Edge of Tomorrow Research:

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On the face of it, there is nothing particularly original about Edge Of Tomorrow.
Brush your hand across its gritty surface and youll smear the thin layer off a
teeming nest of influences: Groundhog Day, the most obvious, for its time-loop
plot engine (and by extension Source Code); Saving Private Ryan, for its Frenchbeach brutality; Aliens, Starship Troopers and the Matrix trilogy for its bombastic
portrayal of big-tech conflict with multi-limbed, insectoid-biomechanical extraterrestrials. Its exquisitely apposite that, if youre coming to this film from a
healthy upbringing on action-sci-fi cinema of the 80s and 90s (with Harold
Ramis clock-resetting comedy being the one rom-com it was okay for you to
love), youll experience a throbbing sense of dj vu only made more acute by
the films shared chromosomes with last years Elysium and that other Tom
Cruise-on-a-devastated-Earth picture, Oblivion.
None of which is to diminish Empires recommendation: director Doug Liman and
his screenwriting triumvirate of Christopher McQuarrie and brothers Jez and
John-Henry Butterworth (adapting Hiroshi Sakurazakas light novel All You Need
Is Kill) wear all these influences well, and with pride. Why else enlist the everreliable Bill Paxton as a puff-chested, adage-chewing sergeant if not to wink at
his past life as a colonial marine? Edge Of Tomorrow may be hugely familiar, but
welcomingly so. And it also proves to be huge fun.
This is in no small part to the movies most significant influence of all: video
games. While we still await an even remotely decent video game-to-movie
adaptation, Edge Of Tomorrow provides the perfect substitute. It may not have

spawned directly from any console-based IP, but it is thoroughly steeped in

gaming culture and logic mainly via Sakurazaka himself, who is also a
programmer. Lay the films plot over a game-design template and youll find a
pleasingly neat match. When Cage (Cruise) awakens into the first day of his
enforced demotion (also the second-to-last of his life), he is effectively starting
from a save point. When, eventually, a close encounter on that bloody beach with
a tentacle-flailing, blast-furnace mouthed alpha the end-of-level boss
causes his health bar to retract to zero, we snap back to that save point, and he
must play the two days again. With each replay, he must learn how to survive to
reach the next level (to ultimately meet the end-of-game boss), although,
paradoxically, just as we learn from our mistakes in life, he must learn from his
deaths. (If youve ever sunk days of playtime into a Dark Souls game, youre
guaranteed to sympathise.)
Part of this is through his power of recollection, plus development of musclememory: step left to avoid explosion here, shoot right to eliminate incoming
mimic there every repeated battle is pre-programmed, so he just has to learn
the patterns. Then part of it is through a more straightforward regime of personal
improvement or levelling up which comes via Cage unlocking new
content. Having mastered the timing of a roll between a trucks wheels in one
amusing and novel sequence, he is rewarded with access to a trainer (Emily
Blunt as seasoned soldier Rita Vrataski) who not only provides him with the
necessary information to progress to new levels, but also enables him to spend
his experience points in her automated dojo.
If this all sounds as mechanical as the exo-suits Cage and his comrades wear,
dont be put off. McQuarrie and the Butterworths have crafted a rich and drily

