You Can’t Kill Tom Cruise: The Morbid Time Loops of ‘Edge of Tomorrow’

Time travel stories have been prevalent in human culture since before science fiction was even a thing, so it stands to reason that these tales of temporal confusion are practically a genre in and of themselves. And out of all the time travel narratives that have inspired filmmakers over the years, my personal favorite has to be the Groundhog Day time loop – a formula that has only recently been coopted by other genres.

Of course, long before movies like Happy Death Day dared to explore the darker implications of repeating the same day ad nauseum, it was Doug Liman’s Edge of Tomorrow that first applied this kind of narrative to more serious subject matter. And with the film still finding new fans after over a decade later – not to mention an upcoming anime adaptation of the light novel which inspired its screenplay – today I’d like to look back on a surprisingly disturbing take on time loops that I think might also appeal to horror fans.

Originally published in 2004, Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s sci-fi light novel All You Need is Kill was already a hit long before its big-budget adaptation was greenlit. Inspired by online gamers commenting on how repeated virtual deaths allowed for self improvement, as well as Sakurazaka’s repeated viewings of Groundhog Day, the novel follows a rookie soldier who finds himself trapped in a time loop during a war against invading extraterrestrials. An inexperienced combatant, Keiji Kiriya decides to take advantage of his multiple “lives” in order to become an alien-killing machine.

This action-packed sci-fi yarn almost immediately sparked interest in Hollywood, with a spec script by Dante Harper making onto the Blacklist and being sold for a whopping $3 million dollars only a year after the book was released in North America. This screenplay would then be rewritten by Jez and John-Henry Butterworth when Doug Liman came onboard the project, though he later had Christopher McQuarrie revise it once again as his vision evolved. Further alterations were made once Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt joined the cast, though the frequent rewrites led to production starting before the team had an ending in place, with Liman working alongside McQuarrie to come up with a suitable climax for the action-packed story while they were already filming.

In the finished film, which was released in early summer of 2014, we follow military public affairs officer Major William Cage (Tom Cruise) as he’s invited to cover humanity’s United Defense Force in their battle against seemingly unbeatable alien invaders known as “Mimics.” After attempting to blackmail his way out of joining the fight, Cage is demoted to infantry and sent to the frontlines, where an incident with an Alpha Mimic variant leaves him trapped in a repeating time loop where he must endure the same day again and again. His only hope of escaping the loop lies with Sergeant Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt) – AKA – an experienced soldier who was previously trapped in a hellish loop herself.