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Also Known As: - |
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| Year of first release: 2014 | |
| Director: Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity, Jumper) | |
| Actors: Tom Cruise (Oblivion), Emily Blunt (The Wolfman, Looper), Bill Paxton (Aliens) | |
| Country: USA | |
| Genre: SF, War | |
| Conditions of visioning: 03.06.2014, CINEMA theater, 3D | |
| Synopsis: The whole of Europe has been taken over by alien invaders. On the day before the largest and last attempts to recover the continent, Major Cage (Cruise) is sent to the front. He quickly dies, and wakes up at the beginning of the previous day. | |
| Review: Similarly to what I said last year about Oblivion, I like this concept of global war against aliens. The daily time loop in which the hero is stuck reminds me of Groundhog Day that I have recently seen, and of an excellent episode of the Stargate SG-1 TV-series: Window of Opportunity (season 4, episode 6). And the whole movie also made me think of Starship Troopers, actually more the novel than the movie (see this post on the Starship Troopers saga). The endless repetitions of the same war scene feel like playing a video game that you can't beat: after a while you know every move you have to do at the exact time to progress a few seconds further. I know this to be very frustrating, and the character of Tom Cruise should have gone crazy after 100 repetitions of the same day. Edge of Tomorrow is adapted from a Japanese novel entitled All you Need is Kill (the title was changed because of the word kill...). You see this influence in the Mechas (armored suits) and in the design of the sword the heroin carries (see the poster). Like for Oblivion, the story is obviously formatted for mega(lomaniac)-star, but this is maybe actually a good thing. Indeed in other "war against large threats" movies like Pacific Rim, Godzilla, War of the Worlds or Avengers, I found the attempts to show the desperation of the population poorly done. The same goes for the usual family story around the main character(s). Comparing several movies of this type, it seems to me that it is better to stick with your hero and keep the emphasis on the war and on how to defeat the enemy, maybe taking the risk of less pleasing the female viewers. This is what I already liked in World Invasion: Battle Los Angeles. You may have understood: I liked Edge of Tomorrow. Not the best SF movie of all time, but built around a solid concept, visually stunning (the design of the aliens is nice, although at times it reminds of the sentinels in Matrix 2-3) and containing small touches of humour when it is needed to relax the atmosphere. I also found the growing relationship between Cruise and Blunt well brought. In retrospect, I liked Oblivion but I am tempted to lower its rating from 8/10 to 7/10, because I liked Edge of Tomorrow better, and I will have no problem watching it again on Blu-ray, it being less based on a final twist. |
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Rating: 8 /10
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More than entertainment, an Art.
Thursday, June 5, 2014
Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
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After watching the blockbuster with Tom Cruise, I aquired the Kindle edition of the short Japanese novel from which it is adapted: All you Need is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka.
ReplyDeleteIt is indeed short and I could go though it in four evenings. My first comment is that the amount of adaptation that was done is large and obvious. The main two characters are the same, but while the man is Japanese and the action takes place in Japan in the book, the guy is an American in Europe for the movie, and his background story is different. The appearance of the aliens if different, the armored suits are fully covering the body in the novel, and the time loops have different rules. The ending is also completely different.
But now that I can compare both I can see that most, if not all, of the choices made during the adaptation go in the direction of making the story easier to follow in a movie format, giving more room and visibility to side stories and characters (this is why the armors are open in the movie), and in general better suited for a feature-length movie targetted at Western audiences. The only few things I could say I miss in the adaptation are a flashback on the Full Metal Bitch's youth, and the funny comment that after many loops, the same food over and over has no taste anymore!
I have reviewed the work of adaptation but what of the novel itself? The English translation is easy to read except for a few reactions of the characters, or the justification and explanation for their reaction, which are confused. But most of it is an energetic SF story, written by a young author born in the generation of video gamers. The armored suits remind many modern Japanese Animes, but together with the whole style of the novel, can also refer to Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers (1959), the novel at the original of the whole Starship Troopers saga.