Edge of tomorrow

or as the cover of the bluray would have you believe.... Live, Die, Repeat.

I have not read the source material for this, all i know is it's called "all you need is kill" and out of the three titles i gotta say all of them are kinda terrible.

but who cares about titles if the end product is good? in my opinion this is a really good movie.

still... I have biases so may as well put them out on the table.
Not a fan of sci-fi cause it almost always goes into space... this doesn't have that problem so yay.
Not a fan of Tom Cruise, i don't dislike him or anything i just find his films kinda dull and soulless.

ok so an officer get put in a situation where he ends up on the frontlines... through a freak accident he gains to ability to go back to a certain point in time when he dies.
he soon finds out he's not the only one who has had this ability but he is the only one who has it currently.... with past and current knowledge they work together to defeat the alien threat to their world.

And it's a lot of fun, it's well paced and funny and dark and it sets up and follows all it's rules (bar one but i understand why they went the route they did)

It's kinda sucky that this film didn't do well... at all... like according to IMDB at the start of september (about a month prior to writing this) it hasn't even broken even (is USA, it made almost double it's budget worldwide but fun fact... north america doesn't particularly care about the worldwide number... they case about domestic)
but i think a few things are to blame....

1. title.... as mentioned before is kinda silly... i don't know of a good title but everyone i spoke to went "edge of tomorrow? that sounds stupid" and didn't see it.

2. commercials... same problem as title, they kinda downplayed the charm of the film and showed some of the repeats so it just looked like this dark gritty film trying to be a video game.

3. downplaying the fact that it's based off a manga (or light novel? not entirely sure... again i haven't read it) now i get why they did this... they didn't want to alienate people who hate anime... i get it.... but instead to kinda kicked the potential existing fanbase so i'm sure that didn't help sales... granted had they called it "all you need is kill" i know the fans would be bitching about changes... but the fact is that IS what it's based off of. and even though i know it's different then the source i think it did a great job with the world building to tell it's own story.

is it the best film ever? hell no... (personal opinion: princess bride... just saying)
is it a lot of fun, well paced and visually interesting sci-fi? yep.

The good:
Pacing - you think a film about repeating an event over and over would have moments of "not this again" but nope, it only shows what it has to and certain events despite being lived multiple times are only shown once.
Character - they are well written and despite only having like... 2-3 days before returning back to point one they have a lot of personal growth and development.
World building - i love a interesting world with lots of rules that make sense and are followed and this really does that well.

The not so good:
Music - that stupid inception WAaaaaaaan noise.... seriously... no more of that noise... it's so annoying.
exposition - In order to not show us every go through... he has to tell us what he knows because he lived it... so there is a lot of exposition but you kinda have to forgive it.
ending - i think the ending is fine and perfect for the audience it was made for.... but in my mind it kinda sorta breaks one of the rules of the world.
without spoilers something happens after something else happens and that thing is needed to make the first thing work so how does doing 'that' work out to what happens in the ending? extremely minor gripe but again... it's not a bad ending just a loose contradiction.

The bad:
how the hell is this not a nic cage movie.... i'm serious... this has him written all over it... the main character is even named cage.
i don't even really like nic cage movies and i'm not saying he would be better then cruise i'm just asking "how is he not in this movie?"
the REALLY downplay the connection to the source material... like... wow. watching the special features they say "oh we wanted to make this WWII movie but more sci-fi" and that may well be the case but that is not where this started and you know it. like i get it... north americans have certain biases when anime or video games are mentioned... fine whatever... but if i'm watching the special features then i have to physically own the bluray... why not just say "we found this great source material and wanted to have it be like this sci-fi WWII"
would that have been so hard?
like looking at the manga (is this the same artist who did deathnote? ha ha called it... not that it's hard his style is extremely destinctive) you can see the filmmakers definitely pulled inspiration... so why not just admit it?

but yeah good film, too bad it didn't do well... if it had maybe i wouldn't be constantly working on remakes (seriously... i only have one original IP under my belt... and i know people who have done this far longer then i have who can't even say that) not that there is anything wrong with remakes... just it would be nice if original stuff did as well as the remakes.

so yeah if you were curious but worried it was too gritty... it's not... it's actually a lot of fun... go enjoy it.