While still wrapped in a familiar structure, Brad Bird gave us the most enjoyable Mission: Impossible film yet for Ghost Protocol, and while he could have continued to go down the franchise route with other properties, The Incredibles helmer is diving into a mysterious, original project with writer Damon Lindelof and Disney. Although we’ve only got two cast members in the form of George Clooney and Hugh Laurie and a title of Tomorrowland, the speculation as to what will be inside this 2014 blockbuster has already run rampant.
From UFO-centered plotlines to a Disney cover-up, the trustworthy Drew McWeeny over at HitFix has decided to set the record straight and it looks to be far removed from what anyone guessed. According to Disney’s official logline used for casting purposes, the film follows, “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.”
McWeeny goes into many other details, a few of which I will share here. The film reportedly follows two timelines, one of Frank Walker, before he was a “genius middle-aged man” (Clooney), rather an eleven-year-old kid. He runs into a budding inventor named David Nix (an older version to be played by Laurie) at the 1964 World’s Fair. While there, a young girl robot named Athena (who will go on to have a “key role”) brings him into the alternate dimension of Tomorrowland, a “place where science has blown past the world we live in.”
Walker sees a glimpse of this world, but is thrown out and we flash forward to the present day, where we meet Clooney’s character and Laurie, whose now plays the corrupt leader of Tomorrowland. A bitter Walker, who is out for revenge on Nix, links up with a young, smart girl named Casey and they must not only save the world, but Walker’s sense of childhood. How the lofty Earth-saving part comes into play is still anyone’s guess, not to mention how Bird will straddle the line of reality vs. science-fiction in this alternate dimension (including our perception that Tomorrowland is not only a Disney park, but also an alternate dimension?), but these brief details have us headed in an intriguing direction. In a perfect world, we can hope this is all we know about the film beforehand, as we’ve still got a ways to go before we see anything from this one, which hits theaters on December 19th, 2014.
What do you think of initial outline of Tomorrowland?