Script Analysis: “The Tomorrow War” — Part 1: Scene-By-Scene Breakdown

A week-long analysis of the science fiction script and movie. Download. Read. Discuss.

Reading scripts. Absolutely critical to learn the craft of screenwriting. The focus of this bi-weekly series is a deep structural and thematic analysis of each script we read. Our daily schedule:

Monday: Scene-By-Scene Breakdown
Tuesday: Plot
Wednesday: Characters
Thursday: Themes
Friday: Dialogue
Saturday: Takeaways

Today: Scene-By-Scene Breakdown.

Here is my take on this exercise from a previous series of posts — How To Read A Screenplay:

After a first pass, it’s time to crack open the script for a deeper analysis and you can do that by creating a scene-by-scene breakdown. It is precisely what it sounds like: A list of all the scenes in the script accompanied by a brief description of the events that transpire.

For purposes of this exercise, I have a slightly different take on scene. Here I am looking not just for individual scenes per se, but a scene or set of scenes that comprise one event or a continuous piece of action. Admittedly this is subjective and there is no right or wrong, the point is simply to break down the script into a series of parts which you then can use dig into the script’s structure and themes.

The value of this exercise:

• We pare down the story to its most constituent parts: Scenes.
• By doing this, we consciously explore the structure of the narrative.
• A scene-by-scene breakdown creates a foundation for even deeper analysis of the story.

This week: The Tomorrow War (2021). Download the screenplay here.

Written by Zach Dean.

Plot summary: A family man is drafted to fight in a future war where the fate of humanity relies on his ability to confront the past.

The Tomorrow War
Scene-By-Scene Breakdown
By Jodi Lustig
GoIntoTheStory.com

1–5 Cool dad DAN gets home from a liquor run while trying to close a deal that will “save the world.” He’s got energy, confidence, and he might be doing a few too many things at once … like making a liquor run in the middle of his own party. Dan offloads the liquor on his science-loving daughter MURIEL (MURI) so he can get back to his deal. Dan and Muri share a special salute. EMMY, Dan’s salt-of-the-earth wife, rescues Dan from guests who’re yammering on about how badly humankind’s damaging the environment. Emmy wants Dan to be present for his own party — and their marriage. But Dan leaves Emmy in the lurch thanks to the absent dad-sized chip on his shoulder. Looks like he could be following in his alcoholic dad’s footsteps.

6–8 Dan can’t close the deal. ARTHUR & his INVESTOR need someone with a hard science background. Dan’s just a veteran turned high school biology teacher — he’s not going to win them a Nobel Prize. Dan says it’s exactly what he’ll do, he just needs more time. Emmy comforts him. Muri talks science. She wants to be like her dad: “the best.” Dan gives her a pep talk about never taking no for an answer.

9 Everybody at the party’s watching a live soccer match from Qatar. There’s a flash of light on the field and a sonic boom that’s felt all around the world — even in Dan’s living room. On the pitch, fifty futuristic COMMANDOS, all under 25, float to the ground, then fan out on the field. Their leader’s a battle-scarred woman, LT. HART, who says: “We are you, thirty years in the future. We are fighting a war. Our enemy is not human. And we are losing … We need you to fight beside us if we stand a chance of winning this war. You are our LAST HOPE.”

10–14 Over the title sequence, defense secretary WILLIAM DODD tells folks the terrible truth: humanity is on the verge of extinction thirty years in the future. The aliens are called “Whitespikes,” and they seem to arrive on earth out of nowhere in Northern Russia, 2048. Every country in the world’s instated a draft to save the future.

Flashforward to one year later. Worldwide draft’s in place, Dan’s sleeping on the couch, and fallen heroes (dead fighters) are saluted on-screen. Muri’s having nightmares about being taken away. Emmy wishes Dan made more of an effort to be present in their marriage and for Muri. She’s tired of doing everything alone.

14–17 Things are equally grim at school. Dan’s students have lost parents and teachers and lost hope for the future. Dan tells them that’s why they need science, to solve problems. There’s empathy in the banter and an important reveal: science geek MARTIN is obsessed with ancient volcanoes. A new draft alert dings their phones.

17–18 The war’s not popular. Few survivors come home at all. Those who do are battered and broken. Emmy counsels vets who reveal that 1) drafted soldiers are sent to the future for seven days 2) the alien enemy is relentless and 3) the Whitespikes make a clicking noise that haunts vets long after they return.

Dan’s conscription status is “Active 1.”

19–22 The military’s serious about this draft business. Dan gets processed. We learn he goes by his middle name even though he’s named after his dad. The goodish news: if Dan dies in combat, his family gets a million dollars. The baddish news: If he runs, his wife will have to take his place, and Muri will be put in a detention center for kids.

Dan learns he will die in seven years. Which is … unnerving. A high-tech metal band is cuffed to his arm, a “Jump-band.” It’s time travel tech, it can’t be removed, it’s got his bio-signature and a countdown clock to his scheduled jump-time.

