Edge of Tomorrow: fun movie but can someone please explain the ending?

Re: Edge of Tomorrow: fun movie but can someone please explain the end

re the ending

Spoiler: the ending

I was slightly dissapointed, but not wholly surprised. Given the nature of the time loops it seemed the obvious way for them to go. I do feel kinda sorry for Cage, he's probably fought more than any soldier alive, aside from Rita, won the war yet no one will ever know...although clearly he'll be able to convince Rita and scientist guy at least!

Saw this last night and really enjoyed it. It's definitely upper echelon B-movie fare, and if you think about it too much it doesn't neccesarily make sense. Part of me wishes they'd explored the psychological effect of being killed over and over again on him, but frankly that wouldn't have been much fun, and it is a fun film, and quite inventive re some of the deaths, and the computer game logic does make for some amusing "Next time I'll get it right"s!

Cruise is excellent, Cage really isn't that likeable at the start and I like the subversion of the usual Cruise cocky hero type. Blunt is excellent as well, a strong female character every bit Cage's equal and she's not just there to be eye candy...ok maybe in the push up scene but even then it's a grungy kind of eye candy!

Bill Paxton does almost steal the whole damn show though!

The ending is weak, the aliens underdeveloped and they almost overdo the repetitive nature early on (but only almost), but on the whole a very enjoyable film.

 

Re: Edge of Tomorrow: fun movie but can someone please explain the end

I've seen the movie now, and I really enjoyed it, though I agree that that ending is pretty confounding. However, I've bullshitted a couple of possible explanations to add to the ones above.

Spoiler: The Dark Ending

As Rita says, the Omega tricked the Humans into believing that they had won at Verdun so that they would commit the bulk of their forces into an assault on mainland Europe which the Mimics would decisively crush. As we saw with the dam trap it set for Cage, it's also capable of inserting false hallucinations into the minds of someone infected with Alpha blood.

The Omega might have been tricking Cage with a hallucination (and an above-ground explosion for the humans to see) into thinking that he had destroyed the Omega once it realized that its position had been compromised, and sent him slightly further back in time with its more powerful blood. It then also ordered its forces to pretend to give up the fight, allowing the Chinese and Russians on the Eastern Front to advance deep into enemy territory and the other UDF forces in Britain to launch the final assault on what they believe to be a much softer, unorganized target in northern France now. Once those forces are fully committed and the Omega is relocated to a safe location, it will launch the full out assault that will defeat the human forces even worse than the Normandy landings in the original timeline did.

Spoiler: The Happy Ending

When Cage destroyed the brain, it, like him, had a default respawn mechanism where the Omega's more powerful blood sent them both back slightly further in time. The Omega, fearing for its life and that of the colony now that it had been discovered and "killed," decided to evacuate the planet, leaving behind the now unguided cannon fodder Mimics and only taking itself and the Alphas. The "explosion" in Paris that the humans saw was its escape vehicle leaving the surface and heading home.

 

Re: Edge of Tomorrow: fun movie but can someone please explain the end

I just saw the movie and I thought it was great. I agree that it starts off slow but picks up nicely, especially when the Groundhogs Day stuff kicks in. Tom Cruise is very good but Emily Blunt is excellent. After seeing him on Game of Thrones, it was cool to see Noah Taylor in the film.

 

Re: Edge of Tomorrow: fun movie but can someone please explain the end

Spoiler: Ending

As far as I could tell from the movie, when Cage absorbed a small amount of the Alpha's blood he gained control over the resets. This was emphasized by the fact that the Alpha was hunting him down to try and regain his blood and thus its power.

When he kills the Omega, we see a massive amount of the Omega's blood. I'm assuming at that point, the Omega lost control of its own power to reset time, leaving Cage with the power. Having a stronger pull, he rest to the point in time when the Omega itself last reset (hence the explosion being seen in the past), or at least a point in which it would have reset. But since Cage now had the power, he was reset instead, just to the Omega's time rather than his own.

Keep in mind, too, that Cage's original reset point with the Alpha blood was pretty random, too. It had no correlation to anything relating to the blood or the Alpha itself, nor did the mechanic's theories mention anything about why it reset like it did. For all we know, he might have actually reset to an earlier period while he was still unconscious, and only "woke up" when he actually woke up in the original timeline.