witty script that really takes the edges off the concept. Seemingly throwaway
lines accrue layers of meaning as Cage relives, and relives, these two days.
Battle is a true redeemer, barks Paxtons sarge at his men; tomorrow morning
you will be baptised. Born again. A little later, just before being dropped into the
hotzone, a fellow grunt yells at Cage, the raw recruit, I think theres something
wrong with your suit... Yeah, theres a dead man in it! So true.
The writers have fun with the whole death-to-progress concept, too. Once Blunts
combat-hardened Rita joins Cage in his quest, it becomes her job to press quit
when things go wrong by shooting Cage through the head. Also, after the
plots loopy logic is firmly established (which, like any time-travel movie, raises
more questions than it provides answers), they employ it to maintain tension:
how much does Cage know? Has he been through this scenario before? Its
deliberately never clear just how many lives hes already gone through to get to
any given scene. It is a shame that the deaths themselves arent allowed to have
more impact. In a previous era, this would have been a 15-to-18-certificate movie
that would not have shied away from presenting Cages many and varied
demises, gore and all. But the commercial pressure to audience-broaden has
required Liman to cut away as much as possible, and a visual sense of trauma is
lost.
Still, Cruise sells it brilliantly. Indeed, this is his strongest performance in some
time and he revels in the characters development. He starts out as a smug,
smirking, weaselly coward, not above trying to blackmail an implacable general
(Brendan Gleeson); Cage is so ineffectual, he cant even switch off the safety on
his hand-cannons. During his first drop he stumbles lamely about, watching his
comrades die in the dirt, doing little useful to help them. But battle is a true

redeemer, of course. So gradually, gradually, the weasel becomes a lion.

Although not without a self-serving detour or two along the way.
Blunt, too, is on strong form, exhibiting a steely poise that makes her comfortably
believable as a war-propaganda poster-girl known simultaneously as The Angel
Of Verdun and Full Metal Bitch. She is less a romantic interest for Cruise (who
seems to be going through an English actress co-star phase) than she is his
mentor, and his foil. Doug Liman has always been an astute, experimental
chemist, and while this isnt quite the Brad-and-Angie lab explosion of Mr. & Mrs.
Smith, its at least as strong a pairing as Matt Damon and Franka Potente in The
Bourne Identity (which, incidentally, is another movie this comes to echo during
one later episode particularly).
After the forgettable Jumper and Fair Game, its good to see Liman back on
pyrotechnic form, orchestrating some inventive combat spectacle. This could well
be his biggest hit yet and Cruises for a good while, too. A rebirth, of a sort, for
both of them. If nothing else, itll stand out as one of summer 2014s most
entertaining surprises.
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Empire

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Its a familiar sci-fi mashup, but director Doug Liman knows how to find the fun and the
thrills in this tale of an alien-fighting soldier who lives the same day over and over again
Tom Cruise>Tom Cruise has a killer case of dj vu in Edge of Tomorrow, and hes
not the only one; viewers will pick out plot elements from Groundhog Day, Starship
Troopers, Source Code, and The Butterfly Effect from this exciting sci-fi action epic,
adapted from the delightfully-titled novel All You Need Is Kill.

The familiarity never gets in the way of the fun, however, with director Doug Liman (The
Bourne Identity, Mr. & Mrs. Smith) and screenwriters Christopher McQuarrie (who
recently directed Cruise in Jack Reacher), Jez Butterworth, and John-Henry
Butterworth keeping the plot moving forward (albeit in a circle) with surprising injections
of wit.
See video: Tom Cruise Spends an Eternity Dying in New Edge of Tomorrow Trailer
It seems like a million years ago now, but there was a time when Liman made his name
with explosion-free comedies like Swingers and Go; its that latter film that Edge of
Tomorrow most often resembles, with its out-of-order-ticking-clock structure and its
pampered protagonist who quickly finds himself way in over his head.
Tomorrow begins with a rapid-fire montage of news reports of an alien invasion of
Europe; all seems lost until soldier Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt), also known as the Angel
of Verdun, wipes out a bunch of E.T.s in the militarys new exo-skeleton
armor/weaponry. The U.S. Armys PR officer, Major Bill Cage (Tom Cruise), appears on
news shows around the world to reassure the public that international fighting forces,
equipped with similar battle suits, will have the same success as the relatively untrained
Rita.