23–24 Emmy wants to run, so the family can stay together. For her, Dan’s willing to ask his dad JAMES FORESTER for help. Crusty James is surprised that Dan is asking him for anything. But he can disable the Jump-band. When talk turns to the reasons James left Dan and his mom, Dan changes his mind about running. He is not his dad.

25–32 Dan breaks the news to Emmy. His logic: “I don’t always know how to be here for you, and for her. But I do know how to do this.” He tries to sugarcoat it for Muri, but she knows he’s been drafted. Ever the science gal, she’s digging for vaccines in the dirt. Dan says they’ll find a vaccine together when he comes back.

33- 37 Dan takes his Army revolver to the conscription center, which makes him better prepared than most of the conscriptees he meets. They are: DAY TRADER LOUIE, TEARFUL JOE, LAWYER PACIFIST JULIE, CHRISTIAN, COWAN. Basic training is beyond basic. Lt. Hart of the soccer field speech breaks the gig down like this: draftees jump to the future for seven days, if they’re alive when their time’s up, they jump back. Not that they’re told what said aliens look like — no one shows recruits what they look like because they fear no one would go at all if they did. The group’s broken up into two teams. R-Force and D-Force. Dan and fellow R-Forcers CHARLIE and NORAH have science backgrounds. D-Forcer DORIAN, a tattooed killing machine, and badass future woman SGT DIAZ are blunt instruments. Diaz instructs folks on alien-killing. Aim the fancy future rifles at the Whitespikes’ heads or bellies. Dorian’s on his third tour, and he’s got his own crew: TANK (male) and DIABLO (female.)

38–40 Charlie floats the idea that the conscriptees are old and the trainers, young, because time jumpers can’t be alive in both time periods. Lt. Hart fills in more blanks. R force is research force, and they’ll work with future science folk to save humanity. Other details: 1) People can only jump to and from fixed points in time because “time is like a river,” it only flows one way. 2) the tech is so new they’d still be using rats if not for the whole extinction threat. 3) Every six days the Whitespikes disappear to their nests. Military calls it the Sabbath, and that’s when troops are inserted.

41- 44 Dan puts his wedding ring on a chain around his neck. Gets to know Charlie, Norah, and BUS DRIVER ROSE. Charlie’s scared, already lost his wife to the war, Nora’s only there because her stupid ex didn’t sign the divorce papers and then resisted the draft. Bus Driver Rose is a grandma who doesn’t want to die but will do it if it saves her grandkids. Dan tells everyone not to give up before they’ve started. Cowan rejoins the group — he’s a gamer. Alarms go off, and suddenly it’s JUMP TIME! The last research facility in the future is under attack. They can’t lose it; it’s humanity’s only hope.

45–48 Jumplink violet light swallows up the draftees. Techs in our time freak because the coordinates are wrong, but it’s too late, everybody, including Emmy and Muri back home, feel the sonic boom of the jump. The draftees drop from the sky into the hellhole that is now Miami. Dan’s group lands on a hotel rooftop. Dan’s ‘lucky’ enough to plunge into a pool. A lot of draftees hit concrete and die on impact. Dan drags Charlie to the side of the pool.

It’s a warzone in more ways than one. Sure, there’s a ton of automatic weapons fire, dead and dying everywhere and burning buildings. But global warming’s turned the streets of Miami into the waterways of Venice.

Dan quips that Florida did indeed find a way to get worse. His Jump-band countdown’s begun: 167 HOURS — 59 MIN till his tour’s over. Norah checks out Miami through binoculars long enough to see the Whitespikes mauling the humans they kill. Do they eat them? Dorian, the multi-tour sucker for alien punishment, only says you don’t want to see what happens next.

49–53 A woman, ROMIO COMMAND, contacts Dan through his earpiece. He’s ROMIO ACTUAL. Romio Command gives Dan the bad news: Miami’s been overrun by Whitespikes, and it’s about to be “cleaned,” as in, everything bombed and destroyed ASAP. But first, Dan’s got to get to the last remaining research facility and rescue the scientists there and their research.

Dan leads everyone who’s able off the roof. Dorian warns him off trying to save anyone: “This is the end of the world.” But old habits are hard to break. Dodging dead human bodies, spikes, and rats, the ragtag team learns that the Whitespikes are hunters, not monsters. Hear them coming, it’s probably a trap.

54–56 They reach the research facility. Romio Command tells Dan to get up to the 7th floor. Cowan’s got a better idea: why not find a nice abandoned hotel and camp out till their clocks runs out? Charlie can’t imagine what he’d say back home if he did that. Dan tries to keep his team of civilians on task, despite Dorian’s insistence that it’s futile to teach them anything. They’re bait. Dan asks Dorian to help them anyway. Dorian says he’s on Team Not Eaten. Thus removing all doubts about the Whitespikes’ diet.

