Headscratchers / Tomorrowland

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Governor Nix

For a movie whose central message hinges on hope and optimism and not losing that; Nix's death seems to almost...needlessly cruel. He wasn't really a villain, he wasn't even really a Well-Intentioned Extremist, he tried a valid idea that unfortunately blew up in his face. What Nix is, is exactly what Frank was when he meet him again as an adult: a man who lost hope. To follow through on this films primary aesop, he should've been given the chance to redeem himself in some fashion - wouldn't that have kept with the core of the film a bit more? I know they tried, but having stay the course for all his supposed brilliance seems like it was just a forced executive beat: because "the villain" so to speak should always bite the dust.

• He's not that innocent. He sent killer robots to assassinate Casey and Frank.
  • Which also made no sense. There was no reason for him to think of either of them as threats, really. If he's simply trying to cover up the existence of Tomorrowland, then killer robots which explode messily when damaged are an absolutely terrible way of going about it, and MURDERING POLICE is even worse. It's an action that doesn't seem to align with what we see of Nix himself.
• There's also the fact that his "valid idea" almost brought the world closer to apocalypse. Intentional or not, we usually feel that there should be consequences if we make a mistake that causes a disaster. We even have a trope for that—Nice Job Breaking It, Hero.
• It should be noted, when he's pinned down by the debris of the teleport gate, he never asks for help or another chance. Instead, he reaches for a gun to kill Frank with. And he never believed in Casey's thesis anyhow, insisting all the time that the world outside Tomorrowland deserved to be destroyed.
  • I thought moment was particularly out of character for him. He's actually pretty reasonable for most of the film. The fact that he allows Casey and Frank to prove their point instead of just killing them outright or chucking them out of Tomorrowland suggests that he believes that the future can't be changed. He shows no malice to Frank and even stops fighting on the island once the gate closes.
    • It's easy to allow someone to attempt to prove something you think is impossible. In the end, Nix is someone who, when his attempted warning guided people closer to the danger, decided that it was better if he kept sending the failed warning and guiding them closer. He had actively given up on the world — as he says to Casey's outrage over the future deaths, "We won't die" — and (in closing down recruitment) the possibility of anything good coming of it.
  • In connection with the strangeness of ordering murder robots, perhaps there was meant to be more information showing the difference between the way Nix behaves 'in public' in Tomorrowland, where he wants to look like a reasonable-if-disillusioned leader, and being privately evil? If so, it didn't come through well.

• In the beginning of the movie... is he seriously incapable of realizing the utility of a jetpack? What's his criteria for utility? Someone will walk up to their desk and just tell them how they can save the entire world?
  • To be fair (no pun intended), him asking what the inventor of whatever device was brought to him was meant to be a test. He wanted to see what the inventor said, and if what he said would have said inventor considered. In Frank's case, it wasn't his answers that disqualified him from consideration (in fact, from Frank's second answer, it seemed to meet with Nix's interest, or at least with the view of what Tomorrowland was looking for in their inventors). It was the fact that at that moment, the jet pack didn't work or didn't work properly that disqualified him.
  • There's also the likely miscommunication that resulted from Nix not asking why the jetpack didn't work, or else Frank not elaborating on it. Nix could reasonably assume that "Not working" meant "Non-functional", but Frank's test shows that the jetpack practically *does* work, it just needs to be properly balanced and/or weighted. It seems like Nix would have taken much more of an interest if he'd realized that a child essentially figured out a propelled backpack and was very close to making it a perfectly-functional jetpack.

The Tomorrowland Pins...have some really questionable mechanics

The mechanics behind the Tomorrowland pins seem to be that they put you in a virtual simulation of Tomorrowland without actually taking you there. Like Frank says, a commercial. Without context though, since for all you know - you've actually been transported away - you'll find yourself walking to a beautiful city through that gorgeous wheat field...while actually walking straight into a wall, or right into a lake, or even into oncoming traffic. Casey luckily only experienced two of those, and was really lucky in the latter case that she didn't go any deeper. For all their brilliance, shouldn't they make sure their recruiters stay close to them instead of dropping them off and going away to the next person? Athena does make the effort to say that she intended to tell Casey, but she left before she could explain; still if that's the case - she really should've stayed right there next to the house and cut her off before she left for the fields. All that brilliance, and they (the designers of the pins) didn't account for this? Hopefully those new chosen folks are as smart as Frank and Casey hope...or some of those people are about to get badly hurt.

