In a summer promising non-stop entertainment, Tomorrowland might feel a little bit like a sermon. Brad Bird’s film, co-written by Damon Lindelof and Jeff Jensen, is a sci-fi adventure but also a damning indictment of cynicism, calling out every post-apocalyptic story and even contemporary scientists for showing the world a future full of doom and gloom, instead of inspiring audiences to change their fate. It is a mission statement that Damon Lindelof himself describes as “pretentious” in our interview at the Montage Hotel in Beverly Hills, CA, but he defends the decision, arguing that audiences don’t just need to “eat their broccoli,” but also that they want to… that films with positive messages have a place in the popular culture, even amongst the hit films like The Hunger Games and Mad Max, and the films that Lindelof has written himself.
What follows is the conversation we had about Tomorrowland, and whatever happened to our collective vision of the future. We talk about inspiration, fancy pins and the curious relationship George Clooney has with his co-star Raffey Cassidy in Brad Bird’s latest film.
The following interview is full of spoilers. You have been warned.
Related: ‘Tomorrowland’ Review: Stand By Your Mañana
CraveOnline: You created for yourself a symbol in a movie, which seems bold. Were you nervous about that? Were you like, “What if people don’t buy the pins? What if they don’t want to be dreamers, oh god?”
Damon Lindelof: It’s funny because you always look for… it’s kind of reductive to say a “MacGuffin,” because I think that the way that MacGuffins are basically used in movies like this now, tentpole movies, are it’s the thing that’s going to destroy the world. It’s the Allspark, it’s Loki’s scepter…
Red matter…
Red matter, God, who came up with that? That nonsense? But there’s always kind of like a destructive power behind the MacGuffin, so it’s like, if we’re going to make a movie, even if the fate of the world is the stakes and it’s almost impossible to avoid the gravity of that, that idea, but what if our MacGuffin was sort of an optimistic thing that wasn’t dangerous at all? In fact, it’s kind of wonderful?
And then I kind of noticed when I was at Disneyland… do you have kids?
I have nieces but I don’t have kids.
I have a son who was four at the time I first started thinking of Tomorrowland. When you experience Disneyland through the eyes of a four-year-old, you kind of vicariously reconnect to that thing of, whoa… they’re really experiencing this like it’s real. I just started seeing the park through this entirely different prism, and one of the things that I saw was all these people were walking around the park and they had all these pins.
These were the hardcore Disney aficionados and I stopped one of them, and I was like, “Do you mind if I ask what’s up with these pins?” And they were like, “Oh, I just collect them, and this one is a limited edition and I got this one back in 1989 when they stopped making this, and this is when they reopened Haunted Mansion.” All these pins are kind of a conduit of a specific memory that they’ve had with this specific attraction here in the park, and they just kind of wear with great pride. [I’m] like, “Well, I’m going to file that away for later.”
That became sort of the inception point for when Jeff Jensen and I first started talking about this, it was this idea of, what if there was a magical object and when you touched it, not unlike Narnia, it transported you there? Except in this case you don’t really go, you just think that you’re there, but if you start walking around anyone witnessing you do this would just think that you were insane. And you could walk into walls, et cetera et cetera. Then those two ideas combinated into the pin you now wear on your lapel.
CraveOnline: I feel like the pin also represents a nostalgia for the future, which is an interesting concept. You evoke it right at the beginning with the idea of The World’s Fair. It made me think, the end of The World’s Fair… is that what meant the future was going to suck? We always look on The World’s Fair with such affection.
Damon Lindelof: That’s a very great insight, and I think that [Brad] Bird has actually articulated to me a couple times the same exact idea, which is, how do we put our finger on that moment when it turned? When that idea of The Jetsons, or our jetpacks, or our shining gleaming flying cars, gets replaced by something else?
I think that something happened in the late ‘60s and the early ‘70s, where maybe it was landing on the moon and kind of going like, “Now what?” Like, we were able to put our collective optimism behind this amazing goal and we reached it, but what do we do next? We combinate it with something that happened with popular culture, which is, now Planet of the Apes comes along and you see the Statue of Liberty in the sand at the end of the movie and you go, “Oh right, this feels right. This feels more like it.” It’s Charlton Heston going, “We destroyed it! We destroyed it!”
We blew it. That’s a powerful thing, that Christopher Nolan Inception model. That’s a powerful idea to incept into somebody’s head. So [that’s] the idea, then we just ran with it.
So it’s Rod Serling’s fault?
It’s Rod Serling’s fault, it’s Ridley Scott’s fault, it’s James Cameron’s fault, it’s The Wachowski’s fault, it’s my fault. Because this idea… it’s The Hunger Games’ fault… this idea of impending apocalypse and dystopia is so powerful because it feels very realistic. It feels inevitable, and you can’t deny it. And it’s also kind of cool. Like, I want to see all that stuff…
You want to see the apocalypse?
I want to see movies about it. I don’t want it for me…
Just checking.
That’s the interesting thing, like I don’t want it for me, but I want to see movies about it. What is that all about?
But they did become so pervasive that they create, as you say in the film, a self-fulfilling prophecy. I thought that was one of the more interesting conceits of Tomorrowland, the idea that showing people a negative future would de-motivate them.
