ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

I missed this one at the theaters, but I recently downloaded it, watched it, and loved it. If you like Groundhog Day, you'll love this one.





There's more combat action in this than in Starship Troopers, and the alien creatures are just as eager to rip people into small painful pieces. I admired the way the filmmakers presented us with a truly alien life form — which ain't easy when you consider the tremendous variety of life right here on terra firma!







Tom Cruise and co-star Emily Blunt make a great team, not only as actors and as the kick-ass combat juggernauts. Both actors project the intelligence needed for the two characters to deal with the insanity of having to relive the same events over and over.





The special effects are stellar from start to finish, and the shots of the military aircraft are gorgeous — both flying into battle and crashing in a spectacular fashion.





The explanation for the time loops is actually a source of considerable confusion among viewers, and you and l find websites like the one below that offer intelligent theories that attempt to clear things up. It did clarify certain aspects of the plot for me, but even the writer of the article freely admits that the film withholds a lot of information we need to fully understand the concepts.

http://screenrant.com/edge-of-tomorrow-ending-spoilers-time-travel/



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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Randy]

This movie is also known as "Live, Die, Repeat".

[Bud Brewster]

I saw that on some of the posters, but I thought it was just a tag line. Interesting.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[orzel-w]

[Krel]

When it was first announced, they were using the original Japanese title, "All You Need Is Kill". It didn't last long though.

David.

[Pye-Rate]

Another Tom Cruise I love me movie. Moronic story, unrealistic monster.
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The road to tomorrow runs through yesterday.

[orzel-w]

[Custer]

It's strange when the tag line is so large, the actual movie name almost vanishes...

[Bud Brewster]

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I really don't understand the folks who don't seem to appreciate what a fine actor Tom Cruise is. He's made some remarkable action and science fiction movies, many of which I own.

One of his most appealing roles is "Knight and Day". Great movie! Funny AND exciting.

And at this very moment I'm watching "Oblivion", one of the best science fiction movies ever made, with sets and props and FX that rival Forbidden Planet.


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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IMDB has 146 trivia items for this movie, and here are several of the most interesting ones. The first item below refutes the unjust claims that Tom Cruise is a "love me" prima donna".
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~ Tom Cruise spent over 100,000 dollars on a lavish wrap party for the cast and crew. He did not attend himself, as he was finishing his scenes for the movie.

Note from me: "How would you like to be in my next movie?"

"How much are you paying me, Tom?"

"Not much. But we're having a party afterwards."

"Okay, I'm in!"

~ When Hiroshi Sakurazaka wrote the novel, he got the idea from video-gaming and resetting it over and over until finding the winning strategy.

Note from me: God, I wish we could do that in real life!

~ Operation Downfall, the name the movie gave the planned invasion, was in fact a real planned invasion: the final invasion of the Japanese Home Islands to end World War II. The real Operation Downfall never happened, as the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought about the surrender of Japan.

Note from me: I've often wondered if just dropping the bombs about a mile offshore of Tokyo would have had the same effect on the Japanese leaders as destroying the two cities did. Sort of a "warning shot across the bow."

~ In the book, Cage awakes at 0600 hours, like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day (1993), who's also trapped in a never ending day; also Cage in the book says "same old, same old", and Murray got that line too.

Note from me: These two movies would make a great double feature. Or a quadruple feature. Or a sextuplet feature. Or a . . .

~ Tom Cruise did all his own stunts; Doug Liman said he could make an amazing career out of it.

Note from me: Cruise seems to be dedicated to his work. I admire that.

~ Cage never mentions how many times the reset had happened to him during the entire movie. Even though Rita asks him on a few occasions about how many times, he never answers with a number. Rita once says she watched Hendricks die 300 times. That is the only mention of reset times.

Note from me: "A coward dies a thousand deaths. A hero dies but once. Unless he's the hero in this movie."

~ Both this film and Groundhog Day (1993) have a character called Rita and both are about time loops. Also, in that film, Bill Murray pinches Andie MacDowell to prove that tomorrow has finally arrived. In the novel, Cage pinches himself when time first resets. Also, in the book, anything new terrified Cage, while Bill Murray had the opposite reaction.

Note from me: And let's not forget that Tom defeats the monster at the end of his movie, but the groundhog survives in Bill's movie. (Okay, that's just silly. Sorry, I was stuck for a comment and got desperate . . . )
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[orzel-w]

Here's something from IMDb on the title-vs-tagline issue.

[Custer]

My blu-ray box is pretty much like the one shown a few posts back, though without the 3D, or indeed the DVD. The spine does have both "titles" on it - the "Live. Die. Repeat" comes first and is in the same yellow/brown as on the front, but after "Edge of Tomorrow," in red, is in wider lettering . . . which is something.

Computer games do use the same bits over and over again — I have sometimes thought that "Groundhog Day" would do well as a game idea. If I go into a specific map in Guild Wars 2 I'm going to find the same events as yesterday and the day before, and non-player characters (NPCs) are going to say the same things. I can repeat the main story — while one character of mine has helped kill the main bad dragon, that doesn't mean that elsewhere in the game his schemes are not still in progress.

Away from the massively multi-player role-playing games, I remember that Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic had a gambling sequence, on a space station I think. With that sort of game you can save your progress, so, if one made a save-point before gambling, if one didn't end up ahead, cash-wise, one could just go back to that save-point and try again . . .

[Bud Brewster]

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If I were 20 years younger and had spent those years playing video games instead of teaching school, publishing two sci-fi novels, and being the site administrator of this message board, I might know what you just said.

However, I didn't.

So . . . I don't.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Custer]

Single-player story games, games that you play solo, are pretty lengthy, so you get the option to "save" your progress, like putting a bookmark in the novel you are reading. You can then go off and do something else - or if you continue playing beyond that save-point, and something goes wrong, you can easily return your character to that point in the game, and try again.

Games where you share a world/map with other players can't have that option. You can have your own character-developing story to follow, but, as the map (or virtual world) has to cater to all the players of the game that visit it, the non-player characters keep to a set routine... kind of like a Groundhog day, yes?

You'll need to do a bit of research on the subject if you intend to go along to see the Ready Player One movie when it gets released...

[Bud Brewster]

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Ah-ha! Thanks!

Now I'm a retired school teacher, a published writer, a web master, AND a "game savvy" sexagenarian!

(Which sounds like something that's sexy . . . but it isn't. Dammit.)
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)