Tomorrowland’s Damon Lindelof and George Clooney talk fanboy cynicism

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

This Friday sees the release of Brad Bird‘s TOMORROWLAND, which was also written with Damon Lindelof. The writer of STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS and PROMETHEUS has had more than his fair share of criticism over the years and while TOMORROWLAND looks to focus on a great, big, beautiful tomorrow, Lindelof and George Clooney wouldn’t be too surprised if audiences don’t take to it.

Damon Lindelof on fanboy cynicism:

There’s this great thing in all of us where we want to hope, we want to believe. But then what happens? We saw that hope with Obama’s first election and then, with the second election, the cynicism sets in. We all want to be activated, but when you face the pragmatic realities of what George was talking about, where now you’re starting to fail sometimes, it’s so easy to default back to cynicism. Which isn’t to say that you have to love everything — obviously, we have to open ourselves up to some level of criticism. But when we all took this on, people were saying, “You can’t make an original movie anymore, and you certainly can’t make an interesting Disney movie. If you make a Disney movie named Tomorrowland, it’s gotta have Space Mountain, and you basically have to sell tickets to the amusement park.

Now, I don’t want to start a war, but as a self-identified fanboy, I think that with this movie, it’s gonna be really hard for fanboys to say, “I really enjoyed this movie. It made me feel good.” God forbid you tweeted something like that! What would happen to you? You’d lose your readership! “You sold out!”

George Clooney on cynicism:

Listen, we’re at sort of a cynical time in society. Don’t ever read comments on anything! People can live anonymously, and I honestly think that when they were talking about freedom of speech in 1787, the theory was that you had to own your speech. It had to belong to you, and you actually had to take some responsibility for it. Now you can just sit alone and say horrible things, and it becomes fashionable to be shitty to people. Now people will come up to me, thinking they’re keeping it real, and they say, “I hated you in that last movie!” And I’ll look at them and go, “Well, I think those extra 20 pounds look good on you.” It’s become a much more cynical time, a time when people think its fun to only be negative.

While I’m sure the likes of Lindelof and Clooney see a lot more personal criticism than you and I, I’m not sure it’s fair to dismiss it just because it seems like the “cool thing to do.” Do they have a point? Absolutely, but in the wake of genre films like EX MACHINA and MAD MAX: FURY ROAD that have captured the imaginations of fanboys across the globe, when is it time to just own up to what may be a flawed product? You can check out our review of TOMORROWLAND here, but it looks like Brad Bird and Co. may have fallen short of meeting their goal. Then again, it sounds like they may be prepared for that anyway.

TOMORROWLAND opens in theaters this Friday.