Movie: Edge of Tomorrow (Tom Cruise + Emily Blunt)

Viper007Bond

Chicken Nugget Connoisseur
STAFF MEMBER
Joined
Sep 21, 2003
Messages
31,044
Location
Portland, Oregon
Car(s)
2008 Dodge Viper, 2006 MB CLS55 AMG
Absolutely awesome. Go see it in theaters seriously.


If you still aren't convinced (come on!), then here's a trailer full of spoilers that I don't recommend you watch:

 
I saw it last weekend, was really good!
 
Edge of Tomorrow

Edge of Tomorrow

Hi guys,

I haven't been here in a while.
I'm sorry to see the main site go down. I guess it was only a matter of time nowdays. :/

Anywho, I've just seen the new Edge of Tomorrow film.
The scene where they drive away with a trailer attached to the car and then wreck it shortly afterward reminded me soo much of the Top Gear (season something, episode noidea) version.
I loved the scene and I love the movie.

Anyone else have any thoughts on this flick?

Woop
 
Entertainment is that way!! --->
 
B-but....we just discussed in length how broken the ending was
 
Just in the last movie thread

Yet another reason I hate huge threads. What if I want to go back and read it? How am I supposed to find it?
 
Alright conversation discussing ending spoilered below.

Shoutout to PelicanHazard for explaining!

I really enjoyed the whole exposition but I didn't understand the ending. Did it even make sense at all?

What's the explanation for going back into a time without mimics?

Like many things that don't make sense, this is the result of a changed ending. The original ending was planned more like this:

They are flying to Paris and Tom Cruise tells everyone not to kill an Alpha, as then the Omega would revert the day and they would be killed without even knowing they had this conversation before. During the ground action one of the grunts gets separated from the group in horror-movie style and in a panic accidentally kills an Alpha. The day reverts and now you see the same events from the mimics' side of the battle as they shoot down the plane and kill everyone just after Cruise warns the group not to kill an Alpha.

The ending was changed because the comedy of the movie (such as Cruise being repeatedly killed on the beach) was highlighted over the original much darker tone, and the writers judged that the darker planned ending no longer fit with the more comedic style the movie morphed into, since comedies Isn't that just an infinite loop then? Why is killing an alpha required for the omega to reset the day? Can't it do that whenever it wants? In fact, why does Cruise's power have any effect at all? Wouldn't it just constantly loop anyway? And let's assume that alternate ending made sense, does that mean the bad guys win?


The explanation is buried deep in the exposition, but the gist is that the Omega can reset the day whenever it wants, but generally waits until an Alpha is killed because there's no point to doing it earlier, Mimics will be killed during battles and not all of them can be spared death. The regular Mimics, despite being part of the hive mind, are not really important to the Omega, but the Alphas serve as extensions of the Omega on the battlefield and are thus precious. Kind of like how the government doesn't really care if an individual enlisted soldier dies in a war but a general being killed incites a panic in leadership. Cage gaining the power is an advantage because according to the movie only one can hold the looping power at a time. Cage stole it from the Omega and the Omega cannot loop time again until it has Cage killed. (It would become aware of its lost power when it is unable to loop time after an Alpha dies, and because it already knows how its time looping works would be able to deduce who has the power by who seems to have foreknowledge of its forces' actions. Though why the power transfers to Cage after just a little exposure to Alpha blood instead of staying with the Omega who has much more such blood is handwaved away for storytelling.)

Furthermore, there have probably been a lot of loops to get to the action of the beach. The Mimics were not supposed to know where Operation Downfall was landing, yet had traps laid, implying that long before Cage killed that Alpha there had been a ton of loops as Downfall initially worked and the Omega kept looping time (perhaps not waiting for an Alpha to die, just looping when it was surprised by the invasion and then sending scouts that direction, looping time on first contact) until it figured out the landing zone and how best to lay traps for the troops' arrival, as well as the opportune time to launch the counter-invasion of England. The original dark ending implied that the Omega regained its looping ability and continued on its war, looping and looping, defeating anyone who stole its looping power like it did Cage and Rita, until it won.

The darker ending is not an infinite loop since once the Mimics shoot down the helicopter, they bleed Cage rather than outright kill him. If they outright kill him, then yes time loops and Cage retains the power, but they would instead capture and bleed him like the Alpha tried to do at the dam the visions led Cage to. Taking his blood like that makes the Omega own time looping again and it doesn't need to revert time for its plan to succeed; Cage and company flew to Paris the night before the invasion, so the Omega's invasion trap and counter-invasion plan can proceed without Cage's interference, as he was the only one who knew what was going to happen.

Ty for explaining, so from what I understand, when Cruise bled out and lost the looping power, it went back to the Omega? And so during their final assault in Paris, a random human slays an Alpha (and presumably doesn't acquire the power from its blood) and therefore alerts the Omega to reset?

This jumping around of the power is a bit dodgy but....plot.....I guess.

Can we also confirm that the actual ending, where Cruise wakes up in the helicopter and the aliens are magically defeated, doesn't make sense at all?

