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Edge of Tomorrow

Where to watch.

Watch Edge of Tomorrow with a subscription on Apple TV+, rent on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, or buy on Fandango at Home, Prime Video.

What to Know

Gripping, well-acted, funny, and clever, Edge of Tomorrow offers entertaining proof that Tom Cruise is still more than capable of shouldering the weight of a blockbuster action thriller.

Audience Reviews

Cast & crew.

Major William Cage

Emily Blunt

Rita Vrataski

Brendan Gleeson

General Brigham

Bill Paxton

Master Sergeant Farell

Jonas Armstrong

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Movie news & guides, this movie is featured in the following articles., critics reviews.

The Ending Of Edge Of Tomorrow Explained

One of the best sci-fi movies of the last decade , Edge of Tomorrow (aka Live, Die, Repeat ) hit theaters in 2014, starring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt, and while the film is a highly enjoyable mixture of pulse-pounding action, satisfying character development, and time loop-y antics, it also can be a little confusing.

Featuring a Groundhog Day -like premise — in which United Defense Force media relations manager William Cage (Cruise) finds himself reliving the same horrific day over and over, aided by the only other person who's ever experienced this before, Rita Vrataski (Blunt) — Edge of Tomorrow sings a familiar tune, but it can sometimes be a little difficult to follow all the lyrics. As a result, it's not unusual to finish the movie with a few lingering questions. The answers are there, but much like Cage's repeating day, it may take a few passes to figure out what's going on. Fortunately, we've re-lived this rewatchable sci-fi film a few times and feel well-equipped to help you navigate through its twisty ending.

How do the Mimics' time travel abilities work in Edge of Tomorrow?

Understanding the ending of Edge of Tomorrow requires you to have been paying pretty close attention toward the beginning, because what exactly the extraterrestrial Mimics are doing gets explained pretty early on, and it goes by fast. As explained by Dr. Carter (Noah Taylor), a Mimic biologist, the Mimics are really like one giant, interconnected organism, with larger "Alpha" Mimics acting as the central nervous system and commanding the Mimic drones. These high-ranking Alphas then return information to be processed by the central "Omega" Mimic. However, each time an Alpha dies, the Omega rolls the clock back 24 hours, keeping all of their collective knowledge intact and enabling the Mimics to adjust their strategies in order to gain a definitive victory.

While the Alphas seem to be the decision makers of the Mimics, dictating the actions of the drones and determining their strategy, Carter hypothesizes that since the Omega essentially functions as the brain of the Mimics, the only way to stop the Mimic invasion is to destroy it. The problem is that thanks to their powers, the Mimics know about the military's biggest weakness, and they have a lot more experience than Cage and Vrataski in utilizing their time loop abilities to their advantage, so they're pretty adept at keeping the Omega safe and hidden.

What happened to Rita at Verdun?

There's a whole juicy prequel just waiting to be made in the story of Rita Vrataski at the Battle of Verdun, which we hear about in bits and pieces but never see. From what we learn at the beginning of the film, the human battle against the Mimics dragged on for five years before the United Defense Force (UDF) finally gained their first victory at Verdun, led by Sergeant Vrataski, who was later nicknamed "the Angel of Verdun." The popular version of the story is that Rita led the UDF troops to victory due to her abilities as an exceptional soldier, but the truth is, she had another advantage that no one knew about: She was living in a time loop.

The first time Vrataski fought the Battle of Verdun, she was killed. But similar to what would later happen to Cage in France, when Rita died, she also managed to take an Alpha with her, and their blood mingled together as they both kicked the bucket. So instead of staying dead, Rita woke up a day before Verdun, and she lived out that battle over and over, gaining a bit more ground each time before she died. After many repetitions, Rita started experiencing visions of the Omega, and she attempted to follow them in order to destroy the brain and defeat the Mimics once and for all. But in the course of finally leading the UDF to victory over the Mimics, she was badly injured and received a blood transfusion. Without the Mimic blood, she lost both the looping ability and the visions.

Why did the day start resetting for Cage?

The first time Cage was dropped into the middle of the battle in France, he had absolutely no idea what he was doing. He didn't even know how to turn off the safety on his gun. Yet he still managed to outlast most of the other members of his unit through sheer luck. However, Cage eventually wound up alone and on his back, surrounded by Mimics, including a giant, blue-tinged Alpha. In desperation, Cage grabbed for a UDF incendiary device lying beside him on the ground and fired it off right as the Alpha lunged for him.

Unfortunately — and fortunately — for Cage, while the resulting explosion was powerful enough to blow up the Alpha, it killed him as well. As Cage lay dying, his flesh burning away, the blood of the dying Alpha dripped into his open wounds, passing along its link to the Omega and giving Cage the same ability the Alphas have — when he dies, the day is reset, so he can learn from his previous actions and improve upon them next time. As with the Alphas, his consciousness was knocked back 24 hours in time. Since the invasion had taken place in the morning, he woke up on the preceding morning, when he first arrived at Heathrow military base.

Why did Cage think the Omega was in Germany?

Once Cage and Vrataski start working together, Rita preps Cage for what to expect: He'll keep looping over and over, and eventually, he'll start experiencing visions of the Omega. When that happens, the two of them can use Cage's visions to locate the Omega and destroy it. According to Vrataski and Carter, although the humans won at the Battle of Verdun, it was really a loss overall, because it caused Rita to lose the time loop ability before she could find the Omega and end the war. So Cage's main goal now that he has the ability isn't to help the UDF claim a victory at the invasion of France but to locate and eliminate the Omega once and for all. Based on Vrataski and Carter's research, that's the only way to end the Mimic threat once and for all.

When Cage's visions do eventually start, he's able to use architectural clues to narrow the Omega's location to a dam in Germany. Cage and Vrataski spend the next many loops attempting to get from the beach in France to the dam in Germany, but once Cage finally reaches his destination, he's horrified to realize that the Omega isn't there after all. It turns out that his visions (and likely Rita's as well) weren't a glimpse into the Omega's consciousness but rather a carefully laid trap, in which they saw exactly what — and where — the Omega wanted them to see.

What were the Mimics trying to do with the visions?

When Cage shows up at the dam in Germany in search of the Omega, he's instead greeted by an Alpha and a drone, with the Omega nowhere to be found. While previous Mimics have killed Cage the instant they get a chance, these Mimics seem to have something else in mind. Instead of ripping him apart as usual, the Alpha merely wounds Cage, giving him a deep gash that bleeds profusely. As Cage watches his blood drip out of his body, he surmises that this is the Mimics' true plan, to lure him away from his allies and then steal back the power kept in his blood.

How exactly the Mimics were planning to take the power from Cage is never made entirely clear. After all, Cage has bled many times before as he died, and that's never caused him to lose the ability. So whether they were planning to somehow drain him of all his blood or whether the Mimics had another way to extract the power, we'll never fully know. What is clear is that the visions were never an advantage over the Mimics, but instead, they were consciously created by them in order to lead Cage and Vrataski into a trap. Perhaps each time one of the looping humans died, it deepened the link with the Omega, until the Omega was finally able to plant thoughts in their minds and manipulate their actions. In that case, Vrataski losing the ability at the Battle of Verdun may not have been the setback she thought it was and may have actually worked in her favor.

Where was the Omega actually located?

Although the visions of the dam in Germany proved to be a red herring, the Omega was still hunkered down in Europe, just in a different country. After Cage and Vrataski stopped relying on his visions to lead them where they needed to go, they managed to locate the Omega through a different method, using the direct link between the Omega and the Alphas (and, similarly, Cage) to pinpoint its location.

Ultimately, the real Omega is located deep beneath the Louvre Pyramid in Paris, France. When Cage, Vrataski, and the rogue J-Squad arrive at the famous museum, the area is flooded by the Seine River, with the Omega located underwater. Typically, the Pyramid serves as the entrance to the museum, housing an expansive lobby underneath, but in Edge of Tomorrow , this entire area is in disarray following the Mimic attacks on Paris and the overflowing of the Seine. So while normally there's no water underneath the Louvre Pyramid, in Edge of Tomorrow , Cage has to swim the final distance down to the Omega.

What was the device that Cage got from General Brigham?

After realizing that the visions are not, in fact, a roadmap to the Mimics' greatest weakness (and in hindsight, why would they be?), Cage and Vrataski are forced to re-evaluate their strategy to destroy the Omega, and they decide instead to resort to a piece of technology Carter started developing back when Rita was the one caught in the loop, which he hoped would lead them to the Omega. Carter was never able to complete this transponder, since Vrataski lost the ability to loop before they could test it on her, and Carter subsequently lost his job and had his research confiscated by the UDF.

After getting fired, it appeared that Carter tried making a new transponder, but he told Vrataski it didn't work, possibly because of his lack of resources following his demotion or because he didn't have a subject with a link to the Alphas to test it on. So instead, they had to acquire Carter's original device, which was kept in a safe in General Brigham's (Brendan Gleeson) office. While the mechanics of the transponder are left a bit fuzzy, it works by making contact with the blood of an Alpha, through which it establishes a link to the Omega and determines the creature's location. Since Cage's blood has the same properties as that of an Alpha, Vrataski was able to use the transponder on Cage, which is how they determine that the Omega is under the Louvre.

Why didn't Cage want a blood transfusion?

According to Vrataski, the only rule Cage must abide by while he loops is that if he gets injured, he has to make sure he dies. She tells him that the way she lost the looping ability was through a blood transfusion, causing her to conclude that blood is the key to the ability. Many times throughout the film, Vrataski is in fact the one to kill Cage when he becomes injured, ensuring that he resets.

It's never clear exactly how much blood Cage could afford to lose while still holding onto his ability to reset. Based on his other injuries throughout the film, he could definitely spare at least a little blood without risking his link with the Omega, and it's unlikely that a transfusion would've replaced every drop of his blood. So it seems most likely that while some of Cage's blood did in fact remain in his body, the transfusion diluted it to the point where the Mimic link was severed.