• Athena took the pins and escaped Tomorrowland, suggesting those were the last of first-gen pins. When they went to "print new invitations," I'd imagine they put in a few improvements regarding the arrival in the wheat field. It should be noted that once the pin takes you into Tomorrowland, it seems to completely ignore the location that you were in before. Casey goes down a flight of stairs and takes the hover-rail across a substantial distance.
• Athena also notes that she was supposed to give Casey some context. She never expected Casey to go to such lengths.

Tachyon-induced Glimpses of the Near Future

• In the climax, we've learned that the tachyon wave (or whatever it is) can show a glimpse of what will happen about a few seconds into the future. This goes just fine until Athena notices that Frank will be shot by Nix, then she takes the bullet for him just in time. Now, why would the wave shows Frank shot by Nix when it was Athena who took the bullet? Beforehand, we've seen what happened with Casey when she saw her father's cap flew away and her near-future self activating Frank's bomb, and it all happened accordingly, but the same didn't happen with Frank. So why's that?
  • She decided that that wasn't going to happen and took actions against that outcome. Which isn't all that surprising since we've seen two instances of an "inevitability" not being so inevitable through Casey suggesting that it could be fixed/averted etc., one of which was in The Monitor showing that even tachyon-wave predicted futures are not entirely set in stone.
  • If anything, the Tachyon waves only prove how awareness of the future messes with the rules of causality. e.g. Casey couldn't have seen her future self waving in confusion if she hadn't seen herself do it, because then she wouldn't have had any reason to wave in the first place but, since she saw it, she did so she proved the future vision right. If the effects of the Monitor had remained consistent, Athena would have seen herself get shot and that would have alerted her as to what Nix was doing.
  • I still don't buy it fully, though. It's true that part of all of this is to prove that The Monitor CAN make mistakes, and that the future is not set in stone like Nix believed, but in-universe, when Athena saw Frank got shot when in reality, it was her who had taken the shot showed the inconsistency of the plot, as it kind of happen with no prior build-up (all previous predictions happened accordingly). And for the paradox of 'one commits the action because they see that they will do it in the future', I believe that in order for that to be true, the action must ALWAYS happen, regardless of whether one choose to do it or not. Casey's hat flew away and there's no way she could prevent that, and she saw herself fall down because the platform she's on is about to plummet down, all of this happened accordingly, so why shouldn't Frank getting shot by Nix wouldn't be the same? Maybe the Monitor isn't perfect, yes, as its 100% prediction of global catastrophe changed every time Casey refused to accept it, but is Athena's refusal to see Frank get shot is the same thing? Casey's thoughts affects the long-term prediction of the future, but the Tachyon-wave only predicts what will happen a few seconds later. If Athena's split-second decision to save Frank could change what was supposed to happen that had just been showed to her a couple of seconds ago, her will to change something for the better is even stronger than Casey. Heck, she could single-handedly changes the whole bad future by herself if she was a human and is as optimistic as Casey!
  • Note that Athena was nowhere near either Frank or Nix during the vision of Frank getting shot. This is the only instance in the film of a character not seeing themselves in a tachyon vision. Perhaps Athena never saw Nix shoot Frank until after it happened, and that suddenly being made aware of that event before it happened caused her to intervene where previously she did not. Temporal mechanics are entirely theoretical after all.
  • Also, regarding Nix's gun. All future guns we've seen so far can completely disintegrate any human unlucky enough to get caught in the blast, but in the 'vision' Athena saw, Frank's body didn't disintegrate immediately, and even when it did it's actually the Tachyon-wave disappearing. Unless Frank is actually wearing an armor of sorts that could protect him from the blast or Nix was using a different kind of gun, the 'vision' is actually lying to Athena. That, or Athena was just seeing things out of desire to protect Frank and it wasn't a vision at all. Do Androids Dream?

