An excerpt from my script review for The Tomorrow War which will be available 07/06/21:
3.) Quality of Characters
Okay, here’s the section where I think the film won out.
First off…Dorian.
In the script, he’s definitely going back for his third tour. He’s also a bit of a prick to the other soldiers.
Then on page 49…he fucking shoots Charlie in the head!
Now if you’ve seen the movie, the camaraderie between Chris Pratt’s Dan and Sam Richardson’s Charlie was the highlight of the film, but the script steals most of that away from us.
Not to mention the fact that Dorian is a stronger, more relatable character in the film, choosing to go back time after time to die on his own terms, instead of slowly to cancer in the past.
It made for a huge difference, with the script’s version of Dorian being a cheap knockoff of leading Dan to the glacier in Iceland that the spaceship is at.
(But don’t get me started on the stupidity of needing a high school student to explain volcanoes to you to solve this riddle either.)
Next was how well the film did with the bond between Dan and Muri.
Both versions argue she didn’t bring him to the future for personal reasons, but of course she did.
In the film, this plays out slowly, him winning her over, but in the script?
We don’t see much because it’s jumping from action scene to action scene, then she does the poison bit, and boom she’s critically injured.
And when she dies in the script…what a little whiny bitch.
There were so many uses of “daddy” that taken out of context you’d think you were watching a bad porno.
Then a few other “betters” from the movie.
Made sense to give Dan some sort of special forces military background, so his survival in the future feels plausible.
Robert, Dan’s father, was cooler in the film.
But what about the script? Didn’t it do a few things better?
Yes.
One being that at the time of the draft Dan and Nikki are having marital problems. This worked better with his choosing to go, being that he felt like a shit dad/husband and wanted to make it up to them by sacrificing himself.
(For me the couple was too tight knit in the film.)
Two, it made perfect sense to take the soldiers from the future on the final mission to Iceland.
When the script brings it up, it was quite the revelation because yeah, what were they doing once the link goes down?
The final point here is to make the changes that strengthen your story.
From a character standpoint the final product was stronger, even if some of the character dialogue and actions felt cliché.
Want EARLY access to our videos, uploads, and movie/script reviews? Members get them FIRST! Follow this link to our Discussion Forum.
