The Tomorrow War
Promotional release poster
Directed by	Chris McKay
Written by	Zach Dean
Produced by	David Ellison Dana Goldberg Don Granger Jules Daly David S. Goyer Adam Kolbrenner
Starring	Chris Pratt Yvonne Strahovski J. K. Simmons Betty Gilpin Sam Richardson Edwin Hodge
Cinematography	Larry Fong
Edited by	Roger Barton Garret Elkins
Music by	Lorne Balfe
Production companies	Skydance Paramount Pictures New Republic Pictures
Distributed by	Amazon Studios
Release date	July 2, 2021
Running time	138 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$200 million[1][2]
Box office	$19.2 million[3]

The Tomorrow War is a 2021 American military science fiction action film directed by Chris McKay, written by Zach Dean, and starring Chris Pratt. It was produced by David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, Don Granger, David S. Goyer, Jules Daly, and Adam Kolbrenner, with a supporting cast featuring Yvonne Strahovski, J. K. Simmons, Betty Gilpin, Sam Richardson, Edwin Hodge, Jasmine Mathews, Ryan Kiera Armstrong, and Keith Powers. It follows a mix of present-day soldiers and civilians sent into the future to fight an alien army.

Originally set for theatrical release by Paramount Pictures, the film's distribution rights were acquired by Amazon due to the COVID-19 pandemic,^[4] and digitally released on July 2, 2021, via Prime Video.^[5][6] With a budget of US$200 million, the film was one of the most expensive films to debut on a streaming platform. The Tomorrow War received mixed reviews from critics, with praise for the concept, action sequences, and performances (particularly Pratt and Richardson), but criticism for its derivative execution. A sequel is in development.^[7]

Plot[edit]

In December 2022, biology professor and former Green Beret Dan Forester fails to land a job at a prestigious research center. While he watches the 2022 World Cup final, soldiers from the year 2051 arrive to warn that humanity is on the brink of extinction due to alien invaders: the Whitespikes. In response, members of the world's armed forces are sent to the future, but less than 20% manage to survive, prompting a global draft. Dan receives notice that he has been drafted and is fitted with a bracelet that tracks him. Dan's wife, Emmy Forester asks him to remove the bracelet with the help of his estranged father, James Forester, but Dan becomes angry with him and leaves without removing the bracelet. Dan and the recruits are sent to Miami Beach, Florida in the future, but few survive, having been dropped at the wrong location above the city.

Colonel Forester orders the recruits to rescue the staff from the nearby laboratory before sterilizing the area. The recruits discover the lab staff dead, but recover their research before the area is bombed. Many of the recruits die and only a few make it to safety. Dan and the survivors make it back to a military camp in Puerto Plata, where Dan learns that Colonel Forester is his daughter, Muri. She asks him to accompany her on a mission to capture a female Whitespike, which are rarer than the males they usually find. They find and capture the female, only to have hundreds of males descend on her position.

Muri finally tells him what happened in his past, which was that Dan abandoned her and his wife after returning from the future and eventually died in a car wreck. Dan and Muri are transported to the Jumplink, located on a fortified oil platform in the middle of the ocean. They work on a toxin that can kill the female; however, the Whitespikes attack the base.

Muri is badly injured and asks Dan to take the toxin to the past, as humanity was never going to make it in this timeline, and they reconcile. Dan manages to return to the past with the toxin to mass produce it and attempts to give the toxin to the military so it can be sent back to the future, but learns that the Jumplink is offline, having been destroyed by the Whitespikes.

After explaining to his wife what happened in the future, he deduces that the Whitespikes did not arrive during the year 2048, but much earlier. Dan and Dorian investigate the Whitespikes claw with Charlie at the Wallace Technologies headquarters and discover fragments of volcanic ash from a volcano in the Changbai Mountains.

They theorize that Whitespikes were already on Earth and global warming caused their release when they thawed and emerged from beneath the polar caps. He turns to the military for aid but without proof, they do not support him. He asks his father to transport a team. Dan leads a mission to Severnaya Zemlya in northern Russia to test his theory and finds an alien ship in an ice sheet.

Once inside, they realize that the alien ship is not actually a Whitespikes ship, and that the Whitespikes were cargo for the deceased alien crew. They proceed to inject the toxin into the dormant Whitespikes and this kills those injected but awakens the remaining Whitespikes. The team decides to manually detonate the alien ship once they realize it is the only method of containment, but the female manages to escape. Dan and his father track down the female and manage to kill her, preventing the future war from occurring. Dan reunites with his daughter and introduces her to her grandfather.