Cage is happy to
put a positive spin on the war from a safe distance, but when the general (Brendan
Gleeson) in charge of anti-alien combat wants to embed Cage with the front line of
forces, the officer chickens out and refuses. Cage is arrested and knocked out; when he

wakes up, hes been busted to private and being mobilized out of Heathrow, with a
barking sergeant (Bill Paxton) prepping him for the glory of battle.
That glory occurs the next morning, and its a catastrophe, with human forces being
picked off easily by the aliens. Through sheer luck, Cage outlasts most of his comrades,
even killing a larger, more threatening alien, who bleeds all over Cage before killing
himat which point Cage wakes up at Heathrow again.
Cage keeps trying to change the sequence of events, but he keeps dying and waking
up and dying and waking up over and over again. Everything seems immutable until
he runs into Rita on the battlefield, and she tells him, Find me when you wake up.
Also read: Tom Cruises Edge of Tomorrow Could Be Summers First Big-Budget
Bomb
Rita, it turns out, was also once infected by one of those larger aliens, and it connected
her to the alien hive-mind, giving her the same cyclical immortality until a blood
transfusion stripped her of those abilities. Mankinds only hope is for Rita to turn Cage
into a soldier (no matter how many times she has to kill him to do it) so that the two can
find the alien alpha-mind that controls the entire invading force.
Like the wartime movies of the 1940s (not to mention Paul Verhoevens parody of same
in Starship Troopers), Edge of Tomorrow is a movie where a callow, selfish d-bag
learns to be a better person by going to war. Weve seen Cruise on this jerk-to-gem path
before, although this film seems almost cannily designed to draw in ticket buyers who
are fed up with the actor. Dont like Tom Cruise? the film seems to be offering, Come
watch him get killed over and over again!
Hes actually delivering a nicely underplayed performance, as though he were aware
that its the high-concept plot thats the real star here. Blunt commits to the material as
well; she might seem wildly miscast as a war hero, but given the strange circumstances
by which Rita achieves her notoriety (as does Cage), it makes sense that they didnt
cast a Sigourney Weaver type.
See video: Top Gun Sequel Will See Tom Cruise Grappling With Drone Warfare, Jerry
Bruckheimer Says

Liman gives editor James Herbert (Sherlock Holmes) a lot to work with, giving us
different angles on repeated scenes (except when making them identical is part of the
joke); for a film about repetition, Edge of Tomorrow never feels tired or familiar.
If theres anything disappointing about the film, it involves the ending; its a defensible
one, but everything leading up to it fooled me into expecting something smarter or more
daring. Ultimately, though, Edge of Tomorrow feels sharper and more clever than it
might have been in other hands, and for a big summer star vehicle, thats surprise
enough.
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The Wrap

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It shouldn't work. A human-versus-aliens epic that keeps repeating the same

scene over and over again as if the comic tilt of Groundhog Day had turned
suddenly dangerous. But Edge of Tomorrow will keep you on edge. Guaranteed.
Tom Cruise had me at hello, playing Maj. William Cage, a glorified PR guy in
uniform. During an interview with hawklike Gen. Brigham (Brendan Gleeson,
chewing hungrily on a tasty role), Cage is condescending as hell, offering to
help the general with his image in a war that seems unwinnable. Instead, the
general sends the combat-unready Cage into battle. Effective immediately.
It's a treat to watch the typically heroic Cruise lose his shit, sweating and
panicking at the thought of getting up close and personal with an alien race
called Mimics. Cage, buried in combat armor and handed weapons no one has
trained him to use, goes kicking and screaming into the alien fray, crying foul to
his commanding officer (Bill Paxton). Yet there he is on a beach in France,

ducking CGI creatures that look truly terrifying and staring in horror as Rita
Vrataski (Emily Blunt), a military goddess, is massacred. Cage dies next.
You heard me. He dies. Until director Doug Liman, channeling the cinematic
pizazz he brought to The Bourne Identity, hits the reset button. Cage is forced to
relive that same day until he gets it right. That means getting to Rita before the
battle in question, persuading her to train him for combat and then, of course,
falling in love. The cornball stuff never gets in the way, thanks to Blunt's grit
and grace. She's a force of nature.
Working from an exuberantly clever script that Christopher McQuarrie (The
Usual Suspects) and Jez and John-Henry Butterworth adapted from Hiroshi
Sakurazaka's 2004 novel All You Need Is Kill, Liman keeps the action and
surprises coming nonstop. OK, the end is a head-scratcher. Until then, Cruise
and Blunt make dying a hugely entertaining game of chance.
- Rolling Stone
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In a next-door near-future, techno-tentacled invaders called mimics have invaded Europe