How did Cage defeat the Mimics?

After receiving a blood transfusion following his theft of Dr. Carter's transponder from General Brigham's office, Cage and Vrataski realize they're all out of resets. That evening is their very last chance to find the Omega and prevent the UDF invasion in France, which is a trap set by the Mimics that will result in absolute defeat for the humans and the loss of countless lives. Knowing they won't get another shot at this, they enlist the help of J-Squad, who helps Cage and Vrataski steal a UDF plane.

They fly to Paris, where the area around the Louvre is completely overrun with Mimics, and all of J-Squad winds up sacrificing themselves in their quest to get Cage and Vrataski inside. Once they've finally made it in, Vrataski offers to provide a distraction that will allow Cage to cover the remaining distance to the Omega, knowing that neither one of them has any hope of making it out alive. As an Alpha kills Vrataski, Cage is able to get to the edge of the water covering the Omega and begins to swim down to it, holding a belt of grenades. The Alpha follows him and stabs him through the chest, but before Cage dies, he pulls the pins of the grenades and drops them down to the Omega, which dies in the explosion.

As the Omega dies, it attempts to restart the day again, similar to what it does when an Alpha dies. But it would seem that the Omega can't reset itself, and instead of giving the Mimics a do-over, it instead transmits its own death back 24 hours, killing all of the Mimics a day before the Omega itself was killed.

Cage said he lost the ability to reset ... so why did he reset at the end?

Throughout the whole movie, Cage and Vrataski firmly believe that if Cage ever receives a blood transfusion, he'll lose his reset ability for good, which is why they always ensure that he dies each time they don't complete their goal. So when he and Rita get into a car accident following their theft of the transponder from Brigham's office and Cage is given blood, they both assume they're literally on their last life. That's why they pull in J Squad — they want the best possible shot at accomplishing their mission, because it's the only chance they have left.

But then ... Cage resets after all! Apparently, after reaching the Omega and getting skewered by the Alpha, Cage held onto life just long enough to get bathed in the Omega and the Alpha's blood when the grenades went off, giving him the ability all over again. Having that blood in his system when he died meant that when the Omega attempted to reset the day, Cage got reset, too. However, unlike the Mimics, whose survival was tied to the Omega, Cage is a human, and his life doesn't depend on the Omega being alive. So while the Omega's attempted reset resulted in the deaths of all the Mimics 24 hours prior, Cage wasn't affected by the Omega's death and merely got another do-over he hadn't been expecting.

Why did Cage reset to a different point in Edge of Tomorrow's ending?

By the end of Edge of Tomorrow , we've seen Cage reset dozens of times, always at Heathrow military base on the morning before the invasion in France. But at the end of the film, Cage wakes up in a helicopter on his way to his meeting with Brigham, before he was ever sent to Heathrow and, thankfully, before Rita or any of the members of J-Squad were killed. The different reset point can be confusing after watching Cage always return to the same time previously, but it makes sense as long as you understand that Cage lost the reset ability before the end and then regained it.

See, the first time Cage died, he reset to the day before that initial death, placing him at Heathrow the morning before the invasion on the beach. Think of that point in time at Heathrow kind of like a video game save point. Every subsequent time Cage died, no matter how much time passed between him waking up and that particular death, he always reverted to that original save point. However, to extend the video game analogy, when he lost the reset ability, it was basically game over. The second time he gained the Mimic ability, he had to spin up a new game, which established its own unique save point, a day before he killed the Omega. Since the Omega died in the early hours of the morning before the France invasion, Cage reset to the previous morning, right before he met with Brigham.

Does Cage still have the reset ability at the end of Edge of Tomorrow?

It would be easy to finish Edge of Tomorrow wondering if Cage still has the ability to reset again if he died, since that's what he does after defeating the Omega. Of course, without the Mimics to fight, Cage hopefully wouldn't find himself facing down death every day, but it could still be a handy ability to have in case he were to, for example, accidentally get himself run over by another truck. Granted, it would be a bummer for Cage to keep living for many years, die, and then wake up back en route to Brigham's office again, but one could argue that it might be preferable to staying dead.

However, there's actually no need to speculate about whether Cage's power is more of a blessing or a curse, since chances are, by the end of the film, he doesn't have it anymore. The way that Dr. Carter explains the Mimics' ability to Cage is that when an Alpha dies, the Omega resets it back to the day before. The Alpha isn't actually resetting itself, and it seems to have no special abilities without the guidance of the Omega. Since Cage essentially stepped into the role of an Alpha when he died, the time looping isn't actually his power. It belongs to the Omega. Without an Omega around to fling Cage's consciousness back in time whenever he dies, Cage is fated to live and die — with no repeat — just like the rest of us.

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Movie Review

Killed in Action by Aliens, Over and Over Again

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By Manohla Dargis

June 5, 2014

Tell me if you’ve heard this one before. A man wakes up and quickly realizes that he’s repeating yesterday, down to the last meal, salutation and conversation. He’s trapped in a kind of time loop. He can’t escape, but, he realizes, he can change. That may not make sense, given the logic of the space-time continuum , but it works just fine in fiction because, well, it’s fiction. To put it another way, “There are no paradoxes in time travel, there can’t be.” Or so says a character in Robert A. Heinlein’s 1964 novel, “Farnham’s Freehold,” about space, time and the apocalypse.

This time around, as it were, the hero isn’t trapped in the maddeningly cute town of Punxsutawney , Pa., as Bill Murray was in “Groundhog Day,” Harold Ramis’s mind- and clock-bending 1993 comedy masterwork. The guy caught in the loop here is played by Tom Cruise, a star who doesn’t do ordinary well. He plays Maj. William Cage, a sensationally adaptable individual who, when confronted with Armageddon, courtesy of scuttling extraterrestrials, would prefer to avoid the fight. But this is a Tom Cruise movie, and so stuff happens, and then it happens all over again and again and again, initially with an engagingly light, comic touch and then with escalating seriousness as Cage’s insouciance turns into gravitas in a war that has united the human world against the alien.

The plot for “Edge of Tomorrow,” which was directed by Doug Liman, has largely been gleaned from “All You Need Is Kill,” a splatter-heavy combat novel by the Japanese writer Hiroshi Sakurazaka. Mr. Sakurazaka doesn’t acknowledge “Groundhog Day,” but he names his heroine Rita — the name of the romantic foil played by Andie MacDowell in that film — suggesting that he is obliquely paying a debt. The debt is more pronounced in the movie, in which Mr. Liman leavens Mr. Sakurazaka’s mordant, too-cool-for-school humor with some wit and a touch of romance with another lovely Rita, this one played by Emily Blunt. Mr. Liman ’s track record with strong female characters, like Angelina Jolie’s in his bullet-ridden comedy of remarriage , “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” bodes well for Rita.

“Edge of Tomorrow,” which has a script credited to Christopher McQuarrie and Jez and John-Henry Butterworth, opens with lock-jawed earnestness and news reports of a global calamity. Extraterrestrials, kinetic creatures called Mimics that look like somersaulting metal octopuses, have conquered most of Europe with their lashing tentacles and are poised to take over the rest of the world. On the eve of a coordinated human assault on the aliens, Cage, a flack for the American military, is called into the office of a general, Brigham (Brendan Gleeson), and told that he’ll be covering D-Day from the front. Cage demurs, raising his brow and breaking out a small, disbelieving smile before beginning a soft-shoe shuffle toward the door.

This song-and-dance rapidly shifts your understanding of whom Mr. Cruise is playing and how. He’s funny! And watching him glide through the opening of “Edge of Tomorrow” — a suggestion of “Jerry Maguire” edging his smile — it’s hard not to think, Where has this guy been? It’s been years since Mr. Cruise felt this light on screen. His smile might have helped make him a star but, like Julia Roberts’s megawatt grin, it rarely beams as brightly as it once did. Part of this is due to his status as an action star. Yet it’s also traceable to a dearth of decent male-female romances and the ascension of mostly male yuk-fests like the gross-out burlesque “Tropic Thunder,” in which he dances in a fat suit.

In “Edge of Tomorrow,” Mr. Liman brings Mr. Cruise’s smile out of semiretirement and also gives him the kind of physical challenges at which he so brilliantly excels. Mr. Cruise’s great talent has always been body-based; he doesn’t put across complex emotional shadings, tunneling so deep into a character’s psychology that it can feel like a transmogrification. Much like old-school, pre-Method movie stars, he takes possession of his characters from the outside in, expressing their qualities and kinks through his extraordinarily controlled physicality. This kind of performance can be easy to overlook, shrugged off as little more than stunt work, as if acting through the whole body were somehow inferior to emoting with a big, TV-friendly face.

As expected, there are wow-worthy stunts and high-flying bodies in “Edge of Tomorrow,” which finds its groove after Cage discovers that he’s on seemingly endless repeat. In time, he figures out what’s going on and sets out to change fate, which leads him to Rita, a legendary warrior with the cutesy moniker Full Metal Bitch. Any thought that the diminutive-looking Ms. Blunt may not be up to that nickname is put to rest with Rita’s introduction, which shows her holding a fiercely beautiful yoga pose in a combat-training area while whirring blades circle her. It’s a perfect encapsulation of the yin and yang quality that enriches her character and the story, as when she and Cage, like a cloak-and-dagger Fred and Ginger, dart and dodge through a mission with perfect synchronicity.

Eventually, Mr. Liman’s eccentricities and the morbidly funny neo-screwball vibe that he establishes are swamped by generic pyrotechnics and noise. That’s predictable, given the high studio stakes and the industry’s faith in spectacles of destruction, but it doesn’t obliterate the movie’s pleasures. In his afterword to “All You Need Is Kill,” Mr. Sakurazaka explains that he was thinking about video games while writing the novel. “I reset the game hundreds of times,” he writes, “until my special attack finally went off perfectly.” In other words, video games are a type of time machine that allows players, if they put in the hours, to achieve victory. Hence the movie’s clever tagline, “Live, Die, Repeat,” which, of course, echoes the faith that every film genre fan embraces: live, watch, repeat.

