Movie Impressions: Tomorrowland: A World Beyond

All the way back in 1955, Walt Disney opened a themed park in his famed Disneyland project dedicated to the future and space age and attempting to let people gain a glimpse into that promise through its rides in the form of Tomorrowland.  60 years later, Pixar alumni, Brad Bird has decided to remind us of that more 'optimistic' future with a heartfelt journey of discovery and determination with a great cast and a greater scale. Though much like the future, the promise is there, but it leaves you wanting more...

When a curious and optimistic teenager Casey Newton (Britt Robertson) stumbles upon a pin that upon physical contact allows her to see 'a city of tomorrow', where all the brightest and creative minds reside free from politics to just go crazy. Thus Casey embarks on an adventure along with inventor Frank Walker (George Clooney) and the mysterious Athena (Raffey Cassidy) to find out if such a world truly exists and ultimately finding out her destiny to save Tomorrowland. 

Armed with a stellar production design and a roaring soundtrack , Tomorrowland looks absolutely gorgeous filled with influences from the 1960's 'Space-Age' future and a very romantic and colourful nature of sci-fi that blends peoplr from all cultures, which is not very common these days to be found on film. There are also allusions to classic Disney rides and movies such as Its a Small World and Rocketeer  . When you see Tomorrowland you truly feel like you are witnessing a utopian society with a blue sky filled with jet-packs and pristine white and chrome buildings. That being said, for a movie called Tomorrowland, you don't see it very much and the story is very much focused on the journey to reach Tomorrowland. I believe that the film-makers did this intentionally so that the audience could imagine and expand on it, though ultimately it does make itself feel missing, since at the very beginning the story tells us that the place is real, so that mystery element is not there.

Brad Bird has proven himself to be capable director with The Incredibles and Mission Impossible:Ghost Protocol, and he carries over the brilliant direction on this movie as well with driving the movie at a brisk pace and nice cinematography which presents a very nice sense of scale a (you see the movie you'll know what I mean) and awe. Every thing looks well managed  and you will never feel that things linger on too much. On the contrary I felt that there was not enough development to plot ideas and themes that clearly had great potential but left underdeveloped, (for eg. responsibility of the future, optimism vs. cynicism, the need for Tomorrowland, whether we should know our future , the relationship between Casey and Frank and etc.) and also some plot-holes in there. There is also a very-brief tie-in to the conspiracy theory of Plus-Ultra, a group of the greatest minds founded by Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison, Gustave Eiffel and H.G Wells. This had so much story potential that it left me cringin for more . Another crime the story commits that they are no real consequences or impacts shown for a premise that sorely speaks about influencing the course of Human Progress. for eg. *Mild Spoilers- An ancient rocket is shown to fly out of the Eiffel Tower with pretty much entire blocks worth of Witnesses, and yet we never really see what sort of impact that created, or phoning your father to tell that you have abandoned your home, do not know where are you going and you just tell, Ill be coming soon, and somehow he is fine with it.* It just doesn't seem...plausible.

Despite some zany yet creative ideas well directed action sequences, most of all the story ultimately feels a bit underwhelming where there is not much of a pay-off and a nagging feeling of things not well rounded-up to a proper conclusion. 

Much of the story is kept afloat by the characters and this the part where the movie really shines and where I assume that Bird felt the most comfort.  Bird and Damon Lindelof approached these characters with great confidence, with each character having a clear set of morals, motivations and behaviours and each of them having great zest. Starting with Casey Newton, who is a curious teenager who "knows how thing's work" and in my opinion she is a very strong female protagonist who carries the film really well with an equally solid performance by Britt Robertson supporting it and it was a shame that she didn't gain much spotlight and was a character that I definitely felt wanting to explore more. George Clooney plays Frank Walker, an inventor who was kicked off from Tomorrowland 'for some reason' because of that he has lost his optimism and curiosity so has become a very grumpy old man waiting pretty much convinced on a dystopian future. While it seems very one-note 'lost on his way' character at first, but he does have nuance stemming from Clooney's performance and our next character. When you see Athena as she blasts past through a store saving Casey, you instantly realise, 'This is pretty much Athena's movie". Athena (Cassidy) is a bubbly, headstrong, charismatic and total bad-ass Audio Animatronic (robot) who recruits the potential candidates who are useful to the Tomorrowland cause and Casey is her new recruit much like he recruited Frank all the way back in 1964. The relationship between Frank and Athena was personally my favourite part of the movie and clearly one of the highlights of the movie, where it feela like a love story and at the same time there also is like a mentor-prodigy thing going on. However, bringing me crushing back into reality is another under-utilized and character and actor in the form of  David Nix, Governor of Tomorrowland, played by Hugh Laurie which the movie shows him to be a bit of a douche but he seems more than meets the eye and one can see a greater character in there, but he is never explored and also Laurie fit the role terribly well, so its a shame that we didn't see more of him. In the end some characters have their screen-time, others don't, though all are good characters to be with nonetheless and make the movie very enjoyable.

