Tomorrowland

My summer movie crawl continued today with Tomorrowland. I loved it by the way. I got home and wanted to explore it a bit more (as I am wont to do) and was surprised that it’s getting mixed reviews. I skipped out early from work yesterday to catch Mad Max: Fury Road. Seen one after the other, the two meld into a rumination on the portrayal of women in movies. I’ve seen a lot of ink spilled on the feminism of Fury Road, and I agree with that, but for me the feminism of Tomorrowland is actually more important than Charlize Theron as an ass-kicking protagonist.

Tomorrowland feels like a Disney semi-classic that was dropped in a wormhole and showed up in the modern era. It reminds me of The Blackhole, The Love Bug, The Cat From Outerspace, even Escape From Witch Mountain. It feels so classically Disney that it trips all of the nostalgia circut breakers in my heart. It bounces around between the past in flashback, the present and this third place that is Tomorrowland. If you aren’t paying attention that can get confusing. I guess some reviewers don’t pay attention.

More than a nostalgia trip though, featuring a young woman as the movie’s protagonist is what made me sit up in my seat and pay attention. Britt Robertson’s Casey Newton is a geek girl. Her dad is a NASA engineer, and she fixes something he’s working on without much of a thought. She rides a motorcycle, uses a drone, sneaks into a NASA facility and disables the demolition equiptment at night. She is the ideal of a woman in a STEM field, or at least bound for a STEM field. She isn’t Mad Max’s Furiosa who can punch guys off of trucks, she’s Casey who can think her way out of a problem. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to be championing?

There’s no love interest here, other than perhaps Casey’s infatuation with what the future could be if we just tried to make things better. Maybe that’s what’s set off some reviewers, this idea that trying to make things better is a worthy aspiration. Tomorrowland can get just a bit heavy handed in that reguard. After seeing the distopia of Fury Road I think I need some of that heavy handed hope.

Towards the end of Tomorrowland Hugh Laurie’s Nix monologues on how humanity is basically driven by fear and dispair. He’s given up trying to change that. It’s Casey that brings hope that the world can be a better place, all we need to do is try to make it a better place. It’s easier to scare people into inaction than insipre them to action, but that’s not going to stop Casey.

Some reviewers have accused Tomorrowland of portraying a Randian utopia. I have no love for Ayn Rand, or her ideas, but I’m also tired of critics that whip out the Rand-brush to dismiss a creative work for not meeting their expectations of a prolitariatly appropriate level of equality. In the end Tomorrowland rejects that Randian ideal. Casey wants to give back to the world rather than abandon it in some Rapture-eqse Tomorrowland.

Mad Max’s Furiosa is an important icon, and so is Casey Newton. I kind of prefer the one that thinks the world is worth saving to the one that punches guys off of trucks.