“Edge of Tomorrow” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Intense violence.

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A Spoiler-Filled Review of “Edge of Tomorrow”

By Richard Brody

A SpoilerFilled Review of “Edge of Tomorrow”

It’s rare that the art of movies and the business of their distribution coincide as closely as they do with “Edge of Tomorrow,” the director Doug Liman’s new science-fiction vehicle for Tom Cruise. It opens this Friday, June 6th, the seventieth anniversary of D Day—and that massive and decisive Normandy landing, tweaked to fit the movie’s futuristic premise, is also its main dramatic event. The metaphorical overlay of fantasy and history is the best thing “Edge of Tomorrow” has to offer—and, for much of its running time, that overlay is enough to lend the movie a shiver of curious power.

“Edge of Tomorrow,” as everyone already knows, is a sci-fi war film with a “Groundhog Day”-like premise: Cruise plays a soldier who, after being killed in combat, awakens the day before the battle and must relive, over and over, the moment of his death. Yet the movie hidden behind “Edge of Tomorrow” isn’t “Groundhog Day” but, rather, “Saving Private Ryan.” The terrifyingly gory opening sequence of Steven Spielberg’s film—the landing at Omaha Beach—poses a fundamental question about war: If the D Day combat had been reported in real time and in detail, if the uncensored newsreel footage that it generated played like Spielberg’s realistic scene—with its dismembered limbs, dangling viscera, incinerated bodies, cries of agony, scattered corpses, and waves of blood—would the American public have tolerated the pursuit of the war until the enemies’ surrender? And would sufficient numbers of American men have fought in it willingly?

That question is the premise of “Edge of Tomorrow”: the world is battling alien creatures who have killed hundreds of millions of people in Europe, and the allied army, known as the United Defense Force (U.D.F.), is planning a colossal and top-secret mobilization to cross the English Channel and gain a beachhead in France in order to reconquer the continent from the invading organisms. On the eve of the great mission, Major William Cage (Cruise), a U.D.F. information officer, is ordered to be embedded in a combat battalion in order to “sell the war” to the citizenry.

Because the setup is the source of much of the movie’s pleasure, more or less any discussion of the story is a spoiler. “Edge of Tomorrow” is a movie that offers primarily the glee of its telling—the well-crafted delight of a tall fantasy that’s as shallow as it is clever—and I’m going to indulge in the pleasure of this well-wrought yarn by simply telling it.

Cage, a former advertising executive who has no military training or background, wants no part of the fight, and he refuses the order from the general in command (Brendan Gleeson). He tries to flee, and is tased into submission—only to awaken in the staging area, demoted to private, and forced into a front-line combat unit under the hard-nosed command of Master Sergeant Farell (Bill Paxton). But the beach landing goes horribly awry. The troops are being massacred by the superfast, thrashing, whip-tentacled monsters, and Cage, confronting an especially big and mean creature, is himself quickly killed. Then, in a brashly effective and simple cut from one shot to another, Cage comes instantly back to life, restored to the way he was at the start of the day of battle, at the moment of his reawakening after being tased.

The crucial and delicious detail is that Cage’s curse, to die again endlessly (though, somehow, seemingly painlessly), affords him a limitless capacity to learn on the job—each return to battle is both another lesson in warfare and another chance to probe the enemy’s vulnerabilities. Soon, reawakening at the British base, Cage chooses a martial mentor: Sergeant Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt), a commando fighter who was the heroine of the U.D.F.’s one prior military victory on the continent (she’s nicknamed the Angel of Verdun, extending a metaphor one generation back). Vrataski trains Cage and accompanies him into battle. They are both helped by a discredited physicist (Noah Taylor), whose speculative simulations reveal the enemy’s deft deceptions and hidden weakness.

The idea of the movie (based on the novel “ All You Need Is Kill ,” by Hiroshi Sakurazaka) is a corker, which is why it’s worth reëmphasizing the spoiler alert. At the same time as Cage’s reiterated lives allow him to master the monsters, we learn that the monsters’ central brain has allowed Cage to be regenerated on purpose. The monster brain is using Cage to learn how humans fight. Vrataski was also similarly chosen. As it turns out, she offered humanity a Pyrrhic victory at Verdun: the aliens allowed her troops to win there in order to observe and master her tactics. When Cage and Vrataski figure this out, they recognize that they have to get one step ahead of the aliens on the learning curve, and must anticipate their play one move in advance, in order to make their decisive advance toward Paris. (The story deals with the sci-fi problem of parallel worlds by making each new iteration ontologically supersede the previous one: last world, definitive world.)

“Edge of Tomorrow” conveys its ingenious, historically resonant premise but never develops it. The narrative is high-concept gimmickry realized with efficiency and energy but not much imagination. The engineering of the intricate story, and the deft dovetailing needed to iterate multiple lives in rapid succession, seem to have taxed Liman’s art, as does the effort to simulate chemistry between Cruise and Blunt. She’s an active and alert performer who, throughout, seems to want more—a character with a life story to sink her interpretive teeth into—whereas Cruise takes Cage’s one-note backstory, the cowardly out-of-work ad man, and expands it, and himself, to the breaking point. Cruise’s eternal sheen of callow youth is integrated into the very substance of the film. As Cage is converted by circumstances into a hardened and capable fighting machine (veering toward superhero territory), the story tracks his dramatic transformation, in under two hours, from a raw trainee into a military hero. “Edge of Tomorrow” turns out to be the movie that Cage was ordered to make: his greatest recruiting film.

What difference would it make to such a juicy tale if Liman had brought more imagination to its direction? If he had parsed the action with more detail and more nuance or had conceived and encapsulated the characters with more insight? The problem with a good story that’s nothing more than a good story is that it exhausts itself in the telling, as this one does, and never makes the leap from idea to experience. “Edge of Tomorrow” requires Cage’s heroism to be simultaneously physical and intellectual, a matter of calculation and anticipation as well as of courage and execution. What’s missing from the movie is the existential adventure that it implies—the confrontation with death, the overcoming of pain. Liman offers war leached of horror—death without pain, memory without trauma—and narrows Cage to a stick figure emptied of the fascinating and disturbing psychological implications of his adventure. The movie is also humorless—at least, devoid of intentional humor. Yet the demands of the international movie-distribution marketplace seem to be responsible for a howlingly funny clinching line of dialogue, capping the heroes’ success: “Russian and Chinese forces are marching across Europe without resistance.” It promises an utterly unintended sequel.

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By Christopher Fiorello

By Susan B. Glasser

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The Day After Tomorrow

Jack Hall, paleoclimatologist, must make a daring trek from Washington, D.C. to New York City to reach his son, trapped in the cross-hairs of a sudden international storm which plunges the p... Read all Jack Hall, paleoclimatologist, must make a daring trek from Washington, D.C. to New York City to reach his son, trapped in the cross-hairs of a sudden international storm which plunges the planet into a new Ice Age. Jack Hall, paleoclimatologist, must make a daring trek from Washington, D.C. to New York City to reach his son, trapped in the cross-hairs of a sudden international storm which plunges the planet into a new Ice Age.

Roland Emmerich
Jeffrey Nachmanoff
Dennis Quaid
Jake Gyllenhaal
Emmy Rossum
1.3K User reviews
147 Critic reviews
47 Metascore
6 wins & 12 nominations total

Laura Chapman

Jason Evans

Frank Harris

Dr. Lucy Hall

Brian Parks

Janet Tokada

Terry Rapson
Saudi Delegate

Venezuelan Delegate

Vice President Becker

Saudi Translator
(as Michael A. Samah)

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Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

Trivia Twentieth Century Fox invited a group of scientists to preview this movie, to test their reactions to the "science" used in it. None of the scientists were impressed with what they saw, although most conceded that the movie was enjoyable nonsense.
Goofs American glaciologists in Antarctica are heard using US units of measurement during their work. The metric system is in use by glaciologists - even American ones - in all scientific contexts.

Library Security Guard : [as Brian works on a radio] Maybe you should have somebody help with that, you know?

Brian Parks : Sir, I am president of the Electronics Club, the Math Club, and the Chess Club. Now, if there's a bigger nerd in here, please... point him out.

Library Security Guard : ...I'll just leave you alone to work on it, then.

Crazy credits The Fox logo before the credits has a storm in the background.
Connections Featured in HBO First Look: The Making of 'The Day After Tomorrow' (2004)
Soundtracks Karma Written and Performed by Emanuele Arnone (as Fungone) Courtesy of Compression Records/Magelic Productions Inc.

User reviews 1.3K

TheLittleSongbird
Nov 29, 2009
What is 'The Day After Tomorrow' about?
Is 'The Day After Tomorrow' based on a book?
On which continent does the movie start?
May 28, 2004 (United States)
United States
Official site
Montréal, Québec, Canada
Twentieth Century Fox
Centropolis Entertainment
Lionsgate Films
See more company credits at IMDbPro
$125,000,000 (estimated)
$186,740,799
$68,743,584
May 30, 2004
$552,639,571

Technical specs

Runtime 2 hours 4 minutes
Dolby Digital

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Edge Of Tomorrow Ending Explained: Ready Player Tom Cruise

Audiences have grown accustomed to watching Tom Cruise risk life and limb for his movies, whether it requires him to swing around the outside of the tallest building in the world or belt Foreigner tunes to his co-star's butt . But as un-killable as Cruise seems to be in real-life (or thinks he is, anyway), he's got nothing on his character from 2014's "Edge of Tomorrow."

