Clooney leads the way back to the future in Disney’s Tomorrowland

From left, George Clooney, as Frank Walker, Britt Robertson as Casey and Raffey Cassidy as Athena, in Tomorrowland. Film Frame / Disney

Hollywood heart-throb George Clooney straps on a jet pack again for Disney's new movie Tomorrowland, a retro-futuristic spectacle that mixes environmental themes with sci-fi wizardry and some good old-fashioned fun.

Clooney, who last fired up his thrusters two years ago in the Oscar-winning space drama Gravity, stars as a burned-out engineering genius.

The actor says the film was a courageous gamble by Disney, going up against sure-fire box-­office hits Avengers: Age of Ultron. In a summer blockbuster season, packed with superheroes, sequels and familiar franchises, it's not often that we see something different.

“It’s a really bold thing for Disney to be willing to do a film that isn’t a sequel and isn’t a comic book, and truly invest in a summer film of this sort,” he says.

The plot has been shrouded in secrecy. In a welcome departure from the current trend, the trailers have teased audiences without giving away every last detail of the story.

The film does provide a roller-­coaster cinematic ride worthy of Disney’s Tomorrowland theme-park attractions, which inspired the plot.

The film tells the story of teenage rebel Casey (Britt Robertson), who finds herself sucked into a mission to unearth the secrets of Tomorrowland, a future realm ruled by David Nix – a despot played by House star Hugh Laurie.

Clooney plays inventor Frank Walker, who found his way into Tomorrowland as a young boy, but became cynical and was thrown out by Nix.

The film includes some spectacular scenes, including one featuring the Eiffel Tower, with computer-­generated imagery by director Brad Bird, who won an Oscar for Pixar's animated film The Incredibles in 2004.

It is unclear exactly what Tomorrowland is supposed to represent – some kind of collective consciousness of the future is our best guess – but the basic idea of the movie is that we should ensure that optimism overcomes cynicism.

“What I loved about the film was that it reminds you that young people [are] not ... born and start out their lives cynical or angry or bigoted – you have to be taught all of those things,” says Clooney.

“I watch the world now and think I see really good signs from young people out there, and I feel as if the world will get better.”

Robertson, 25, says that climate change is also a key theme.

“It’s us that’s creating that issue, it’s not anything other than the people and the environment and what we’re doing to the environment,” she says. “I do think it’s all of these issues that provoke the post-apocalyptic movies you see, where the world is ending, whether it be environmental or technological.”

The film is also a tribute to the studio’s founder, Walt Disney.

"Walt was a futurist," says Damon Lindelof, the co-creator of the television hit Lost, who co-wrote the Tomorrowland with Bird. "He was very interested in space travel and what cities were going to look like and how transportation was going to work.

“Walt’s thinking was that the future is not something that happens to us. It’s something we make happen. And we really wanted to take that baton and run with it.”

• Tomorrowland opens in cinemas on Thursday, May 21