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Well, Now We Know What the Tomorrowland Movie is About

by Christopher Campbell
May 18, 2009

Remember the news that Disney is turning their theme park area Tomorrowland into yet another Disneyland-based movie? Well, Collider has gotten the scoop on the plot, and it sounds pretty familiar. It also sounds, not surprisingly, like a total cash-in. During a junket for The Hangover, writers Jon Lucas and Scott Moore described their script for the Tomorrowland project as "Pirates of the Caribbean in space." That's what Disney wants it to be known as, anyway. Obviously they don't want us to think of it as Country Bears in space or Haunted Mansion in space, because both of those movies didn't do so well.

Moore revealed that Dwayne Johnson will most likely play the character of Rip, a pilot who is "shot into the future" while testing a new kind of plane. "And he is sort of a fish out of water in the future," he added. "So he has to figure out how everything works and along the way the people of the future don't know who he is, so they think he is a bad guy bent on destroying the future. Rip is sort of on the run."

Certainly this doesn't sound much like the plot of Pirates, for better or worse. However, it does sound a lot like a thousand other fish out of water stories, including the hundred or so dealing with time travel. Sure, Rip doesn't wake up from a cryogenic sleep, but he may as well, as far as conventions go. This could simply be a remake of Woody Allen's Sleeper, Mike Judge's Idiocracy or Steve Miner's Forever Young.

But there is one major thing that seems to set Tomorrowland apart from most: the future setting of this movie is not apocalyptic, totalitarian or otherwise negative. "Our goal of the vision of the future is that it's the best future," Moore says. "It's not post apocalyptic or dark and gritty – it's everything you wish you could have. Every gadget, device and car... that's what it's like in this future. So the future is really great."

Okay, so the setting is basically Utopia, and The Rock is from our non-Utopian time, so he obviously comes off to future people as a bad dude. And the movie becomes a man on the run story. That could be interesting in spite of its familiarity (isn't it basically another adaptation of Buck Rogers?), but we'll still reserve doubts until we see more. Something keeps making us think this should be starring Eddie Murphy. Yet that would make people see it as The Haunted Mansion meets Pluto Nash meets Meet Dave - and no one wants to see that. Well, whatever, because we're going to see it as that anyway, until we're proven otherwise.

Lucas and Moore are expecting to turn in their first draft in the next few weeks. So, depending on how well Disney likes it, there could very well be changes to the story before we see the result up on the big screen.

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