Directed by Doug Liman, the sci-fi thriller (a loose adaptation of the Japanese novel "All You Need Is Kill") takes place in an alternate 2020 that's somehow worse than the actual one , in which an army of aliens known as Mimics have crash-landed in Germany and quickly conquered much of Europe. Cruise stars as Major William Cage, a selfish PR officer with no real combat experience who's demoted and forced to participate in an invasion against the Mimics, only to find himself trapped in a time loop after being covered in the blood of an unusually large Mimic, and dying in battle.

Confounded about what's happening, Cage gets some clarity from Sgt. Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt), a war hero who was formerly stuck in her own Mimic-induced time loop. For the most part, "Edge of Tomorrow" is pretty cohesive in the way it lays out the story's rules for time travel, at least until you get to the movie's somewhat baffling ending.

The Ending of Edge of Tomorrow

As Cage soon learns, the larger Mimics are known as Alphas and exist as part of a super-organism controlled by the Omega: a creature that resets the day when an Alpha is killed in combat, allowing the Mimics to keep re-fighting the same battle until they win. Rita, like Cage, discovered this after being exposed to an Alpha's blood, allowing her to tap into the Omega's power until she got a blood transfusion.

Much of "Edge of Tomorrow" consists of repeated scenes of Cage training and trying to find the Omega with Rita. This also necessitates Cage dying, over and over, allowing him to learn from his mistakes in the same way someone playing a video game has to keep tackling the same challenges until they can beat them without getting their avatar killed. Along the way, Cage grows more selfless and empathetic, much like Bill Murray's uncaring weatherman Phil Connors did in the classic time loop comedy "Groundhog Day."

Eventually, Cage and Rita do locate the Omega, only for Cage to lose his time-travel abilities after he suffers a severe injury and gets a life-saving blood transfusion before he can kill himself. As such, Cage seems to die permanently while sacrificing his life to kill the Omega before unexpectedly making contact with the creature's blood, sending him back not one, but two days to a reality where Cage was never demoted and humanity is winning the war against the Mimics.

Wait, What?

While critics and audiences mostly liked "Edge of Tomorrow" when it first came out, its ending left many perplexed, given the way it seemed to blatantly violate the film's established rules about the Omega's powers. As co-writer Christopher McQuarrie explained, the original plan was to end the movie on a darker note. However, as the film evolved and began to play up the comedy inherent to Cage getting killed time and time again, those plans had to change with it:

"... We really struggled to deliver what the movie needed to be emotionally. I know the ending was somewhat controversial, with some people who didn't like it, but I think the only way to make those people happy would to end the movie in a way that wasn't happy. We weren't interested in doing that. It needed to end in a way that wasn't harsh."

Shaky logic aside, the ending is satisfying when it comes to Cage's arc. At the start of "Edge of Tomorrow," Cruise's character is self-serving and hasn't done anything to earn the respect afforded to his ranking in the army. So, when soldiers snap to attention as he walks by in the movie's last scene, it feels like he actually deserves it. What's more, Cage is so happy to see Rita alive that he doesn't care that she no longer remembers him or what he did, cementing the idea that he's more concerned about people beyond himself and less fixated on personal glory.

So, About That Sequel...

Interestingly, McQuarrie has said " Edge of Tomorrow 2 " will clear up all the questions about the first movie's ending ... if it ever happens. The sequel has been in the pipeline since 2015, based on an idea Cruise pitched to McQuarrie. Several rewrites later, the script is now apparently done, with Cruise, Blunt, and Liman all ready to return as soon as Warner Bros. says "Yes."

Therein lies the problem: "Edge of Tomorrow" grossed $370.5 million at the box office against a $178 million budget, which was enough to make it profitable (going by the old rule that a movie needs to gross double its budget in theaters to break even), but nowhere near enough to guarantee a sequel will happen. Not helping matters, Cruise and McQuarrie are still buried deep in the world of "Mission: Impossible," not to mention Cruise and Liman planning to shoot a movie in outer space (you read that right) at some point.

Blunt has admitted that scheduling is a big reason "Edge of Tomorrow 2" keeps getting postponed. The other factor , as Blunt noted, is the budget. In the Covid era, studios often only spend $150-$200 million on surefire bets, as far as their theatrical releases go. And unless everyone involved agrees to take a hefty pay cut, the odds are against Warner Bros. greenlighting "Edge of Tomorrow 2" as a Max exclusive.

Does Edge of Tomorrow Hold Up?

For all the questions its ending raises, "Edge of Tomorrow" works perfectly well as a standalone film. It presents the mythology of the Mimics with as few exposition dumps as possible, there are no attempts to set up sequels, and it recycles the tropes of the time loop sub-genre to tell a new story with a proper message. Compared to the modern landscape, where tentpoles that primarily exist to launch franchises reign supreme, "Edge of Tomorrow" is a breath of fresh air.

Not only that, the action in "Edge of Tomorrow" is genuinely inventive in the way it uses montages as visual shorthand for Cage cycling through his time loop over and over. The spectacle is equally captivating; as often as the movie plays Cage's injuries and deaths for darkly comedic effect, it also makes his pain tangible. You can't help but feel sorry for the schmuck and want to cheer him on, even if the whole situation is kinda his fault. Because of this, there's a real sense of stakes whenever Cage and Rita are in danger, more so than in a lot of recent blockbusters.

That's not to say "Edge of Tomorrow" is without its faults. Its conclusion is still nonsensical, and the quasi-romance between Cage and Rita falls flat, in part because Cruise and Blunt have zero onscreen romantic chemistry. Still, "Edge of Tomorrow" has only gotten better over time, much like a great video game with endless replay potential.

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"Edge of Tomorrow" is less of a time travel movie than an experience movie; that statement might not make sense now, but it probably will after you've seen it. Based on Hiroshi Sikurazaka's novel "All You Need is Kill", it's a true science fiction film, highly conceptual, set during the aftermath of an alien invasion. Maybe "extra-dimensional being invasion" is more accurate. The fierce, octopod-looking beasties known as Mimics are controlled hive-mind style by a creature that seems able to peer through time, or rupture it, or something. When the tale begins, we don't have exact answers about the enemy's powers (that's for our intrepid heroes to find out), but we have a solid hunch that it can see possible futures through the eyes of specific humans, then treat them as, essentially, video game characters, following their progress through the nasty "adventure" of the war, and making note of their tactical maneuvers, the better to ensure our collective extermination.

Tom Cruise , who seems to be spending his fifties saving humanity, plays Major William Cage, an Army public relations officer. Cage is a surprising choice for the role of hero. He's never seen combat yet inexplicably finds himself thrown into the middle of a ferocious battle that will decide the outcome of the war. The film begins with Cage en route to European command headquarters in London, waking up in the belly of a transport chopper. The rest of the movie may not be his dream per se, but at various points it sure feels as though it is. The world is wracked by war. Millions have died. Whole cities have been reduced to ash heaps. The landscapes evoke color newsreel footage from World War II, and much of the combat seems lifted from that era as well.

When Cage meets the general in charge of that part of the world's forces, he's told he's being sent right into this movie's version of D-Day and is to report for duty immediately. No amount of protest by Cage can halt this assignment, and soon after he joins his unit and learns the rudiments of wearing combat armor (this is one of those science fiction films in which soldiers wear clumping bionic suits festooned with machine guns and other weapons) he dies on the battlefield. Then he wakes up and starts all over. Then he dies again and starts over again. He always knows he's been here before, that he met this person, said that thing, did that thing, made a wrong choice and died. Nobody else does, though. They're oblivious to the way in which Cage, like "Slaughterhouse Five" hero Billy Pilgrim, has come unstuck in time.

Cage's only allies are a scientist ( Noah Taylor ) who believes the creatures are beating humanity through their mastery of time, and Rita Vrataski ( Emily Blunt ), an Audie Murphy or Sgt. York type who's great for armed forces morale in addition to being an exceptionally gifted killer. Rita has experienced the same temporal dislocation that Cage is now experiencing, but at a certain point it stopped. She recognizes his maddening condition but can no longer share in it. She can, however, offer guidance (and a key bit of information that defines his predicament), and speed up the learning curve by shooting him in the head whenever it becomes obvious that they're going down a wrong road that'll lead to the same fatal outcome.

Although the film's advertising would never dare suggest such a thing, for fear of driving off viewers who just want the bang bang-boom boom, Cage is a complex and demanding role for any actor. It is especially right for Cruise, in that Cage starts out as a Jerry Maguire-type who'll say or do anything to preserve his comfort, then learns through hard (lethal) experience how to be a good soldier and a good man. He changes as the story tells and retells and retells itself. By the end he's nearly unrecognizable from the man we met in the opening.

Cruise is hugely appealing here, not just in the early scenes opposite Gleeson in which he's in Tony Curtis mode—he's always fantastic playing a smooth-talking manipulator who's sweating on the inside—but later, where he exhibits the sort of rock-solid super-competence and unforced decency that Randolph Scott brought to Budd Boetticher's westerns. He was always likable, sometimes perfect in the right role, but age has deepened him by bringing out his vulnerability. There's an existential terror in his eyes that's disturbing in a good way, and there are points in which "Edge of Tomorrow" seems to simultaneously be about what it's about while also being about the predicament of a real actor trying to stay relevant in a Hollywood universe that's addicted to computer generated monsters, robots and explosions. Cruise deserves some sort of acting award for the array of yelps and gasps he summons as he's killed by a Mimic or shot in the head by Blunt and then rebooted into another version of the story.

