Edge of Tomorrow; Playing Card Sugar Cookies
I'm going to tell you a story. It's going to sound ridiculous. The longer I talk, the more rational it's going to appear.
Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
Director: Doug Liman
Had I seen this before: Yes
Time loop variety/genre: Biological (alien)/action
Two years after realizing that there was not actually going to be a great deal of looping in her film Looper, Emily Blunt thought: “Let’s see what the guy who directed 1996’s skinny-Vince-Vaughan-showcase Swingers has to offer on that front.” And that was a good instinct on her part, because in Edge of Tomorrow Doug Liman delivers a lavish bounty of loops; a glorious, Olympic-size swimming pool full of time Cheerios. There’s even a protagonist who slowly falls in love with a woman named Rita even though she has to be reintroduced to their relationship every single day. That’s right, we’re back, baby! And we’re ready to watch Tom Cruise live out a particularly difficult and elaborate first-person shooter as many times as it takes.
When I say this is a video game of a movie, I am not being dismissive—Hiroshi Sakurazaka, who wrote the novel on which the film is based has explicitly said that he was inspired by the experience of determinedly putting hours and hours into a video game. Besides which, I quite like video games, and I think having played so many of them helped me feel a heightened sense of frustration on behalf of Cruise’s character finally mastering a very tricky bit only to get sent back to the beginning over and over again. It also speaks to an economy of world-building in the opening minutes of the film, much like you would see in the opening of most modern games. And thus we commence the starting cutscene: a montage of news broadcasts swiftly inform us that earth is under attack from a seemingly unstoppable alien force; seemingly unstoppable, that is, until a recent human victory at Verdun appears to have turned the tide. This win is credited to a new wearable battle technology that that military PR spokesman Major William Cage (Tom Cruise) asserts can turn the untrained masses into supersoldiers overnight. The face of this optimistic campaign is Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt) aka “The Angel of Verdun” aka “Full Metal Bitch,” who was able to kill hundreds of alien Mimics on her very first day of combat. Cage is on every news channel pitching the upcoming “Operation Downfall,” an all-out effort to engage these weaponized jackets and put down the invaders permanently, and in less time than I spent on the wagon in Skyrim or the train in Red Dead Redemption, we’re all caught up.
Cage arrives in London via chopper in order to meet with the head of the United Defense Force, General Brigham (Brendan Gleeson in full intimidating, stubborn, would probably cut his own fingers off out of spite mode—what a magnificent frown this man can deploy). Brigham is grim and matter-of-fact; Cage, who is more of a salesman than a soldier, is slick and, I’m very sorry to say, glib. When Brigham informs Cage that in order to effectively sell this invasion to the public, he will be embedded with the first wave of troops on the beach tomorrow, he quickly cycles through the six stages of what the hell are you talking about (veneers-flashing smarm, self-effacement, nervous compliments, slightly panicked laughter, fully panicked blackmail attempt, running very fast), at which point Brigham orders him arrested for desertion and he is stunned into unconsciousness by the military police.
So maybe you had a few dialogue options but no real control over how the scene with Brigham plays out, but here—here we are at the true starting point of the game. Cage awakens in handcuffs, on a pile of tactical backpacks outside of Heathrow Airport. He does not have the benefit of waking up to hokey DJs and friendly bed and breakfast denizens; unlike our two previous comedy loopers, Cage never has the option of just chilling out for the day or getting into zany hijinks. Instead, it’s military-grade hostility everywhere he turns, first getting kicked and called maggot (classic—an insult you just don’t hear in civilian life), then realizing through a brief conversation with Master Sergeant Farell (Bill Paxton, wonderfully mustachioed and gleefully tyrannical) that due to his cowardly little “bargaining” stunt with Brigham, he has been well and truly railroaded.
