Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

 

100 best Science Fiction films

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#93. Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

 

There was once an influential, now forgotten, border-line Fantasy book,” by Ernest Dunlop Swinton (1905). It was meant to install the idea of Critical Thinking in Military Planners and its plot was deceptively simple:

 

During the Boer Wars in South Africa (1899-1902), Lt. Backsight Forethought is given the task of defending Duffer’s Drift. He has six dreams about the up-coming Battle. His forces are slaughtered in the first dream, but in the second, and all the subsequent ones, he remembers and corrects his previous mistakes. Finally, he wins.

 

This maybe the first Time-Loop story in English Literature, and though other Authors who have played with this Theme, they probably never heard of this book (which I admit I never read) yet still owe it a debt.

 

Since the wild success of the Comedy film, “Groundhog Day” (1993) Time Loops have been becoming increasingly popular in cinema; they perfectly reflect our longing to either go back and correct our past mistakes, or at the very least learn from them, and has become a leading theme in the whole of SF,F&H.

 

Time Loops require clever plotting, but real quality is established not by plot, but the Emotional-Through-Line of the Character trapped in it, something that “The Defense of …” apparently was unconcerned with. I guess it was inevitable that a Time Loop story would eventually return to its roots, but do not fear that this film is a dull instruction manual on Military Planning, it has a strong Emotional-Through-Line (so it apparently shares a stronger connection with “Groundhog Day” than “The Defense of …”) and it also features really nasty Monsters.

 

Even though “Edge of Tomorrow” is clearly not intended as a lesson in Critical Thinking, it’s not as if it ignores the concept. Without stating it explicitly, it eventually explores the all-important, and frequently misunderstood, difference between Tactics, the individual steps to achieve a goal, and Strategy, the larger action plan, far more about understanding what the goal is, and adapting that goal to reality, than the specifics of its achievement. Call it the difference between good training and good vision.

 

Here's the set-up:

 

Earth has been Invade by really nasty Aliens, called Mimics, who adapt to our Tactics with lightning-speed. Things seemed hopeless until the Battle of Verdun (a reference to one of the bloodiest Battles of WWI), and since then, the Aliens’ advancement has been stalled, but things still don’t look good for the Human Race.

 

Enter Major William Cage (Tom Cruise) a callow and cowardly US Army PR guy who clearly pissed someone off because he’s been assigned to the frontlines even though he’s not Combat Trained. In a face-off with General Brigham (Brendan Gleeson), William acts like a fool, is stripped of his rank, sent to a French beach (a reference to the landing at Normandy, also one of the bloodiest Battles of WWII) and quickly killed …

 

Only to suddenly wake up and the previous day and forced to do the whole nightmarish experience again. He remembers the day before (day after?) and tries to correct his mistakes and not get killed again.

 

Well, good for him. He lived a couple of seconds longer the second time. And this just keeps going on. Like the movie poster says, “Live, Die, Repeat.”

 

Repetition is the heart of the concept and that should’ve been a trap for the filmmakers as it’s mimicking the advancement through levels of video-game play. True, Video Game-Movies are hugely popular, but they also generally suck. Here, the repetition is funnier and faster than it sounds even though Character William is clearly hopeless. Finally, he’s smart enough to make a B-line on the exploding beach for the famous War Hero, Sgt. Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt), whose nickname is the “Angel of Verdun.” Maybe she can keep him alive.

 

Nope.

 

But she does say something interesting just before he dies, “Find me when you wake up.”

 

You see, Rita knows about the Time Loop and that’s when the story really take off.

 

Both Cruise and Blunt are cast-against-type, Blunt more so than Cruise. This might be viewed by some audiences as her break-out role even though she’s already a Big Star, but she’s never been this buff a tough. This maybe be the best Casting-Against-Type in a SF,F&H film since Sarah Polly in “Day of the Dead” (2004). Blunt owns the middle sections of the film, outshining bigger star Cruise, and Director Doug Liman referred to Rita as the “real hero” of the film.

 

Critic Monika Bartyzel took umbrage with that, calling Rita a “Female Yoda” as in allowing “Hollywood to appeal to feminist concerns while continuing to feed male wish fulfillment. She looks so killer in action — and seems so good on paper — that she seems to shut down arguments about female marginalization. She's better than the hero: Stronger, smarter, more mature.” But like the Yoda of the “Star Wars” franchise (the franchise goes back to 1977, but that Character first appeared in 1980) there does come some point where she steps back and leaves the rest of the job to a boy. Bartyzel was clearly annoyed with the Female Yoda thing, asking why Rita, like Trinity (Carrie-Ann Moss) from “The Matrix” franchise (first film 1999) and countless others ultimately who get subtly submissive. All are following in the footsteps of Character Ellen Ripely (Seymore Weaver) from “Alien” (1979) who redefined so many Genre assumptions, but they still reflect a Boy’s Club sexism. Unprepared William has to completely surrender to Rita, and through long and grueling training (she teaches him how to fight nimbly in a really cool-looking, but bulky, Exo-Skeleton). She makes a man out of him, but then gets marginalized in her own story.