57–59 Norah and Cowan stand watch outside while everyone else goes into the research facility where Dan and his team of newbies get their first glimpse (and sniff) of dead Whitespike. Dorian cuts off a Whitespike’s claw for a souvenir. He’s got a collection.

Next, they stumble upon a dead scientist riddled with Whitespike claws. Looks like a gruesome way to die. As Dorian takes his souvenir claws, he opens one up to show the newbies. They’re filled with gross alien eggs. Bad gets worse. The team finds a whole nest of dead scientists. Romio Command warns Dan that the Whitespikes will be back if they left bodies, so they need to get the data the scientists were working on and get out. Most importantly, they’ve got to get the BLUE AMPOULES from the centrifuge.

60–65 Outside, Norah and Cowan get spooked. Inside, Dan and the team head to the 7th floor for the blue ampoules. Dan has them all in hand by the time Norah and Cowan run in and tell them they do NOT want to go out the way they came in. Good thing Romio Command says to exfil through the back loading dock.

They hear the clicking sounds they’ve heard so much about. And freeze. Is it a false alarm? Cowan sees tentacles. Then a head. Then more heads. Finally, he yells “Hey Guys!” and Dorian confirms the bloody obvious: “That’s them!”

Dan orders everyone to “SPRAY AND PRAY!”

Cowan gets spiked. Charlie and Norah kill a Whitespike. The team rushes downstairs, where Bus Driver Rose, the grandmama bear, opens fire on the Whitespikes screaming, “EAT Meeeeeeee!” Draftee #2 Kelly and April are killed.

As Rose goes down, she crashes into Dan and knocks his gun out of his hands. Dan goes to pick it up and gets his first up close and personal glimpse of a Whitespike — all 8 feet of him!

Dorian leads the team out through a stairwell, and his buddy Christian gets killed bringing up the rear.

Gunfire only holds the Whitespike off for so long, so Dan grabs an axe from an emergency fire box. It takes an uppercut to the jaw to do any damage. Even injured, it puts up a deadly fight. Dan can’t finish him off till Dorian slides in under the Whitespike and shoots it dead.

66–69 Romio Command says bombardment is in three minutes. Charlie asks Dorian if all Whitespikes are that hard to kill. Nope. “Those are the males. They’re easy. The females are worse.”

At the loading dock, dozens of Whitespikes barrel into the street, climbing cars, walls. The team runs to an open parking garage. Yoga Teacher Alexis is killed. Whitespikes overrun the garage, splitting up to surround the humans. Romio Command wants the team to get to the roof, but they run out onto the street. Humvees are coming for them. But the Whitespikes keep attacking, so the team keeps firing and running.

Charlie falls and a huge weapon falls out of his bag. A rocket launcher? He had no idea. Dan and the team charge off, Whitespikes in pursuit. They can’t outrun them. Just as the aliens are about to overtake them, smoke clears to reveal Charlie with his rocket launcher. He fires, and the Whitespike swarm is engulfed in a fireball.

The celebration’s short. Whitespikes emerge from the flames unfazed. Barb and Draftee #1(Royce) get killed.

69–72 Romio warns Dan to stay away from the areas with red smoke — just as the team’s engulfed in red smoke. The team makes a run for it. The firebombing’s begun. Then the cavalry appears. Three Humvees barreling their way. Till a swarm of Whitespikes appear out of nowhere and take them all down.

The team has to fight their own way out of this one. Dorian exchanges his shot gun for an automatic weapon. Dan gets a spike in the shoulder. Julie and Jodie go down.

Cowan falls through slats on a slotted tunnel with two mics till the carpet bombing begins. Dorian tells Dan to leave him, but Dan and Norah jump down to help.

73–75 Cowan says he’s not gonna make it. Dan and Norah get Charlie to help pick Cowan up, anyway. But it’s no use. Cowan’s giving up. Just as Norah shouts: “We’re not leaving without you!” she gets spiked in the hip. Dan can’t save them both.

Norah steps up and plays hero. She and Cowan will hold the Whitespikes off as best they can. The team runs off. Norah and Cowan fire away … till KABOOM! The tunnel, Norah, Cowan, and the Whitespikes explode. Dan, Charlie and Dorian get enveloped in flames shooting out of the tunnel.

The screen goes black.

75–77 Dan wakes up in a medical tent. Charlie’s a few cots away. Outside, Dorian’s pocketing alien claws and spikes off the dead. He’s got buyers willing to pay a million bucks for one. Dan calls bullshit. If the claws are worth so much, why’s Dorian wearing one around his neck?

Dorian got the claw around his neck on his first jump. Near St. Petersburg, ground zero, a Russian who’d been on the ground when the first spike was killed, sawed off the claw when the spikes were five minutes away. Dorian was one minute from jumping back. They traded. The claw for saving the Russian.

“You got him out?” Dan asks. Nope. “You’ve seen what the bodies look like after they eat — how much of that you think you live through? He paid for a bullet, and I gave him one.” The world according to Dorian: the Russian knew he was already dead when he got there. They all are. But “it’s better to be dead at the end of the world.” He gestures towards the coffins bearing his buddies Tank and Diablo.