as an unstoppable swarm of super-speed terrors. Major William Cage (Tom Cruise) is an
officer and a PR man, given an order to land and record footage with the assault forces in
the big push thats designed to stop the enemy. When he refuses, hes slapped in chains
and busted to Private.
Given minimal training and a exo-skeleton loaded with weapons and technology, he goes
into battle on the shore of Normandy the next day and dies fast and ugly, his blood mingling
with whatever it is that floods out of one of the alien officers And then wakes up, alive,

whole and entire, on the morning of the day before his fateful, futile drop into France where
he dies
A mix of forward-looking sci-fi, classic themes, deft plotting and superb writing and direction,
Edge of Tomorrow may be the pure-pleasure blockbuster to beat this Summer. Its easy to
dismiss the film as a pastiche of its influences Starship Loopers Save Private Ryan on
the Longest Groundhog Day but accurate as that joke it, it nonetheless does the film no
justice.
Director Doug Liman and his team of screenwriters, Chris McQuarrie and the pair of JohnHenry and Jez Butterworth, arent just re-cycling old plots and tropes but, rather, up-cycling
them, making them shiny and new and fun in a way that not only works as entertainment
but also works, superbly, with star Tom Cruises abilities and image to groovy, goofy effect.
(Based on the novel by Hiroshi Sakurazaka, Edge of Tomorrow displays McQuarries
fingerprints as a writer smart, cynical, snappy most clearly.)
From his first death big eyes staring out of a blown-up face Cruise and the movie both
work, and work hard, to turn his journey through cosmic oddness and ammo-spitting action
into a sci-fi variation on Wile E. Coyote: Effort, failure, agony, re-start. Tom Cruise is, like all
movie stars, a little under-served by that mere appellation hes actually an interesting
actor, God forbid, and one whose secret weapon is his public face.
Cruise always looks like hes on top of things, but hes at his best when hes trying to look
like hes on top of things when he is not. Cruise puts the con in confidence in many of his
roles and Maj. Cage, who goes from the last guy youd want fighting in the war to being
the only man who can win it, is a perfect fit for him. Watching the Tom Cruise get punched
off Tom Cruises face in this film often, and often fatally is one of its major pleasures.
We love watching Cruise play the man wholl never say die. What happens when die is all
he can do?
Eventually, Cage manages to manipulate his moebius-strip timeline until he meets
propaganda poster girl and decorated soldier Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt), who tore through
the invaders at Verdun specifically because she, like he, was looping through time in a
similar way or that battle and now cant. The aliens control time and use that control to
ensure crushing, absolute victory and Cage, returning to life again and again with more
information earned each time he dies, will be the key.