Yes, exactly. Cruise got the power only because when he killed an Alpha, it bled on him. (Toxic blood that burned his face, if I remember.) After he was wounded in the car crash and got a transfusion, he lost a lot of the Timeloop blood and had extra human blood put in, diluting it to the point where I guess the unwritten rules of the movie transferred looping power back to the Omega. Though since that happened in London where the Omega couldn't see that Cruise had lost the power, it had the Alpha in Paris try to bleed him in the mistaken belief he still had the power rather than just outright kill him; had it known Cruise lost the power it would have just looped as soon as the Mimics became aware Cruise was in Paris and shoot him down on the next try. In the darker ending the grunt presumably killed the Alpha without it bleeding on him, keeping the looping with the Omega (and the Omega trying to loop upon the Alpha's death maybe just for kicks, to discover the power had gone back to it.)

The ending we got reeks of production decisions to keep movie crowds happy, but could still work in the movie universe since the full and concrete rules of looping or what sort of extra powers may be granted to the Omega are not clearly established. Given the continuity of the looper's memory every time loop, it hints at the possibility that information, specifically events, can be chosen to be brought from one time loop to another, so that upon Cruise gaining the Omega's blood and time looping abilities after he kills it and all the other Mimics, he chose to not only send himself back to the helicopter to avoid the whole arrest kerfuffle, but brought over the event of the Omega's demise to wipe out the Mimics with no further loss of human life.

More likely though is it's just bullshit.


oh man that's a satisfying spoiler wall
 
Last edited:
I just read the original ending in the wiki and

It's different and more darker than the alternate ending of the movie. It explains the connection between the Alpha (The antenna) and the Omega (The nexus) much better. The antennas don't have the power to reset time. The nexus does. When an antenna dies (The signal), the nexus resets time. When Cage killed the antenna and got face full of it's blood, Cage became an antenna thereby when Cage dies, the nexus gets the signal to reset time.

The thing I don't get in this plotline is that why is it a requirement to kill all the antennas to stop the time reset? Doesn't killing the antenna triggers the nexus to reset time? Maybe an antenna(Cage) killing an antenna doesn't trigger the signal? And in the ending, how is the time being reset when the nexus is dead? And why is Rita's brain influenced in the time resets as she no longer has the antenna blood in her? *tears hair off* Maybe all of these questions are answered in the book.


As for the movie endings this is what I think.

1. Movie ending; After killing the Omega the time is reset and the mimics are dead. Why and how? Movie magic I guess. I can only speculate that after killing the Omega, it can't revive even with the time reset that magically happened. Since the omega isn't alive after reset, it probably means that Cage can't trigger the signal. Therefore no loops.
Another crazy speculation that I just thought of - Since cage absorbed Omega blood. He became an Omega! Who was his signal to reset time? That I do not know. But it makes the magical time reset somewhat swallowable.

2. Alternative movie ending; Going by my speculation of requiring an alpha to kill an alpha without resetting time, the normal goon killing an alpha triggered a reset. But why did Cage lose his antenna abilities in the reset? And if he didn't lose it, wouldn't killing him reset time creating a loop? *tears hair off*


Goddamn it Pininfarina :shakefist: I was happy with my half arsed understanding of the whole thing. But now that I spent far too long thinking about it, there are more questions left unanswered.

I do however can reach a conclusion which makes everything clear. The author is Japanese. End of story. :p
 
Last edited:
Ahpadt is right. Even though it didn't make sense it was still fun to watch.

It's not the inconclusive ending that bothers me most though, it's the ridiculously high ratings this movie received. It makes me wonder what goes through the critics', let alone the viewers' minds when they reached the ending and thought "wow what a brilliant finish 8/10".
 
Some people overanalyse movies far too much. Just enjoy it... :p

+1

Made perfect (movie) sense to me and I really enjoyed it. I'm glad they didn't make a bleak ending too. It was much better as an action movie with a bit of comedy in it. Knight and Day is kind of similar in tone and I enjoyed that one quite a bit as well.

Edge of Tomorrow was one of my favorite movies this year, if not the favorite.
 
Edge of Tomorrow was one of my favorite movies this year, if not the favorite.

Whoa whoa whoa what the heck really!?!??! I get that favourite movies are a subjective and all but you're not short of heavy hitters this year: lego movie, guardians, grand budapest, how to train your dragon 2 etc etc

To pick a movie that was fun but had a broken ending as your favourite? I'm surprised Viper.
 
Whoa whoa whoa what the heck really!?!??! I get that favourite movies are a subjective and all but you're not short of heavy hitters this year: lego movie, guardians, grand budapest, how to train your dragon 2 etc etc

To pick a movie that was fun but had a broken ending as your favourite? I'm surprised Viper.

Sorry, you're right. Not my top favorite but still one of my favorites as I had a lot of fun. I was thinking of LEGO movie when I wrote that but forgot about Guardians (which ends up above Edge of Tomorrow on my list). I haven't seen Grand Budapest or HTTYD2 yet.
 
Sorry, you're right. Not my top favorite but still one of my favorites as I had a lot of fun. I was thinking of LEGO movie when I wrote that but forgot about Guardians (which ends up above Edge of Tomorrow on my list). I haven't seen Grand Budapest or HTTYD2 yet.

Interstellar *ahem*
 
Top