77–81 An Army Officer orders Dan to follow him. Dan asks Dorian to look out for him, but Dorian won’t. “Not even a little bit.”

Dan meets a WOMAN (40) wearing a filthy command uniform. This is ROMIO COMMAND. She’s briefing an all-business command leader we’ve only heard till now, MAJOR PAUL GREENWOOD. Dan taps his ear to tell Romio Command they’ve already met. She thanks him for getting the blue ampules. And yes, they have met. When they met Dan learns when a soldier says, “Colonel Forester, you’re being requested for debrief.” Because Dan isn’t a colonel. MURI is!

Dan stares at his now-grown daughter. Bewildered. Was she ever going to tell him she was his daughter? Nope, not in the middle of a military operation she wasn’t.

Muri’s R-Team’s lead researcher. She did go into science, after all. Got a PhD in Biotechnology with an emphasis in genomics and immunology, to be exact. Dan’s proud. Asks if he was proud back then when it happened. “Muri, already hardened, hardens more.”

Muri says they’re literally living on borrowed time; she didn’t bring him to the future because she wanted to see her dad one more time. She brought him because he knows science, and he knows how to fight. Can’t survive without both in this world. And she needs him to survive.

82–84 On a monitor, Muri shows him a female Whitespike. She’s much bigger than the males and has a bright red abdomen. They nest underground. The males will die to protect her. It’s pack mentality at its finest.

Muri fills him in on her research. The blue ampules he recovered are filled with a toxin it took them a year to develop. It kills the male Whitespikes just fine. But they need to find out why it didn’t kill the females — so they can find out what does. She hands Dan a military-grade iPad device and tells him to get studying. Dan’s got 104 hours and 5 minutes left on his armband. While he’s reading up, he finds a private file with pictures of Muri growing up. Only the older she gets, the fewer pictures he’s in. What happened?

84–86 Before Dan can ponder that, helicopters land and Elite Forces Commandos snap into action following Muri’s orders. Dan’s coming on the extraction mission. He’ll need full armor. No weapons package. Dan protests the no weapons part. Muri says she needs him alive, and the safest place on earth is in the air. She orders him to stay in the helicopter.

As the Blackhawks take off, Muri shares more Whitespike info with Dan. They just appeared one day. No UFO landing. They just show up in northern Russia and three years later, earth’s overrun with them. North and South America, Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa are devoid of human life. Maybe there are scattered holdouts, but not for long. Whitespikes have no need for technology or money. Humans are food. And they are hungry.

Dan admits he found out that he dies seven years after his jump. What happened? Not how did he die, what happened between them? The family? He thought he had all the time in the world with them, time to do something great with his life. But seven years is nothing. Muri looks like she has a lot of things she’d like to tell him. But what she says is: “I think the less we say the better.”

86–88 The choppers fly over a Whitespikes’ nest. Rangers rappel down into it. Dan and Muri hear gunfire. Screams. Muri orders Dan to stay in the helo. The pilot, she orders to shoot Dan in the leg if he tries to leave. Then she rappels down into the cave herself.

In the cave, Muri, Major Greenwood and Rangers trudge through human skulls and bones. Rangers struggle to hold the lines that pull a FEMALE WHITESPIKE into the cave. She’s fighting them with everything she has. Somehow, they manage to get her cornered. As Muri puts it: “She’s got one spike left and she wants us to know it.”

89–90 From the helo, Dan sees Whitespikes scrabbling on the ground and flying off rocky ledges. FLYING? Scariest thing about them. They learn. Flying Whitespikes crash one of the Vipers. Dan looks down and spots Whitespikes climbing up the rappel line! The pilot tells Muri they need to abort. She won’t. They lose the female. They all die. Her reply: “We lose her…we all die.”

Dan grabs a gun and rappels down, shooting Whitespikes off the line as he goes.

In the cave, Muri’s wrangling the Whitespike. She and Major Greenwood are trying to get it into an iron cage. Dan charges into the Whitespike — to little effect. The Whitespike flips her tentacle out, ready to spike Muri, but Dan grabs it and directs the claw back on the Whitespike herself. A direct hit! The female screeches in pain, and it’s all the time Muri and Major Greenwood need to get her in the cage.

91–93 The cage breaks through the nesting ground on its way up out of the cave. Muri tells the pilot to take off with the female; she and Dan’ll catch the next transport. Then flying Whitespikes take out another helo …

Dan and Muri make a break for it in a Hummer. When they lose the Whitespikes chasing them, Muri lays into Dan for disobeying a direct order. He gives her their old secret handshake. Okay, yeah, he could’ve ruined the mission, but he didn’t. He was helpful. Muri lets up a little. He was useful. That’s good enough for Dan.

