Before today, all we knew about Disney’s Tomorrowland was that Brad Bird would direct George Clooney in it, Hugh Laurie would probably sign as the villain, and Damon Lindelof signed a seven-figure deal to co-write the script. Now we finally have an idea of what Tomorrowland is about, and it involves alternate dimensions and robots and a theme park.
“A teenage girl, a genius middle-aged man (who was kicked out of Tomorrowland) and a pre-pubescent girl robot attempt to get to and unravel what happened to Tomorrowland, which exists in an alternative dimension, in order to save Earth.” [Bleeding Cool]
Hitfix also posted an extended synopsis. The short version is, George Clooney is playing the middle-aged man (Frank Walker) and Hugh Laurie is playing David Nix, a corrupt boss of an alternate dimension’s Disneyland.
The “Tomorrowland” that they keep referring to in this break-down appears to be a place where science has blown past the world we live in, and when Frank Walker was a young man, he first encountered the promise of Tomorrowland at the 1964 World’s Fair. David Nix was there, showing off his own work, and he told Walker to come back when he was older and his inventions actually worked. A girl named Athena saw great promise in 11-year-old Frank, though, and she snuck him into Tomorrowland. Eventually, Frank was discovered by Nix and thrown out, but not before learning that the girl he loved, Athena, was actually a robot.
By the time we meet Frank in the film, he’s much older, and George Clooney is set to play the part. Nix is the role that Hugh Laurie is signed for, and by the point the main story of the film kicks in, Nix has been in charge of Disneyland for many years, and he’s become rotten, corrupt. Athena, unchanged since Frank was a young man, plays a key role in the film, and the hero is a girl named Casey who has a quick scientific mind that becomes important as the story unfolds. Nix is a guy who values technical accomplishment over creative thinking, and when he throws Frank out of Tomorrowland, he’s not alone. Every creative thinker is banished, allowing Nix to focus purely on aesthetics and technical advancement for its own sake. [Hitfix]
I’m not sure why that synopsis starts with the statement that Tomorrowland “appears to be a place where” yadda yadda. That’s a very detailed synopsis if it’s based on what something “appears to be”. We can play at that game. It appears to be that Hugh Laurie’s character, who runs the alternate universe’s Disneyland, will die and be cryogenically frozen. Then George Clooney goes to Six Flags. We just used imagination to discover all kinds of new things!