does that imply that a goal of progress is suicidally myopic and single-minded in some ways? That you have the beckoning figure offering you a seat on the journey of a lifetime, but if you had not run out of time and 'made it', you probably would have ended up drowning? Or cutting back to reality mid-way through that rocket flight and ending up thousands of feet above the ground!) What was to stop her jumping into the middle of a wall (or ending up hundreds of feet in the air, rather than on a platform) when she switched to the Tomorrowland universe?

Those were all of the elements that made the world feel slightly troubling to me even before the turn into murderous robots and the Bioshock-like turn of the utopia into a dystopia. In a way the laser gun battles with nerds (another expression of sci-fi filmmaker's ambivalent attitude to those who get too involved with wanting to exist inside the universes they create, and are sometimes unable to see the metaphor for the shiny techno-surface? Where the button that has the power to shift realities is being treated like a rare trinket, going for collectible prices) and all of the stuff with the robots, including the 'wacky robot companion culture clash' stuff were a bit less interesting to me, and a little tonally jarring for something that might be trying to be pitched at kids, as well as promoting a Disney ride! (Though it did all interestingly remind me of the original Escape From Witch Mountain films, with a bit of a 'road trip to a sci-fi climax' element)

Perhaps that is because the film is less about our new young heroine protagonist (though it is mostly through her eyes) than about George Clooney's cynical ex-idealist learning to dream again. Another father figure struggling with loss of purpose and depression about the callous nature of the world in which they have been used and then discarded (the only difference is that the bookending father is the 'real world' version of this, about to lose his apparently blue collar working man NASA engineering job because of those bureaucrats with limited vision shutting down the space programme, and the Clooney character is the fantasy version, having been ejected from the Eden of Tomorrowland and seen it go to ruin in his absence). Its a film dealing with futile feelings of hopelessness and depression and your inability to feel as if you have a place in the world, and have no ability to influence the course of events moving inexorably towards a catastrophe that would be averted if you were just able to be heard. Where those with the potential to bring new ideas into the world have no way of doing so whilst they labour in menial jobs, dreaming of what they might do if they had the opportunity to actually affect the world, but just left to watch it fall apart in the hands of the mediocre.

That feels a bit Ayn Rand-ian, especially in the sense that its the middle layer of 'uninspired' people and bureaucracy that have ruined the world for all. Letting the elites go off into their own world will eventually lead to a trickle down effect of futuristic advances that will raise even the masses. But they have to be unburdened by the petty middle managers who in this film have somehow even been able to mis-manage an entire futuristic world of wonder into ruin. Along with (as mentioned above) the depressive news media talking about inevitable, unavoidable disasters all of the time rather than having their eyes fixed on the brighter future and possibilities. Mourning the deaths rather than celebrating the world that those sacrifices brought to fruition.

Much like The Incredibles, if everyone is special then no-one is. So the elites need the masses to be superior to, and differentiate themselves from. Not perhaps in a cruel manner (the elites need the labouring masses, and vice versa) but one which certainly categorises people into different camps, and features a public school like selection process (with its own tests, officials and badges!) to wean out those with potential from those who...don't. Normal people do not really seem to feature at all in this film, aside from perhaps the bystanders in a couple of the real world scenes. We're already dealing with the 'chosen' in this film. I guess the girl's father could count as a 'normal' person, but then he's also a member of an 'abandoned generation' that probably would have been 'recruited' if Tomorrowland had not gone to hell in the interim, and he gets belatedly chosen to rebuild at the end.

That probably gets to the biggest idea of the second half of the film, that without that aspirational Tomorrowland to guide and shape brilliant people's talents and abilities, the world is doomed and people's potential is left unfulfilled (unexploited? ). There is a surprisingly barbed-seeming condemnation there of 50 years of a lack of scientific vision or curiosity that has led to the metaphorical Tomorrowland decaying into ruins through lack of nurture (a bit like the way that Wonderland decays and corrupts in Alice's absence?), and that has had a knock on effect of making the real world a bleaker place. Everyone is depressed and there is actually an embodiment (architecturally speaking) of that malaise that is crumbling around us. The world can only be saved by recruiting a new generation of the best and brightest to actually do something more effective with their time (dragging people away from tinkering in their garages, writing equations on blackboards, teaching in school, or doing tiny things like planting single trees on street corners), and work towards a brighter future for all. Only this time (in what might have been an unintentional but which I thought was very amusing anyway call back to the It's A Small World ride from the beginning of the film) its a multi-national, multi-ethnic, gender neutral, quota respecting sampling of the world rather than the 1960s monocultural one that apparently failed!

It is a surprisingly difficult and complex film in many ways. A bit jarring tonally with all of the depression themes and some of the violence. And the theme of 'elite collectivism' is a bit troubling, perhaps all the more so when it is put across with all of the Disney positivity towards a bright future! But its fascinating to think about, I did like those discussions about "feeding the fox" as a metaphor for thinking positively rather than negatively, and I think I would agree with the earlier comments about Brad Bird seeming to have an interest in these kind of areas of 'secret elites'. It is probably why he made one of the better Mission: Impossible films, because of actually having an interest in Ethan Hunt's cabal! But I'll stick with Harrison Bergeron, thank you very much!