“Warriors of Future” is a Chinese-language science fiction action film that may be called ambitious with regards to its visual effects grandeur but a complete loss in terms of everything else. Perhaps more akin to a bad mindless video game, the film follows an impending disaster as an alien plant threatens to wipe out a city’s entire population following heavy rainfall, and a team of the local military force plans to stop this in time. Overall, “Warriors of Future” is mostly a combination of plot, ideas, and visuals that we have all seen before, with an obvious and predictable ending and twists.
Spoilers Ahead
‘Warriors of Future’ Plot Summary: What Is The Film About?
Over the years, in the near future, the world and society as a whole have struggled through numerous devastating wars raged after the immense advancement of technology. Robotic warfare was soon followed by nature’s wrath, as global warming and other horrible natural disasters destroyed Earth’s atmosphere and air. With the air filled with high levels of toxins, governments have had to build artificial protective covers of sorts over the skies, called Skynets. Cities and countries now seem to have been replaced by area sectors, and the area in focus in the film happens to be B-16, over which a meteor crashed during the construction of the Skynets. To make things worse, an alien plant-life has grown out of the meteor, causing large-scale destruction of life and construction over a large radius, and it keeps growing every time there is any rainfall. In a cruel irony, scientists have found out that this alien plant can actually purify the Earth’s atmosphere, bringing things back to normalcy, but at the cost of human lives and civilization. They have collectively named the plant Pandora.
Amidst such a scenario, B-16 receives a forecast of heavy rainfall over the next few days. Realizing that Pandora would wipe out the entire population of B-16 after these rains, the local military force named ASU decide to come up with a do-or-die plan. The lead scientist, Dr. Chan, has discovered a rare virus that can get rid of Pandora’s harmful qualities and has invented a sort of vial that needs to be fired inside the plant’s pistil. This would lead to the plant’s negative characteristics going away, and it would instead just purify the atmosphere. ASU takes on this mission, and its responsibility is given to Colonel Tam, who also has a backup plan in case the first one fails. She prepares the army to drop a devastating bomb over the Pandora plant before the heavy rainfall, which would kill the plant but also kill 160,000 people in B-16. The Air Force team of the region is called into action, and our protagonist, Tyler, and his best friend and commander, Johnson Cheng, are introduced. Totally against the cruel second plan, Tyler and Johnson prepare to give their all to make the first plan a success.
Who Sabotages ASU’s Plan And Why?
The ASU team, with three aircraft full of soldiers, is given the responsibility of locating Pandora’s pistil and also of guiding the large Orca 1 aircraft that holds inside it three efficient robots, which would then fire the virus vial into the plant. As the operation begins, the first phase of rainfall starts, and the plant’s tentacles grow and attack the aircraft. As the soldiers manage to dodge past them and somehow locate the whereabouts of the pistil, they temporarily lose connection with the Orca 1. Inside this large aircraft, though, other military robots seem to sabotage the whole operation as one of them pulls a grenade pin and also crashes two of the smaller aircrafts. Only the one holding Tyler and his team inside survives the unprecedented sabotage attack, as the Orca 1 aircraft crashes too, along with the vial of the virus still in it. While this plot point of the sabotage looks menacing enough, “Warriors of Future” does not seem interested in making this its primary drama and instead focuses on the question of whether the plan can be successfully carried out. The leader of the current government in B-16, who is also the head of the military army, Sean Li, had been introduced earlier, and the man had seemed rather unfavorable towards the idea of a clean, natural atmosphere. Such a reversal to the original ways of nature would completely wipe out the need for artificial Skynets, but Sean Li is more obsessed with the latter technology. He claims that he and his government have spent way too much effort and money to get the Skynets designed and installed, and he absolutely hates the idea of removing them from operation. It is only Sean Li and Colonel Tam who have the ability to make the robots function out of order, and it is quite obvious that Sean Li is the one to sabotage the mission. The leader is indeed frustrated at the presence of the ever-threatening Pandora and would rather have it completely destroyed along with its atmosphere-healing abilities. This is why he somehow tries to ensure that the first plan of the mission is a failure, knowing well that Colonel Tam would then simply bomb the alien plant out of existence.
However, his plans are marred by the survival of Tyler and his team, who crash their aircraft and then set out to go in search of the vial. The commander of the Air Force, Johnson, had been watching and monitoring the whole situation from headquarters, and now, seeing his best friend Tyler in potential danger, he sets out to help the man and to continue the mission, which he still does not know had been sabotaged by Sean Li. Interestingly, “Warriors of Future” does not find it adequate to show Sean Li as the main antagonist but also considers it important for the characters to find incriminating proof against the man. Tyler’s team consisted of Privates Lincoln and Connor, the first of whom was killed by large, human-sized insects that originated from Pandora’s pistil. Private Connor, who is a young novice, is informed by one of the communications personnel, who is also Connor’s girlfriend, that getting hold of the robot’s head will make it clear who had sabotaged it. Later, when Tyler, Connor, and Johnson go to Orca 1’s crash site, Connor makes it a point to find the robot and its head. He then tells his team of his finding, and together they learn that it was Sean Li who had worked against them. But the team directly confronts Li first before informing anybody else about all this, and Li sets off the three efficient robots against the men. He also cleverly cuts all ties between the base and Tyler’s team in the Pandora-ridden area. Not only does this ensure that they would not be able to tell Colonel Tam of their findings, but it also prepares an easy way for their death. Without any trace of the team out in the wildlands, Colonel Tam decides that they must have died and calls for the bomb to be dropped on Pandora before the heavy rains arrive. It is then Connor’s girlfriend who discovers the robots are in operation against something (which is basically Tyler and his team) and lets Tam know of her suspicions. Finally, Tam also learns of Sean Li’s betrayal, and she reestablishes communication with Tyler, Connor, and Johnson.