Regardless, since we never see Cage (or anyone else) die after absorbing the Omega's blood, for all we know, he might effectively be an Omega now, too. Afterall, the whole point of absorbing the Alpha's blood was that he stole the Alpha's power to reset. And now he has the Omega's blood...

 

Re: Edge of Tomorrow: fun movie but can someone please explain the end

Okay, my question is: what would have happened if he'd survived for a whole day, without a blood transfusion? Would the reset still occur, or does he actually have to die, and if so, why?

 

Re: Edge of Tomorrow: fun movie but can someone please explain the end

I assume he'd just keep going until he died, was wounded but not killed and had a blood transfusion, or the Alpha blood was eventually filtered out of his system by his spleen.

 

Re: Edge of Tomorrow: fun movie but can someone please explain the end

I'd be interested to know how many times he repeated the day, since there were a few instances we didn't even see (the many times they were at the farm/the many times they tried to break into Whitehall).

 

Re: Edge of Tomorrow: fun movie but can someone please explain the end

I saw this today. I thought it was decent. Not a bad way to while away a couple hours. Not Cruise's best, but not his worst either. I enjoyed it a bit more than Oblivion, though I thought Oblivion wasn't a bad film either.

With Edge, I liked that Cruise wasn't Mr. Action Hero at first. I liked his reaction to the news that he would be going to the front. I also liked Bill Paxton. Emily Blunt was alright. She did fine as a hard ass. J Squad could've stood to be developed a little more.

I thought the Mimics were pretty cool. I've been disappointed with the designs of alien invaders from a lot of these films but these were nice. If the new Trek films or a TV show ever does the Kelvans, they should be inspired by these Mimics.

 

Re: Edge of Tomorrow: fun movie but can someone please explain the end

Was it ever explained why they called them Mimics? They didn't seem to mimic anything.

 

Re: Edge of Tomorrow: fun movie but can someone please explain the end

I'd like to see this, but I won't pay extra to see it in 3D given I don't like 3D. If it doesn't screen in 2D at my local cinema then I'll have to wait for the video release.

 

Re: Edge of Tomorrow: fun movie but can someone please explain the end

I saw it.

It's funny, and it's great for people who hate Tom Cruise because he dies lots and lots of violent deaths. (Get scientology to save you from that, bitch!)

 

Re: Edge of Tomorrow: fun movie but can someone please explain the end

Edge of Tomorrow

My Grade: A-

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Edge of Tomorrow stars Tom Cruise as a military Major (Honorary) who's busted down to a Private on the front lines in a war against aliens in the European Theater.

He's a man who's military experience extends to an ROTC stint but none the less was the face of the US military's war in Europe against an army of alien invaders. So he's pretty much tossed into England's military to be little more than cannon fodder for one last, big, push to defeat the invaders in a beach scene that ends up mostly being a massacre.

(No, it's totally coincidence this came out in the US on the weekend of the anniversary of the D-Day invasion on Omaha Beach.)

But something strange happens during the attack, Cruise's character manages to kill one of the aliens at the cost of his own life, moments after dying he jolts awake to where he was almost a day earlier, after being tazed and dropped off in the military barracks. He soon discovers he's living the day over again and begins impact events, and upon dying he, again, wakes up a day earlier.

It seems something happened when he killed a particular variety of alien, who can control time to their advantage in these attacks, giving him the ability to "reset time" upon dying. He manages to team up with Emily Blunt's character, something a model/spokes solider for the war effort, who discloses that she also once had this power but lost it. She intends to guide Cruise into hopefully defeating the alien invaders for good, as it turns out his last mission is humanity's last hope.

We end up getting a good combination of "Groundhog Day" and "Starship Troopers." (That is, assuming that last movie was a serious one and not some-kind-of satire.) And it pulls it off very well. The various iterations through the loop are fun and different in their own ways and it's interesting to watch how Cruise is able to use his knowledge to change events and work towards his goal, which before long becomes more than saving humanity and also about saving Blunt's character.

There's a lot of comparisons I've seen made to this movie being like a video game and I can certainly see that as video-game like logic is used by Cruise trying to "do better" based on gained knowledge during the previous trip. "Mapping out" the precise movements to go through to survive and even in one instance giving up on the notion of playing the mission and pissing off to go on a world-exploring trip.

I'm not usually too big a fan of Cruise but with this and some of his other recent efforts he's brining me more and more back into his camp. He and Blunt do a great job here and there's a lot of good action in this movie.

