Home Entertainment Is this what Damon Lindelof and Brad Bird's TOMORROWLAND will be about?

Is this what Damon Lindelof and Brad Bird's TOMORROWLAND will be about?

4 min read
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Love him or hate him, you’ve got to admit that Damon Lindelof sure knows how to keep a secret. Actually, that’s a perfect reason to just hate him, because while everybody has been eagerly waiting to see what he and Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol director Brad Bird have cooked up for their new sci-fi project Tomorrowland, all we’ve had so far is mysterious briefcases and enigmatic hints.

But now it looks like the mystery of Tomorrowland may have been unraveled, and it sounds pretty intriguing.

Now just a recap, we initially knew that the film had something to do with Disneyland as Lindelof revealed that he found inspiration for the film from a briefcase of ideas which once belonged to Walt Disney himself that Lindelof found in Disney’s archives. The briefcase was enigmatically labelled “1952” which became the film’s initial title. After the cast additions of both George Clooney and Hugh Laurie. that title was then changed to Tomorrowland, the same name of a proposed Disney theme park from the 1960’s, which prompted lots of speculation from a Walt Disney biopic to a movie about that one time the US Department of Defense approached Disney to help them break the news of first contact with aliens to the public (No, really, that happened).

But according to HitFix’s Drew McWeeney, all of that is completely wrong. Way wrong. According to McWeeney, this is the logline that’s being used to shop the script around to casting agencies.

“A teenage girl, a genius middle-aged man (who was kicked out of Tomorrowland) and a pre-pubescent girl robot attempt to get to and unravel what happened to Tomorrowland, which exists in an alternative dimension, in order to save Earth.”

Okay, that’s so far out of left field that it pretty much came from a different sporting event altogether. Drew indicates that “the “Tomorrowland” that they keep referring to in this break-down appears to be a place where science has blown past the world we live in”, and then then went on to describe the concept in detail:

 “…when Frank Walker was a young man, he first encountered the promise of Tomorrowland at the 1964 World’s Fair.  David Nix was there, showing off his own work, and he told Walker to come back when he was older and his inventions actually worked.  A girl named Athena saw great promise in 11-year-old Frank, though, and she snuck him into Tomorrowland.  Eventually, Frank was discovered by Nix and thrown out, but not before learning that the girl he loved, Athena, was actually a robot.

By the time we meet Frank in the film, he’s much older, and George Clooney is set to play the part.  Nix is the role that Hugh Laurie is signed for, and by the point the main story of the film kicks in, Nix has been the mayor of Tomorrowland for many years, and he’s become rotten, corrupt.  Athena, unchanged since Frank was a young man, plays a key role in the film, and the hero is a girl named Casey who has a quick scientific mind that becomes important as the story unfolds.  Nix is a guy who values technical accomplishment over creative thinking, and when he throws Frank out of Tomorrowland, he’s not alone.  Every creative thinker is banished, allowing Nix to focus purely on aesthetics and technical advancement for its own sake.

There’s interdimensional travel, human-looking robots, and a quest for revenge on the part of Frank.  He is a bitter adult, and the film is not just about Casey’s adventure, but also about Frank rediscovering the kid he used to be.  It sounds like young Frank actually plays a decent-sized role in the film, so we may see both timelines play out to some extent.”

To quote a certain excellent dude: “Whoa!” That sounds like the type of crazy high-concept adventure films that we used to see a few decades ago. Bird has already shown a superlative grasp on both family adventure and high octane thrills with his past works, and while Lindelof is a chronic non-finisher, he… he… So how about that Brad Bird, hey? That guy is amazing!

While the alien contact story that was initially theorized is still amazingly intriguing and something that I really hope somebody actually does turn into a script, this sounds like quite the interesting story. Well, that’s if it turns out too be true, of course. Drew does point out that this may just be the most elaborate smokescreen ever, but he’s a pretty solid source for things like this. With a December 14, 2014 release date though, it’s still a long way off until we can confirm anything about Tomorrowland.

Last Updated: March 5, 2013

One Comment

  1. James Francis

    March 5, 2013 at 11:08

    Why would a robot be pre-anything? It’s a robot!

    Reply

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