Using children to recruit Dreamers

• Why are the robots used to recruit Dreamers all children? Wouldn't adults have more freedom to move around without being conspicuous? Tomorrowland has the ability to make adult-sized robots, and virtually all of the Dreamers they recruit are adults. In fact, the one time I recall that they recruited a kid (Frank), Athena's childlike appearance caused a major problem.
  • Perhaps they're meant to be avoiding the romance problem with their usual adult recruits, by taking a form that adults will find non-threatening, possibly even feel protective of, and be willing to listen to (if they're dreamers) without triggering the wrong kind of attachment?
  • Adults would probable have less freedom and in some situations be more conspicuous. Not to mention there might be practical concerns we are not aware of (adults would be asked more questions while kids are usually asked where their parents are etc.) or perhaps it was done to maximize the robots power to weight ratio.

What is Tomorrowland?

• So does the movie ever adequately explain the exact nature of Tomorrowland? It doesn't appear to be the future itself achieved through time travel. Some kind of Alternate Dimension? It was discovered by historical inventors and visionaries, but seems to be populated by its own race of probably humans: were they always there? Did Eiffel et al populate it? Why does it seem to reflect Earth's future, and if Earth is intended to advance to Tomorrowland's technological level, why don't they simply give Earth some of their futuristic technology? They seem to welcome Earth prodigies into their fold, so technically isn't the technology ours anyway? Seriously, what is Tomorrowland?
  • Tomorrowland is an alternate dimension/universe. It was colonized by humans from Earth, all of whom were Plus Ultra members, in the 20th Century. All we see is a single city surrounded by wheat fields, but the presence of a spaceport with rockets being boarded and launched (as seen in the "commercial" from the 1960s) suggests that the entire star system or maybe the entire universe that Tomorrowland is located in was being explored by Plus Ultra/Tomorrowland citizens. It's likely that the whole planet has been colonized as well. There is no indication that this dimension ever had an indigenous population. When we see it in the present day its birth rate has probably dropped significantly and it isn't recruiting new citizens anymore (until Casey and Frank take over). The people of Tomorrowland don't give Earth any technology because Governor Nix wants to let Earth's population destroy itself. Tomorowland exists in the present but it was created by visionaries fascinated with the possibilities of futuristic technology, which is why it is seen by Casey, Athena, and Frank as a symbol of the future.

General Questions

• When Frank, Casey and Athena teleported to France, Frank and Athena both took some sort of powder (presumably sugar, or super-sugar) that let them avoid the effect of having their blood sugar crash. Casey, on the other hand, crashed hard, and had to drink two Cokes to recover. The thing that's got me scratching my head is that Athena is a robot (or Audio Animatronic, as she insists), and doesn't have blood or blood sugar.
  • Athena was operating on her habit of acting human, even though her cover's been blown.
• So, the "time bomb" thing that Athena used to save Casey... when the time bubble was "collapsing" it was just shrinking at a pretty steady rate. But as soon as Casey's fingertips leave the bubble, the rest of it collapses instantly. Is there any good reason, or just Rule of Drama?
  • Maybe her moving her fingers as quick as she did may have resulted in it rapidly collapsing. It is a bubble, and the sudden collapse could be said bubble "popping."

The Eiffel Tower launch

In the movie, Nix explains that normally they would have done something to cover-up what happened in the Eiffel Tower as it obviously would comprise Tomorrowland's secrecy, but they didn't bother because the earth was less than two months away from Doomsday. Well, since the end of the world was averted, what happens with that? Not only there are thousands of witnesses, but the launch site was left accessible to the authorities.

• Seeing Frank and Casey are now in charge of Tomorrowland, they more than likely took over said covering up until Tomorrowland was ready to make itself fully known to the world. Not only that, the EMP may have wiped out any video evidence (as we see at least one person using their phone to record video). And even then, if it were posted on the Internet or broadcasted on the news, no one would believe it and just think it was a hoax.