Summer-Preview-Edge-of-Tomorrow

In the past few years, time loop movies have been making a slight comeback in mainstream Hollywood. The genre is one rarely ventured into, with good reason, but the quality we’ve seen recently has been spectacular. So with baited breath, and fingers cross, I am wholeheartedly looking forward to Doug Liman’s Edge of Tomorrow this summer.

The biggest reason I am it is not the fact that Tom Cruise is front and centre, but rather that Emily Blunt is right beside him in the female lead.

Blunt has been rising through the ranks over the years, making huge strides across a slew of genres with movies like The Adjustment Bureau, Your Sister’s Sister, and Looper, not to mention Disney’s upcoming Into the Woods. She traverses independent and blockbuster movies like few are capable of, and seeing her return to blockbuster territory here is what’s got me really excited about Edge of Tomorrow. I’m a huge fan of her work, and the footage that Warner Bros. have teased us with so far promises a great chemistry between her and Cruise.

That footage also promises a blockbuster of epic scope, one of the biggest films of the year, making for what is sure to be one of the most adrenaline-fuelled experiences we’ve got coming our way over the summer season. And, above all, its focus on the idea of looping time could make it one of the most unique.

There are a number of very good reasons why most filmmakers don’t even attempt to make time travel movies. For starters, the science behind the sci-fi is (currently) much more fiction than science, but with just enough science for it to be open season should you overlook any holes in the way it works – more than anything, criticism surrounding time travel films rails against any possible plot holes, and to a certain extent, rightly so.

Then, of course, there are budgetary concerns. Few and far between are films like Shane Carruth’s Primer that make them on a shoestring budget. Despite Rian Johnson’s Looper being an independent effort, it still had m. behind it, and Duncan Jones’ Source Code had marginally more with m.Edge-of-Tomorrow-Poster-slice

But perhaps the biggest reason storytellers avoid time loops is the risk of repetition, especially when it comes to films like Groundhog Day, Source Code, and now Edge of Tomorrow, repeating the same day, over and over. If you do that, you risk reducing that day’s importance in the minds of your audience very early on in the film, to the point where they could lose all emotional investment in your characters. Fortunately for us, Groundhog Day and Source Code both avoided the trappings masterfully, repeating enough to keep the feel of the cycle alive whilst bringing plenty of new material into each new loop.

Similarly, the most recent trailer for Liman’s upcoming blockbuster proved that we’ve got nothing to worry about on that front. After Cruise and Blunt discover each other, we’ve instantly got new material to look forward to there – days of training harder and harder as Blunt brings Cruise’s capabilities up to speed in the fight against the aliens; days of seeing the dynamics in their relationship change as they spend more time together; and then what we can assume will be the final day in which Cruise breaks the cycle, giving us an epic ending in which he and Blunt ultimately, presumably, end up saving Earth (at least for now – see below).

Having not read the original Japanese light novel, All You Need Is Kill, written by Hiroshi Sakurazaka and illustrated by Yoshitoshi ABe, I readily admit that the aforementioned assumptions are uneducated guesses. But even if the novel ends badly for Keiji Kiriya (Cruise’s Japanese counterpart), you have to believe that Warner Bros. are going to want to make a change for the film (again, see below).

You can count on two hands the number of memorable time loop films made in the past twenty-odd years: Groundhog Day, 12 Monkeys, Donnie Darko, The Butterfly Effect, Primer, Source Code, and Looper sit at the top of a very short list. And if Liman, Cruise, and Blunt have pulled off what I think they have, Edge of Tomorrow will be earning its place and then some in just a few short weeks.

That the original source material bore no follow-up changes nothing, in my eyes; Warner Bros. have put in over $100m. for this blockbuster, and if it’s as successful as I expect it will be, they’re sure to want to return to this world as soon as possible, ideally within the next few years. The Hobbit comes to an end this year, and the studio have only a handful of properties like this set up as franchises at the moment. Man of Steel (and the expected Justice League) is of course the biggest among them, with The Lego Movie recently launching a new property for them, Godzilla sure to do the same this summer, and Guy Ritchie’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E. quite possibly doing the same early next year.

Cruise is already in solid business with Paramount on his Mission: Impossible franchise, and potential sequels for Jack Reacher and Top Gun, with Van Helsing set to launch a new series for Universal if it gets off the ground. Naturally, Warner Bros. would do well to set up their own property with Cruise, given his record at the box office, and though it’s still too early to know for sure, I’d be more than happy to turn out for a second outing if he and Blunt come back for round two.

Edge of Tomorrow will be released in 3D and IMAX 3D on 30th May in the UK, with its US release date following a week later on June 6th.