Tomorrowland
Entry updated 21 September 2026. Tagged: Film.
US film (2015; vt Project T). Walt Disney Company. Directed by Brad Bird. Written by Bird, Jeff Jensen and Damon Lindelof (story); Bird and Lindelof (screenplay); inspired by the Tomorrowland section of Disneyland (see Theme Parks). Cast includes Britt Robertson, Raffey Cassidy, George Clooney, Pierce Gagnon, Kathryn Hahn, Keegan-Michael Key, Hugh Laurie and Tim McGraw. 130 minutes; colour.
It is best to relate the events of the film in chronological order, instead of the confusing way that they are gradually explained in the film. In 1889, at the Paris Exposition Universelle which introduced the Eiffel Tower, four forward-looking people – Thomas Alva Edison, Gustav Eiffel, Jules Verne, and Nikola Tesla – established a secret society dedicated to improving the world (see Secret Masters). Gaining access to another Dimension, the group builds a futuristic City dedicated to Utopian ideals and sends Robots back to Earth to recruit promising people to come to their city by means of a special "T" pin and aid in its progress. One of them is young Frank Walker (Robinson), who is recruited by the robot Athena (Cassidy) while riding in It's a Small World at the 1964 New York World's Fair. But as an adult, Walker (Clooney) becomes disillusioned by the growing failure of the city's leaders to live up to its ideals and is returned to Earth.
As the film begins, young Casey Newton (Robertson) is fighting to prevent a shutdown of the government space programme that her father (McGraw) works for. She finds a "T" pin and traces it to a memorabilia store, but the owners (Hahn, Key) are evil robots from Tomorrowland who threaten her. She is rescued by Athena, who takes her to Walker. Initially reluctant to join them, he eventually goes with them to the Eiffel Tower, where they are transported to Tomorrowland. They discover that its Governor Nix (Laurie) is using a Machine to broadcast apocalyptic visions to Earth, discouraging human hopes for a better future; but Athena destroys the machine and kills Nix at the expense of her own life. Frank and Casey then take over Tomorrowland, bring in Casey's father and younger brother (Gagnon), and send new teams of robots to Earth to attract suitable new recruits.
Tomorrowland has its heart in the right place, but it is undone by modern Hollywood's insistence upon inserting Villains and violence into every story, so the film is periodically interrupted by contrived battles with robots – in jarring contrast to its optimistic message. It would have been less exciting, but more inspiring, to depict a Tomorrowland that is placidly proceeding to improve itself and gradually achieving some progress in doing the same for Earth: something akin to the story of James Hilton's Lost Horizon (1934). It is also disheartening that the film does not acknowledge the many people today who are actively striving to improve the world in tangible ways, instead arguing that we must depend on magical people from another dimension to do the work. Still, the retro-futuristic city is well rendered, including the obligatory jetpack (see Flying), and Bird should be commended for filling the memorabilia store with items based on several classic sf films – a company that Bird obviously wished to join. [GW]
links
previous versions of this entry