Edge of Tomorrow

[yoco]

Be sure to check out "All You Need Is Kill", Yoco. It's the manga this story was heavily based on

Maybe I'll check it out. No anime?

[Sazzy]

Maybe I'll check it out. No anime?

Sadly no anime. I looked for one as well. It's a short manga though, maybe that's why.

[yoco]

Well if it's a short manga, I'll probably take a look then. I dislike reading mangas that're still ongoing!

[Sazzy]

Well if it's a short manga, I'll probably take a look then. I dislike reading mangas that're still ongoing!

It's more like a western comic book, length-wise

[Blocker]

I watched this movie yesterday and liked it!! In general I think the plot is original and I liked the idea of time control from the mimics and the reseting thing kind of "The Butterfly Effect " / "Memento" .Cheers.

[slikrapid]

*spoilers ahead*

- the opening scene was rather clumsy/amateurish - all these public persons are such pro's that not even an advancing alien invasion can put a dent in their composure
- a good deal of the world is occupied and the commandeering officers still need to sell the invasion? anyone bothered selling any of the WW2 operations? not really, maybe only post-factum, if there was something very wrong with them, like nuking japan for live testing purposes, sold as a necessity to win the already won war
- you want to hire someone (famous) to publicly work for you and you do it by making them hate you, by violating their rights? by sending them to, say, hiroshima just before the nuke is dropped, so they can taste the effects first hand... really?
- famous people disappear but no one would look for them?
- famous people are sent with the first wave of ground troops?
- famous reporters are given combat equipment so they can report... that it is working correctly?
- deserters are given a state of the art combat equipment so that it can come in handy when they try to escape for the 2nd time?
- untrained people are placed within elite troops, to do what exactly, increase the probability of success?
- you send a soldier in combat without even showing him how to use at least the basics of his equipment?
- elite units are comprised of cowboys with a deathwish, of physically incapable soldiers or treated like some fresh recruits or they jump up like frightened recruits when their commander arrives?
- officers get degraded to the rank of a private with no due process whatsoever?

so far we had one not too convincing general, slightly annoying overacting by paxton, but still very good acting by cruise (which will continue throughout the movie and later on emily keeps up with him well - even though their obvious chemistry potential was a gold mine, no one bothered to dig into it)

at this point i was pretty much ready to dismiss the movie as an incompetent mess, but then comes the first combat scene and the groundhog plot thickens...

from there on it is a pretty good ride though with several troublesome things like:
- exoskeleton combat suits provide no particular defense against the (metal) enemy
- sending ground troops & valuable equipment to be slaughtered by superior combat machines counts as good tactics (regardless of whether it was an ambush or not)?
- no one analyzes enemy weak spots except for the main characters (one-day brainstorming like that should make think tanks run for their money)
- emily's sword is somewhat cool but way too large/heavy for her and makes no sense in a realistic modern combat, not to mention you do not want wildly spinning enemy metal machines too close to you
- nowadays war heroines become nicknamed 'bitches', rappers use it all the time, movies as well and the characters seem to be enjoying it as something cool - notice how this mimics the male a-hole/d*ck counterpart, emancipation made a wrong turn?
- training was way too optimistic regarding soldier skills, in such a scenario there would be no soldiers left to fight, they would all be mowed-down by the training machines before any of them even took a step on the actual battlefield
- the repeating day part gets overused and becomes somewhat tiresome after a while - imagine how tiresome it must be for someone who could actually experience it...
- the enemy is not very smart and doesn't have a solution for a hijacked day-repeater
- the ending is rather nonsensical and anti-climactic, not to mention cruise outswims even the dolphin-like bond from his last movie, or the cheap solution of 'just blow it up and we're safe after that'
- they kept mentioning that cruise controlled the mechanism, but he basically only temporarily had access to the reset button (his death, within a one day period) and thats it, the whole process was still done by the aliens

finally, the movie had much potential to be very good, perhaps even excellent but, as mentioned above, the beginning & the end have had a strange lack of creative writing, as if the middle was done by some other, much better writer(s) - even so, this is (so far) the best SF or action movie this year, thus definitely gets a recommendation as worth watching


and something to chew on:

- the idea in the movie is to keep repeating a scenario until you get some expected/desired/prescribed/destined outcome, retreading a single path over and over again until you get the steps right, practice makes perfect, then you advance
- how about a scenario where whatever you do still ends up leading to the desired outcome and instead of repeating the same living scenario over and over again ad nauseam you get to reincarnate and live another one from scratch, while still leading to the desired outcome - treading multiple paths in sequence, any single one of them only once, until you end up at the desired outcome - whatever you do, you advance towards the goal - and even the most ignorant of the ignorant would eventually realize that, at least when close enough to the desired outcome

[mirrormask]

great humor, action, story and actors.
highly recommended, not only to scifi fans.