Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
Directed by Doug Liman
Major Bill Cage is an officer who has never seen a day of combat when he is unceremoniously demoted and dropped into combat. Cage is killed within minutes, managing to take an alpha alien down with him. He awakens back at the beginning of the same day and is forced to fight and die again... and again - as physical contact with the alien has thrown him into a time loop.
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53 films that influenced Edge of Tomorrow
What critics say influenced Edge of Tomorrow
Edge of Tomorrow draws masterfully from exactly the right influences: there’s the obvious parallel to draw to Groundhog Day, but the most striking aesthetic reference point is James Cameron’s Aliens, from the exoskeletons down to the casting of Bill Paxton (Two Guns), who restrains himself from declaring “Game over!” even once.
There’s a pretty good chance that every review about “Edge of Tomorrow” will reference the 1993 comedy “Groundhog Day” at least once, and that’s because both films feature a very similar plot device, not unlike the one that was also employed in Duncan Jones’ underseen sci-fi thriller, “Source Code.”
Time travel’s a problematic device as it can be the enemy of internal logic, but here, despite a modicum of head scratching when the exposition finally comes and an ending that gives you pause, it’s straightforward enough, liberating the film, in its own World War II parlance, to explore the themes it’s borrowed from Groundhog Day ; a flawed character who matures while stuck in his time loop, his changing feelings for a woman he gets to know over many iterations of the same day, the empowering notion that we’re each ultimately the masters of our own fate, regardless of how pernicious a lie that is.
Based on the manga All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka and adapted for the screen by Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects) and Jez and John-Henry Butterworth (upcoming James Brown bio-pic Get On Up), Edge of Tomorrow recalls other notable time loop sagas, including Groundhog Day and Source Code in the witty and engaging way it moves its story forward piece by piece.
From the trailer alone it was clear this new film by director Doug Liman ( The Bourne Identity ) had borrowed heavily from 1993's outstanding live-die-repeat karmic comedy Groundhog Day .
Edge of Tomorrow borrows liberally from films such as Groundhog Day , Starship Troopers , and Independence Day , but that doesn’t stop it from emerging as a terrific entertainment all its own.
In its evocation of the breathlessness of battle, the attack at Normandy can rightfully be mentioned alongside its clear inspiration: Steven Spielberg’s famed Omaha Beach sequence from Saving Private Ryan.
It’s hardly an accident that the setting immediately evokes Normandy, and while what follows isn’t exactly the opening sequence from “Saving Private Ryan,” it’s a brutal massacre all the same: The humans are gravely outnumbered, and even UDF’s star soldier, the tough-as-hell Rita (Emily Blunt), is killed in the onslaught.
Having human soldiers don exo-skeleton fighting suits provides a strong visual (think a mix of Saving Private Ryan and the metallic crunch of Iron Man ), that will please both war movie and superhero movie fans.
This is surely not a coincidence: Liman and his screenwriters have built in enough nods to other movies—Groundhog Day, Alien, Saving Private Ryan, and so on—to make clear that the meta-ness is the point.
Director Doug Liman channels Saving Private Ryan in his depiction of the chaotic action, as human troops outfitted in giant metal exoskeletons attempt to destroy the alien hordes.
Although Liman employs some handheld-camera techniques to create you-are-there immediacy, a hectic beach invasion – preceded by a breathless dropping of troops via cables from an exploding, crashing ship - feels more like Spielberg’s harrowing Normandy sequence in “Saving Private Ryan” than the hectic visual noise of “Transformers”-style hackwork.
That premise has generally been compared to a certain Bill Murray comedy, yet it’s perhaps even more reminiscent of the 2011 thriller Source Code, in which a man is sent back in time over and over again to gather the information necessary to prevent a terrorist attack.
There’s a pretty good chance that every review about “Edge of Tomorrow” will reference the 1993 comedy “Groundhog Day” at least once, and that’s because both films feature a very similar plot device, not unlike the one that was also employed in Duncan Jones’ underseen sci-fi thriller, “Source Code.”
Based on the manga All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka and adapted for the screen by Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects) and Jez and John-Henry Butterworth (upcoming James Brown bio-pic Get On Up), Edge of Tomorrow recalls other notable time loop sagas, including Groundhog Day and Source Code in the witty and engaging way it moves its story forward piece by piece.