He is introduced to J Squad, a real action movie collection of misfits, intense dudes, and one girl. When Farell catches them playing cards, they are forced to recite his position on the concept of fate: “Through readiness and discipline we are the masters of our fate.” And also to…each eat one of the playing cards, as punishment. See below! Cage is not really in a good headspace to internalize life advice at this time, but I think he’ll come around. At 06:00 hours it’s go-time and at this point the real secret sauce of this movie becomes apparent: in the past two decades we have watched Tom Cruise and the characters he plays grow increasingly, dementedly competent—rock climbing sans harness, scaling skyscrapers, dangling from airplanes, holding his breath underwater for seven minutes, jumping motorcycles off of cliffs, flying fighter jets, etc.—but here we see the exceedingly rare example of a Tom Cruise character who is absolutely, terrifyingly in over his head. And even though we know in our hearts that it won’t last for long…it’s incredible fun.
Cage is awkwardly suited up in one of the tech jackets he was so recently touting. It’s too cumbersome for him to walk well in it, he doesn’t know how to turn the safety off of the gun, and he can’t set it to the right language. He is too clumsy in the suit to make a viable escape attempt before he is loaded on to a transport with his belligerent fellow soldiers. Seconds before they are meant to drop, the aircraft is hit and chaos ensues. He has no choice but to drop awkwardly into the water, where he immediately sees one of J squad, Kimmel, get crushed by a falling vehicle. He lumbers onto the beach, horrified and confused. We see Rita, the Angel of Verdun herself, arrive on the battlefield with an extremely—and I say this as someone who does not generally describe weapons as cool—cool paddle-shaped axe sort of thing. (Update: my helpful brother informs me it’s a helicopter blade forged into a sword, so reconfigure how cool you were picturing it because it’s even cooler.) Rita does not look clumsy in her suit. Rita looks stupendous. Cage watches her in awe, and then in horror as she is hit by an explosion and killed. It becomes obvious that this battle is an un-winnable slaughter and not the surprise attack the humans were hoping to launch. In the meantime, Cage is exactly as good at managing his weapons and controls as I have been in the beginning of every video game I have ever played.
Eventually Cage is cornered by an alien that looks different than most of the orange/silvery Mimics that are all over the battlefield. This one is much larger, and blue, and has a recognizable head and also seems to be in charge. When it attacks, Cage manages to grab an explosive pack off a fallen soldier near him and he and the alien go out together, with Cage getting covered in a gnarly mass of blue and black goo, as his eyes turn black and…
He wakes up screaming, in handcuffs, on top of a pile of tactical backpacks outside of Heathrow Airport. In a daze, he is again called a a maggot, lectured by Farell, introduced to J Squad. He watches them eat playing cards, he gets put into a suit. He drops slightly more efficiently onto the beach and tries but fails to warn Kimmel before he’s pummeled. He manages to push Rita out of the way of the explosion that killed her the first time but is immediately hit. On round three, he frantically tries to explain to Farell that the aliens know they’re coming, and manically recites all the facts about him and the members of J Squad that he shouldn’t know but does. It seems pretty convincing! Cut to: Cage suited up, on the transport, but this time sporting a layer of duct tape over his mouth. Ah, well. Nevertheless.
A loop montage commences—Cage incrementally improves, with some humorous setbacks (a genuine guffaw from me when he is running urgently toward Rita only to be hit by a truck). Eventually he reaches Rita with enough obvious foreknowledge of what’s about to happen on the battlefield that her eyes register a kind of recognition: “Come find me when you wake up,” she says, before they both explode.
