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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.

Filed under Movie News, Opinions

From around the web:

Kaiser

Disney seem to be into Dwayne Johnson at the moment. This sounds like it will be ok for the kids. Just one thing Chris, Tomorrowland is actually an area of the theme parks and not a specific ride, it was originally Walt's vision of the perfect future, which is why I guess the future spoken of for this movie will be exactly that.
Christopher M

sounds like Demolition Man
twb136

No its Meet the Robinsons minus the Robinsons.
http://www.bradleyhuber.com/blog Brad

Except Demolition Man was faux-utopian, in that it was really totalitarian. The future was only perfect because the government dictated so much stuff than any law breaker was condemned, and so society was only "perfect" because people were too scared not to be perfect. A true Utopian future would be perfect because society strives for that ideal, not because they are forced into it. Demolition Man's future is more like Equilibrium's "Utopia" than what it sounds like Tomorrowland will be. Tomorrowland sounds more of like a Star Trek: The Next Generation type future- where science and innovation have propelled society into an almost utopian symbiosis between humanity and technology. (Sort of like Wall-E, but without taking so much advantage of it that society has become lazy and dependent on technology)
Ajax

#1, I was just thinking that! Anyway, the idea sounds kinda cool, so I'll have to wait to see some footage before I get really excited.
Dan W

As soon as I heard the Rock was in it I became disinterested
crAziemutant

I was interested before the description of the plot. The plot seems so...I don't know... And the Rock?...he's cool and all. But I don't like the way his characters come out. I'll most likely catch this sooner or later. But I'm not going to be running for a midnight showing.