It isn’t original in the least – at times, it recalls “Starship Troopers,” “Aliens” (Bill Paxton even turns up as a barking drill sergeant), “Independence Day,” “Source Code” and “The Matrix,” with maybe a smidgen of “RoboCop” thrown in.
Based on the novel "All You Need Is Kill" by Hiroshi Sakurazaka, the film has the misfortune of arriving three years after the conceptually similar " Source Code ," wherein a man finds himself living out the same moment in time over and over as he attempts to prevent a calamitous tragedy from occurring.
“Edge of Tomorrow” will inevitably be compared to “Source Code” and “Groundhog Day,” but it has more in common with a particularly shrewd episode of TV’s “Star Trek: The Next Generation” called “Cause and Effect.”
It isn’t original in the least – at times, it recalls “Starship Troopers,” “Aliens” (Bill Paxton even turns up as a barking drill sergeant), “Independence Day,” “Source Code” and “The Matrix,” with maybe a smidgen of “RoboCop” thrown in.
Edge of Tomorrow borrows liberally from films such as Groundhog Day , Starship Troopers , and Independence Day , but that doesn’t stop it from emerging as a terrific entertainment all its own.
…scenes will remind you of James Cameron's " Aliens " and its literary predecessor " Starship Troopers ."
If there is any satirical edge to the film, a la Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers, perhaps it’s here.
Instead, with a script that embraces its own lunacy, clever direction from Doug Liman, and a charmingly self-aware performance from Tom Cruise, it's the unexpectedly endearing love child of "Groundhog Day" and "Starship Troopers."
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It isn’t original in the least – at times, it recalls “Starship Troopers,” “Aliens” (Bill Paxton even turns up as a barking drill sergeant), “Independence Day,” “Source Code” and “The Matrix,” with maybe a smidgen of “RoboCop” thrown in.
Edge of Tomorrow borrows liberally from films such as Groundhog Day , Starship Troopers , and Independence Day , but that doesn’t stop it from emerging as a terrific entertainment all its own.
Lots of people I like and respect are already jumping out of their seats for “Edge of Tomorrow,” a high-octane Tom Cruise action thriller that – as approximately everybody has observed – combines “Groundhog Day” with “Independence Day.”
What emerges is an inventive mash-up with elements of that film, plus Inception, War of the Worlds and Independence Day.
It would be easy to call this Groundhog Day meets Independence Day, and that’s a very apt description.
Just think of this Doug Liman-directed feature as a cinematic mash of “Groundhog Day,” “Starship Troopers” and “Independence Day.”
This is surely not a coincidence: Liman and his screenwriters have built in enough nods to other movies—Groundhog Day, Alien, Saving Private Ryan, and so on—to make clear that the meta-ness is the point.
As improbable a concoction as it might seem, Edge of Tomorrow is a curious mix of ingredients from the 1993 Harold Ramis/Bill Murray comedy, Groundhog Day , and James Cameron's 1986 sequel to Alien .
So "Tomorrow" is like Bill Murray bringing his character's dilemma in "Groundhog Day" to Sigourney Weaver on the set of "Alien" (without anyone knowing their streams would cross in "Ghostbusters").
You get no visceral sense of them – think the meaty chest burster in Alien , or the drool – those little things that make you feel the threat.
Then there’s The Immigrant, probably James Gray’s most beautiful, moving and expansive work, a sepia-steeped ode to immigrant resilience, struggle and conditional American Dreaming that visually evokes Coppola’s Godfather Part II and Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America, but in its utterly irony-free melodramatic sincerity also suggests a silent-era woman’s picture à la D.W. Griffith, King Vidor or G.W. Pabst.
Cruise brings his A-game smarminess to these early scenes, and reminded me of James Garner in "The Americanization of Emily," who played a combat-shy officer thrust into the vanguard of an American-led assault on the beaches of Normandy.
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For no real reason, “Edge of Tomorrow” has been shot in 3-D, with hokey stunts like tasers fired in our faces and characters staring goggle-eyed at the camera, as if this were 1952 and we were watching “Bwana Devil” through paper glasses.
Director Doug Liman and screenwriters Christopher McQuarrie, Jez Butterworth and John-Henry Butterworth could have borrowed a name from any number of James Bond films — You Only Live Twice, Live and Let Die, Tomorrow Never Dies, Die Another Day — to describe its hero’s curse and gift.