When I went to see Age of Ultron ten-ish days ago, I found myself underwhelmed by the majority of the trailers. We’ve covered our disinterest in Batman v Superman already, and I would preferably look at dog shit for three hours over spending money to see Ant-Man. But nestled among the uninteresting trailers for an nth Mission Impossible movie and a third Insidious installment was an unlikely gem: the preview for Tomorrowland. For a film that wasn’t even on my radar before I walked into that auditorium, I’m pretty psyched to see it now.
The trailer I’ve embedded here isn’t actually the one I watched in the theaters; that’d be the second one (here). But having seen both, I think this one better introduces the potential conflict of the movie. Intrepid teen Casey discovers a pin that, through skin-to-pin contact, allows her to see into another world. After presumably struggling with the idea that she has totally lost her mind and is hallucinating a futuristic otherworld, she does what intrepid teen heroines ought to do: decides to get to the bottom of it. This leads her to discover George Clooney’s character Frank, a shut-in who knows what she’s experiencing and reluctantly agrees to help her on her heroine’s journey.
Besides the fact that I like George Clooney and this looks like a fun ride, I have two specific reasons to be excited. First of all, there doesn’t appear to be any sort of romantic interest in either trailer, which sets this apart from slightly-older-audience-directed genre movies like The Hunger Games or the Divergent series. Also, based on the brief plot description of the movie on IMDb, it’s clear that Casey is the protagonist and the special person on whose actions the story depends—not Frank, who appears to be more of a father/mentor figure than anything else.
Given that the movie does come out in two weeks, I’m surprised that there hasn’t been more hype or at least another trailer introducing other cast members. Maybe I’ve been watching the wrong channels? From that selfsame IMDb page, at least, I can see that there appear to be numerous actors of color in the cast (including Keegan-Michael Key). Without more backstory, though, I don’t know if they’ll play crucial roles or be relegated to background decoration.
Disney’s luck with theme park-based films runs the gamut from the excellent (the original Pirates of the Caribbean, of course) to the… not so excellent (lookin’ at you, Haunted Mansion). Given that Tomorrowland in Disney isn’t a single ride but rather the name of a whole district of the Magic Kingdom park, will the movie suffer from a lack of focus? Or will the vagueness of the idea of “Tomorrowland” give the movie the freedom to paint a really interesting picture? My fingers are crossed, and I can’t wait to find out when it hits theaters next weekend.
Follow Lady Geek Girl and Friends on Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook!
Lady Geek Girl and Friends 
Ooh, yes! I’ve been excited about this movie for quite some time. The director, Brad Bird, is the man behind The Iron Giant, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, and Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. If anyone can pull off a theme park-based movie, I’m convinced that he can 🙂