SPOILER ALERT: the following article contains massive spoilers, including the ending. If you have not yet seen the movie, proceed at your own risk, or better, come back to this article later!
In The Tomorrow War, the world is stunned when a group of time travelers arrive from the year 2051 to deliver an urgent message: thirty years in the future mankind is losing a global war against a deadly alien species. The only hope for survival is for soldiers and civilians from the present to be transported to the future and join the fight. Among those recruited is high school teacher and family man Dan Forester (Chris Pratt). Determined to save the world for his young daughter, Dan teams up with a brilliant scientist (Yvonne Strahovski) and his estranged father (J.K. Simmons) in a desperate quest to rewrite the fate of the planet.
SPOILERS AHEAD
The Tomorrow War Video Summary
The Tomorrow War Plot Summary and Synopsis
The movie starts with Dan Forester (Chris Pratt) falling down in the air. He manages to navigate himself and lands in the pool uninjured. He gets out of the pool and looks above.
In a flashback taking palce in December 2022, 28 years earlier Dan fails to get a job at a prestigious research center. It is reveiled that he is a biology teacher and former Green Beret.
While he is watching the World Cup at a Christmas party, 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 militaries are sent into the future, but fewer than 20% survive, prompting a world wide draft.
After a year of the draft and a growing anti-war movement, there is little hope for humanity’s survival. Dan receives a notice that he has been drafted and reports with other draftees to basic training. Dan deduces with fellow draftee Charlie that in order to prevent a paradox, those drafted have already died before the war starts.
The draftees are sent forward in time to Miami Beach but few survive, having been dropped in the incorrect location above the city. The draftees are ordered by Colonel Forester to rescue nearby lab personnel before the area is sterilized. The draftees discover the lab personnel dead but recover their research.
Dan radios to command about the situation, and is instructed to escape the area. Many of the draftees are killed with only a handful able to reach safety.
The survivors wake up in a military encampment in the Dominican Republic. Dan is asked to report to Colonel Forester, who is his grown up daughter Muri. She acts cold as she is angry on him for divorcing and leaving her as a child.
She requests him to accompany her on a mission to capture a female Whitespike, which are rarer than the males typically encountered. They cage the female, only to have hundreds of males descend on their position. As the helicopter with the female lifts off, Dan and Muri escape to a beach and radio for rescue. Dan and Muri are transported to the Jumplink, located on a fortified oil rig in the middle of the ocean.
Muri tells Dan that he died in the car accident.
Dan and his daughter work on a toxin that can kill the captured female. They find a match for killing the aliens, just as they start to breach the base. As the Whitespikes attack the base, the formerly captive female spears Col. Forester with one of her spikes. She plummets from the gantry and Dan follows her off just before he is transported back to the past with the toxin to mass produce it.
Dan tries 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. The world has become chaotic with the news that the Jumplink is offline, foretelling the war was lost.
Brainstorming with his wife, he deduces that the Whitespikes did not arrive in 2048, but came much earlier. Further research leads him to theorize the Whitespikes are actually already on Earth, and that global warming caused their release when they thawed out and emerged from under the ice caps.
Dan leads a mission to Russia to prove his theory and finds an alien ship in an ice cap. The team debates telling the world about the problem, but decides to end the threat right then and there. 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 with injecting the dormant Whitespikes with the toxin; this kills those injected but wakes all the remaining Whitespikes.
The team realizes the initial Whitespikes they find are only a drop in the bucket, and decide to detonate the ship manually. The team successfully blows up the alien ship once they realize it is the only method of containment, but one female escapes.
Dan and his father track down the female and are able to kill it in a frenetic battle to the death, preventing the future war from occurring.
The Tomorrow War Ending
Dan returns home to his wife and daughter, secure knowing that the future has been altered. He promises himself that he’ll never leave his family and kisses his wife.
Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0).
The Ending Explained
The aliens are defeated and the future is changed solely because of the protagonist’s actions. He is going to live a happy life with his family.
Cooncel Rating
An action movie turned family drama with a happy ending.
Source: © Cooncel.com.
Title: The Tomorrow War
US Release Date: July 2, 2021
Starring: Chris Pratt, Yvonne Strahovski, J. K. Simmons, Betty Gilpin, Sam Richardson, Edwin Hodge, Jasmine Mathews, Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Keith Powers
Directed by: Chris McKay
Written by: Zach Dean
Synopsis: A family man is drafted to fight in a future war where the fate of humanity relies on his ability to confront the past.
Trailer: https://cooncel.com/the-tomorrow-war-official-trailer-video/