With all those points being mentioned, however, I do not put the entire blame on the Film-makers for being this film underwhelming. I think that most of us (including myself) as an audience clearly have been spoilt with having too many 'complex' characters who walk the grey area so much that we have pretty much forgot to appreciate characters with a clear moral ground or a very defined character. Nowadays we just expect for characters to have flaws and pathos to it. And for that reason I admire Brad Bird for telling a very simple and straightforward story that has a lot of heart to it, and while at some bits it does seem like a wasted potential, its an enjoyable experience nonetheless that reminds of a future that just may not be filled with grey skies and muted colour correction.

But that's just my impression....... 

What makes Birdman's 'long-takes' unique ?

I think by this time we are all acquainted with the praises that Birdman received and the achievement of the movie which is the whole movie playing out in one 2-hour long continuous take  . However what exactly makes this technique unique ?

I mean it does a feel a bit gimmicky at first doesn't it and that it wouldn't really affect the movie as a whole even if it was shot like a normal movie, with edits. Though you will probably agree with me that if you have seen the movie you couldn't imagine it being played out otherwise. And I think this is why it doesn't feel so arbitrary, that the technique is woven in to the story in such a way that it has a unique pace and flow to it unlike a movie with cuts and edits. I think the director Alejandro G.Inarritu put it perfectly, that it stayed with the characters for 10 minutes non-stop because there is no 'Cut-To' or 'Fade To Black' in real-life. Everything remains in constant motion.

It is fairly noticeable that because of this long-take style the movie does become much more fluid in its approach in a way that it starts to mimic its very own subject matter, Theatre. When I was going through the Behind-the Scenes of the film I witnessed the meticulous preparation where each actor, camera operator and the sound guys were to know their exact positions. And since each take averaged about 10-15 minutes approx. a single mistake could brake those entire shot. Sounds very much like real theatre doesn't it. And if we go more deep into it, we could also assume that the 'high stakes' of the shooting process also mirrors the 'high-stakes' situation of the characters in the movie as well. In many ways it actually seams to take the best of both worlds with the cinematography and convenience of film-making but marrying it to the continuous performances and the fluid entries and exits found in theatre.  


The one thing that defines Emmanuel Lubezki's cinematography in Birdman is that it stays with the characters and is always positioned in such a way that it represents the perspective of another human looking into these characters lives and struggles. It does add a layer an add of tangibility to the film and the audience doesn't feel some kind of entity hovering about in space and does in fact feel as a human spectator watching and listening into people. In fact the whole thing of the super-long take works because it is such a character driven story so we are constantly shifting character perspectives and getting to know their angles in the story (because if you notice the situation itself does not change very much but they are constant developments within characters), and most of the time, the characters are the ones that drive the story.



As a conclusion, in my humble opinion, I think that this style of cinematography really has, emotion in it which in turn resonates with the audience because really for most of the time the camera is not trying to paint a beautiful picture or landscape, it appears to follow a very hands-on and gritty( to some extent) approach. Placing the audience right at the centre of everything that is happening. As a result it has managed to replicate a human experience of life. It is not the sheer length of these takes that makes it unique or innovative, nor necessarily the effort that went into it. However, the fact it blended with its subject matter and story so well that it was able to add to the immersion, made it unique.


P.s   Here is a video that explains some of the techniques used in the film to make it look 'seamless'.