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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

Maybe the General did believe them. He gave them the device out of the safe after all. Maybe he wasn't the one that called security on them.
 
Re: Edge of Tomorrow: fun movie but can someone please explain the end

Well yeah they were in the middle of an alien invasion, but I imagine you'd have a lot of crazy people coming out of the woodwork saying crazy things during a time like that. And the story Cruise told of repeatedly jumping back in time kinda DID sound ridiculous, and probably would no matter what else was going on.
 
Re: Edge of Tomorrow: fun movie but can someone please explain the end

Well yeah they were in the middle of an alien invasion, but I imagine you'd have a lot of crazy people coming out of the woodwork saying crazy things during a time like that. And the story Cruise told of repeatedly jumping back in time kinda DID sound ridiculous, and probably would no matter what else was going on.

But, then Cruise backs up his claims by being very damn precognitive.
 
Re: Edge of Tomorrow: fun movie but can someone please explain the end

Minority Report. Wut? LOL!
 
Re: Edge of Tomorrow: fun movie but can someone please explain the end

Well yeah they were in the middle of an alien invasion, but I imagine you'd have a lot of crazy people coming out of the woodwork saying crazy things during a time like that. And the story Cruise told of repeatedly jumping back in time kinda DID sound ridiculous, and probably would no matter what else was going on.

But, then Cruise backs up his claims by being very damn precognitive.
Yeah. The longer he talked, the more rational it sounded.
 
Re: Edge of Tomorrow: fun movie but can someone please explain the end

Yeah, everything he pulled off in that room went well beyond "parlor tricks" or any-kind of "magic show tricks" of precognition. And the General, being aware of Cruise's record, would certainly see the difference in his behavior and know he's not known or even capable of this level of trickery. Plus he's backed by one of their more decorated/influential troops. Why doubt him, unless giving him the device posed a greater risk going on with the next day's invasion.

I don't quite get why Cruise and Blunt didn't "reset" sooner once their escape escalated and became less and less likely to be a success. They *know* that getting a blood transfusion will end the "power." So why risk getting into an accident which will likely send them to a hospital where they'll get a transfusion? Reset and try again. Cruise often seemed quick to not want to reset. I get that it's probably a traumatic experience and he's got to go through the hassles of getting to Blunt, convincing her, and then going forward from there and it requires him to do everything perfectly. How many times did it take him to figure out how to time the roll under the truck? And once he timed it right he still likely didn't get it perfect every time.

So, sure, he's got to do the brunt of the work here to make this all work but I'd see at as risk weighing game. If you can die and "reset" the day then do it when your chance of success seems less and less likely rather than risking a critical, but not life-threatening, injury that might necessitate a transfusion.

And, hell, we could probably question on whether or not some of these injuries would have really been instantly deadly. A shot by a 9-millimeter gun to the head is certainly survivable (though, maybe not at point-blank range, that I'm less sure of.) So now we wonder, were all of his deaths ones where death would be instant and certain enough to not warrant any attempts at medical attention which likely would mean a transfusion.

And I'm guessing after Blunt's transfusion she also, conveniently, "felt" that she lost the power making her, like Cruise, take caution from then on to not die "for real." Rather than not knowing the transfusion caused one to lose the power and then not caring if they're in a life-threatening situation or thinking if something goes wrong they can just die and reset.
 
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Re: Edge of Tomorrow: fun movie but can someone please explain the end

Well yeah it was a very impressive feat, but I still don't think my first thought would be "Well of course, it's because this guy really did leap back in time and relive this moment multiple times!"

It's a pretty big leap from knowing the subject of a phone call or something about a secretary to... time travel.
 
Re: Edge of Tomorrow: fun movie but can someone please explain the end

Considering there had been three guys saying time travel was possible, two of whom were travelers and one suggesting it as how the aliens were operating, all three of which agreeing how it was possible, and the two travelers coming to take a piece of technology made by the third that the general allegedly didn't even believe was true...

Just...

Yeah, it's a very weak plot point.
 
Re: Edge of Tomorrow: fun movie but can someone please explain the end

I loved this flick. It was very fun. Cruise was awesome, as usual. Blunt, as well, for a variety of reasons. Paxton was cool.

As for the end, I was under the impression that the Mimic hive mind couldn't actually control the reset button. The way it was presented seemed more like an evolved self-preservation reflex triggered by encountering anything that could kill an Alpha, thus allowing the Omega to repeat such encounters until it could develop a counter to the new threat.

When Cage gets doused in Alpha blood, he gets linked with the hive mind and is tenuously recognized as an Alpha himself, so that every time he dies, the Omega has no choice but to reset the day, it just doesn't realize why it's happening until the link becomes established enough for visions to pass between Cage and it, at which point it tries to pull a Verdun, and fuck with the intruder-Alpha like it did with Rita previously.

In the final confrontation, after having lost his Alpha reset ability, Cage kills the Omega, and we actually get to see the effect of this when all of the Alphas and Betas on the surface collapse. The Omega is clearly dead, but the day doesn't reset. Instead, it's like 30 seconds before Cage gets fully doused with Omega blood spreading through the water -while he is still alive- his eyes go black and then the reset occurs.