He makes his way to Rita pre-battle, although this takes mastering a new combination of Farell-escaping moves. Finally, it’s heavy exposition time, courtesy of Rita and scientist-who-has-been-demoted-to-mechanic-because-he-believes-in-crazy-time-controlling-alien-abilities Dr. Carter (Noah Taylor). The alien system is really one organism made up of three categories: the orange drones are like the claws; the blue Alphas, which is what Cage killed his first time in battle, are like the central nervous system; the Omega is like the brain—and also can control time. Whenever an Alpha is killed, the Omega starts the day over again, this time with the knowledge of what the enemy’s movements will be. The humans’ victory at Verdun was actually a trap—the alien wants them to think they can win, and to throw all their resources into it. Cage has now inadvertently seized control of the day-restarting power, as his death is the one triggering the time-shift response each day. The only way to end the war is to find the Omega and destroy it, and the only thing that can take Cage’s power away is to receive a blood transfusion, which is how Rita lost hers. I’m sure that won’t happen at any point in order to intensify the stakes, though. Wouldn’t worry about it.
Training montage! Every day Cage gets called a maggot, slips away from Farell, reintroduces himself to Rita, and gets slightly better at combat. When he gets seriously injured, she shoots him. “Again,” she says, “again, again” Bang, bang, bang. It’s the part in Groundhog Day where Bill Murray keeps getting slapped but somehow even funnier? Finally, he has a vision of where the Omega is located—a dam with German writing on the walls. To get to it, Cage and Rita have to make it off the beach, which means the action part of this action movie is now in full bloom. And so are the googly eyes, because at this point Cage is understandably in love with Rita (did I mention the helicopter blade and how cool it is?) and it’s compromising his commitment to destroying the Omega because he doesn’t want to end up stuck in a timeline where she’s dead and she simply won’t stop dying. Eventually he mopes his way to the dam from his vision and discovers that it was an ambush, because the Omega is playing 12-dimensional chess and was just trying to recapture his magic time travel blood.
It’s okay though, this is science fiction and there’s a somewhat mad scientist (positive connotation) back at the base, so he has a gadget that will, uh, show Cage the correct vision? And they just have to…get it back from the mean general who hates Cage? No problem. Oh, well, slight problem actually—when escaping with the device, they are in a pretty nasty car wreck and Cage regains consciousness in a hospital…having received a blood transfusion and lost his day-resetting ability. Ah, beans.
In the meantime, the sci-fi gadget has shown Cage that the real location of the Omega is in Paris, underneath the Louvre. I love it. It’s giving The Da Vinci Code. It’s giving…the basement of the Alamo. “This will be funny,” the alien organism thought to itself, “I’ll hide below all their little paintings.” Time to gather up J Squad and hoof it to France and try harder than usual not to get killed. A lot of action things happen, J Squad acquits themselves admirably enough, and Cage crashes very dramatically into one of the world’s most celebrated museums, where he blows a giant alien brain to bits. He has also been stabbed by an alien tentacle and tossed by the explosion, but as he fades away, his eyes turn black and…
He wakes up back on the chopper en route to London, where he learns that after an energy surge in Paris the alien forces have collapsed. I do not know why. I mean, I know actually why, which is that the producers wanted this film to have a happy ending, but I do not know why within the rules of the story. I feel like I have a pretty good handle on everything up to that point so I don’t care enormously, but both times I’ve seen this now it has left me with a general feeling of “…huh.” Also probably worth noting here that my husband had a completely different interpretation of the ending, which was that rather than the final boss, the Omega was just a big boss, and now Cage et al have made it to Level 2, where the alien tactics will be on a higher difficulty setting. A better ending, in my opinion, but not one that I’m certain is supported by the text (sorry Dan). Either way, we end on a grinning Cage and a confused Rita, who has no idea who he is and frankly probably has better options out there than a smarmy PR-guy-turned-killing-machine.
Time loop solution: Blood transfusion
Did I understand/care how the loop worked: Up until the last one, I understood it well enough/ I would say I cared a…medium amount, because the joys of this film are not really tied up in the logistics, but too much sloppiness would have been distracting
How unpleasant would this loop be for me personally (1-10): I cannot overstate how much I dislike being yelled at 10
Playing Card Sugar Cookies
The only thing anyone eats in this film is playing cards. Which I guess is still more than I’ve had to work with in some previous movies, so, fine.
Up next: Train crime!