The other day I was looking at a list of upcoming movies, and when I got to EDGE OF TOMORROW, I realized it's been forever since we've seen or heard anything new from the sci-fi flick. That changes today with this excellent footage description from Total Film. The site recently got to preview over 20 minutes of footage from the film, and based on their report, it sounds like director Doug Liman's new movie is going to be a blast. There are some spoilers in their reaction to the footage, so if you don't want to know any details on EDGE OF TOMORROW, don't scroll past the spoiler buffer.
Footage description with spoilers!
The footage opened on Cruise as he wakes up in the middle of a military base. Bill Paxton's Master Sergeant Farell approaches, and reveals that Cruise is being processed with the other new recruits ahead of a big battle tomorrow. Cruise explains he's a PR man, not a soldier, and THAT there's been some kind of mistake. He asks for a phone call, and Farell pulls a switch-a-roo, revealing that Cruise is a deserter, and he's going to be forced to fight the next day.
We cut to a huge armada of spaceships flying through the air – this shot was awesome, looking like Avatar multiplied by a million – then we jump into one, with Cruise's William Cage strapped into the craft with a bunch of other soldiers all in their exo-suits.
After a rousing speech from Paxton – "Remember, there is no courage without fear!" – Cruise has just enough time to ask one of his fellow soldiers how to take the safety off his gun, before a sudden explosion rips through the craft and bodies start to drop.Still attached to the ship via a connective wire, Cruise's Cage pirouettes through the air in a sequence that's going to look amazing in 3D, before dropping into a beach battle scene. This looked /beautiful/, and incredibly intense, with explosions all around and missiles spiralling through the sky, leaving hefty smoke trails everywhere.
After a spot of battlefield fun – including a very dark gag drawn from a falling spaceship – we're introduced to Emily Blunt as she punches and blasts an alien into submission. The aliens look a bit like Matrix squids covered in ultra-violet lights, and were probably the only minor disappointment in the footage. But it is a small negative (Liman pointed out later: "At the end of the day, I wasn't making a movie about an alien invasion.") and the footage revealed there's much more to Edge Of Tomorrow than that.
Anyway, we then saw a fairly beautiful shot of Blunt, framed by trails of missile smoke, looking like the coolest bad-ass in the galaxy, before suddenly – and shockingly – an alien attacks, killing her in an instant.Cruise joins his group, who are quickly torn up by an attacking squid. He manages to switch on his gun, blasts one of the aliens, before working out how to use a rocket launcher, and exploding another. Unfortunately, that creature's weird acidy blood splashes Cruise's face, and kills him in a gross melty way that drew gasps from the crowd.
He wakes up back on the base, where we first found him, and the movie's Groundhog Day concept is revealed. He relives the processing day, the battle sequence, with each time trying to change events. We saw a few minutes of this stuff, before the next big twist was revealed – after he finally manages to save Blunt, she realises the situation he's in and tells him "Come and find me when you wake up."
We cut to Cruise seeking Blunt out, who, after a minor confrontation (it turns out she doesn't remember him) is convinced of Cage's time-loop situation, and tells him "What happened to you, happened to me, I had it and I lost it."
We then go into an impossibly cool training sequence, as Blunt trains Cruise to be the ultimate fighter, swinging a massive sword about and generally being amazing. Then, when Cruise f*cks up, falls down and complains of a broken back, she wearily pulls out a gun and shoots him in the head so they can start all over again. This bit got big laughs.
Then, we went straight into an extended sequence of Cruise being a bad-ass. If you like it when heroes shoot baddies casually, without so much as looking at them, you're going to find a lot to enjoy in this film. We got goosebumps during one moment of Cruise awesomeness which is pretty impressive.
Finally, we saw a sequence featuring Cruise and Blunt in a farmhouse setting that had shades of Looper. There are several movie touchstones throughout the footage we saw, some we were expecting (Groundhog Day, Aliens), and others that came as a pleasant surprise (Avatar, The Matrix). But it's the Looper element that was perhaps the most exciting.
Doug Liman did a Q&A after previewing the footage, and he says, "If you hate Tom Cruise, he dies 200 times in the movie," so even if you're not a fan of the actor, you might still be able to enjoy EDGE OF TOMORROW. Sold yet?
EDGE OF TOMORROW looks like it's going to be a very thrilling (but also occasionally funny) action movie. The bit with Tom Cruise getting shot by Emily Blunt sounds fantastic, and I have a feeling Blunt is going to completely own this film.
Synopsis:
The epic action of “Edge of Tomorrow” unfolds in a near future in which an alien race has hit the Earth in an unrelenting assault, unbeatable by any military unit in the world. Lt. Col. Bill Cage (Cruise) is an officer who has never seen a day of combat when he is unceremoniously dropped into what amounts to a suicide mission. Killed within minutes, Cage now finds himself inexplicably thrown into a time loop—forcing him to live out the same brutal combat over and over, fighting and dying again…and again. But with each battle, Cage becomes able to engage the adversaries with increasing skill, alongside Special Forces warrior Rita Vrataski (Blunt). And, as Cage and Rita take the fight to the aliens, each repeated encounter gets them one step closer to defeating the enemy.
EDGE OF TOMORROW will be in theaters on June 6th, 2014.