Disarmed some, Muri tells Dan what happened to them back in his time. Muri wanted to be him. She thought he could do anything. But them he left. Drinking. On her sixteenth birthday, Dan crashed his car after too many beers. Muri was in the ICU when he died. Dan watches Muri in horror as she says, “I wanted you to see me. I wanted you to hear me. I wanted you to save our family. To fix it. To not give up. To not walk away. But you couldn’t see what you had in front of you.”

Dan reminds Muri he hasn’t done any of that. Muri corrects him. He hasn’t done any of that — yet. Dan’s gutted.

94–97 Viper Four takes Dan and Muri to a repurposed oil rig, Deepswell-9 Research Station. It was built to protect their most valuable weapon, the jumplink. Now they use it to protect everyone else.

Inside Deepswell, the female Whitespike’s caged and muzzled inside a glass sphere. Muri brandishes a ten-inch needle and jams it into her abdomen. Heavy sedation. She can do it safely, thanks to the sphere’s design.

98–99 While the creature’s knocked out, Muri and Dan get to work. The female’s genetics aren’t that different from males. The poison hurts them, but their bodies are better at detoxifying. So, Dan reasons, all they need to do is find out what she uses to attack the poison, then design an enzyme inhibitor to neutralize it. As Muri draws blood from the Whitespike’s leg, one of her eyes opens up, and she lunges at Muri, testing her bonds. Dan jabs her with more sedatives.

Side by side, father and daughter do science. Lots of science. Dan’s impressed by Muri’s expertise and all the tech innovations the future’s brought. Muri allows herself a moment to enjoy the fact that her dad’s proud of her. Finally, they find an inhibitor and hope to make one strong enough to work overnight.

Dan asks how they’re going to get the inhibitor into the females. Muri tells Dan she has a solution. The Whitespikes have another Sabbath coming up. Then she clams up and tells Dan to get some sleep. He’s got 30 hours left on his jumpband.

100–101 Muri works through the night while Dan stares at his old picture of Muri and Emmy. Major Greenwood asks if Dan happened to meet a badass training officer with a shaved head at Army Base in the past. Dan smiles, remembering Lt. Hart. Greenwood says Lt. Hart’s his wife. But they’re separated in every sense now. He has a lot of the same regrets Dan does (or will have, if his timeline goes as Muri experienced it.) Greenwood always thought he had enough time to fix things. Dan can definitely relate.

Dan asks Greenwood if he knew Muri before the war. He didn’t. But the world “needed a hero, and sometimes you can’t help but just be what you are — smart, tough, selfless.” Dan thinks that makes Muri just like her mother. But when Greenwood tells him Muri’s favorite quote: “Be willing to do what others won’t” — he realizes she takes after him, too. That’s what Dan always told her in the past.

102 -105 Next morning, Muri hasn’t found a toxin that works. But when she does, she needs Dan to bring it back to the past. They can’t manufacture enough of it here. And humans are the Whitespikes primary food source, so … Dan puts the rest together himself. Humans from the past are going to be the weapons delivery system when they jump to the war. The toxin would only be released into their bloodstreams if they go into cardiac arrest, but still, it’s an immoral ask.

Dan tells her she’s saving the world. Soldiers would be happy to sacrifice themselves to save the human race. But Muri wouldn’t be sending soldiers in to fight; she’d be sending them in to die. The plan is to jump folks straight into the Whitespike’s nests. It’s a suicide mission.

The centrifuge testing toxins dings GREEN — they have a match! Muri looks at it, conflicted. Dan feels for her, but he’s sure about one thing: Muri figured out how to save the world. Now she has to do it.

Before Muri can answer him, the female Whitespike shrieks, alarms go off, and the entire compound starts rocking. Monitors reveal the Whitespikes have found them! They’re surrounding Deepswell-9, swimming through the minefields, breeching the perimeter.

105–112 Military personnel are called to battle stations. Civilians (there are a few cruise ships within the perimeter) are told to defend themselves and their families as best they can. In the lab, the female Whitespike stares down Muri. Dan realizes the males are coming for her …

The centrifuge dings again, and there’s irradiated green liquid in the test tube. Muri hands it to Dan. She needs to get him — and the toxin — back to the past.

She orders a Kill Team to execute the female. Greenwood’s already on it. Guarding the jumplink, too. The ship’s being overrun. Dan and Muri fight their way through Deepswell, heading for the jumplink. It’s chaos. Whitespikes and soldiers dead and dying everywhere …

Muri commands a squad of attack drones that help get Muri and Dan closer to the jump link, but it’s a losing battle. When the Kill Team reaches the lab, they discover the female has escaped!

Muri and Dan run for their lives. In an engine room, Muri and Dan come face to face with the female. Muri blows a pipe that explodes in the female’s face, but she emerges unscathed. Muri and Dan run off again. Somehow, find themselves alone for a moment. Muri can see the drone pad they’re headed for when FFFFFT! Spikes hit her in the stomach. She falls, and Dan jumps down after her.

The female Whitespike eyes them from above. She raises her tentacles for the kill shot when Greenwood shoots her in the head, knocking her into the ocean.