 

Cruise’s casting was clearly because of his marque status, but his performance is still nicely subversive. He’s probably the biggest Action Hero in the World today, but his Heroes tend to be guys who walk into frame already Super Heroes, like his Character Ethan Hunt from the “Mission Impossible” series (a long running-TV and film franchise going back to 1966, but Cruz didn’t join it until 1995) or the title character in “Jack Reacher” series (first film 2021). Here, casting a 51-year-old as an unprepared Soldier is not a bad choice, but who actually believes Cruise is 51? Cruise then proves surprisingly convincing as the hapless William early in the film. The training Rita forces him through is brutal (to “reset the day” faster, she repeatedly shoots him in the face) but by the end, when William finally lives up to what he looks like of the movie poster and you believe he really earned it.

 

For Director Liman, this movie marks something of a breakthrough too. It’s his thirteenth Directorial outing, and through his diverse resume, Action Movies were his bread-and-butter, but with the exception of this one and “The Bourn Identity” (2002), they aren’t his best films. This one should be viewed as a true Action landmark.

 

Key to the strength of this film is that these Characters have arcs, though we don’t get to see Rita’s, we see William get forced through what she’s already endured, so William becomes the mirror of Rita’s arc. When she’s introduced, she’s a powerful Fighter but Spiritually Exhausted; she still fighting because it’s her last purpose, everything else has already been taking from her. Just before the last act begins, she talks about watching someone she loved die over a hundred times. As the last act opens, William, now a powerful Fighter, has been similarly ground-down Spiritually, and similarly fighting on because there’s nothing else left for him.

 

One of the more comedic Characters is Master Sergeant Farrell (Bill Paxton) and, because of the Time Loop, he says the same lines over-and-over, “Battle is the Great Redeemer. It is the fiery crucible in which true heroes are forged. The one place where all men truly share the same rank, regardless of what kind of parasitic scum they were going in.” This film is very much about the cost of taking those lines and making them true.

 

The Battle scenes on the beach are brutal, visually referencing the open scenes of the far-more serious-minded “Saving Private Ryan” (1998). We see William knowingly walk into the Valley of the Shadow of Death more times than I could count – one critic estimated 500 times, that has to be an exaggeration, but the dialogue makes it clear that whatever we saw, the real number was ten times as much. In a vital scene, when we see Rita and General Brigham in the same place for the first time; William casual asks her, “Please don’t shoot him this time.”

 

The film never gets redundant, a tall-order given that the plot mechanics are so complicated, involving not only the mechanics of the Time Loop, but the improbable Biology of the Aliens, the Military Chain-of-Command, and the landscape of France, all which has to be learned-by-doing, over and over, and over.

 

It's based on Writer Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s acclaimed novel “All You Need is Kill” (2004), which also became a Magna comic and a video game. Hollywood was stymied as to how to get the narrative down to a stand-alone and coherent feature (it was ultimately a remarkably economical 1¼-hours), and the three listed Scriptwriters did remarkable work: Christopher McQuarrie who a achieved fame for the script to the wildly complicated Crime Thriller, “The Usual Suspects” (1995), and Jez and John-Henry Butterworth who collaborated with Liman before.

 

Of equal, or greater, importance was the dynamic editing, praised by Critic Kristin Acuna wrote that the film was "aided enormously by James Herbert and Laura Jennings’ snappy, intuitive editing, they tell the story in a breezy shorthand, sometimes sleight-of-hand.”

 

The FX were by executed by so many team leaders it would be impossible to list them here, but the Alien design by Kevin Jenkins deserves special note, it’s nothing short of astounding. Influenced by the writings of H.P. Lovecraft who was a master the art of using very specific language to describe the indescribable, they are solid and tactile, but give the impression of a tornado of enraged tentacles as the charging, snapping, swirling, darting, at their prey. Because of their speed and fury, you can’t fully see them even when they are right in the center of the frame. It’s a demonstration of the latest tech expressed to its fullest potential; they would’ve been impossible to even attempt on film before about 1999, and wouldn’t have looked near as good this until, well, the year this film was made.

 

The film does disappoint near the end. That’s when Critic Bartyzel got annoyed that Rita’s Character gets all doe-eyed towards William. William has been fighting alongside her for his Eternity, so of course he Falls in Love with her, but time works different for Rita, every Reset is the day they first she met him, so that relationship doesn’t exist for her.

 

I had a bigger problem. The climax happens at a World-Recognizable landmark, but also at night, during a blackout, in an underground parking garage, and Liman chose to, well, make it look like an underground parking garage during a blackout. What had been vivid, coherent, Chaos in the film suddenly gets really murky.

 

Finally, to set up the last scene (which was funny) the script changed the rules of how the Time Loop worked.

 

Trailer:

Edge of Tomorrow - Official Trailer 1 [HD] - YouTube Edge of Tomorrow - Official Trailer 1 [HD] - YouTube

 

Trailer:

Edge of Tomorrow - Official Trailer 1 [HD] - YouTube Edge of Tomorrow - Official Trailer 1 [HD] - YouTube