I’d be totally okay with that. The onslaught of “please put this in front of the Avengers” trailers continues today with a new trailer from Tomorrowland, George Clooney’s sci-fi adventure that is (disappointingly) also not a biopic of Walt Disney. This project, written and directed by Brad Bird, has been mystery-boxed, but this trailer gives us a fair look at the action and tone of the movie, even though I’m still a little dim on the plot. Why are the robots attacking George Clooney? Where did they come from? Is Tomorrowland an alternate dimension? Why is the Eiffel Tower a rocket ship? Is this movie just Home Alone with robots?
While I still have a lot of questions about Tomorrowland, I’m really into the goofy action sequence in George Clooney’s house. I mentioned previously that the rocket-ship bathtub is like something straight out of a child’s fantasy, and now looking at the expanded sequence, I think Tomorrowland is a twenty-first century update of the sort of bonkers sci-fi/fantasy adventures I grew up on, like The Last Unicorn and The Dark Crystal. I’m still not entirely sure what’s going on in Tomorrowland, but I’m starting to suspect it’s not aimed at adults.
There are a lot of downsides to the “importance” of the PG-13 rating to studios, not least of which is a lack of genuinely good entertainment exclusively for kids. Sometimes you get a Paddington or a Cinderella, but a lot of the time, children’s entertainment is more like the second-rate Home, or worse, the soul-crushingly awful Dolphin Tale 2— lazy and uninspired because everyone thinks kids are dumb and don’t deserve smart, exciting movies just for them. Brad Bird, who also made The Iron Giant, a stellar should-be children’s classic, seems to be offering an adventure flick just for kids. I’m totally fine with this.
