History Film / TheTomorrowWar

* LoweredRecruitingStandards: During training, Charlie remarks that there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason as to who's drafted and that his group includes those who are out of shape and elderly.

** The similarly titled 2014 sci-fi military action film ''Film/EdgeOfTomorrow'' also features a NewMeat protagonist and his comrades being sent into the meat-grinder of a [[HopelessWar losing war]] of humanity versus a HordeOfAlienLocusts species of extraterrestrial invaders sporting CombatTentacles and bent on the extermination of life on Earth. The initial battle also involves [[ItsRainingMen getting dropped into combat]] into a beach setting from a great height (though in a controlled manner rather than teleportation above the ground) before the protagonist [[TookALevelInBadass gradually develops their combat skills]] at the hands of a female military authority figure, [[spoiler:who bonds with the lead protagonist, and then dies in battle before the protagonist is able to destroy a critical target that ends the invasion in its tracks]].

* AncientAstronauts: Turns out, [[spoiler:aliens accidentally crash-landed on Earth's glacier in 946 AD, during the EarlyMiddleAges]].

* SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong: [[spoiler:Muri has Dan take the perfected Whitespike toxin back into the past, where it can be mass-produced and wipe out the threat before it ever happens.]]

* YouAreAlreadyDead: {{Exaggerated|Trope}} with the various conscripts-- not only are they practically guaranteed to die due to the power and ferocity of the Whitespikes, but everyone sent into the future is revealed to have died before the aliens arrived in the original timeline, so that no temporal paradoxes are caused if they die.

* ZergRush: The only tactic of the Whitespikes. Given their numbers, speed, and combat ability, it's plenty effective-- everything the humans throw at them in the battles we see only slows them down a little bit from whatever target they're swarming at or chasing after.

* AncientAstronauts / {{Precursors}}: Turns out, [[spoiler:aliens accidentally crash-landed on Earth's glacier in 946 AD, during the EarlyMiddleAges]].

** Charlie is shown to have trouble loading his weapon before the Jump. Sure enough, it jams up during the final battle. [[spoiler:Charlie decides to use a simpler weapon instead, [[LudicrousGibs to great effect]]]].

* HiveMind: The aliens seem to possess this, as when one of their females is held captive alone on an oil rig 25 miles offshore, the rest of them promptly show up to rescue her. [[spoiler:Likewise, on the alien ship housing the Whitespikes in the present day, killing a few of them with Muri's toxin suddenly causes the entire colony to awaken.]]

* MoreDeadlyThanTheMale: The female Whitespike is larger, stronger, more aggressive, and more durable than the male, and it's implied that they might be capable of asexual reproduction [[spoiler:(not that the cast is going to take that chance).]]

* SanDimasTime: In a brief InfoDump, it's explained that time is always moving forward, but that humanity figured out how to establish a somewhat stable connection between the present and a point thirty years in the future. Humans and materials can only go back and forth between the two points, and the points move forward in time at the same rate, so no one can jump to some time before the Whitespikes arrived to preemptively stop the war.

** The Whitespikes are like ''[[TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons Dungeons & Dragons]]''' [[https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Displacer_beast Displacer Beasts]] - with their 6 legs and 2 tentacles - on steroids. Compared to their tabletop counterparts, they are much more durable, faster and can [[spoiler: throw spikes from their tentacles]], but the basic structure is not so different. Fortunately, they do not possess the Beasts’ eponymous Displacement ability, but make up for it by being [[MadeOfIron exceedingly difficult to wound]], [[NighInvulnerability let alone kill]], even if a shot lands on them.

** In the future, [[spoiler:Dan will also leave his family and break off contact with Muri]].

* JustBeforeTheEnd: Mankind has been reduced to a population of ''500,000'' by the time Dan heads into the future, and it's very clear that humanity is a hairsbreath away from extinction. [[spoiler:Future!Muri reveals that the forces from the future don't even have the ability to mass-produce the toxin that can kill the Whitespikes, so their plan is to send the toxin back to the present and mass-produce it so that the aliens can be killed ''before'' they wipe out mankind]].

* ArtisticLicensePhysics: Charlies states that if his gun went off and pierced the plane's hull, everyone would be sucked out of the plane through decompression, but this is an urban legend.

** Of course, without these two Idiot Balls in play, we might not have gotten the dramatic finale involving [[spoiler:Dan fighting the last surviving Whitespike hand-to-hand with improvised weapons. The Russian government discovering the alien ship and simply nuking it after being tipped off wouldn't have been nearly as thrilling.]]
* ImMelting: The effect of the toxin created by [[spoiler:adult Muri]] on Whitespikes. It turns them into green glop in a matter of seconds, to gruesome effect.

* AmputationStopsSpread: [[spoiler:When Dan sticks the toxin in the queen’s arm, it rips it off and successfully stops the disintegration.]]

In 2022, the world is shocked when a portal opens up and soldiers from the future step out, saying that humanity is facing annihilation from vicious aliens known as Whitespikes and that they are desperate for reinforcements. The world's governments send troops, only for them to be wiped out. Unwilling to commit more trained soldiers, but needing to support the war, a global draft is instituted. Draftees who manage to survive seven days get to come home. Among the draftees, James Daniel "Dan" Forrester, Charlie and their field commander Muri Forrester will prove to be humanity's unlikely hope against the Whitespikes.

* AncientAstronauts: Turns out, [[spoiler:aliens accidentally crash-landed on Earth's glacier in 946 AD, during the EarlyMiddleAges]].

* TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture: The film takes place in the not too distant future year of 2022.
* AncientAstronauts: Turns out, [[spoiler:aliens accidentally crash-landed on Earth's glacier during medieval times]].

''The Tomorrow War'' is a 2021 sci-fi film starring Creator/ChrisPratt and Creator/YvonneStrahovski.

In 2022, the world is shocked when a portal opens up and soldiers from the future step out, saying that humanity is facing annihilation from vicious aliens known as Whitespikes and that they are desperate for reinforcements. The world's governments send troops, only for them to be wiped out. Unwilling to commit more trained soldiers, but needing to support the war, a global draft is instituted. Draftees who manage to survive seven days get to come home.

* TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture: The film takes in the not too distant future year of 2022.

[[quoteright:259:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/34e87baa_6c24_4704_b9d0_9e893947a10d.jpeg]]
[[caption-width-right:259:''"Second chances are really hard to come by."'']]

* AllForNothing: The toxin that Muri develops to kill all the Whitespikes. The key to defeating them turns out to be [[spoiler:finding the alien spacecraft housing them in a glacier back in 2021, where they've been frozen since crash-landing in medieval times, then killing them all there before they have a chance to escape the ship and begin reproducing. This is mostly accomplished by blowing up the ship with C4 rather than using the poison.]] Muri's mission to capture the female Whitespike and the subsequent [[spoiler:destruction of Deepswell-9 that it causes when the Whitespikes retaliate]] is all done to develop a weapon that is only ever used to kill a few of the aliens, in circumstances where conventional weapons easily could've done the job anyways.