By: Addison Wylie

Edge of Tomorrow owes some gratitude towards video game culture.  Doug Liman’s exciting movie emulates the entire process of playing a challenging level against inhuman hoodlums, failing it, and then having to repeat your steps.  It also searches through that option of having to find an alternate route in order to complete your mission.

When people compare movies to video games, it’s usually to knock the film down a couple of pegs.  It’s never a good sign.  Criticizers will compare the experience to watching someone play a video game, providing the assumption that the movie denies a viewer’s opportunity to immerse themselves.

Edge of Tomorrow has to be the first movie in a very long time that could be compared to watching someone play a video game, and work that angle as a compliment.

Tom Cruise plays the role of Cage, a loyal comrade to a vile war against unruly extraterrestrials.  However, he’s perfectly content with staying away from enemy lines.  When he’s given no choice but to take part in the deadly combat, his confident stature is shattered.

A specific event happens to Cage during his first of many fights.  I dare not describe it simply because if I do, it’ll sound stupid.  A lot of what happens in Edge of Tomorrow chances arbitrary opinions from jaded movie goers in order to open itself up for forthcoming exhilarating sequences of non-stop action.  For the most part, this  defying attitude works wonders for the film’s screenplay (written by Jex Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth, and Christopher McQuarrie adapting from Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s novel All You Need Is Kill).  The audience is willing to go for the ride.

So, back to that climactic change for Cage.  After this pivotal point, Cage has the ability to relive his time on the front lines once he’s killed.  It dumps him in a perpetual state of nausea as life hands him a literal situation of choosing is own adventure.  Of course, the adventure has to lead him to destroy something quite gargantuan.

With the help of Rita (aka. Full Metal B*tch played by a resilient Emily Blunt), Cage must solve this riddle through trial and error, in order to save mankind.

Movie goers have a blast watching Cruise and Blunt fight through different scenarios.  In our eyes, the recognizable actors lose that familiarity because both are dead-set on going against their public image.  The change in character doesn’t call attention to itself, and we genuinely enjoy watching these two gritty personalities at work.

Liman’s intelligent continuity towards the film’s precise timeline is foolproof.  However, the script does glaze over details that could’ve made this war a truly fleshed out danger.  If you’re anticipating something more than humans battling frightening creatures, you need to lower your expectations.

If you go with it, Edge of Tomorrow is a great adventure.  Doug Liman has set this film up in a manner that’s easy for audiences to turn their brains off, but at the same time respect the film as a full-fledged explosion of entertainment.