112 -113 Muri’s still got the poison in her hand. Dan’s determined to drag her to safety, but when he finally gets a good look at her wounds, he knows it’s fatal. Still, he insists everything’s going to be all right. Tears stream down Muri’s face. She knows she’s not going to make it, but this is the dad she knows and loves. The dad she admits she wanted to see again, like he was before … With the last of her strength, she says “I love you … Dad.”

Dan looks down at his band. 59 seconds to jumptime. Suddenly the platform rocks. The Whitespike’s behind Dan. Her weight tilts the platform, and Dan and Muri go sliding. Dan grabs Muri, trying to pull her back in as his Jump-band counts down 20, 19, 18 … Muri sees it. She’s still got the toxin. She knows what she has to do. As she lets go, she tosses the toxin to Dan. Muri falls. Civilians leap off cruise ships. It’s the end of humanity. A bloody Greenwood protects the jumplink till he’s overrun. The last thing Dan sees is a mass of Whitespikes falling on his daughter. His Jump-band goes down to zero. Then he vanishes.

114 -115 Dan thuds to the ground at Army Base. Lt. Hart is there. Dan shows her the toxin. Says they need to make more and send it back through the jumplink. Bad news. The jumplink’s offline. Hart is gutted. She knows it’s all over.

Charlie is in the cot next to Dan. How did he survive his tour? He hid. But he’s not proud of it.

116–118 Emmy greets Dan in the VA parking lot. He’s not in good shape, but neither is she. They go home where Dan envelopes (young) Muri in his arms. It’s too much. He’s squeezing her too tightly. Emmy manages to pry Muri free. She’s all right. But there are tears in Emmy’s and Dan’s eyes.

Emmy finds Dan in Muri’s room, staring at her, at 3:30 in the morning. She tells him he should talk to someone — even if it’s not her. He agrees. Emmy goes to leave, but Dan surprises her by asking her to sit down with him. He tells her he saw Muri in the future. “Grown and strong and a scientist fighting so hard …”

He shows Emmy the toxin Muri made. The toxin they worked on together. How can they have the thing that can save the world with no way to use it? He and Emmy brainstorm. There has to be a way, right? They know the aliens didn’t arrive in 2048, but they had to arrive sometime. Maybe they’ve been looking at the wrong year.

119–120 Dan goes to see Charlie at Georgia Tech. Maybe they can win the war. Not by fighting but by using their big science brains. Charlie’s happy to noodle over the possibilities. Could the Whitespikes have landed before 2048? Definitely. The military searched Russia when the Whitespikes appeared and found nothing. Charlie concedes there aren’t many untouched places on earth, but the Whitespikes nest underground. Maybe they landed somewhere and hibernated?

Dan takes his thinking further. Since there aren’t all that many places on earth where they could’ve landed undetected, it shouldn’t be that hard to monitor those places for meteor or pod crashes. True. But it’d be easier to narrow it down if they had evidence to analyze. It hits Dan and Charlie both: Dorian

121–122 Dan and Charlie find Dorian in a hipster bar. He’s not thrilled to see them. They broke the world. Folks are rioting, hopeless. Dan says they can make it all go away if he gives Dan his claw. But Dorian won’t do it. The future comes for them all, making them pay for their sins. It dawns on Dan and Charlie that Dorian’s sick. Not just sick in the head. Like, sick, sick.

It’s true. Dorian was given six months to live. Pancreatic cancer. He thought maybe he had a purpose when he was drafted to fight in the future war. He was a hero there. T-Rex. A god. And now … ? Dan says maybe he was meant to help him and Charlie. Having lived longer than doctors predicted, he should already know better than anyone the future isn’t written in stone. What if the reason Dorian was still alive was to help Dan save his daughter — and the world?

123–126 Charlie discovers sediment in the claw. Volcanic ash from China. Does Dan know anyone who’s an expert on volcanoes? Does he ever …

In Dan’s classroom, all eyes are on Martin, the volcano expert. Dan tells him to focus. No pressure, or anything, but “The fate of the Earth and the lives of every man, woman and child lie in the balance and it’s all about volcanoes.” Martin says: “I knew this would happen.” And Charlie would’ve killed to have a moment like this in high school.

How could a creature that’s only ever set foot in Northern Russia get volcanic ash from China or Korea in its claws? Martin’s got this. “It’d have to be from the Millennium Eruption. The Changbai volcano on the border of China and Korea erupted in 946 A.D with the force of over a thousand nuclear bombs. It blew ash over half the world. Today you can still find that ash buried in ice.”

Charlie’s got knowledge, too. Scientists recently found volcanic ash in a glacier in Northern Russia at a depth consistent with about a thousand years of average snowfall. Dorian’s making sense of all this science. To get it in their claws the aliens would’ve had to dig down through a thousand years of ice? Nope, Dan says. They’d have to dig UP! They were here the whole time.

