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Movie of the Week #40 - Edge of Tomorrow
The last blockbuster is Edge of Tomorrow from 2014. Directed by Doug Liman and starring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt. It made $370 million at the box office.
Is this a proper blockbuster? Is it a proper Tom Cruise movie?
This also ends Movie of the Week format for now. See you in the Midweek movietalk instead.
The first handful of minutes had me worried that was going to be pretty bad. It looked like a video game, like a trailer for Gears of War. The whole reset concept is kinda gamey, but the movie gradually won me over. It does the Groundhog Day thing well where it keeps things interesting and stay away from too much repetitiveness. There is a proper balance of seriousness, as it is an alien invasion after all, and the general fun moments that comes from repeating the same day over and over. It was pretty entertaining seeing Tom Cruise go from completely incompetent and afraid to super soldier action hero. Restoring the balance of Tom Cruise's movie persona as the always competent hero.
Yeah, it's fun that he is only "Tom Cruise" in the very last scene.
I love this movie and I have not passed up an opportunity to rewatch it with someone who hasn't seen it yet.
This was 2014, from slightly before Reset became its own anime powerhouse genre. Re:Zero came out same year, apparently. Madoka 2011. There are some world-reset type stories but I'm more talking about deliberately using resets as a personal progression mechanism.
Anyway. A story idea doesn't have to be new, it just has to be done well. And this movie does that, I think. Also Emily Blunt <3. Mech suits, giant swords, pew pew pew ...... It's a type of movie that often has a lot of no effort trash or inadvertent fails, so it's very lovely when there's one where the characters are fun to watch and the story isn't insulting.
Why wouldn't it be a proper Tom Cruise movie? Anyway, yeah, it's a brilliant flick.
I’ve seen this countless times. It’s in my top 5 for 2014 (Gone Girl, Birdman, Whiplash, and Grand Budapest make up the rest of that list). The trailer for this is also ingrained in my head with the song playing in my head every now and then.
I love Tom Cruise, I think he’s an auteur as a producer. You know what you’re getting from a Tom Cruise production.
This is highly entertaining. It’s really funny, I was actually surprised at how much humor there was the first time I watched it. With a lot of the humor coming from his deaths. I’m also a fan of the “well how many times line” and Cruise’s physical comedy like when he gets paralyzed.
I love the look of this film. I love the colors, and the texture. It has a gritty look to it without being desaturated and dull. I love the editing of this. Blunt is really good in the role and this movie was really foundational in me having a crush on her.
This is probably the last great movie Doug Liman ever makes (American Made is good but not as good as this).
I remember the online reaction to this film was crazy at the time especially the nerd side of the internet who made up the majority of film discussion at the time.
It’s funny that we had two Tom Cruise movies for this month’s theme. But I do think it’s apt because I think his productions are the blue print for what makes great blockbusters. I kind of wish we also did Top Gun Maverick just to complete the Tom Cruise theme.
And for final comments, thanks for running this for all these months. It was nice while it lasted. It was cool to be able to show you movies, and it was cool to watch movies I probably wouldn’t have watched otherwise.
Tom Cruise really is one of the GOATs. It is hard to name any other moviestar who has consistently had so much commercial success for several decades. He is a brand like no other where his name on the poster draws people to the theater. I am also planning to catch up on more Tom Cruise in the next weeks, with Maverick, Born on the 4th of July, The Firm, Jerry Maguire and Magnolia.
While he has sort of settled into his action persona in recent years, I hope he will make a return for more dramatic type roles. Would also be cool to see him as a villain instead. He did a great job in Collateral.
While Cruise has an impressive resume and has worked with most of the greatest directors in the biz, I disagree that his name alone ensures impressive box office for twenty years or so. For nearly a decade, Tom Cruise was considered, if not box office poison, then an actor whose personal life my overshadow a production (this is all following the whole Oprah couch jumping, weird Scientology video leaks scandals). Edge of Tomorrow underperformed theatrically. The Mummy was a straight up flop. The Mission: Impossible series have been consistent earners, but none of them match even mid-level Marvel films in box office, and the last installment made less money than the Qanon film The Sound of Freedom last summer.
In fact, Top Gun: Maverick was the first film starring Tom Cruise that made over a billion dollars. Zoe Saldana had starred in more billion dollar franchises than Tom Cruise has.
Tom Cruise could die tomorrow and his filmography would be considered legendary, but producers are not necessarily salivating to have him involved in their projects.
There was a period where his affiliation with Scientology became a problem, but he has somehow managed to get past that. Mostly by simply refusing to do interviews on it. And most of his movies do make decent money, and I would say the same movies without him in them, would have sold substantially less. Marvel movies have a different brand that relies less on the actors.
Man, 2014 was a good year for movies; your top 5 are some of my all-time favorites.
Yeah I remember even at the time it was considered one of the best years for movies in a while. Two of the best MCU movies were released that year with The Winter Solider and Guardians of the Galaxy. Days of Future Part came out which was considered the best X-Men movie at the time. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Interstellar, Nightcrawler, American Sniper, Under the Skin, Boyhood, Blue Ruin. Really kind of wild how much stuff released that year.
Blue Ruin was 2013 but the point still stands
It premiered at film festivals in 2013 but wasn’t released until 2014. So I count it. Like how I count Hit Man a 2024 release despite premiering last year at TIFF.
2014 is far and away my favorite year for movies. I don't know if it's just the time where I became really in tune with what was coming out, but there's been no year like it since for me, where just about every notable movie that came out I was into and will rewatch without question.
I've been re-reading (or, more like, re-listening on audiobook) Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers recently. I remember when the Verhoeven film came out, one of the main nerd objections to the movie was that there was no power-armor, where in the book it featured prominently in the story.
Perhaps Verhoeven decided to leave the power-armor out of his film because of the special effects requirements to truly render it properly.
When I watched Edge of Tomorrow (was fortunate enough to see it opening weekend) I initially thought about how far FX had come to have actual power-armor combat served up on the screen. What I was watching was almost exactly what Heinlein described in his book.
Besides power-armor, both Starship Troopers and Edge of Tomorrow seem to have an emphasis on military structures, heirarchy, and discipline, and also a faceless, anonymous, inhuman enemy. Where Starship Troopers (both the film and the book) explores the society such a structure would spawn, Edge of Tomorrow sidesteps any larger world-building issues in favor of it's Groundhog Day like plot.
I've never read All You Need is Kill, so I'll have to tackle that someday to see how the book compares to Edge of Tomorrow. But if they were ever looking to remake Starship Troopers, it would probably look alot like this film.