The movie poster for the film Tomorrow When The War Began
I first read the Tomorrow When The War Began series early in high school. It was one of the most exciting collection of books I’d read. The story was brilliant. 7 teenagers living in rural New South Wales head out into the bush to camp for a few days only to return home and find that the country has been invaded by a hostile foreign force. We follow the teenagers as they attempt to deal with this and work out what to do. The story was exciting, adventurous, dangerous and completely compelling especially for a teenager.
Fast forward 14 years and the film has been made. Naturally, I was incredibly excited. Here it was, an Australian film being made of a great Australian story written by a great Australian writer. I couldn’t wait. I could only hope the film would do justice to the novel.
I saw Tomorrow When The War Began last night and let me just say that I was disappointed. So disappointed! Once again, a film that promised so much failed to deliver. It wasn’t that they deviated drastically from the novel, but more that they totally missed out on the tone and feel of the story. It felt like the filmmakers were trying to give the audience what they thought they wanted instead of just concentrating on telling the story.
The film was a collection of clichés and stereotypes. To start with the characters, whilst it is in the novel that Lee Takkam (played by Chris Pang) is Asian, the first scene in the film is a shot of Lee in his family’s Chinese restaurant with his family sitting around drinking Chinese tea while he plays the piano like a virtuoso. How clichéd and insulting is that?! Next we have Homer Tannos (Deniz Akdeniz), a Greek character. Once again the Greek character in an Australian film plays a car jacking, mischievous rev-head. When was this film made? 50 years ago?! It’s just completely insulting not just to minorities in Australia but to the whole population of Australia. You’d think we’d have grown and moved on as a multi-cultural nation.
The script itself was clunky. Some of the scenes and the dialogue just didn’t pay off and seemed unjustified. There were moments of attempted humour and quirkiness but it just didn’t work. It didn’t fit in with the style and tone of the film.
The acting left a little to be desired. Whilst I didn’t mind the performance of Caitlin Stasey, who played the lead role, Ellie Linton, it seemed like once again a studio has gone with a couple of names (Lincoln Lewis plays Kevin Holmes) in an attempt to boost the film’s profile and turnover, however the story and the acting suffers. Whenever there was any moment of high intensity or high stakes, it wasn’t believable. It felt like Home and Away and Neighbours got together to make a teenage action film.
Some of these issues may also have come from the writer/director, Stuart Beattie. It seemed like the film was a mix of a few different tones and genres. It didn’t have a clear style. It had the potential to be an epic, serious war drama instead of a feature length teen soap.
Whilst some people liked the special effects, I was unimpressed. You could tell that the film had a high budget for an Australian film but that’s not what you want to be able to see. Every explosion was overdone and looked fake. You don’t want to see the effects. You want to believe them.
I suppose that was really a recurring issue with the film for me. You could see everything that was going on. You could see the attempts at humour, you could see the acting, you could see the problems with the script, you could see the special effects, you could see the stereotyped characters. In great films, you don’t see any of these things.
I’ve heard other people’s comments about the film, “..It was good for an Australian film..” Well I say “NO!” That’s not good enough. We have brilliant actors and filmmakers in this country. We have great stories to tell. When are we going to stand up and take responsibility for our industry?? When are we going to stop insulting and underestimating the general public.
Now with Tomorrow When The War Began, I’m not sure where the responsibility lies. Whether it’s with the studio, the director, the casting director, the actor. Whether it’s to do with funding or something that happens in the development process. All I know is that somewhere along the way, a potentially great film got lost and it shouldn’t have.
I believe that we need to get back to focusing on the story. To telling interesting and different stories. To get away from being safe and doing what we think people want to see (to assume that any of us know that is insulting to the audience). I believe that studios need to get out of the way of filmmakers and put there faith in the people they’ve invested in. That casting directors and directors need to open there minds when it comes to choice of actors. That casting needs to be opened up and multi-cultural. That more chances need to be taken on lesser known actors as opposed to just casting the same old soap star.
Tomorrow When The War Began was such a special novel to myself and many other Australians. The film could have been so much but didn’t get there. It is a key example of everything that isn’t working in the Australian film and television industry. The industry needs to change. It needs to be bolder and braver. And until it does, we’re going to keep seeing the same, average films and tv shows.
