When Disney first announced that it was making Episode VII I thought that Brad Bird would be an ideal director. While I trust J.J. Abrams with the galaxy far, far away, Brad Bird would have also been a great choice. He directed The Incredibles and Ratatouille and brought the Mission Impossible franchise back to life with Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, which I only saw because of a special preview of The Dark Knight Rises. Even though I hadn’t gone to see it, Ghost Protocol was fantastic, due in large part to Bird’s direction.
Unfortunately Bird wasn’t able to direct Episode VII because he was already committed to Tomorrowland. Tomorrowland has been veiled in secrecy since its announcement, but the first trailer made its debut yesterday at the New York Comic Con. You can see the trailer below.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k59gXTWf-A&w=560&h=315]
Due to my admiration of Brad Bird’s previous work I was already looking forward to Tomorrowland. After watching that trailer, though, I’m even more excited. I already had May 1 marked down for The Avengers: Age of Ultron but I’ll need to add May 22 for Tomorrowland.
The teaser doesn’t give us many details on the plot. We can discern that our world is in some amount of turmoil but that there is a better somewhere “out there.” We also learn that George Clooney and his amazing voice know how to get to that better somewhere, which I’m assuming is the titular Tomorrowland.
There will always continue to be movies about a better somewhere “out there.” Tomorrowland, Hogwarts, Neverland and Oz exist because of our desire for somewhere else, somewhere better. We know that this world of ours is deeply broken and fractured, that there has to be something better. Through Christ, though, the answer isn’t escaping this world but transforming it.
Jesus came to begin the work of revealing God’s kingdom. We live in a world broken by sin but Jesus came to put the broken pieces back together again. We get to partner with Jesus in that work until he returns brings the new heaven and the new earth. At that point we won’t need any more movies about the better somewhere “out there” because the better somewhere will have come to us.
What did you think of the Tomorrowland teaser?
Holy cow! This looks incredible! I thought it was going to be a period piece about making DIsneyland or something - more of the House of Mouse mining its own past for material (a la "Saving Mr Banks," which I still have yet to see). It looks awesome!
(I also think how marketing savvy genius is it of Disney to have a trading pin that is a portkey, basically. I know what the rare pins will be if I ever go back to WDW!)
Great theological take-away, too, Scott!
I thought that it had a chance to be good but the teaser has got me really excited. I must be a sucker for movies based off of Disneyland rides because I also love all of the Pirates movies.