Why didn’t they climb out sooner? Global warming. They didn’t wait it out. They thawed out. Martin brings up a graphic that shows the projection for the ice melt in 2048. The ice is thinnest in Russia. They need to get there.

127–128 Dodd, the Secretary of Defense, says no way they’re going to Russia. They have no proof. Besides, if the Whitespikes were already here he’d know it. Dan, Charlie and Dorian leave dejected. They’ll just have to do it themselves. Too bad Russia’s closed its borders. Luckily, Dan knows a guy who’ll fly them in under the radar. His dad.

129–130 James is happy to see Dan alive, but he isn’t gonna make it a thing out of it. A pat on the shoulder’s plenty enough. Dan tells it straight. They need a pilot to fly them into Russia undetected with a team of soldiers to find an alien spaceship. James deadpans: “They say kids only call when they need something. But this? This is something else.” Dan tells him a little bit about what he saw in the future. About Muri. Things he’s not about to let happen again. James: “I’ll get my coat.”

Dan pulls up to an abandoned airfield with Charlie and James. Dorian and Future Soldiers Hart, Diaz, Tran and Ikemba are already there armed to the teeth. Hart’s grateful to hear about her husband Major Greenwood in the future.

Hart and James fight over who’s going to fly the plane. Hart gets to the pilot’s seat first. James shrugs. It’s a fifteen-hour flight. They’ll take turns.

131–137 In the cargo hold, Dorian teases Charlie about the arsenal he’s bringing. Charlie says this time, he’s not gonna hide

On the glacier, Charlie explains all they’re looking for is a rift or a fissure, something that would let heat in. Problem is there are millions of them.

Many, many hours later the needles on the snowmobiles’ speedometers go wild. And everybody feels something. Static electricity. In the middle of a glacier. It’s a magnetic field. Dan spots a tiny fissure in the ice wall. Then a series of explosions opens up a half-mile fissure in the ice wall that reveals crystalline ice caves. The team heads in. Hard to believe that all this melts in thirty years.

Past the correct depth, they find nothing, except Dan’s axe clanks metal — and there shouldn’t be any metal this far down. Lts. Tran and Diaz light flares. Dan looks up and sees the long dark shadow of A MASSIVE SPACECRAFT ENTOMBED IN ICE. They found it. They were right. Now what are they gonna do about it?

Dan can’t tell anyone else what to do. If they go in, they might not come out. But he’s going in. The Future Soldiers are on board. Charlie and James are in, too. Muri deserves a second chance.

138–139 A rescue saw slices through the forward section of the spacecraft fuselage, and the ship depressurizes, coming to life. This could be the aliens wake up call. Dorian locks and loads his weapons. Lt. Hart shows Dan she’s brought a ton of explosives. If things go south, they’re blowing the roof off.

Dan makes James and Dan wait at the mouth of the cave because they need a secondary perimeter. Besides, neither of them has ever killed a Whitespike.

140–144 The team enters the spaceship and finds extensive damage. The aliens definitely crashed here. They find the corpses of lizard-like alien pilots. They’re not Whitespikes. The Whitespikes they find in hibernation pods. They’re cargo. Ready to breed like cattle. Or weapons.

Dan takes out a needle filled with Muri’s toxin. Whether the aliens meant to land on earth or not, they’re killing them all. He and the team start injecting the pods with toxin, and the creatures melt. It’s working!

Then a Whitespike’s eye opens. Seconds later, its tentacle grabs Ikemba by the throat. He jabs his syringe into the Whitespike. It dies. But Whitespikes are waking up faster than the team can kill them. They pull out their weapons and open fire. Some Whitespikes are killed. Others charge out of the ship. Dan gives James and Charlie the heads up.

Three males and one female size up James and Charlie at the mouth of the cave. Charlie gets ready to open fire — and discovers he’s left all his ammo on the plane. He grabs the rescue saw and charges at the Whitespikes. James blasts the aliens with gunfire. Gets his shoulder spiked to the cave wall. Charlie slices off the tentacle with the saw.

The firefight continues on the ship. The team using their MKs and the toxin. Hart tells Dan they’ll take out the rest of the Whitespikes. He should go.

Dorian gets his hands on the explosives. They need to take the whole thing down. Manually. No timers. Dan tries to talk him out of it. But Dorian hands him his claw necklace and tells him to get the hell out of there. Dan takes off.

Hart looks at her fellow Future Soldiers. They can’t let the Whitespikes escape. Her team nods, racks up. This is their war. They’re going to end it.

145–150 Dan hustles out of the cave seconds before the explosives go off. James and Charlie are there. Alive. They killed three Whitespikes. The big one got away. Dan hops on a snowmobile, determined to kill the female. James hops on another and follows him.

Dan’s tracking the female when he hears James taunting it. It’s ridiculous. But it works. The creature was hiding, but she comes out for James. Dan charges in as the Whitespike female attacks James. No, not James. A snowman.