The rest of the cast has less to do because this is Tom Cruise's movie through-and-through, but they're all given moments of humor, terror or simple eccentricity. Taylor often gets cast as brilliant but haunted or ostracized geniuses, and he's effective in another of those roles here. Gleeson, as is so often the case, invests a rather stock character with such humanity that when the character's motivations and responses change, you get the sense that it's because the general is a good and smart man and not because he's just doing what the script needs him to do. Emily Blunt is unexpectedly convincing as a fearless and elegant super-soldier, and of course a magnificent camera subject as well. Director Doug Liman is so enamored with the introductory shot of her rising up off the floor of a combat training facility in a sort of downward facing dog yoga pose that he repeats it many times. The film's only egregious flaw is its attempt to superimpose a love story onto Cruse and Blunt's relationship, which seems more comfortable as a "Let's express our adoration for each other by killing the enemy" kind of thing.

There's no end to the number of films and novels and other sources to which "Edge of Tomorrow" can be likened. " Groundhog Day " seems to be everyone's reflexive comparison point, but Liman's elaborately choreographed tracking shots and unglamorously visualized European hellscapes evoke " Children of Men ," the creatures themselves have a touch of the Sentinels from the "Matrix" films, and the monsters-vs.-infantry scenes will remind you of James Cameron's " Aliens " and its literary predecessor " Starship Troopers ." ( Bill Paxton , one of the stars of "Aliens," plays Cage's drill sergeant, a mustachioed Kentucky hard-ass with an amusingly sour sense of humor.) It's also an exceptionally brutal film, so bone-and-skull-crushingly violent and fairy-tale frightening that its PG-13 rating is stupefying. Parents should avoid taking young children who'll be both confused by the fractured narrative and terrified of the Mimics, nightmare creatures that look like razor-tentacled squid and roll across the landscapes like tumbleweeds.

In all, though, "Edge of Tomorrow" is its own thing. One of its most fascinating qualities is its keen judgement of the audience's learning curve. The early sections of the film repeat scenes and dialogue until you get used to the idea of the story as a video game or movie script, but just when you start to think, "Yes, I get it, let's move on," the film has in fact moved on and is now leaving things out because they're not necessary. By the end of the movie the script—which is credited to Christopher McQuarrie and Jez and John Henry Butterworth—has gotten to the point where it's tactically withholding information and waiting for us to figure things out on our own. It repeats key images and lines near the end as well, but always for good reason. When you see the familiar material again you feel different about it, because its meaning has changed. The movie has an organic intelligence and a sense that it, too, exists outside of linear time. It seems to be creating itself as you watch it.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi action and violence, language and brief suggestive material

113 minutes

Tom Cruise as Lt. Col. Bill Cage

Emily Blunt as Rita Vrataski

Brendan Gleeson as General Brigham

Bill Paxton as Master Sergeant Farell

Jonas Armstrong as Skinner

Tony Way as Kimmel

Kick Gurry as Griff

Dragomir Mrsic as Kuntz

Charlotte Riley as Nance

Noah Taylor as Dr. Carter

Hiroshi Sakurazaka
Christopher McQuarrie
Jez Butterworth
John-Henry Butterworth
Christophe Beck

Cinematography

James Herbert

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clock This article was published more than 9 years ago

‘Edge of Tomorrow’ movie review: Tom Cruise shows that he’s still got it

It’s so easy to be glib in dismissing summer blockbusters: They’ve gotten too big, too loud, too dependent on slick computer effects and too dismissive of fusty ideas like narrative and character arc. How depressing the routine has become, watching otherwise gifted stars squander their talents on the altar of the lowest common denominator.

Then, something like " Edge of Tomorrow " comes along, and it looks like there's still hope. A crafty, clever, stylish science-fiction action adventure, this time-travel loop-de-loop didn't have to be this good. But thanks to the efforts of a superb creative team and Tom Cruise — here deploying his own persona with stunning self-awareness and humor — what might have been a throwaway genre exercise instead turns out to be a surprisingly satisfying day-after-day-after-day at the movies.

Synopsis is not our friend when it comes to summing up "Edge of Tomorrow," whose title was mercifully changed from the dreadful " All You Need Is Kill " (the name of the Japanese novel it's based on). Cruise plays Maj. William Cage, a media relations officer with the U.S. Army of the very near future, when Europe has been overrun with an alien force of huge, hissing, squid-like dervishes. When Cage is unexpectedly drafted into a platoon readying to invade France, he blanches: He's a coward, all too ready to use his disarming grin and ad-man charms to get out of any real danger.

Instead, Cage is plopped down at Forward Operating Base Heathrow in London, where he's outfitted with a computerized exoskeleton that turns him into a rock 'em, sock 'em robot. Also training at the base is a world-famous special forces soldier named Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt), known as the Angel of Verdun for her heroics at that eponymous alien battle. The two eventually cross paths, with Cage being tossed into a repetitive and deadly time loop that resembles a cross between " Groundhog Day ," " Saving Private Ryan " and Wile E. Coyote 's worst morning ever.

If that last reference suggests a note of antic physical humor, that’s because “Edge of Tomorrow,” which has been brilliantly adapted by brothers Jez and John-Henry Butterworth and Christopher McQuarrie, pops with moments of welcome, unexpected levity. This especially comes through when Cage begins to grok what’s happening to him and starts to riff and rush along encounters that he’s been through dozens of times before.

Aided by the crackerjack cutting prowess of editor James Herbert, director Doug Liman skillfully conveys the endless repetition without making “Edge of Tomorrow” repetitive itself. He quickly, and often amusingly, cuts to the chase of each sequence, during each of which Cage tries to nudge reality just a bit further in the direction of survival and saving the world before he dies and has to start all over again.

As light as “Edge of Tomorrow” is on its feet, it still manages to balance that fleetness with visceral, impressively staged battle sequences. Borrowing nomenclature and visual language from classic World War II films, the film re-imagines D-Day as a high-tech aerial assault on Normandy, with terrifying tentacled creatures rising out of the waters and flaming shards of planes crashing down on their own human cargo. The tableau is gruesome and intense, with Cage initially a passive, horrified victim and then, eventually, an agent in a carefully ritualized study in fate, human nature and the possibility of growth and change.

Like the classic war films it lovingly quotes, “Edge of Tomorrow” even has a ragtag group of misfits, in this case the battle-scarred squad that Cage is thrown into over and over again by his drawling master sergeant, played with a barely discernible wink by Bill Paxton. (When Cage notes from his Southern accent that he’s obviously American, Paxton flawlessly barks back, “No, sir, I’m from Kentucky!”)

But the centerpiece of "Edge of Tomorrow" is the burgeoning relationship between Cage and Rita, whom Blunt invests with just the right mix of machisma and soulfulness. (Between this, " The Adjustment Bureau " and " Looper ," she's apparently the go-to girl when it comes to busting the time-space continuum.)

Even with Blunt charismatically holding her own, the undisputed star of "Edge of Tomorrow" is Cruise, who, as the story's reluctant hero, delivers a one-man master class in his own fascinatingly protean screen presence. Starting out as a shallow, cocksure sharpie " Jerry Maguire " — even sporting some " Risky Business " baby fat — he smoothly navigates the myriad tiny transformations that Cage goes through, until he becomes the flinty, competent, steely-eyed saver-of-the-day that his " Mission: Impossible " years have taught us to expect.

What’s more, he earns every beat in a performance that calls on him to undergo all manner of physical punishments and slapstick indignities. Like summer movies themselves, it’s become so easy to be glib in dismissing Tom Cruise. “Edge of Tomorrow” provides welcome and hugely entertaining evidence that he’s still a star of considerable gifts, and savvy enough not to let them be squandered just yet.

PG-13. At area theaters. Contains intense sequences of sci-fi action and violence, language and brief suggestive material.

113 minutes.

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Tom Cruise rewatch: Edge of Tomorrow is practically designed to be revisited several times

The Groundhog Day of sci-fi action, it stars both a very un-Tom Tom, and, a bit later, the intensely disciplined Cruise we know and love.

Senior Writer

In advance of this Friday's release of Top Gun: Maverick , our writers return to their favorite Tom Cruise movies, in appreciation of an on-screen persona that's evolved over decades.

Watch enough summer blockbusters and it can seem like you're viewing the same one over and over again. It is ironic, then, that one of the greatest big-budget extravaganzas to be unleashed on movies screens during the warmer months in recent times — as well as one of the best Tom Cruise movies ever — does exactly that.

In director Doug Liman's 2014 alien invasion movie Edge of Tomorrow , Cruise plays a publicity flack named William Cage who is sent off to die at the hands (well, technically at the the luminescent tentacles) of the monstrous Mimics after falling foul of Brendan Gleeson's General Brigham. Cage does indeed swiftly perish during the course of the human forces' doomed attempt to establish a beachhead in alien-controlled France but gets covered in extraterrestrial blood before he dies, giving him the power to do-over the previous day every time he croaks.

Cruise's character teams with Emily Blunt 's war hero Rita Vrataski, who previously possessed the same power Cage now wields, and together the pair attempt to execute a plan which will banish the alien menace forever, with Blunt literally and repeatedly executing Cruise along the way. The result is in many ways a combination of 1962 D-Day drama The Longest Day with beloved romantic-comedy Groundhog Day . It's a minor miracle the film was never called The Longest Groundhog Day , given that the movie was originally called All You Need Is Kill , was retitled Edge of Tomorrow for its theatrical release, and was then retitled again as Live. Die. Repeat.: Edge of Tomorrow when it arrived on home media.

Edge of Tomorrow is a blast, regardless of what you choose to call it. The film is blessed with a script co-written by Tony-winning playwright Jez Butterworth, his brother John-Henry, and longtime Cruise collaborator Christopher McQuarrie which is both sharp and, when it comes to the time travel aspect of the movie, tricksy. Liman, whose previous credits included Swingers and the first Bourne movie, handles the action mayhem with aplomb while leaving room for moments of drama and comedy between Cruise and Blunt. The latter fulsomely establishes her genre heroine credentials as she marauds through the battlefield clad in her exoskeleton-armor slaying aliens with a modified helicopter blade.