I love that you locked into that, by the way, because it’s like…
Are people not locking into that?
This is my first opportunity, really, to talk to people who have been outside the development of the movie about the movie at all. But [Nix] says, “We didn’t build this machine to end the world, we started broadcasting to save the world and then you gobbled it up!” Obviously you’re a bright guy but it is a bit of nuance that we did fear. Like, uh-oh, if people don’t get this part we’re goners.
At the beginning of the film you have George Clooney sending a message directly to the audience, and as the message subplot began to finally coalesce and take form, I started thinking to myself, “Is this movie the reverse message? Was this their solution, to send a positive message, to show people the jet pack?”
Yes.
To show people that anything is possible, so now that I’ve seen Tomorrowland, the world is awesome?
Well, now you’re speaking to immensely pretentious filmmakers, but I think that yes, Brad and George and I and even Hugh [Laurie] spoke very specifically about this idea, of like, “Hey look, here we are. We make our living generating entertainments.” And certainly George has already gone out of his way to make movies that are meaningful, but they’re niche movies. You’re not going to get an eight-year-old to go see Good Night, and Good Luck.
So can we Trojan Horse this idea that you just described? Can we make something that is inspirational, but might make people feel a little ashamed? Sort of like, what are you doing to make the future better? Dare we actually beat the audience about the head and neck with that idea, that the future isn’t something that happens to you, it’s something you make happen? Should we go for that? And we all said, “Ahoy!”
This movie itself, embedded in the middle of the summer, amongst the Poltergeists and Avengers and Mad Maxes and Ant-Mans and franchise and sequels… all of which we are going to pay money to see ourselves, we love these movies… dare we? Why not. Let’s be pretentious.
CraveOnline: Is that not even more of a responsibility? The broader an audience you are expecting to reach, the more careful one might be to portray a positive message? Sometimes I see a major blockbuster that espouses or even accidentally embodies negativity, and people are just going to sit there and eat their popcorn and not think about it because it’s mainstream entertainment.
Brad keeps calling it “broccoli,” as if that’s a bad thing, but I think that everybody does want to take things into their system that are good for them. So that idea, of “eat your broccoli,” is like, no, I actually want to eat my broccoli. I want stuff that’s good for them. So when you go and see something like Cinderella, which I’m going to go on record as saying I liked a lot…
Damon Lindelof: A lot. But for me, it was like it’s that reinforced message of: be courageous, be kind. I was like, “Ooh!” This is not rocket science, this idea, but the fact that [her] dying mother is telling her this but then she’s basically carrying that out over and over again in the movie, and they’re demonstrating that this ideal actually reaps benefit. Now it’s not just about someone waiting for a prince to come and slip a glass slipper on their foot, it’s about this value system.
I’m actually like, I love this, and what a great message to be sending to kids. And it doesn’t feel corny, it doesn’t feel dated, but it risks an eye roll. It’s possible that you could go to this movie and be like, “I get it. Be kind!” Hey asshole! You’re not being kind right now! You’re missing it! So you have to get up on your soapbox a little bit.
What I love about Hugh and his performance and Nix’s speech – which Bird wrote, that’s the first draft pretty much verbatim – is, he’s right. You know? Everything that Nix is saying is absolutely right. So I think that what Nix is saying balances that other part of it, the more idealistic aspect of it. Because both of them are right.
One of the most unusual and I think daring things about the movie is the romantic relationship between George Clooney and a little girl who just happens to be a robot. Were you worried about that? That seems like a risk. They play like a married couple.
I think, ultimately, the margin there is razor thin, and I think that when we were first talking to Disney about, like, “Just so you know, this is what we’re going for: we’re going for a young 11-year-old boy falls in love with 11-year-old girl. She never grows up, he does. He’s not in love with her anymore, because he’s a man and she’s a girl, but he was in love with her and their relationship is that they bicker like Nick and Nora Charles, a little bit like a married couple. Are you down for that?”
And they were like, “We think that’s very interesting, but the margin of error is pretty narrow.” And we’re like, “We think if it’s Clooney we can get away with it,” because as much as George can play a romantic lead, that idea of what he does tonally, but also you feel safe with George. You know that there’s nothing lascivious or sexual about it, and I think that at the end of the day the movie is a romantic movie because these three characters – Casey, Athena and Frank – their romance with the future, is with idealism. So that’s what they’re in love with.
When Athena says, “I’m the future, Frank Walker,” he’s in love with the idea of Athena. But it’s not like, “I want to kiss that, I want to get with that.” We’re also telling a movie with a teenaged female protagonist who is not boy crazy. By the way, there’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s like The Hunger Games. I’m down for Katniss just being. Isn’t it enough that she’s just trying not to get killed in the arena?
She’s busy!
Yeah. Peeta, come on, dude! Get over yourself!
It’s not all about you, Peeta…
But I think that the way that they do the romance is very clever, in terms of that Katniss uses that almost as a survival mechanism. But we weren’t out to make Twilight, we weren’t out to make The Hunger Games. Those are very effective, highly successful films, but Casey is in love with the future. She’s not in love with a boy.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and the host of The B-Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
