What makes the movie compelling is that the audience is waiting for Cruise to start acting like Cruise. Instead of kicking ass, he’s like Matthew McConaughey in How to Lose a Guy In 10 Days combined with a hypothetical Battlestar Galactica draft dodger. This wrinkle is aided by the fact that Tom Cruise doesn’t begin the movie playing a Tom Cruise. But this simple exposition smartly conceals a late twist: the Mimics are trying to trick the humans into giving them their time-loop power back. The film gets a video game quality embedded in it, and you get that Cruise can keep dying until he figures out how to win. Carter (Noah Taylor), the rules of the movie are laid out. In an early speech from Vrataski’s ally Dr. These might seem like minor touches, but they’re huge. What makes Edge of Tomorrow work is twofold: the rules and stakes are explained early and clearly, and Tom Cruise starts off playing against type. But this is a very good and very fun sci-fi action movie. In a serialized TV series, these very specific time-loop rules wouldn't fly because they’re patently ridiculous. Throughout the course of one day repeated many times over, they have to figure out how to work together to save the world. Vrataski (Blunt) once had that power, but now Cage (Cruise) does. But their power to “reset the day” can be hijacked if you get their blood in your blood, which humanity learns by accident. The Mimics use time-loops to determine the best way to take over a planet, and can therefore win every battle because they’ve already fought it multiple times. Their invasion plan, meanwhile, feels borrowed from the playbook of a Doctor Who enemy. The alien Mimics don’t actually mimic anything, and given that they’re as mighty and unstoppable as the Decepticons from the Michael Bay Transformers movies, you’d be forgiven if you thought they looked like rejects from them. It’s Starship Troopers meets Groundhog Day.Įdge of Tomorrow is full of stock characters, cliche dialogue, and gaping plot holes. Cruise is a cowardly double-talker, and only by getting stuck in a time-loop does he become less of a douchebag. He’s a smarmy PR guy who works on ensuring the media feels good about a desperate battle being waged against alien invaders called Mimics. It just hit HBO Max, and it’s worth another look for one specific reason: it’s the only contemporary sci-fi action movie that made time-loops seem brand new again.Įdge of Tomorrow stars Tom Cruise as William Cage and Emily Blunt as Rita Vrataski. Regardless of the innocuous-sounding name, Edge of Tomorrow is a memorable sci-fi movie that revitalizes an ancient trope. from tagline to title on the home media release. must have thought so: they elevated Live. Edge of Tomorrow is not particularly memorable, but it’s hard to say if the two other titles would have worked any better. The film is an interesting study of the question of whether titles matter. That was the title Doug Liman wanted for the 2014 sci-fi movie Edge of Tomorrow, based on Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s novel All You Need Is Kill.
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