How Does The Asu Mission Join Old Broken Relations And Start New Connections?
Along with the rescue-mission storyline, “Warriors of Future” also makes it a point to stress the human relations that seem to go on throughout the film. The first to be introduced in this regard is, of course, Tyler. After the Earth’s atmosphere had been destroyed, the toxic air resulted in most children being born with severe illnesses and conditions, and Tyler’s own daughter, Sissy, was no different. The child was born with some incurable condition and then developed cancer by the time she was six or seven. Despite his best efforts, Tyler could not get his daughter treated, and the young girl passed away. The memory of Sissy lives on with Tyler through a small music box toy that was probably Sissy’s, and during the grand mission, Tyler also gets a new connection akin to Sissy. While going through a hospital area, Tyler saves a young girl, around the same age as Sissy, from the devilish human-sized insects and rescues her from the debris. This girl, Pansy, is then taken around in the soldiers’ vehicle from place to place, and through all of this, she develops trust in Tyler. At one point, she begs him not to leave as she recalls how her mother had told her to wait inside the hospital ward and had never returned, possibly intentionally abandoning her. Tyler gets emotional and promises to always stay with her, getting a new daughter figure even amidst all this mess. Tyler also has a strong camaraderie with his commander, Johnson, as it is revealed that the men have been friends for over thirty years now. Johnson does not think twice before heading into the Pandora-ridden area to help out his friend, and he also does not hesitate to sacrifice himself for his team. He seems to do exactly this when, during their fight with Sean Li’s robots, Johnson throws himself down with one of the robots, protecting the rest of his team. Along with Tyler and Johnson, there had also been a third man to have shared this long friendship of thirty years, an ex-soldier named Yau Tai-long. Yau and Tyler had a falling out over a certain mission for the Air Force when Yau disagreed with Li’s command and abandoned his whole team, fearing death. While Yau thought that his friends would support his beliefs about Li’s ruthless orders and possibly also protest against them, the two friends, especially Tyler, had turned against Yau for cowardly fleeing the scene, endangering the lives of his brothers-in-arms. After this fallout, Yau was dismissed from the force, and he turned into a sort of street peddler in B-16. When Tyler and his team go missing in the wildlands and Jackson has to drive there, he visits the streets of B-16 first and brings Yau along. Throughout the journey that follows, Yau saves his friends multiple times and then becomes an active member of the whole mission. Without a doubt, his bond with his two best friends is restored through this moment of crisis.
‘Warriors Of Future’ Ending Explained: Do Tyler And Jackson Save B-16 From Pandora? What Happens To Sean Li?
As the heavy rainfall has almost arrived and Colonel Tam’s bombing mission is underway, Tyler and Yau try to fight off the villainous robots while Connor is given the responsibility of arming a bomb. The soldiers and scientists had realized that Pandora’s pistil was underground, and Connor placed a bomb on the road, blasting away the concrete and making a way into the chamber. By this time, one of the robots seems to have killed Pansy, but to everyone’s delight, Jackson is seen to be still alive after his previous sacrificial leap, and he had already saved the little girl. Jackson now joins the fight too, and he is the one to enter the pistil chamber and kill off the insects that try to stop him. Jackson then throws the vial containing the virus into the alien plant’s pistil, and Pandora’s deadly growth finally stops. People all over B-16 celebrate the success of the mission, and Tyler and his friends make their return. By this time, Colonel Tam had realized Sean Li’s villainous betrayal, and she prepared to arrest the leader and punish him for his crime. However, as Tam briefly walks away, a loud gunshot is heard from Li’s room, and an empty bullet shell is just shown. It is made very apparent that Sean Li commits suicide before he can be arrested and therefore saves himself from the punishment of the law that he always knew was coming his way. Finally, with Pandora’s negative qualities now out of the way, the alien plant magically starts to heal the Earth’s atmosphere, and after a week’s time, the Earth’s greenery returns to normal. In the end of “Warriors of Future,” Tyler is seen in an aircraft now flying towards the moon on some new mission. Although no such mention is made in the film, perhaps his next mission is to install Skynets over the moon to make it hospitable for humans. Or the next human step of development is to send soldiers in robotic armor suits into space to kill alien life forms. As if we have not seen enough Halo.
“Warriors of Future” is a 2022 Drama Action film directed by Yuen Fai Ng.
