Rental Corner: “Edge of Tomorrow” silly sci-fi taken serious

Watch. Suffer. Critique.

The current DVD and Blu-ray cover of “Edge of Tomorrow” has done something rather strange lately. Instead of posting the title of the movie in its glory, the tagline “Live. Die. Repeat.” appears to be centered as the focus. Almost like they wanted that to be the title of the film while its real one is down in the far bottom in tiny lettering. After seeing this movie, I can imagine why Warner Bros would try to “re-title” its film by means of addressing the tagline more than the real title. It even appears on the disc label almost in a way its trying to cover up just unbelievable bad this film gets. Which is sad because it has a good idea in place but only if it was executed right.

Tom Cruise is  Major Cage, a public relations officer living in a post-apocalyptic Eurpoe where aliens have crash landed and consumed a good portion of the Earth. The human armies are trying all they can to prevent total extintction by somehow the aliens creatures called “Mimics” seem to be one step ahead of them. Cage somehow gets recruited under force to fight among the soldiers but when killing an alien, it somehow causes a time loop.

The gimmick is that each time Cage dies, he keeps repeating the same day and going through the same things from waking up in a military base to finding that alien race is far more advanced. This is sort of a science fiction version of Groundhog Day that has some promise but I couldn’t help but laugh a little every time Cage repeats a day. Maybe its the unintentional nature but something is just funny about how a man keeps reliving the same day under different casualties. And there are times when his multiple deaths feel like something out of a Looney Tunes cartoon but more head scratching is how many times this character has to keep track of the different outcomes in order to stay alive. Its like he needs a pen and pad of paper to keep track of the actions.

Honestly, I would be fine with this if they didn’t give an explanation for the time loop. Cage later meets up with a Sergeant played by Emily Blunt who experienced the same problem he did. Apparently, one of the “mimics” he kills was an alpha and after being hit with its blood has to experience the same day again and again with the only option is to kill the Omega Mimic to ensure humanity is saved. Again, I address this. The blood of an alien is the reason for these time loops as these creatures are one step ahead of the human race and constantly use time to know when they will attack and be ahead. Even reading this on paper, I can’t believe how silly it sounds. Even the aliens are uninspired as they look like leftovers from the Matrix as a batch of mechanical tentacles and bizarre metal bone structure that looks to over used.

“Edge of Tomorrow” has some decent performances but I still can’t get over just how silly the execution is. From what I head, this was based on a Japanese light novel called All You Need Is Kill and from what I read up on it, sounds a tad more interesting than its live-action counterpart here. Perhaps somethings got lost in translation but “Edge” just feels like a video game that keeps getting reset. And when you repeat a level on a video game, you grow tired of the repetition playing that difficult level to the point you abandon it for something else. That’s the feeling I get from this movie. It doesn’t take many risks as Cage walks through the danger knowing if harm comes, he can always relive it. And again, you really have to be so smart to remember EVERYTHING in order to end the time loop. Without giving too much away, there is a risk factor at the end when he losses his time loop power knowing if he dies for real then humanity is doom but I already feel exhausted at this point. Somewhere there is a good movie here but with all the repeated deaths and dull “end of the world” dystopia theme that has been exploited over these years, the final product is more laughable than something thought provoking.