Its one thing to find a summer blockbuster that, at first glance, is as well-shot and wellmade as this one with smart creative decisions directing the craft. (Director of Photography
Dion Beebe deserves much well-earned credit here.) But Edge of Tomorrow zips by so
fast, its like seeing a Ferrari whip by before you get a chance to look under the hood to see
exactly what makes it so speedy.
The montages here arent shortcuts in the storytelling they are the storytelling, showing
us Cages journey through a short life and resurrection as he follows the tracks, or leaps
them, every time. The aliens, cracked-out on time itself, move almost too quickly to be seen
which makes them easier SFX creations, and means we feel more of an impact when we
can see them. The power-suits Cage and Vrtaski wear are badass but never obscure
their faces, and its made clear that, as ever, its whos carrying the gear that makes it count.
The supporting cast is all excellent Blunt is a warrior-woman who knows more than she
lets on; Bill Paxton plays the older, grizzled order-spitting Master Sgt. Farell; a host of great
actors with great faces, like Noah Taylor and Kick Gurry, make up the rest of the phonytough and crazy-brave in Cages doomed battalion. Blunt gets to be both tough and tender,
but not too much of the latter a constantly-resetting timeline means no time for love, Dr.
Jones and its the kind of performance on her part that has surface-level gloss but that
will also yield deeper pleasures on repeated viewings.
Director Liman jumped to action-studio films with 2002s The Bourne Identity another
action film, like this one, about self-preservation as self-discovery and hes definitely,
deftly improved his game in the intervening years. Id much rather watch Limans shooting
and staging (and the wit he brings to them) than anything similar-ish from ham-handed
masters of the mediocre like Michael Bay or Matthew Vaughn. And the best thing about
Edge of Tomorrow is that its fun no watching huge monsters destroy cities as we look
on helpless; no mopey mutants whining about persecution; just one person, aided by and
aiding others, facing fearful odds with the world at stake.
Itd be easy to dismiss Edge of Tomorrow as just another blunt-force summer movie, but
its sharp as a scalpel in the deft hands of its makers, with the kind of smarts, wit,
filmmaking and force too many other summer films can only dream of.
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Film.com

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"Edge of Tomorrow" is less of a time travel movie than an experience movie; that
statement might not make sense now, but it probably will after you've seen it. Based on
Hiroshi Sikurazaka's novel "All You Need is Kill", it's a true science fiction film, highly
conceptual, set during the aftermath of an alien invasion. Maybe "extra-dimensional
being invasion" is more accurate. The fierce, octopod-looking beasties known as Mimics
are controlled hive-mind style by a creature that seems able to peer through time, or
rupture it, or something. When the tale begins, we don't have exact answers about the
enemy's powers (that's for our intrepid heroes to find out), but we have a solid hunch
that it can see possible futures through the eyes of specific humans, then treat them as,
essentially, video game characters, following their progress through the nasty
"adventure" of the war, and making note of their tactical maneuvers, the better to ensure
our collective extermination.

Watch Now

Tom Cruise, who seems to be spending his fifties saving humanity, plays Major William
Cage, an Army public relations officer. Cage is a surprising choice for the role of hero.
He's never seen combat yet inexplicably finds himself thrown into the middle of a
ferocious battle that will decide the outcome of the war. The film begins with Cage en
route to European command headquarters in London, waking up in the belly of a
transport chopper. The rest of the movie may not be his dream per se, but at various
points it sure feels as though it is. The world is wracked by war. Millions have died.
Whole cities have been reduced to ash heaps. The landscapes evoke color newsreel
footage from World War II, and much of the combat seems lifted from that era as well.
When Cage meets the general in charge of that part of the world's forces, he's told he's
being sent right into this movie's version of D-Day and is to report for duty immediately.
No amount of protest by Cage can halt this assignment, and soon after he joins his unit
and learns the rudiments of wearing combat armor (this is one of those science fiction
films in which soldiers wear clumping bionic suits festooned with machine guns and
other weapons) he dies on the battlefield. Then he wakes up and starts all over. Then he
dies again and starts over again. He always knows he's been here before, that he met this
person, said that thing, did that thing, made a wrong choice and died. Nobody else does,

