The horrifying White Spikes in The Tomorrow War are yet another alien race that copies a classic sci-fi alien. Amazon’s latest live-action sci-fi film depicts a cross-timeline global battle against the White Spikes, an extraterrestrial race whose appetite almost brought humanity to total annihilation. As present-day Dan Forrester (Chris Pratt) is sent 30 years into the future, he is faced with predators that look and attack remarkably like an iconic alien race from another classic science-fiction story.
The Tomorrow War focuses on humanity’s fight against the White Spikes, which are massive carnivorous beings with terrifying maws containing protruding fangs. Armed with tough impenetrable backplates, powerful mantis-like forearms, and a pair of tails able to shoot spikes, the White Spikes were nothing short of a nightmare for humanity. In fact, these aliens were so overwhelmingly strong that they reduced the population in 2051 down to 500,000 people in a mere 3 years, making the White Spikes the foremost predator of The Tomorrow War’s Earth. As Lt. Hart (Jasmine Mathews) reluctantly admits, they were so terrifying that “if the public saw what they’d face when they reached the future, it would become virtually impossible to fill that hanger” with army recruits.
Looking at their overpowered abilities though, it is clear that the White Spikes’ design actually comes from another popular extraterrestrial – A.E. van Vogt’s Coeurl aliens. Appearing in both his “Black Destroyer” short story and his subsequent adaptive novel The Voyage of the Space Beagle, the Coeurl were sentient, feline-like creatures known for having massive forearms and prehensile tentacles that grew from their shoulders. Not only serving as the inspiration for the xenomorphs in Ridley Scott’s 1979 film Alien, the original Coeurl was also the inspiration for the tentacled cat-like predators in the Final Fantasy and Dungeons & Dragons franchises, respectively named the coeurl and the displacer beasts. Joining the likes of these franchises, The Tomorrow War copies the original Coeurl aliens by adapting many of their original abilities and basic aesthetic.
“Black Destroyer” is set on an alien planet, where a Coeurl utilized his intelligence and his physical attributes to capture prey both human and animal. The Coeurl “had everything he needed to defeat" the humans he encountered; similarly, the White Spikes had everything they needed to be as lethal as possible — most notably the familiar-looking set of tentacled tails. These tentacles were one of the White Spikes’ most defining features and are direct references to the Coeurl, as both creatures were able to use them to strike like whips and grab objects or people. The Tomorrow War, though, took that defining feature and upped the ante even further, adapting them into spike-shooting projectile weapons. It’s easy to see that the White Spikes design is taken from the Coeurl, as this built-in weapon let the White Spikes crush the humans much like the Coeurl nearly crushed “Black Destroyer”’s human crew.
Where other Coeurl-inspired creatures are more direct copies, The Tomorrow War does the extra work to make them all the more strong, and all the more terrifying. As a time travel thriller, The Tomorrow War does what it can to present an impressively dangerous alien, and it does so by looking towards the same source material many other franchises have looked toward. With such a roster of abilities, it's no wonder that van Vogt’s Coeurl creations still hold up today, and it’s only a wonder which upcoming franchise they’ll help inspire next.
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