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Reviewed by:
  • Edge of Tomorrow by Doug Liman
  • Leimar Garcia-Siino (bio)
Edge of Tomorrow (Doug Liman US 2014). Warner Home Video 2014. Region 2. 16:9–1.78:1 widescreen. UK£6.99.

Released in June of 2014 and directed by Doug Liman, who directed films such as The Bourne Identity (US/Germany/Czech Republic 2002), Mr. and Mrs. Smith (US 2005) and Jumper (US/Canada 2008), Edge of Tomorrow looks like what happens when Groundhog Day (Ramis US 1993) is crossed with the Halo franchise and the aesthetics of every purposefully estranging alien design from H.R. Giger’s xenomorphs to the Prawns from District 9 (Blomkamp South Africa/Canada/US/NZ 2009). It steals from these as much as it homages them, utilising such standard action-film conventions as the focus on a male protagonist (despite a potentially more interesting female support character) who begins as a naïve self-entitled weakling and transforms into the altruistic hero who battles the monstrous aliens that stand for, essentially, faceless embodiments of evil.

Edge is set in an indeterminate near future, when an alien force invades the Earth, practically razing Europe to the ground in less than five years. A capacity to anticipate and counter any attacks from Earth’s military has garnered the aliens the name ‘Mimics’, and unless a sufficiently advanced form of defence can be devised, the Mimics are expected to completely conquer the world in a few years’ time. The plot is not too concerned with examining the nature of the aliens, nor with addressing whether their arrival had philosophical, social or political repercussions. Compared to near-future films like District 9 or Elysium (Blomkamp US 2013) that seek to open sociocultural dialogues and engage in ecocritical commentary, Edge is far more preoccupied with the microcosm of the individual and their choices rather than the choices of humanity as a whole.

The film’s protagonist is William Cage (Tom Cruise), a US major and public affairs officer who finds himself stripped of rank and forcibly reassigned to a combat unit in Britain set to launch an assault against the alien forces in France the following morning. At the base, Cage is hastily introduced to the bulk of the film’s ensemble, a group of characters primarily composed of stereotyped caricatures whose purposes are not to be confused with actual human beings but to serve as familiar character tropes for the audience to recognise and not [End Page 295] have to think about too much. It is here that it becomes difficult to determine whether the film is engaging in conscious referential intertext (for example, Bill Paxton’s character could be interpreted as a reference to Aliens (Cameron US/UK 1986)), or whether it is merely a product of pop-cultural hypertextual saturation.

The second important character the audience is introduced is Sergeant Rita Vrataski, played by Emily Blunt – the character-descendant of Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor. This character should open a forum for discussion and debate about how strong, capable women are portrayed in film, especially in sf action films. Unlike her antecedents, Vrataski is tough because she’s a soldier, and not primarily because she’s a woman. Her gender is almost entirely overlooked – a welcome perspective – and she is as praised and derided as any male character under the same circumstances would be. In addition, save for a hasty kiss before dying at the end, she is not treated as Cage’s love interest, but as a fellow (and much more capable) soldier whom he respects and admires (a comparison can be drawn with Moto Mori (Rinko Kukuchi) in Pacific Rim (del Toro US 2013), who is also not thrust into a romantic relationship by the end of the film). However, while it is understandable that the protagonist be Cage given that the protagonist in the original novel (Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s All You Need is Kill (2004)) is also male, it is regretful that Vrataski is not given her own story (or made into the main character) but is only a participant in Cage’s arc, whose point of view the audience steadfastly follows. Comparisons with other recent female sf action heroes...

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