The film's secret weapon — though there is little that is low-key about his performance — is the late Bill Paxton as Master Sergeant Farrell, a voluble exemplar of gung-ho militarism who is put in charge of Cruise's initially reluctant soldier. When I spoke with Paxton about the film, the Aliens actor described it as a "very underrated movie" and also recalled how Cruise had been supportive of him during his early time on set. "We knew each other in passing, so he was digging that," said the actor. "I remember him saying, 'You're killing this part!' I said, 'I haven't done anything yet!' He goes, 'You're killing it!'"

Tom Cruise is, of course, a legendarily enthusiastic person, but it's easy to understand why he might have felt particularly keen on his role in Edge of Tomorrow . The Top Gun star initially gets to play a nice reversal of his usual onscreen persona, portraying someone who runs away from danger rather than toward it, and doesn't even know how to turn off his own gun's safety switch. His character then turns into someone hellbent on achieving perfection through training, a plot development which surely must have appealed to this most autodidactic of actors.

Edge of Tomorrow earned $370 million at the box office around the world, which was regarded as something of a disappointment given its high budget of a reported $178 million. Liman has repeatedly talked-up a sequel, to be called Live Die Repeat and Repeat but last year Blunt indicated to EW that the project still languished in development hell. "That was an amazing script, but I just don't know what the future holds for it," the actress said.

In truth, it is hard to know how they could top a movie whose thrilling mix of action, humor, action, romance, science fiction, propulsive plotting, and terrific central performance renders Edge of Tomorrow one of Cruise's most enjoyable films. Whether you like like seeing the star doing incredible things or having incredibly awful things done to him, this is a movie that was made for repeat viewings.

Check out our daily must-see picks — plus news, celeb interviews, trivia, and more — on EW's What to Watch podcast.

Tom Cruise Relives The Same Deadly Day Again And Again In Edge Of Tomorrow Trailer

"How many times have we been here?"

The full trailer for Doug Liman ’s Edge of Tomorrow just dropped, and it is filled to the brim with all kinds of awesomeness. Beyond our wholly scientific assessment, I think you’ll find an engaging, visceral, terrifying an stimulating science-fiction extravaganza waiting in the trailer up above (shared via YouTube ). Click. Play. Enjoy!

What do we know about Edge of Tomorrow , beyond the fact that it stars Tom Cruise (still one of largest stars on the planet) and Emily Blunt ? Written by Christopher McQuarrie , Jez Butterworth and John-Henry Butterworth, the twisty film casts Cruise as a man who’s forced to relive the same day over and over, waking up every time he dies. But he isn’t watching the annual Groundhog Day celebration! He’s engaged in a lethal, futuristic battle that threatens to wipe out civilization.

Still, it does remind us of Groundhog Day .

And Looper .

However, this full trailer makes the movie look so much better than earlier marketing materials, which couldn’t possibly get into the intricate details of Liman’s story. (Which, no doubt, were punched up by Cruise’s hired gun of a screenwriter, McQuarrie.) The hook of the plot is that Blunt’s character understands, to a certain extent, the odd time loop that has swallowed up Cruise’s character. And the two are using that as an advantage over the alien race that they are fighting.

Trailers are supposed to sell tickets. Edge of Tomorrow is dropping itself into the middle of a very crowded summer marketplace, hanging its hat on Cruise’s name, and the effects on display in this clip. Several other movies have tried that before (hello, Oblivion ) and failed. This clip, however, has me very excited for Edge of Tomorrow . I still wish it retained it’s original, bad-ass title All You Need is Kill . So much better. But I’m officially on board with Liman’s upcoming film, which arrives in theaters on June 6. How about you?

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Edge of Tomorrow Made the Time-Loop So Stupid it was Brilliant

Sometimes you just want to watch Tom Cruise level up.

Live. Die. Repeat. That was the title Doug Liman wanted for the 2014 sci-fi movie Edge of Tomorrow , based on Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s novel All You Need Is Kill . The film is an interesting study of the question of whether titles matter. Edge of Tomorrow is not particularly memorable, but it’s hard to say if the two other titles would have worked any better. Warner Bros. must have thought so: they elevated Live. Die. Repeat. from tagline to title on the home media release.

Regardless of the innocuous-sounding name, Edge of Tomorrow is a memorable sci-fi movie that revitalizes an ancient trope. It just hit HBO Max, and it’s worth another look for one specific reason: it’s the only contemporary sci-fi action movie that made time-loops seem brand new again.

Edge of Tomorrow stars Tom Cruise as William Cage and Emily Blunt as Rita Vrataski. She’s a war hero kicking alien ass. He’s a smarmy PR guy who works on ensuring the media feels good about a desperate battle being waged against alien invaders called Mimics. Cruise is a cowardly double-talker, and only by getting stuck in a time-loop does he become less of a douchebag. It’s Starship Troopers meets Groundhog Day .

Edge of Tomorrow is full of stock characters, cliche dialogue, and gaping plot holes. The alien Mimics don’t actually mimic anything, and given that they’re as mighty and unstoppable as the Decepticons from the Michael Bay Transformers movies, you’d be forgiven if you thought they looked like rejects from them.

Their invasion plan, meanwhile, feels borrowed from the playbook of a Doctor Who enemy. The Mimics use time-loops to determine the best way to take over a planet, and can therefore win every battle because they’ve already fought it multiple times. But their power to “reset the day” can be hijacked if you get their blood in your blood, which humanity learns by accident. Vrataski (Blunt) once had that power, but now Cage (Cruise) does. Throughout the course of one day repeated many times over, they have to figure out how to work together to save the world.

In a serialized TV series, these very specific time-loop rules wouldn't fly because they’re patently ridiculous. But this is a very good and very fun sci-fi action movie. What makes Edge of Tomorrow work is twofold: the rules and stakes are explained early and clearly, and Tom Cruise starts off playing against type. These might seem like minor touches, but they’re huge. In an early speech from Vrataski’s ally Dr. Carter (Noah Taylor), the rules of the movie are laid out. The film gets a video game quality embedded in it, and you get that Cruise can keep dying until he figures out how to win. But this simple exposition smartly conceals a late twist: the Mimics are trying to trick the humans into giving them their time-loop power back.

This wrinkle is aided by the fact that Tom Cruise doesn’t begin the movie playing a Tom Cruise. Instead of kicking ass, he’s like Matthew McConaughey in How to Lose a Guy In 10 Days combined with a hypothetical Battlestar Galactica draft dodger. What makes the movie compelling is that the audience is waiting for Cruise to start acting like Cruise. The screenplay was co-written by Cruise’s frequent Mission: Impossible collaborator, Christopher McQuarrie, but McQuarrie slows Cruise’s transition into an Ethan Hunt-level badass. Instead, we ignore how silly these aliens are, because we’re too busy cheering as Cruise gets more Cruise-y to give them much thought.

Emily Blunt and Tom Cruise attend the "Edge of Tomorrow" New York Premiere at the AMC Lincoln Square...

Emily Blunt and Tom Cruise don’t make for a terribly charismatic couple, but it’s still fun to watch them carve up aliens.

Emily Blunt is a good foil for Cruise who, of course, falls in love with the only person who can help him. For some critics, this romance went too far and devalued Blunt’s performance. And while this may be true in terms of presenting ideal archetypes, Edge of Tomorrow has the same level of realism as Emily in Paris . If anything, the movie has a weird amount of restraint when it comes to the tacked-on love story.

Nothing about Edge of Tomorrow looks good on paper. It’s riddled with contradictions, and the messy ending may leave you wondering what exactly happened. And yet there’s a charming tone throughout. The movie isn’t using time travel to make you feel smart, or Tom Cruise to make you feel sophisticated. Edge of Tomorrow doesn’t pretend to be a smart or sophisticated movie. But it is an effective one.

Throughout the film, Emily Blunt wields an insanely huge anime sword . This weapon seems impractical, and unwieldy, and defies the logic of the fictional world in which it exists. And yet it’s awesome, and when the movie is over you wish you’d seen her use it even more. It’s possible that the edge of Emily Blunt’s sword is where the purest enjoyment of movies exists: we can’t justify it intellectually, but damn if it doesn’t work.

Edge of Tomorrow is streaming on HBO Max .

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Is Edge of Tomorrow 2 now possible with Tom Cruise back at Warner Bros.?

A decade ago, Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt starred in Edge of Tomorrow , a sci-fi alien invasion flick based on the memorably named Japanese light novel All You Need Is Kill . However, Edge of Tomorrow didn’t bring in the big profits for Warner Bros. and it finished with $370.5 million worldwide against a $178 million budget. Nevertheless, the film has picked up a cult following that has clamored for Edge of Tomorrow 2 , and those hopes may actually come to fruition now that Cruise is back at Warner Bros. with a long-term deal.

Via The Hollywood Reporter , Cruise’s new pact with Warner Bros. includes teaming up with studio executives Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy to develop and produce “original and franchise theatrical films.” Cruise’s other successful franchises — Top Gun and Mission: Impossible — are both lined up at Paramount. The only preexisting WB franchise that Cruise has already starred in is Edge of Tomorrow . That is, unless Cruise suddenly wants to star in a Harry Potter flick or put on a cape for DC.

Cruise’s frequent collaborator, Christopher McQuarrie, co-wrote the script for Edge of Tomorrow . And McQuarrie first mentioned that Cruise came up with a concept for the sequel in 2015 . Director Doug Liman and Blunt have also expressed their desire to return for a sequel. As recently as last year, Blunt appeared on the Happy Sad Confused podcast and said that she had already been slipped the script by Liman. But she cast doubt on the film happening anytime soon.

“I mean, I would love to make it a reality, but I just don’t know when or how,” said Blunt. “And how many Mission Impossible s does [Cruise] need?”

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As it happens, Cruise is filming his final Mission: Impossible movie this year, which will finish the story that began in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One . Cruise will than make a movie for Universal that will be partially filmed in the International Space Station. Beyond that, perhaps there could finally be room for Edge of Tomorrow 2 .

