From Brad Bird – the Oscar-winning director of The Iron Giant, The Incredibles and Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol – comes Tomorrowland, a film that has been shrouded in mystery since it was first announced in 2011. But we finally have our first look in the first Tomorrowland teaser trailer, and boy, does it look promising.
The first plot details, revealed in Entertainment Weekly, paint Tomorrowland as a hopeful film, about a better world that may or may not already exist.
Related: What’s the Best Live-Action Disney Movie Ever?
Screenwriter Damon Lindelof refers to the film’s protagonist, played by Britt Robertson (Scream 4), as “a Muggle who accidentally wanders across Platform 9 ¾ and sees something she probably shouldn’t have.” Brad Bird also continues the Harry Potter analogy by saying, “What Hogwarts is to magic, Tomorrowland is to science: They are both easy to find if you are a wizard and very difficult to find if you’re a Muggle.”
In the film, Britt Robertson finds herself in possession of a pin that transports her between our dreary, dystopian world and a beautiful, science-fiction realm where the impossible is possible. George Clooney plays a mysterious figure who knows more about this “Tomorrowland” than he lets on.
Science-fiction tends to focus on the ways that technology will eventually threaten and/or destroy our lives. In this haunting and exciting new trailer – really, we like it a whole lot – we are promised a sci-fi film that has an element of honest to goodness hope. And nowadays, that seems especially daring.
Related: No Monsters in ‘Pirates of the Caribbean 5?’
But it’s still a Disney movie, and they’re not infallible. Remember the way that The House of Mouse glorified Walt Disney to the point of grievous historical inaccuracy in Saving Mr. Banks? That’s why the only piece of news about Tomorrowland that troubles us is this quote from Damon Lindelof, who says, “Walt Disney is not a character in our movie, but he is referenced as having some involvement in this mysterious place called Tomorrowland, as a huge futurist and aficionado of space travel, rocketry, cities of the future, and space travel.”
Disney is the source of all the wonder in our imaginations? There may be an argument for that, but let’s hope that Tomorrowland doesn’t go too far in self-aggrandization its own corporation. Brad Bird is an exceptionally talented filmmaker, however, and if anyone can pull that storyline off with grace, it’s probably him.
So keep your minds open and hope for the best. After all, that’s what Tomorrowland seems to be about. The film arrives in theaters on May 22, 2015.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and the host of The B-Movies Podcast and The Blue Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
