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The IndieWeb Movie Club - IndieWeb this month has Tomorrowland (2015) — The Movie Database (TMDB) as its focus this month, which was suggested by Tantek - May 2025 IndieWeb Movie Club.

Review of Tomorrowland

I finally watched the whole of Tomorrowland. My son had strongly recommended Tomorrowland after he saw it when it first came out, saying, “this is a movie you will love”. About two or three years ago I started watching it too late one evening and was about 45 minutes in and put it on hold, but didn’t get back to it.

Rather than starting where I left off, I started all over from the beginning. I didn’t remember much from my prior watching, but watching it from the start I had the same feeling and thoughts of, “this isn’t going where I thought it would go”. I had this thought a lot. The movie is largely had non-linear chronology in many spots and plays with time concepts, which is something I deeply enjoy.

Given it is 10 years beyond release, I’m not worrying about spoilers (in River Song voice or not). Much of the movie is working through crossing time and timelines from current storyline to one future timeline. The future, Tomorrowland, is a glimpse of the future created to show the possible optimistic outcome. Athena (Raffey Cassidy) is a young human-skinned bot who traverses Tomorrowland’s timeline and space to bring people in to help it become reality, but also save it. Hence, our two main characters, Frank Walker Geoge Clooney) and Casey Newton (Britt Robertson). Frank is the jaded and pessimistic creator who is back in our timeline under agreement to stay there. Casey is new to the Tomorrowland experience from her “gifted” token.

The movie leans into the Two Wolves - Wikipedia legend and storytelling device where the white wolf is positive and optimistic and the black wolf is negative and pessimistic and the one that wins is the one you feed. I felt this worked well and was a good underlying story driver.

Much of the movie was quite good, but some transitions were a bit bumpy. But, that may be intentional as much of the focus is on Casey and her perspective and at many key points she doesn’t have any understanding of what is going on, what the hole journey she is on is about, and also lacking context to have a foothold to understand what is going on. The only character that didn’t really seem fully fleshed out was the possibly evil David Nix (Hugh Laurie).

From a first watch perspective the bumpy path of the journey was a good framing and means of pulling the audience into the characters understand of what is happening.

The Wrap-up

I quite enjoyed Tomorrowland and my son’s estimate was pretty dead on. I really enjoy plays on time, timelines, and reality and this ticked the boxes well. The story was good and pulled the viewer along. The acting was good and cinematography and editing supported the time settings and moods along the storyline.

I would / will watch this again, but that will be a very different perspective. To give it a rating I’d put it at or just under 8 out of 10. It isn’t perfect nor did it put me in awe at any point, but it was quite enjoyable, ticked boxes for story focus I enjoy, and there are spots and perspectives I may be thinking about for a while.