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In 1986, the original Top Gun helped firmly establish Tom Cruise as a movie star. And unlike many icons from the '80s, Cruise has maintained that status and avoided the direct-to-video phase of his career. Now, Cruise is revisiting the franchise that started it all in Top Gun: Maverick. The film was actually finished three years ago, but it has faced numerous pandemic-related delays. Now that the new trailer has arrived, there are finally clear skies ahead for the sequel.

The trailer picks up with Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Cruise) nearly 30 years after the original film. While Maverick's peers have gone on to bigger things, he remains a captain and a test pilot simply so he can keep flying missions. Maverick finds himself back in the Top Gun program while teaching a new generation of pilots the skills they will need to survive in hostile skies. But at least one of the cadets will remind Maverick of his darkest hour, when his friend, Nick "Goose" Bradshaw (Anthony Edwards), was killed in the original movie.

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Via Variety, The Flash movie, which was previously slated to race into theaters on November 4, will now arrive on June 23, 2023. Meanwhile, the Aquaman sequel, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, is not set to be released on March 17, 2023, three months after its former date of December 16.

In 2007, Warner Bros. adapted Richard Matheson's post-apocalyptic sci-fi classic I Am Legend as a film, with Will Smith in the leading role. While the ending of that film didn't leave much room for a sequel, Deadline is reporting that I Am Legend 2 has come together with some pretty serious star power. Not only is Smith slated to headline the sequel, but he will also appear alongside Michael B. Jordan as co-lead in the movie. Both Smith and Jordan will also produce the project.

In the first film, Smith portrayed Dr. Robert Neville, one of the creators of a failed attempt to cure cancer. Instead of curing mankind of a virulent disease, the customized virus killed most of the human population. The vast majority of the survivors mutated into vampire-like creatures known as Darkseekers. Robert was one of the only remaining humans, and he lived a solitary existence as he tried to find a cure.

Almost Perfect: 12 Movies Needed A Bittersweet Ending

Posted: May 3, 2024 | Last updated: May 3, 2024

<p>Many files have endings that may result in marriage, life-saving moments, or the main character’s success. These finales make our favorite films unforgettable, but what if the film went the other way and didn’t end with the sweet conclusion we all love? These are 12 films that may have been better with a bittersweet ending. Be warned, there are spoilers!</p>

Many files have endings that may result in marriage, life-saving moments, or the main character’s success. These finales make our favorite films unforgettable, but what if the film went the other way and didn’t end with the sweet conclusion we all love? These are 12 films that may have been better with a bittersweet ending. Be warned, there are spoilers!

<p>An amazingly directed Christopher Nolan film, <em>Interstellar </em>stars Matthew McConaughey as an astronaut who needs to travel across the galaxy to find a habitual planet. Fans think the ending would have been better if McConaughey’s character never made it out of the tesseract and to the colony around Saturn to see his daughter again. Instead, it should have ended with the idea that he was the ghost on the bookshelf that provided quantum data to his daughter.</p>

1. INTERSTELLAR (2014)

An amazingly directed Christopher Nolan film, Interstellar stars Matthew McConaughey as an astronaut who needs to travel across the galaxy to find a habitual planet. Fans think the ending would have been better if McConaughey’s character never made it out of the tesseract and to the colony around Saturn to see his daughter again. Instead, it should have ended with the idea that he was the ghost on the bookshelf that provided quantum data to his daughter.

<p>In perfect Tom Cruise form, <em>Edge of Tomorrow </em>is a film where he is in a perpetual combat loop, trying to break the pattern and save the day. Fans were upset that everything that could go wrong does, but everything is magically solved in the end, and everything is okay. Viewers claim that this forced a happy ending to the film when it should have ended tragically.</p>

2. EDGE OF TOMORROW (2014)

In perfect Tom Cruise form, Edge of Tomorrow is a film where he is in a perpetual combat loop, trying to break the pattern and save the day. Fans were upset that everything that could go wrong does, but everything is magically solved in the end, and everything is okay. Viewers claim that this forced a happy ending to the film when it should have ended tragically.

<p>A scary movie that involves a young police constable, played by Johnny Depp, who is sent from New York City to investigate three murders in the Sleepy Hollow village. Fans of this movie believe that the last twenty or so minutes tie up all the loose ends in the wrong places and that it needs more character development. Many believe the movie would have been better if the film had not ended “happily ever after” for Ichibod and Katrina.</p>

3. THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW (1999)

A scary movie that involves a young police constable, played by Johnny Depp, who is sent from New York City to investigate three murders in the Sleepy Hollow village. Fans of this movie believe that the last twenty or so minutes tie up all the loose ends in the wrong places and that it needs more character development. Many believe the movie would have been better if the film had not ended “happily ever after” for Ichibod and Katrina.

<p>This action-packed film series stars Tom Cruise as a fighter jet pilot who is one of the best ever to fly. After losing his best friend to an accident, he eventually returns to the pilot seat to teach younger students to fly. However, he is very reckless and flies risky maneuvers. Many believe Maverick’s life should have been worse due to his carelessness for the people and other pilots around him.</p>

4. TOP GUN, TOP GUN: MAVERICK (1986, 2022)

This action-packed film series stars Tom Cruise as a fighter jet pilot who is one of the best ever to fly. After losing his best friend to an accident, he eventually returns to the pilot seat to teach younger students to fly. However, he is very reckless and flies risky maneuvers. Many believe Maverick’s life should have been worse due to his carelessness for the people and other pilots around him.

<p><em>Karate Kid</em> is a classic film where a boy, Daniel, gets bullied by students of a local karate school. To defend himself, Daniel befriends a fantastic instructor to help him learn karate. During his training, Daniel is paired against one of the bullies at a tournament. He beats the bully, but some fans wish he hadn’t won the fight.</p>

5. THE KARATE KID (1984)

Karate Kid is a classic film where a boy, Daniel, gets bullied by students of a local karate school. To defend himself, Daniel befriends a fantastic instructor to help him learn karate. During his training, Daniel is paired against one of the bullies at a tournament. He beats the bully, but some fans wish he hadn’t won the fight.

<p>Robin Williams transformed into a kind Scottish grandmother to try and keep in contact with his children after his wife divorced him. Although we naturally side with the protagonist, many people in the thread have other ideas. “I have a love-hate (relationship) with this movie,” says a critic. “It’s funny and classic, but as I get older, I am so mad for Miranda. She was right, and he made her out to be so crazy and mean.”</p>

6. MRS. DOUBTFIRE (1993)

A divorced man, played by Robin Williams, has very little access to see his children, so he dresses as an old lady and convinces his ex-wife to hire him as a nanny. While movie watchers love this movie as it is, the original script called for the parents to get back together at the film’s end. They do not get back together to show that the world does not end just because Mom and Dad got a divorce.

<p>In <em>Pretty Woman, </em>an escort (Julia Roberts) and a wealthy businessman (Richard Gere) fall for each other, forming an extraordinary couple. In the original ending, Gere dumps Roberts back onto the street; fans did not like this, so the directors decided to tweak it so they stayed together, and the movie became a love story. Some fans wish they had kept the original ending, as it would have been more realistic.</p>

7. PRETTY WOMAN (1990)

In Pretty Woman, an escort (Julia Roberts) and a wealthy businessman (Richard Gere) fall for each other, forming an extraordinary couple. In the original ending, Gere dumps Roberts back onto the street; fans did not like this, so the directors decided to tweak it so they stayed together, and the movie became a love story. Some fans wish they had kept the original ending, as it would have been more realistic.

<p>When a small-town California boy and his friend experiment with time travel, Marty McFly gets sent back to the 50’s. The last of the <em>Back to the Future </em>films should have ended with Doc leaving a message in the past for Marty, thanking him for his friendship and saying that he is content with how his life turned out.</p>

8. BACK TO FUTURE III (1990)

When a small-town California boy and his friend experiment with time travel, Marty McFly gets sent back to the 50’s. The last of the Back to the Future films should have ended with Doc leaving a message in the past for Marty, thanking him for his friendship and saying that he is content with how his life turned out.

<p><em>My Sister’s Keeper </em>is a drama about a girl named Kate who is diagnosed with leukemia and has to undergo numerous medical procedures. The child’s parents decide to have another child so that Kate can have a donor match for stem cells and organs. At the movie’s end, the younger sister, Anna, sues the parents for how they used her body. Many fans think this film should have ended more like the book, where Anna is involved in a severe car accident that leaves her brain dead.</p>

9. MY SISTER’S KEEPER (2009)

My Sister’s Keeper is a drama about a girl named Kate who is diagnosed with leukemia and has to undergo numerous medical procedures. The child’s parents decide to have another child so that Kate can have a donor match for stem cells and organs. At the movie’s end, the younger sister, Anna, sues the parents for how they used her body. Many fans think this film should have ended more like the book, where Anna is involved in a severe car accident that leaves her brain dead.

<p>This movie focuses on the underdog in a dodgeball tournament that rises from the top. The “Average Joes” were just a group from a small gym that started winning dodgeball games and beat out the top team in the tournament to win it all. Many viewers think the ending would have been better if the Average Joes hadn’t won, showing that life is not always fair and the underdog does not always win.</p>

10. DODGEBALL (2004)

This movie focuses on the underdog in a dodgeball tournament that rises from the top. The “Average Joes” were just a group from a small gym that started winning dodgeball games and beat out the top team in the tournament to win it all. Many viewers think the ending would have been better if the Average Joes hadn’t won, showing that life is not always fair and the underdog does not always win.

