The Lego Movie director Chris McKay is making his live-action debut with The Tomorrow War, a time-travel alien invasion sci-fi story led by Chris Pratt. The film was originally set for a theatrical release by Paramount Pictures, and the distribution rights were acquired by Amazon Studios due to the global Covid-19 pandemic. It’s out on Amazon Prime Video now, and McKay’s advice to movie fans would be to get the biggest TV possible to recreate the theatre experience at home.
The self-confessed genre movie fan spoke News18 about making this film more than just a heavy duty actioner by adding in some laughs and ways for the audience to emotionally connect to it. The behind-the-scenes raw footage is extremely funny, he says. Excerpts from a chat:
What about the story of The Tomorrow War appealed to you as a director?
I’m a huge genre movie fan. I really love sci-fi movies, action, horror, alien movies. There’s an appeal there. But the fact that it was also a family story, a character study of this man, and his relationships with his family, with his father. It’s a father-son story, it’s a father-daughter story. That was the stuff that really appealed to me, mixing that, because you don’t get an opportunity to do that in a lot of science fiction movies, and especially in big budget movies.
How did you ensure that this is not all about action and emotion?
I knew that Chris wanted to take a certain point of view. He’s known for playing guys who are a little more joke-y, and he wanted to try something a little bit different with this. The script wasn’t necessarily written super funny, so I wanted there to be other characters who could provide some levity. So Sam Richardson and a bunch of the other people were cast. Otherwise I think movies like this can be really self-serious, and I wanted there to be light moments.
What were the challenges since this is your debut live-action feature?
Lots of challenges. It’s tough because in animation, whether it’s stop motion, or whether it’s computer generated, you can draw your way out, or computer your way out, of a problem. In live-action, you can’t… But just like in animation, where you’re working with actors in a voice booth and you’re trying to create a world for them, on set in a movie like this, where there’s a lot of CG and a digitally created monster, you end up doing same kinds of playful, childlike stuff. You’re asking them to use their imagination and run around with guns. It’s very much like playing when you’re a kid, but you’ve got smoke and millions of dollars of equipment around you.
When you watch the raw footage, it can seem a little silly. There’s a moment in Iceland when JK and Chris are fighting the creature, and it looks cool with all the effects in there. But the raw footage is of just these two men throwing themselves on the ground, getting back up, snow going up, they throw themselves in another direction. It’s just this weird ballet of these guys rolling around in the snow. The raw footage is very funny.
Films like these are best enjoyed on the big screen. Do you regret the fact that people will have to settle for like a streaming service to watch this one because of the pandemic?
I love movies and movie theaters. And that’s a huge part of why I wanted to be a filmmaker. Streaming offers other kinds of pleasures for both a filmmaker for the audience. The audience can watch it immediately, whether they can make it to a movie theater or not. We wanted to maximize the home experience so the way we mixed the sound, the way we color the movie – it has never looked better than the version that’s going to be streaming. It looks amazing and the sounds amazing. My advice would be, get the biggest TV, go to a friend’s house if they got a bigger TV, crank up the sound if you got a big loud TV or a home theater system and get the full HDR version of movie. It’s really something that we made specifically for the home and it’s going to be something special.
In India, people really love these larger-than-life movies. Anything you want to say to the audience here?
Go in with as little knowledge as you can, and I think you’re going to have a really great time. There are a lot of surprises in the movie. Go in with as much of a blank slate as humanly possible, because there’s a lot of fun to be had.
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