Warner Bros.
It’s a real shame that no one has thought to craft a trailer for Doug Liman’s Edge of Tomorrow set to the all-soaring, all-twirling charms of Steve Nicks’ “Edge of Seventeen.” Perhaps this latest trailer for the Tom Cruise-starring future-set actioner will provide the mash-up geeks out there with more material for such a dreamy scenario, but for now, we’re stuck with the clanging sounds and cool kid techno tones of one hell of a weird future.
In the film – previously titled All You Need Is Kill, lest you get confused about why a film about deja vu sounds so weirdly familiar, though with the wrong title – Cruise stars as “not a soldier” Lt. Col. Bill Cage (not a soldier? weird about that military rank then), a man who gets trapped in time loop that keeps bringing him back to the same day. It’s like Groundhog Day, but with a world war, because the particular day that that Cage is trapped inside is the day he dies, over and over, and the day of a major military assault on an alien army. It’s a bad day, okay?
Similar to Groundhog Day, Cage is aware of his predicament, though no one else is (maybe?), and he’s able to improve his skills with each day, at least enough to survive a bit longer. Nothing Cage does, however, changes the inevitable outcome – he’s going to die, and all the humans are going to lose. But when he discovers that star soldier Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt) is hip to what’s going down, it changes the game.
The film’s latest trailer is a bit more heavy on the Cage/Rita dynamic, and it provides a glimpse into something pretty intriguing – does Rita really know what’s going on? if so, does she always know? does that change? – because this new bit of material slides between Rita definitely knowing and being fully confused. Sure, this trailer could have been cut for maximum confusion, but the possibility that Rita’s realizations can change from day to day definitely adds a new layer to the film.
The action film draws from a cool background – it’s based on Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s sci-fi novel “All You Need Is Kill,” a beloved Japanese manga that has a big fanbase. Although the name of main character has been changed, Rita’s is the same. In fact, in the book, she’s known as the “Full Metal Bitch.” Fun!
Edge of Tomorrow opens on June 6th.
