Not only is that the theme of Tom Cruise’s latest film, “Edge of Tomorrow”, in which he plays William Cage, a man doomed to repeat his death during the biggest military battle on record in a futuristic war with an invading alien horde, it perfectly sums up my feeling of being completely underwhelmed by this movie. In a title that suggests something more than having to be subjected to everything I’ve ever seen in a sci-fi movie, it blatantly copies elements of sci-fi films I’ve loved and throws them all together into one big hodgepodge. The makers of “Edge of Tomorrow” should have called it “Edge of the Kitchen Sink”.
The lack of thought evident in mimicking beloved sci-fi movies may be flattery and make moviegoers comfortable, but it’s not very original. I enjoy a good twist or taking a convention we all know and turning it on its head. I understand that every genre has its inherent elements, but if I watch a western and I see a tumbleweed blow through the middle of a standoff between two cowboys, I’m usually bored when I see the second tumbleweed start to blow.
The creation of names in the film is also toward the bottom of the list of considerations by the screenwriters. The invading aliens are called Mimics and look exactly like the tentacled machines that sucked the energy out of the humans they were harvesting in “The Matrix”. Maybe they’re called Mimics because they mimic the look of the Matrix machines- after all, they never morph or change into anything else. The screenwriters should have just called the aliens “Chainies” since they resemble a lot of metal chains coiled together.
The army of aliens are controlled by one queen/energy source/brain called Omega, whose chief aliens are called Alphas (love those names). So valued are the Alphas that Omega resets time every time an Alpha dies as to not lose any of the Alphas. When Cage (Cruise) kills an attacking Alpha during battle, he is inadvertently infected by the Alpha’s blood and acquires the time repetition activated by Omega at the Alpha’s death. Here’s the catch- Cage must die a physical death every day to repeat the same time frame to refight the battle until he figures out a way to defeat the seemingly undefeatable Mimics (guess Cage wishes he had killed a Beta or an Epsilon alien instead).
Don’t get me wrong, “Edge of Tomorrow” isn’t the worst sci-fi movie I’ve seen. It’s just that I’ve seen it all before- it doesn’t add anything new. When breaks in the time continuum are introduced in science fiction, it’s usually a good gimmick. Someone stuck in a repetitive time loop, or being able to travel into the past or future, is usually when audiences can share a character’s duplicity and bond with them. When the character leaves items or creates opportunities that will help them succeed in their quest when they revisit that particular point in time, an audience is in league with the character’s thinking process or are pleasantly surprised by the future outcome that the character has orchestrated given the warped time knowledge they have acquired. “Edge of Tomorrow” reduces its repetition of Cage’s fatal day in battle to the thought processes behind someone playing the “Boss round” of a video game to advance to the next level. When you die, that stage of the game resets and you start again. In the knowledge you’ve acquired through playing, you can anticipate some surprises and move forward using your knowledge of that stage until you eventually prevail to reach the next level.
Apart from the aliens looking like they stepped out of “The Matrix”, “Edge of Tomorrow” reminds of us of better sci-fi movies. In addition to “The Matrix”, we see glimpses of “Aliens”, from Bill Paxton’s role as master sergeant Farrell leading the plucky platoon to which Cage is assigned into battle (wasn’t Paxton good as Hudson in “Aliens”?) to “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” with Emily Blunt playing alien war hero Rita who bears a striking resemblance to Linda Hamilton, complete with Hamilton’s wardrobe of black tank top and tan cargo pants.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with “Edge of Tomorrow”. It’s just that if I have to go to this particular edge and look into that particular tomorrow, I’d rather just glimpse over the edge, see what tomorrow has to offer, and slowly walk back into the past, to the ideas and innovations better sci-fi movies have previously given us.