Tag: Tom Cruise

Edge of Tomorrow (2014) – A Science Fiction Movie Review

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This is a time loop movie.  It’s Groundhog Day crossed with Starship Troopers.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

Tom Cruise is Major William Cage.  He’s the US Army’s public relations man during a war against aliens called the mimics who have conquered mainland Europe and are about to be counter-attacked by humanity’s attempt at D-Day from a London staging area.  But instead of staying behind in an office to edit commercials his superiors have loaned him out to the Brits as a warrior.  He tries to desert but is handcuffed and handed over to Master Sargeant Farell (played by Bill Paxton) and put into powered body armor and dropped into battle in France.  And of course, since he’s not a real soldier, he’s killed in the first few minutes of the horrific battle.  But right before he dies, he manages to kill a special mimic called an “alpha.”  And because some of the alpha’s blood gets on him, he ends up in a time loop that always brings him back to the same day of the battle.  And as long as he’s always killed he’ll come back again.

And from starting out as a hopelessly incompetent soldier, by virtue of getting to endlessly re-live and re-die on that day, he becomes adept at fighting mimics.  During one of these replays, he meets Sergeant Rita Vrataski (played by Emily Blunt) and just before she dies, she tells him to find her the next time he wakes up.  In other words, she has had the same time loop ability.  Through endless additional replays, Cage and Vrataski figure out that the mimics are aware of all the humans’ plans and fighting them is futile.  But if Cage is exposed to a device that was made to read the mind of alphas he will discover where the head mimic (the omega) is hiding.  But in the effort Cage loses his ability to reset time and come back to life.

And so, there is a kamikaze mission with Cage, Vrataski and some comrades to storm the Louvre where the monster hides.  As it works out everyone but Cage is killed and he is mortally wounded just as he blows up the omega.  But somehow killing the omega (I think) resets his looping ability and he wakes up with all of them alive but the omega destroyed and the mimics basically defeated.

Alright, so what about all this.  This is a pretty good sci-fi war movie.  The special effects are good.  The acting is good and the plot is pretty well worked out.  And even Emily Blunt’s Rita Vrataski character isn’t a complete girl-boss super hero.  She is annoying from time to time but not hopelessly.  Cruise carries the movie with a decent amount of character acting from his “comrades” and with even a little humor thrown in to lighten the mood.  The endless live/die repetition is handled very well for most of the movie with only a couple of spots where they seemed to over do it.  I will say that in the final assault the image on the screen is sort of too dark and hard to really understand.  It’s at night in an underground vault and under water so maybe that’s realistic but it feels confusing and unhelpful to the viewer.  All in all, I recommend this movie to fans of sci-fi action movies.  It’s pretty good.

Very Funny Deep Fake

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This is not a real video made by Tom Cruise.  It’s a computer simulation.  But it’s funny.  I think it captures the essence of Tom Cruise’s over the top desire for authenticity.  Hopefully he’d get a kick out of this gentle mockery.  If not then he’s just another Hollywood loser.

The Edge of Tomorrow – A Short Movie Review

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Last night I watched the Tom Cruise movie “Edge of Tomorrow.”  The first thing that strikes me is that it is a sort of mixture of things.

First off, it’s a mil sci-fi movie.  It tells the story of aliens invading and battling humans.  Almost the entire movie takes place within the confines of a single battlefield.  And because it’s a big budget movie with a big star that part is done rather professionally.  The special effects and sets are very good looking.  The action takes place in England and France and Germany so there is the interest of seeing The Louvre and London engulfed in military paraphernalia and smashed by battle.  So, there’s all that.

Next, it’s a time travel story.  The gimmick is that Tom Cruise has been caught up in the gears of the aliens’ ability to alter the future.  Because of a chain of events involving his lucky killing of a high level alien, Cruise is effected in such a way that every time he gets killed in battle, it resets time back to the start of the day of the battle he’s in.  But when he returns to that day he remembers each of these past lives.  It’s sort of like Bill Murray’s character in Groundhog’s Day.  So, even though he’s a complete neophyte to combat, he can learn from what happened to him on the previous incarnations.  Comically, after countless iterations he can effortlessly step through the battlefield performing a choreographed dance with death.  Of course, this means to keep advancing his progress on the battlefield he has to keep dying over and over again.

So, in a way, it’s also a metaphor for, or even a parody of someone playing a first-person shooter video game.  You keep playing the game and increasing your knowledge and skills.  You also have to die over and over and over.  And for anyone who has spent a lot of time playing one particular game you understand the psychologically painful experience of building up the necessary muscle memory and rote memorization of the endless sequences of motions and thought processes needed to wend your way to the next level.  That’s the feel this movie provides.

I’ll have to say it’s a mixed experience.  It’s both stimulating to sense the iterative advancement and at the same time irritating.  There’s one particular sequence that occurs almost endlessly during the movie.  It’s when he’s awakened by a sergeant screaming abuse into his face.  It must happen at least two dozen times.  By the end of the movie I’m genuinely hoping Cruise just clocks him in the face, just to shut him up.

So, does the movie work?  Yes, it does.  The initial introduction to Cruise’s character presents him as an unlikeable jerk.  By the end of the movie he has had to grow.  There’s even, believe it or not, the elements of a love story in the tale.  And, Lord help me, I know how ridiculous that seems in the context of a war movie.

Who is this movie for?  If you’re a Tom Cruise fan and you liked him in War of the Worlds and Minority Report you’ll probably like this movie a lot.  If you’re a mil sci-fi fan I think you’ll probably enjoy it.  If you don’t like science fiction or war movies you will hate this.  And if you’re neutral on Tom Cruise, sci-fi and war movies I think it’s 50/50.  It’s a good sci-fi movie and provides solid entertainment.  But it isn’t “Gone with the Wind” so if you’re looking for highly cerebral or morally meaningful move on.