Instead of waking up on base after getting tased, he wakes up aboard the helicopter he flew in on at the start of the movie, where it is revealed that there has been a massive explosion in Paris and the Mimics have all collapsed into uselessness and the war is over. Why?

Either the Omega is fucking with everyone to go run off and hide and sort shit out, as was posited above...or what? Could Cage now be the Omega and the Mimic Omega self-destructed when it realized Cage stole the power and it could no longer reset time?

Why did Cage travel farther back in time? Did he chose to do this or was this a side-effect of an Omega reset instead of an Alpha reset? It's at most, what? An hour's difference between landing and waking up from getting tased? He was tased originally, not bludgeoned into a coma, so he couldn't have been out for long.

Was the explosion at the Louvre Cage's grenades going off? How would anyone have noticed an underground and underwater grenade explosion? Did the Omega's death carry over into the reset somehow or was it killed in the new present? Did Cage actually travel farther back than the helicopter trip we are shown, provide the American military with the Louvre as a target for an alpha strike, then take a nap on the helo heading to Whitehall? Leaving the UDF to wonder what the hell happened?

Why did they never ask themselves, "What if killing the Omega resets the timeline a day...just like killing an Alpha does?" Well, probably because then they could never win and humanity would be doomed and that's kind of a downer ending, I guess. Still, someone should have brought it up.

So, I'm thinking the Alpha death only triggers the reset with a living Omega, but then Cage triggers the reset either willingly on his own after getting Omegafied or he drowns and that triggers it ... or the Omega died, killing the Alphas, and simultaneously transferred Omeganess to Cage, who triggered the reset because the Alphas were dead, but they were already dead when became the new Omega ... sigh, I don't know.

ARRRGGHHHH! Time travel!
 
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.
I think I'd have to take some rest days to stay sane; if London doesn't work, then farther out. Was he planning to off himself the day he went to the pub, just to be safe? And would it be unethical to blackmail the gal into going on a date with him once in a while? Totally, right? But if he's repeatedly dying and on the verge of saving humanity, the gal could find the compassion to at least share some chaste relaxing downtime with him now and again? (I assume the only reason Guy Gardener hasn't taken this particular line of thinking even further is he hasn't seen it.) Of course, she'd never know how often said downtime were occurring. He could abuse that power. But that'd be far too emotionally complex a thought for this movie to have, I guess...



Considering there had been three guys saying time travel was possible, two of whom were travelers and one suggesting it as how the aliens were operating, all three of which agreeing how it was possible, and the two travelers coming to take a piece of technology made by the third that the general allegedly didn't even believe was true...

Just...

Yeah, it's a very weak plot point.
How it should have ended: the general believes them at least enough to gamble on sending out a strike team of experts. As they wait for news, Cage and the woman go to a local pub for a quiet dinner and talk through their lives and shared traumas; the last twenty minutes play out around the table, My Dinner With Andre-style. The good news comes through, and our heroes get instant meritorious leave for travel to their respective homes. At the airport, they share a tender, chaste hug. Cage kisses her, chastely, on the forehead (he has to stand on his tippy-toes to do so, obviously). Fade to Sarah McLachlan's "Angel" playing over the end credits. I would have respected and enjoyed the hell out of that movie.

... Aaaaaand, that's also why they don't let me write $170m flicks.

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

I don't think the blood would have either been "filtered out by his spleen." Blunt's character suggested that she'd been in the loop for almost a year, I'd think of the effect could ever be "filtered out" it would have been.
 
Re: Edge of Tomorrow: fun movie but can someone please explain the end

I can't imagine that he Omega would move to another location after the Paris reset and attempt to trick the allied forces a second time if it knows that Cage got its blood and can reset the day and go after it again. The idea that it gave up and left in a hurry does seem to hold up though.

Another thing that doesn't make sense... How was he able to keep resetting in the first place? With each new day, his body should be free of the Alpha blood. That wouldn't carry over unless he acquires the blood by killing the Alpha each day.
 
Re: Edge of Tomorrow: fun movie but can someone please explain the end

Yeah, the General seemed ridiculous and over-the-top. I mean, Tom and Emily put on quite a presentation, mostly from the way Tom "predicted" things as/before they happened. And I'm not clear what the "harm" would have been in lending them device if it could lead to the war ending and preventing the massacre on the beach.

The General was the only weak link in the story IMO and that he stored the device in his work safe seemed a little to convenient.

Aside from that, this was a great film. IMO one of Cruises best in the sci-fi genre.
 
Re: Edge of Tomorrow: fun movie but can someone please explain the end

LOVED this movie. Loved it more than Godzilla by far and I'd put it right up there with X-Men: DOFP. Tom Cruise, despite being batshit insane, is still a phenomenal actor. Emily Blunt was great in this too. I though the way the Alphas and the time resets worked was a great concept. Really makes me want to go read the All You Need is Kill graphic novel now. I laughed and was in awe and was emotionally invested in the entire movie.
 
