This is just a list of what I feel are plot issues with The Tomorrow War. Its an excellent movie from an entertainment stand point and no where close to the mind numbing stupidity of a Fast and Furious where a car does a Tarzan swing. However, plot issues exist that could have been easily handled.
- People falling that distance into a pool would die, especially those that fell on top of others. Easy enough to handle, show everyone else appearing at the height of the building and he and his pool size crew appearing just above it. Sci-fi needs to be sci.
- Dan would not leave his family. At least not based on anything shown in the film up to the point of him being told that is his future, or anything to come after it. The director needed to give more of a reason why he needed personal success, if that was the reason. Why there might have been some marital issues, something. He showed too much love in the moments he had with her as a 9 year old to ever leave. I’m a father, the love of a child is chemical, its tied to you right to the core of you as a human. That’s not to say fathers don’t leave, they do, but they don’t leave when they show that twinkle in the eye that he showed to her.
- Why is Dan so special? Why wouldn’t anyone else choose to take the poison back and have it manufactured to prevent the war from happening in the first place? Hell Ill do it. For that matter, let the scientists in the past run all those test iterations.
- Before they left, why didn’t they just kill the queen, or cut off all its limbs beforehand? Something, and I don’t mean poison, because they said why, but maybe just shoot it.
- They do not show people reloading their weapons enough considering how many rounds they are firing. And given how many rounds they are firing they would need to be much more heavily loaded up prior to going in. The average solider carries about 7 magazines, 30, 40 rounds each. They shoot that in one failed burst.
- Why not more powerful weapons, even if they shoot less, that can penetrate anywhere? Seriously, at least someone should go in with a 50 cal or heavier machine gun.
- I get not having civilians learn to march, hand to hand combat, exercise, but why not teach them how to use their weapon in a basic way. Getting back to reloading, thats a really hard thing to do quickly in combat without dropping a magazine or have some other mechanical difficulty. They should learn basic weapon mechanics and basic combat tactics. Flanking, reloading, clearing a jam, aiming, that they need to scavenge from the dead, basic squad movement and communication. Nothing deep, just show them being run through it more. And yes, I did see CPR lessons but the one not knowing which end was up on his weapon? That shit comes first.
- They have poison that kills the males. The males are the ones that attack. Have a way to deploy that at critical research facilities like Halon gas.
- That these aliens were just a weapon and not the actual intelligence behind the invasion should have occurred to them much earlier. You don’t become a space faring species and viscous chaotic base instinct creates devouring a planet bare. In the couple of years the future world spent dealing with them they should have asked that question as well. Granted, its not all that important. I will at least commend them for wrapping up this plot issue at the end, but its convenient that Dan and his wife are the ones that figure stuff out at the end vs some ancillary character. Too much was riding on one person.
- There is no way 500,000 people support the level of technology and logistics that still exist when Dan jumps in. A simple explanation that they created fallback bases, and planted supplies and weapons at various facilities. I also may have missed it, but some explanation of why they don’t nuke them. Like inevitably some survive in their caves and nukes just didn’t work. They still had advanced fighters (note, the aliens had no air superiority, just “gliders”), helicopters, and ships along with the fuel requirements and ammunition production.
- At the end they spend time injecting each creature in their suspension chamber but have to blow up the ship and kill them because there are so many. Why not blow it up to begin with?
- Why would the Secretary of Defense give a live speech to each set of draftees?
- They did not show the SoD being sniveling enough to not want to send in a real military team to find and destroy the ship at the end. I mean its believable. Hell, just show Trump in office would be enough I guess. As it is I also find it hard to believe society would rally. We can’t get people to wear masks to stop a pandemic when it directly impacts them.
With all of that said, I found the movie thrilling and heart wrenching in ways I did not expect. What sucks is, and I give the movie high marks for being entertaining, most of these issues could have been resolved easily with some character development conversations or exposition early on. Dan is being sent in because he’s intelligent and meant to help with research. As others are learning CPR and weapons mechanics he could attend a quick seminar that answers some of these questions.