Edge of Tomorrow

Edge of Tomorrow

Hearing that it was surprisingly good didn't seem to change my mind when this huge sci-fi/action Tom Cruise film came out in 2014, I still didn't care enough to go see it. Honestly, the only reason I saw it three years later is because it came up in a writer's intensive that I recently joined and it became an assignment.

The film is sci-fi war Groundhog Day, and it's very open about that (which it should be, because it's a great idea). It's slightly different in that Tom Cruise actually needs to die every day, otherwise the aliens that are looking through his eyes will find out the military's plans. This is easily the coolest concept in the movie, and because the people in charge of making the movie knew that, they went all-out with it. It starts as a funny montage, but the more depressing existential aspects start to weigh in as well. They don't really talk about all of the different realities that Tom Cruise is creating by doing this, but that might just be my Rick and Morty brain complaining.

The other cool thing this movie has going for it is Tom Cruise's character. Not because he's a fully fleshed-out, interesting, three-dimensional character, because he's not, but because his character isn't supposed to be a soldier. Having Tom Cruise in a movie is distracting, especially when he's playing an action hero but he looks and sounds like Tom Cruise the whole time. But in this movie, his character is just supposed to be a talking head that the military uses to spin stories on the news for them, like a campaign manager. So when he's told he has to do actual combat, he's terrified and bad at it. It's only through having to relive the same day over and over that he actually becomes a good fighter.

Emily Blunt is pretty cool in the movie, though for as much as she's built up it would've been nice to see her getting to fight a little more than she actually did. There's several points where Tom Cruise saves her, which makes sense in the story and is softened by the fact that she taught him everything, but it's still a little obnoxious to see, especially when it's Tom Cruise getting all the kills and not her, the actual badass soldier. It just would've been cool to see her take the driver's seat more often, though again she's more of a Yoda/Mr. Miyagi character than the action hero, but also she's established as an action hero at the beginning of the movie so actually I don't know anymore.

The action is alright, mainly just typical PG-13 violence and stunts that might have been choreographed well but are hard to see due to shaky cam and dirt flying everywhere. The sci-fi is pretty bland as well, since the "mimics" they're fighting just look like evil spaghetti and the thing they're trying to destroy is just a big mcguffin. There's hardly any creativity or originality aside from the big, main premise of the movie.

I really don't have much else to say on this one, overall it's definitely a few notches above typical big, dumb summer blockbusters, but not enough to reach into the great sci-fi action pantheon of films like T2: Judgement Day or The Matrix. It'll never be a classic, but it's also a fun one to check out and turn the old brain off.