Re: Edge of Tomorrow: fun movie but can someone please explain the end

Another thing that doesn't make sense... How was he able to keep resetting in the first place? With each new day, his body should be free of the Alpha blood. That wouldn't carry over unless he acquires the blood by killing the Alpha each day.
Yeah, Cage's very space-time continuum seems to have read the script. :p
 
Re: Edge of Tomorrow: fun movie but can someone please explain the end

Much as I enjoyed it though, I couldn't shake the many SF similarities (Troopers, Aliens, FF: Spirits Within, Mimics/Matrix Sentinels) and wish there'd been something really unique and original.

Perhaps I'm giving the film makers WAY too much credit here, but while there were a lot of familiar visual tropes, I actually felt that helped root the movie in the same sense of deja vu that Cage must have felt from the timeloop.

By chanelling some very familar stereotypes from any number of alien invasion movies & video games and then regurgitating those back onto the screen, the viewer already feels like they know the plot/setting. The historical D-Day/WWII parallels just add to that sense of deja vu. We feel like we know some of the story already. And then the timeloop hits and so does Cage too.

:techman:
Hudson, Bill Paxton doing his Sergeant Apone was a hoot.

There was also the military movie callbacks, First Saving Private Ryan as the invasion scene but then The Dirty Dozen as J Squad, who did seem to be the rejects of the platoon, went behind the lines on the eve of D-Day
 
Re: Edge of Tomorrow: fun movie but can someone please explain the end

<<Another thing that doesn't make sense... How was he able to keep resetting in the first place? With each new day, his body should be free of the Alpha blood. That wouldn't carry over unless he acquires the blood by killing the Alpha each day. >>

Hey, I never thought of that! I think you just solved the ending!

When Cage dies he resets with the physical body containing the Alpha blood which he got in "the future".

So when the Omega died and reset, it did so with the physical body from the future that a) suffered through the mental trauma of dying for the first time and so exploded or b) the grenades carried over since they were inside its physical body and exploded over again.

The reset occurs in the moment before dead. In Cage's case it's before the lethal trauma/bullet happens. In the Omega's case, the grenades were sitting inside it for a little too long. Or something. I dunno :lol:
 
Re: Edge of Tomorrow: fun movie but can someone please explain the end

Really enjoyed this and have been thinking about it a lot since I saw it. Interestingly I saw the new X-Men two days after seeing this and did note that Kitty's Pride's clever method of escaping the Sentinels was basically the same trick the Omega uses to defeat humanity.
 
Re: Edge of Tomorrow: fun movie but can someone please explain the end

Darkest possible explanation for the ending:

When you get Alpha blood on you, you effectively become an Alpha as far as Omega is concerned (which is why the time-reset kicks in when you die). But when you get Omega blood on you, you get a more severe infection: not just the Alpha-ness but Omega-ness. This is the ultimate defence mechansim. When Cage is touched by the Omega's blood, it infects him, giving him the time-reset ability but also seeds him with Omega-ness.

He then resets back to the helicopter as the original Omega has finished dying by now. We see him initially disorientated; this is not because he's suddenly & unexpectedly found himself alive again, but is due to Omega asserting its dominance over Cage. Once that's done, it transmits a psychic message to its former physical state in Paris, telling it to kill itself as he's now in a new body. Once the troops get sent in, he'll reactivate all the mimic defences and slaughter all the humans.

His recognition of Rita on the building poster and then going to find her is because she's the only person capable of realising what's happened (even if it's unlikely she would), and he plans on killing her quickly. His grin at the end is knowledge that the Mimics have won. Completely, and even more efficiently than under the initial scenario.

I both love and hate this interpretation... :D
 
Re: Edge of Tomorrow: fun movie but can someone please explain the end

Darkest possible explanation for the ending:

When you get Alpha blood on you, you effectively become an Alpha as far as Omega is concerned (which is why the time-reset kicks in when you die). But when you get Omega blood on you, you get a more severe infection: not just the Alpha-ness but Omega-ness. This is the ultimate defence mechansim. When Cage is touched by the Omega's blood, it infects him, giving him the time-reset ability but also seeds him with Omega-ness.

He then resets back to the helicopter as the original Omega has finished dying by now. We see him initially disorientated; this is not because he's suddenly & unexpectedly found himself alive again, but is due to Omega asserting its dominance over Cage. Once that's done, it transmits a psychic message to its former physical state in Paris, telling it to kill itself as he's now in a new body. Once the troops get sent in, he'll reactivate all the mimic defences and slaughter all the humans.

His recognition of Rita on the building poster and then going to find her is because she's the only person capable of realising what's happened (even if it's unlikely she would), and he plans on killing her quickly. His grin at the end is knowledge that the Mimics have won. Completely, and even more efficiently than under the initial scenario.

I both love and hate this interpretation... :D
At last, my dark ending! Thank you for that interpretation. :D
 
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