though. They're oblivious to the way in which Cage, like "Slaughterhouse Five" hero Billy
Pilgrim, has come unstuck in time.
Cage's only allies are a scientist (Noah Taylor) who believes the creatures are beating
humanity through their mastery of time, and Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt), an Audie
Murphy or Sgt. York type who's great for armed forces morale in addition to being an
exceptionally gifted killer. Rita has experienced the same temporal dislocation that Cage
is now experiencing, but at a certain point it stopped. She recognizes his maddening
condition but can no longer share in it. She can, however, offer guidance (and a key bit
of information that defines his predicament), and speed up the learning curve by
shooting him in the head whenever it becomes obvious that they're going down a wrong
road that'll lead to the same fatal outcome.
Although the film's advertising would never dare suggest such a thing, for fear of driving
off viewers who just want the bang bang-boom boom, Cage is a complex and demanding
role for any actor. It is especially right for Cruise, in that Cage starts out as a Jerry
Maguire-type who'll say or do anything to preserve his comfort, then learns through
hard (lethal) experience how to be a good soldier and a good man. He changes as the
story tells and retells and retells itself. By the end he's nearly unrecognizable from the
man we met in the opening.
Cruise is hugely appealing here, not just in the early scenes opposite Gleeson in which
he's in Tony Curtis modehe's always fantastic playing a smooth-talking manipulator
who's sweating on the insidebut later, where he exhibits the sort of rock-solid supercompetence and unforced decency that Randolph Scott brought to Budd Boetticher's
westerns. He was always likable, sometimes perfect in the right role, but age has
deepened him by bringing out his vulnerability. There's an existential terror in his eyes
that's disturbing in a good way, and there are points in which "Edge of Tomorrow"
seems to simultaneously be about what it's about while also being about the
predicament of a real actor trying to stay relevant in a Hollywood universe that's
addicted to computer generated monsters, robots and explosions. Cruise deserves some
sort of acting award for the array of yelps and gasps he summons as he's killed by a
Mimic or shot in the head by Blunt and then rebooted into another version of the story.
The rest of the cast has less to do because this is Tom Cruise's movie through-andthrough, but they're all given moments of humor, terror or simple eccentricity. Taylor
often gets cast as brilliant but haunted or ostracized geniuses, and he's effective in

another of those roles here. Gleeson, as is so often the case, invests a rather stock
character with such humanity that when the character's motivations and responses
change, you get the sense that it's because the general is a good and smart man and not
because he's just doing what the script needs him to do. Emily Blunt is unexpectedly
convincing as a fearless and elegant super-soldier, and of course a magnificent camera
subject as well. Director Doug Liman is so enamored with the introductory shot of her
rising up off the floor of a combat training facility in a sort of downward facing dog yoga
pose that he repeats it many times. The film's only egregious flaw is its attempt to
superimpose a love story onto Cruse and Blunt's relationship, which seems more
comfortable as a "Let's express our adoration for each other by killing the enemy" kind
of thing.
There's no end to the number of films and novels and other sources to which "Edge of
Tomorrow" can be likened. "Groundhog Day" seems to be everyone's reflexive
comparison point, but Liman's elaborately choreographed tracking shots and
unglamorously visualized European hellscapes evoke "Children of Men," the creatures
themselves have a touch of the Sentinels from the "Matrix" films, and the monsters-vs.infantry scenes will remind you of James Cameron's "Aliens" and its literary predecessor
"Starship Troopers." (Bill Paxton, one of the stars of "Aliens," plays Cage's drill sergeant,
a mustachioed Kentucky hard-ass with an amusingly sour sense of humor.) It's also an
exceptionally brutal film, so bone-and-skull-crushingly violent and fairy-tale frightening
that its PG-13 rating is stupefying. Parents should avoid taking young children who'll be
both confused by the fractured narrative and terrified of the Mimics, nightmare
creatures that look like razor-tentacled squid and roll across the landscapes like
tumbleweeds.
In all, though, "Edge of Tomorrow" is its own thing. One of its most fascinating qualities
is its keen judgement of the audience's learning curve. The early sections of the film
repeat scenes and dialogue until you get used to the idea of the story as a video game or
movie script, but just when you start to think, "Yes, I get it, let's move on," the film has
in fact moved on and is now leaving things out because they're not necessary. By the end
of the movie the scriptwhich is credited to Christopher McQuarrie and Jez and John
Henry Butterworthhas gotten to the point where it's tactically withholding
information and waiting for us to figure things out on our own. It repeats key images
and lines near the end as well, but always for good reason. When you see the familiar

material again you feel different about it, because its meaning has changed. The movie
has an organic intelligence and a sense that it, too, exists outside of linear time. It seems
to be creating itself as you watch it.
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Rogerebert.com