Chris Pratt’s latest sci-fi adventure film has come to streaming and was met with mixed reviews. After tackling everything from dinosaurs to Thanos, Pratt has turned to a more family-oriented character – that of Dan Forester, the protagonist of The Tomorrow War.
Warning: spoilers ahead.
While he’s often portrayed the buffed, humorous, single guy, Pratt’s character in the Amazon original movie is much subdued by comparison. A devoted husband and father, Dan Forester recognizes his responsibilities to his family and does what he believes is best for them.
Forester is drafted into a military endeavor that involves time travel – to the future. Why? To fight aliens, of course! However, the entire mission is fraught with continuous dangers such as glitches in the time-travel transport system and the ferocity of the aliens themselves. These creatures have hunted down and killed much of the world’s population.
The plan for global defense and preserving humanity is to bring able-bodied individuals to the future, give them weapons, and hope for the best. Needless to say, this seems a bit futile. Full of surprises, the plot turns to focus on Forester and his daughter Muri, whom he meets in the future.
Muri now holds the military rank of colonel; she is as intelligent as she is courageous. Dan is quite proud of his daughter, but she seems reluctant to open up to him. The flood gates of emotion are let loose when she reveals to her dad that he left her and her mom during the formative years of Muri’s life.
Now, while these events had not yet happened in Dan Forester’s life, he nevertheless feels shame and remorse over the situation he had apparently placed his daughter in. It is doubly sad for him because the story Muri tells is strikingly similar to what happened to Dan himself in his own upbringing. His father abandoned him and his mother, and – as an adult – he has not felt at ease with his father, refusing to forgive him for the dysfunctional state of his childhood. In a moving and ironic twist, he finds that he put his own daughter in the same situation he had detested when he was young. Now he, like his own dad before him, was in need of forgiveness.
Forgiveness is perhaps one of the hardest expressions of love. Throughout Christ’s ministry, our Lord noted the importance of not retaliating against injustices, of refraining from being judgemental, and of even loving one’s enemies!
In Matthew 7:1, Jesus says, “Judge not, that you be not judged.” The opposite of judging others who have wronged us is to go about forgiving them. The jugding which Jesus mentions at the beginning of Matthew chapter 7 is paralleled by the message of forgiveness articulated in the Lord’s Prayer, or the “Our Father:”
Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us…
Anything noted in a prayer so integral to Christianity as the “Our Father” is important to put into practice. In the prayer that Jesus Himself gave us, He mentions the need to forgive instead of judge. We’re not supposed to judge others, but forgive them. The message is clear: You should forgive others if you yourself wish to be forgiven.
Realizing that all people deserve forgiveness and a second chance, Dan Forester makes amends to his father James (played by J.K. Simmons). In doing so, they are able to team up and destroy the aliens at their source.
As a result, the future is looking a little bit brighter for everyone, and Muri doesn’t just get to spend her childhood knowing her father but her grandfather as well. The story treats family as something precious. The Tomorrow War has its moments of darkness and violence. But it has a heartwarming end.
John Tuttle
John Tuttle is a Catholic journalist, blogger, and photographer. He has written for Prehistoric Times, Culture Wars Magazine, Those Catholic Men, Catholic Insight, Inside Over, Ancient Origins, Love They Nerd, We Got This Covered, Cultured Vultures, and elsewhere. He can be reached at jptuttleb9@gmail.com.