Edge of Tomorrow

Has anyone else scene this yet? It’s bombing hard at the box office, which is a shame because it’s one of the best movies I’ve seen this year so far. I’m not usually a big fan of Groundhog Day loop stories, because they tend to get repetitive, but EOT does a pretty good job of avoid that, once the loop is established. The action is engaging and fun, even if I wish the shaky cam would die a horrible death, and Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt’s characters both start out as fairly unlikable people, so I was pleased with how much I grew to like them over the course of their arcs.

The science of the sci fi plot is a little weak (time traveling alien blood…okay, I guess we’re going with that, fine), but I was having so much fun with it that I didn’t really care. This one is definitely worth seeing.

I liked it quite a bit (despite some plot holes)

However, the 5-6 friends I saw it with didn’t like it much. So, maybe this is one of those love-it-or-hate-it movies, and most people don’t like it. (I also sense a lot of people avoided this movie due to a personal antipathy towards Tom Cruise)

As an aside, Emily Blunt was a revelation in this movie. After getting used to seeing her in lighther fare like The Devil Wears Prada, it was a bit surprising to see her give a strong performance in an action movie.

We enjoyed it quite a bit - nice usage of the ‘groundhog’ affect - although we never quite get the sense of how many times he reset, it was clear that it was a great number of them.

You can’t really count plot holes in a time travel movie, nor how ‘time travel’ is achieved - you just have to run with it.

Definite thumbs up from me, although I thought that it got worse after he broke out of the loop and it became a standard “ragtag group of misfits must improbably save the world” story.

There was some clever use of the looping device, although I thought the conceit of “you have to DIE each day, not just get injured and someone keeps you alive” should have been explored more. Like, once you’re in that situation, you should have a suicide vest or something that you wear at all times to make it VERY hard to be captured alive.

I didn’t think it was ‘die each day’ as much as it was that he had to die to reset - it was pretty clear, to me anyway, that at least a few of the adventures took several days to complete.

He reset back to the beginning of the day before he got covered in blue blood.

In other words - he could have continued on with any given injury to any point (and reset when needed) - just not one that caused a blood transfusion.

as for the ragtag must save - I liked it . And I loved how it kept messing with the Sargent.

I liked it, I really liked the ‘Jackets’. A funny quirk about them is that the propiganda about their effectiveness with an untrained soldier is just that- propiganda. The military gets this illusion these things are really effective due to a combination of the Omega deliberately losing a battle and Rita’s time loop. Take those things away and while potent looking the Jackets seem cumbersome and unweidly. There were a few shots of troops walking/running in them and it looks like how you walk when you pooped your pants :stuck_out_tongue:

A lot of Tom Cruise’s deaths were pretty funny too, particularly the one where he attempted to roll under the passing truck.

We thought it was great as well - and not just because we got to see Tom Cruise die a hundred different ways. The groundhogging was done well, the story was decent, the action equally so, and most importantly, it didn’t even try to take itself seriously.

I loved it.

SPOILERS

However, the final reset at the end of the movie - after Cruise ostensibly wins the war - didn’t really make sense to me. I’m still kind of grappling with how that plays out.

I guess that by the end of the movie he permanently has that power, and that whenever he dies again he’ll just reset to that victory day.

That’s right - he now has that power and can have a do-over anytime he wants it and all the info from the earlier (?) jumps.

Small Hen writes:

> . . . I’m not usually a big fan of Groundhog Day loop stories, because they tend to
> get repetitive . . .

Didn’t you say that in the last thread you started about this movie?

We just returned from this and really enjoyed it. The looping was cleverly varied, and Cruise started off believably as a craven back-lines officer. I’m also surprised and pleased they kept it under two hours.

It was good! I think it had the perfect mix of humor and action. And I think they handled the idea well - when you have an idea like “alien blood gives you time travel” they need to establish it early, then let the rest of the movie just organically grow from that idea. Don’t get too bogged down in trying to explain it. (Much like how Y: The Last Man just starts with “all the men die” and tells a good story from there).

I thought it was also pretty cool how they mess a bit with audience expectations - when they’re hanging out in the cabin with the helicopter, the audience figures out that Cruise has been here before the same time Blunt does. Pretty cool reveal.

My only real complaint/plot hole was - how would Emily Blunt’s character have known she lost her power when she got the blood transfusion? (Cruise’s character makes a “I lost the power, I can feel it” aside but… let’s be honest, Blunt probably would’ve just tried to reset and killed herself). And I agree the ending was a bit weak, but I’m glad for the happy ending. One last pulse of the alien’s death rattle just sent Cruise back in time? Don’t even know for sure if he still has the time travel power or not.

It’s a fun movie with a bunch of plot holes typical for sci-fi, time-travelling fare. It was enjoyable watching Cruise die all those different ways.

My 12yo thought it was pretty good too, if that matters.

TC has put together a pretty solid run of science fiction films over the past decade. Who would’ve guessed?

I really liked it. They did a very convincing job of showing Cruise has not a real officer at the beginning. Any military person would have recognized and accepted the death sentence the moment the order was given, not have tried to extort his way out of it.

But yeah, definitely one of my top sci-fi movies. Shame it isn’t doing better.

Saw it tonight and me and my 17 year old son really enjoyed it. The acting was much better than I expected and there was a lot of effective humor as well. Shame it isn’t doing as well as it should, but it wasn’t a movie that needed a sequel anyway, so that doesn’t matter as much to me.

Absolutely loved the movie… 'til the last five minutes or so. The denouement felt like a studio exec insisted that audiences would hate the movie if it didn’t have a happy ending. Even my wife, who hates sad endings, said she felt ripped off by the ending.

I saw it this weekend and enjoyed it for the groundhog day elements – Bill Paxton, the ragtag J squad, figuring out how to meet Rita and the crazy scientist guy. The acting and the humor in those scenes was enough to carry the movie. Especially the truck.

That said, it suffered from a lot of bad space marine movie tropes. Shaky-cam hasn’t made me this nauseous since the second Bourne movie; using ground troops against a flightless enemy instead of aerial bombing; discovering late in the movie that shotguns can kill instantly after wasting countless millions of machine gun rounds; a centrally controlled enemy that will shut down if the brain is killed; a “perfectly evolved” enemy that can control time but whose battle strategy is basically to poke holes in people; a tacked-on hollywood happy ending that didn’t make any sense. Honestly, when I realized what they were doing with the whole blood transfusion conceit I facepalmed myself.

It was a good movie that took a few risks; more movies should be like this.

Really enjoyed it. I liked how the smarmy smiling Tom Cruise character was turned on its head – everyone saw through his bullshit from the beginning, and he had to turn himself from a snivelling coward into a skilled soldier.

Very solid action sci-fi movie – maybe the best I’ve seen in quite a while. As good as Looper, IMO.

We enjoyed it quite a bit - nice usage of the ‘groundhog’ affect - although we never quite get the sense of how many times he reset, it was clear that it was a great number of them.

You can’t really count plot holes in a time travel movie, nor how ‘time travel’ is achieved - you just have to run with it.

…and you just sold a ticket. I’m not much for Cruise so I haven’t paid any attention to the media build-up but I love time loop stories, so now I’m in. Huh, I was going to catch the new X-men movie now that crowds have thinned, but if this is bombing the crowds won’t be bad for that either.