Upon leaving the theater I was surprised to see that only close to 2 hours had passed, making this movie under the 2-hour mark if you consider trailers and pre-movie theater bullshit.

It's a good, tight, sub-2 hours. The movie feels longer but not in a "boring, when will this end?" way but more in a "wow! they got a lot of story in there!" sort of way. It's very tightly paced.

Enjoyed it a lot and I don't see how anyone couldn't find something to like in this movie even a little bit.

 

Re: Edge of Tomorrow: fun movie but can someone please explain the end

Because it appeared to the humans who didn't know about the time jumps that they rapidly learned from and mimicked and improved upon human battle strategies, when in fact they were just replaying each engagement.

 

Re: Edge of Tomorrow: fun movie but can someone please explain the end

A-

Thought it was a pretty fun and entertaining movie, even if the reset gimmick made it hard to ever get fully emotionally engaged with it (after watching Cruise and Blunt die so many times it kinda becomes hard to get that worked up over it). And the exo-suits never stop looking clunky and ridiculous.

But it was awesome seeing Cruise play a very different type of character at the start, and the story is so inventive and well-directed that it was easy just to go along for the ride.

And yeah, the ending is a bit more confusing than it should be, but ultimately I don't think it hurts things too much.

 

Re: Edge of Tomorrow: fun movie but can someone please explain the end

I could be misremembering this but I think it is because in the book when they first appeared they were easy to beat but in every do-over they got harder as they learnt from human behaviour - however to the humans it just appeared that they were getting better by mimicking without the humans knowing how or why - I guess they just carried the name over.

 

Re: Edge of Tomorrow: fun movie but can someone please explain the end

Yeah, it seemed like the exosuits weren't entirely practical. They didn't seem to offer very much protection for the wearer and it seemed to slow people down more than it provided any aid other than weaponry. It was inventively handled but I'd think real-world exosuits would allow the user a lot more range of movement.

 

Re: Edge of Tomorrow: fun movie but can someone please explain the end

Interesting to read the generally positive feedback on here. Do we think the movie's going to have legs? I heard that the US box office returns this weekend for it don't seem spectacular (internationally, it's done better), but if word of mouth is good, it might be one of those movies that lasts more than just a few weeks.

On the question of the exosuits not seeming to add much more than firepower, I don't think that's necessarily fair. After all, nearly everyone using one had minimal experience with them as they were recent recruits, except for Cage and Rita who had the benefit of their extra battle time. We did see some fancier moves from them, at times. For example that bit where Cage strafes around J-squad in the foxhole at super-speed and one of them tells Farrel that the "new guy is pretty good", or something like that. I don't think he could have strafed at that speed and angle without the augmented abilities of the suit.

 

Re: Edge of Tomorrow: fun movie but can someone please explain the end

The exo-skeletons were necessary because the humans could not carry heavy enough weapons and enough ammo to take the rather sturdy Mimics down without them (and with the Jackets they could carry roughly the equivalent of an armored personnel carrier themselves), and because it allowed them to use physical attacks as a last ditch effort, when a non-augmented human punch or kick would have no effect.

If you want to see how effective the Jackets were against non-alien targets, look at the soldier who stopped Cage and Rita from escaping Whitehall by smashing the engine of the car in and stopping it at full acceleration by standing in front of it. That shows just what it takes to stop a Mimic at a full charge with a physical attack when your grenade launcher and rocket launcher and assault rifle all run out (unless you have a sword too).

Plus, it gives the soldiers greater agility once you get used to using them. Unfortunately their situation was so dire and the need for fresh recruits for the invasion was so desperate, that they were using the suits ability to give even barely trained and physically unfit soldiers at least some advantage on the battlefield (as said above), while not taking full advantage of the suits abilities. In the hands of well trained personnel like Rita and Cage after the timeloops, the Jackets were extremely effective.

 

Re: Edge of Tomorrow: fun movie but can someone please explain the end

Yeah there were a few moments when the suits appear to do some fantastic, superhuman things, but for the majority of the time they appear just as awkward and impractical to move around in as the prop itself must have been. Even when the actors were simply walking around, you didn't get the sense that the suit was "aiding" them in any way; instead it was clear that the actors were having to power them completely by themselves. Which sort of hurt the illusion a bit I think.

As for the design, I realize a real life exo-suit created by the military probably wouldn't be all that sleek or sexy, but these ones still looked a little too clunky and uninspired for my taste.