The film’s key question: Why do “end of the world” scenarios continue to remain popular, yet their messages and warnings are almost completely ignored by society. 

The film’s answers: 1) Media imagery are controlled by some kind of techno-elite who are cynical about the future and cynical about the masses, who themselves apparently prefer cynicism rather than enlightenment about how to make the world better and avoid/end the destruction we are causing. 2) Society's widespread embrace of doom and the apocalypse as the future certain to come, as if most people want it to happen.

My book provides the deeper answers and cultural connections, though the millions who saw the film will never read it or know it exists. Apparently, the filmmakers didn't either. Bummer.

Tomorrowland's questions and answers are why the film is less about jetpacks and nostalgia (as commonly reported), than it is a yearning for optimism and the utopianism of World's Fairs —which have been replaced by cynicism, apocalyptic films, and Disneyland's collapsing of the past and future into a consumer now, a simulacrum of the world in which past and future are cloned, copied, and obliterated. 

George Clooney plays the cynical inventor whose cultural cynicism is challenged by an optimistic teenager (Britt Robertson) and a teen robot, who get Clooney to join them on a journey to Tomorrowland to help save the future and prevent the end of the world. The world of the present is apparently a surveillance-police-state enforced by robots, all dedicated to making sure an alternative future does not arrive. Insightfully, the film states that nuclear weapons were a mistake and still pose a threat to the future, along with other threats, including climate change and ecological destruction.

What was interesting was Tomorrowland — the film and the place called “Tomorrowland” inside the film — made no mention of politics or nations or theologies or corporations as central to the future, other than suggesting NASA was once a symbol of the future and is flying nowhere now. According to the film's ending, "the future" is to be made by the optimistic young "dreamers" (from all genders and ethnicities around the world) — the artists, scientists, environmentalists, and inventors, who believe they can help create a "better world." The film offers no suggestions on what they should do to make a better future, other than vague references to environmentalism, science, and technology.

The film briefly hints at, but does not develop, the idea that humans are part of a vast cosmos which holds the meaning to our existence. As my book explains, accepting that non-centrality is the key to finding meaning and hope in a better future. Developing a species-based narrative with cosmic meaning is a challenge for the philosophers, who are not mentioned in the film. But, as the daily news and pop culture indicates, most people prefer their imaginary cosmic centrality and their vision of "Tomorrowland" is little more than a selfie and status update via a new phone. 

Not a truly great film, Tomorrowland is still an excellent film that thoughtfully embraces the challenge detailed by Jean-Paul Sartre in his existentialist epic, Being and Nothingness (1943). Because of humanity's reason and freedom, we are a species who must seek meaning in the universe and must hurl themselves into the future, a vast Tomorrowland from which there is no exit. The cosmos ensures the future will arrive, but it is up to us — and only us — to make a better and saner world in our small part of the universe. Otherwise, we might find ourselves facing the worst of the past enforced by the technologies of tomorrow, leaving us trapped in Yesterdayland and not even knowing it.