The Whitespike pauses. Confused. Gets two shots to the head courtesy of James. Dan revs up his snowmobile and crashes it into the Whitespike. Dan and James double team her, alternating fire. Dodging and rolling. They get some good hits in near the vitals. Wounded, the Whitespike disappears. But Dan and James know better than to let their guards down.

The Whitespike POPS out of the snow behind them. Slices Dan’s weapon in two. Dan fires his pistol instead. The Whitespike tosses Dan, then James, back. Peppers them both with spikes. One hits Dan in the leg. He pulls it out and stabs the Whitespike in the eye. James swings his axe into the other eye. Blinded, the Whitespike flails. James pins it to the ground by stabbing his pick in its tail.

Dan gets the toxin out, manages to get it in the female’s arm. She screeches as the toxin oozes and bubbles down her arm. Dying in a “glorious hideous fashion.” Then she finds the spike in her mouth. Yanks it out. And CHEWS OFF HER POISONED ARM! Dan deadpans, “Well, shit!” The now-blind Whitespike hears him and charges towards the sound on all fours. Dan realizes he’s at the edge of a cliff. Nowhere to go.

James sees the Whitespike approaching Dan. So he starts talking, loud enough to be sure the Whitespike hears. James says he never got to meet Dan’s kid. Sure enough, the Whitespike turns around, heads towards James. James cuts his hand with his knife. The blood draws the alien further away from Dan. James keeps talking. If Muri’s anything like Dan said she is, she takes after Dan. Could Dan tell her something for him? Her dad deserves a second chance, too. James watches the Whitespike running towards him. Ready for it to take him over the cliff.

James tells Dan he’s sorry. For everything. Dan screams, “No!” Grabs the claw. Leaps onto the Whitespike’s back. Jams it into its vertebrae. The Whitespike shrieks and stumbles, losing control. Tossed to the ground, Dan finishes the job, slicing the alien from throat to abdomen like a master Samurai. He shouts, “Die!” for good measure. The alien gives him one last look as Dan kicks her off the cliff.

Back at the Forester home, young Muri and Emmy watch a news report about an explosion in Russia. Isn’t that where Daddy went? Emmy doesn’t know how to answer. Muri looks so scared. Then they hear the garbage can being dragged up the driveway …

Dan’s back. Muri leaps into his arms. Emmy wants to know if they did it. Dan nods. They’re going to be okay. He introduces James to his granddaughter. They hug. Emmy looks Dan in the eyes. He’s home.

Writing Exercise: I encourage you to read the script, but short of that, if you’ve seen the movie, go through this scene-by-scene breakdown. What stands out to you about it from a structural standpoint?

Major kudos to Jodi Lustig for doing this week’s scene-by-scene breakdown.

To download a PDF of the breakdown , go here.

I am looking for volunteers to read a script and provide a scene-by-scene breakdown for it to be used as part of our weekly series. What do you get out from it? Beyond your name being noted here, my personal thanks, and some creative juju sent your way, hopefully you will learn something about story structure and develop another skill set which is super helpful in learning and practicing the craft.

This is a great tradition and provides a major benefit to the online screenwriting community.

Go Into The Story Script Reading & Analysis Series

Movie Script Scene-By-Scene Breakdowns

Our updated list of volunteers:

Laura Bolton / CODA
Lesa Babb / Don’t Look Up
Ryan Canty / Encounter
Martina Cook / Belfast
Karen Dantas / Annette
Jaime Dunkle / Mass
Amy Falkofske / The Mitchells vs. The Machines
Lisa Gomez / tick, tick… BOOM!
Shari Hazlett / Being the Ricardos
Jodi Lustig / The Tomorrow War
Florencia Manovil / The Lost Daughter
Terry Melia / Dune

Here are the other 2021 movie scripts available for you to read and break down:

The Boss Baby: Family Business
The Card Counter
C’mon C’mon
Cyrano
The Electrical Life of Louis Wain
Encanto
The Harder They Fall
A Hero
The Humans
Jockey
Last Night in Soho
Luca
Nine Days
Nightmare Alley
No Time to Die
Parallel Mothers
Passing
Raya and the Last Dragon
Red Rocket
Respect
Spencer
Spider-Man: No Way Home aka Serenity Now
Spirit Untamed
Stillwater
Swan Song
The Tender Bar
The Tragedy of Macbeth
West Side Story
Zola

Thanks to the folks who have already sent me their breakdowns. This will enable us to continue our annual bi-weekly script read and analysis series.

Now is YOUR chance to contribute to this most worthy cause and provide an additional resource for the online screenwriting community.

Even if you do not participate in the analysis, discussion, or write up a scene-by-scene breakdown, I strongly encourage you to read these scripts.

So seize this opportunity and join in the conversation!

I hope to see you in the RESPONSE section about this week’s script: The Tomorrow War.

Volunteers, when you finish, email your breakdown to me at (GITSblog@gmail.com) as a Word or Pages doc.

Thanks, folks. Who’s next?