<p>Fans worldwide love the <em>Rambo </em>series, but the storyline was a little different the first time around. In the first release of the movie, Rambo ends up taking his own life at the end of the film from PTSD and being unable to readjust to society. Fans worldwide enjoyed the movie so much that the directors decided to keep Rambo alive and make multiple movies.</p>

11. RAMBO (1982)

Fans worldwide love the Rambo series, but the storyline was a little different the first time around. In the first release of the movie, Rambo ends up taking his own life at the end of the film from PTSD and being unable to readjust to society. Fans worldwide enjoyed the movie so much that the directors decided to keep Rambo alive and make multiple movies.

<p>In a movie where Will Smith plays a scruffy superhero who looks over the city of Los Angeles, he leaves lots of collateral damage in return. After he saves the life of a PR executive, he notices his beautiful wife, and then a soft spot is discovered for Hancock. Movie watchers around the globe did not like this getting thrown into the plot and instead would have rather had no love story at all.</p>

12. HANCOCK (2008)

In a movie where Will Smith plays a scruffy superhero who looks over the city of Los Angeles, he leaves lots of collateral damage in return. After he saves the life of a PR executive, he notices his beautiful wife, and then a soft spot is discovered for Hancock. Movie watchers around the globe did not like this getting thrown into the plot and instead would have rather had no love story at all.

<p>There’s a famous saying: never judge a book by its cover. The same can be said for movies. Despite looking bland and generic, these 17 films are better than they have any right to be.</p>

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Screen Rant

This 20-year-old tom cruise movie can lay the blueprint for his future after mission: impossible.

Tom Cruise won’t be able to do Mission: Impossible movies forever, but one of his old movies may have paved the way for his acting future.

Tom Cruise's action star status faces a challenge as he ages, so exploring villain roles could be the key to his future success after Mission: Impossible .
A return to the character depth of his role in Collateral could provide Cruise with exciting new opportunities in his career.
Practical stunt work sets Cruise apart in action films, but taking on antagonistic roles could help him stay relevant in the industry.

Tom Cruise has been a movie star for over forty years, and one of his most underrated films could be the key to the next phase of his career after Mission: Impossible . Cruise, in his most recent star era, has become synonymous with daring stunt work and large action set pieces in his blockbuster films. The two most notable examples are his long-running Mission: Impossible franchise, which is currently filming its eighth installment, and Top Gun: Maverick , which was the highest-grossing film of 2022 .

In many ways, Cruise is as popular as he's ever been and remains one of the last examples of a true movie star. There's just one issue he faces, and it's one that will only get worse with time: he's now in his 60s. He's still in amazing shape for his age and can still perform all the stunts his action roles require of him. Yet, at a certain point, Cruise just won't be able to physically accomplish these feats anymore , and the question will arise of what he will do to define the next era of his career.

10 Movies That Defined Tom Cruise's Career

Tom cruise should follow collateral's blueprint after mission: impossible.

The answer regarding a future after Mission: Impossible lies with one of Cruise's most memorable roles as the cold-blooded hitman Vincent in Michael Mann's Collateral . Collateral follows a single night in the life of cab driver Max (Jamie Foxx), who is forced to transport Vincent around L.A. as he crosses off targets on his hit list. The film doesn't just feature excellent action scenes but also a fascinating back-and-forth between the two leads. Many long exchanges of dialogue happen within Max's cab, and the audience sees him and Vincent argue philosophically about the value of human life and their differing ideologies.

Cruise's movie star charisma brought layers of charm to Vincent's sociopathic demeanor

Cruise had to train for Collateral since it was an unexpected role, as the actor had never played the main villain of a film before, and to this day hasn't done it again since. The uniqueness of this notion paid off, as Collateral proved to be a healthy hit. It grossed $220 million worldwide from an estimated $65 million budget (via Box Office Mojo ). Cruise's movie star charisma brought layers of charm to Vincent's sociopathic demeanor, and it is still widely considered one of the best performances of Cruise's long and illustrious career. A return to this type of role would be an exciting prospect for the actor.

Every Michael Mann Movie, Ranked Worst To Best

Villain roles can help tom cruise stay relevant.

As Cruise gets older, it'll become more challenging for him to remain at the center of these action franchises. Unlike films like Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny , which heavily relied on CGI to assist 81-year-old Harrison Ford with the action scenes, Cruise's movies use their practical stunt work as a selling point. Top Gun: Maverick had Cruise flying real jets , and Mission Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One had him jumping off a massive cliff on a motorcycle. Too much CGI would cheapen the impact of these stunts, which have become a big part of Cruise's brand.

However, if Cruise takes on more antagonistic parts in movies like Collateral going forward, h e could not only avoid putting his body at risk in as many huge stunts but also access an untapped well of potential film roles . Cruise would still be a selling point in whatever franchise he chooses to be a part of, and he'd be able to explore the darkness he displayed as Vincent all those years ago. It'd be an exciting development for fans to witness, full of possibilities, and could prove to be the key to Tom Cruise staying relevant through the 2020s and beyond.

Source: Box Office Mojo

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Jennifer Connelly Is 'Ready' to Film Top Gun 3 with Tom Cruise: 'I'll Be There'

The actress also noted that she hasn't "seen anything" yet when it comes to 'Top Gun 3,' though she's discussed it with director Joseph Kosinski

Scott Garfield/Paramount Pictures/Courtesy of Everett

Jennifer Connelly would love to return to the world of Top Gun again.

The Snowpiercer actress, 53, revealed in a recent interview with Entertainment Tonight that if she got the call to do a third movie in the popular franchise, she’d do it in a heartbeat.

"I'll be there. I'm ready," Connelly told the outlet.

She also pointed to her positive experience filming Top Gun: Maverick as the reason why she would return to the film series, saying, "We had such a great time shooting it. It was fun."

Samir Hussein/WireImage

Despite her enthusiasm for the potential project, the actress noted that she hasn’t been privy to “anything” in the works yet.

"I haven't seen anything," she said. "I had a casual chat with my friend, Joe Kosinski, who directed it, who I worked with twice now. I'm his biggest fan. I think he's so great. [I talked to him] about the possibility of it, but I don't know anything concrete."

Her comments come a month after Jerry Bruckheimer , the producer behind both Top Gun movies, confirmed to PEOPLE "we're working on" Top Gun 3 .

"We pitched Tom [Cruise] a story he liked. But he's a very in-demand actor and he's got a lot of movies lined up, so we have to wait and see," Bruckheimer, 80, shared of the potential for a third installment.

He noted that part of what makes the Mission Impossible actor, 61, so popular is his work ethic, saying, "A lot of actors, they finish the day, they get in their car and they go home. Tom stays around, talks to the other actors, looks at the film that they shot, wants to know what's happening tomorrow. He's really engaged in every part of the process."

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

Reports initially circulated in January that a third installment of the Top Gun movie franchise was in the works. The Hollywood Reporter reported that the film’s co-writer Ehren Kruger had been writing a script for the film and that Kosinski would be tapped once again to direct.

Miles Teller , who plays Lt. Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw in the film series, teased in July 2022 that he and Cruise had "been having some conversations" about the possibility of another movie . Though the actor, 36, noted at the time, "It's all up to Tom.”

He and costar Glen Powell , 35, both shared that they would be open to returning to the franchise again as well.

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'Once Upon a Time ... The Movie Critic' - The Most Amazing Hollywood Movie You'll NEVER See

How Quentin Tarantino’s ‘The Movie Critic’ Fell Apart

Inside the messy, late-hour collapse of the director’s mysterious final feature amid wild script and casting rumors (Tom Cruise?) and a fully on-board Sony Pictures.

By Borys Kit , Pamela McClintock , James Hibberd April 23, 2024

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“I trust myself as a writer, I trust my process,” Quentin Tarantino declared onstage at the Adobe Max creative conference in 2016. “I never try to take anything out too soon. If I do, I realize it, and I put it back.” The acclaimed filmmaker added: “Not every film needs to be made. Not every movie should be made.”

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Big bear: how dreamworks animation & universal’s ‘kung fu panda 4’ is kicking it with $500m+ global box office, ‘the fall guy’ tripping to $28m opening – saturday am update.

By Anthony D'Alessandro

Anthony D'Alessandro

Editorial Director/Box Office Editor

‘The Fall Guy’ L.A. Premiere Red Carpet Photos: Ryan Gosling & Mikey Day Show Up Dressed As Beavis & Butt-Head

‘The Fall Guy’ L.A. Premiere: Ryan Gosling Calls Film A “Love Letter” & A “Giant Campaign To Get Stunts An Oscar”

Fall Guy already has $8.4M-plus in the bank from a 38-market rollout last weekend including Australia, Turkey, Netherlands and Spain. The movie goes into 40-plus markets this weekend including UK & Ireland, Germany, France and Mexico.

No RT audience score yet.

Amazon MGM Studios’ Challengers is booked at 3,477 theaters and eyeing $2.55M in its second Friday, -59%, for a 3-day around $8.75M , -42%, for a running cume of $30.5M .

Third place goes to 20th Century Studios/Lucasfilm/Disney’s Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace at 2,700 locations for a $2.65M Friday, $8.5M 3-day.

RELATED: ‘The Fall Guy’ Review: A Highflying Tribute To Hollywood’s Unsung Stunt Heroes – SXSW

Sony/Screen Gems’ Tarot booked at 3,104 locations is seeing a $2.4M Friday, 3-day of $6M . Per social media monitor RelishMix, the social universe at 88.6M for this horror pic is running 39% under first installment horror genre norms across TikTok, Facebook, X, YouTube and Instagram combined.

Legendary/Warner Bros.’ Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire in weekend 6 at 2,884 sites is seeing $3.8M , -47%, after a $1M Friday. Running total is $187.4M by Sunday.

FRIDAY AM: Universal teed off summer Thursday night with the Ryan Gosling-Emily Blunt action comedy The Fall Guy, which made $3.15M from showtimes that began at 5 p.m. and Wednesday advance screenings. The movie is only expected to do around $35M for the weekend, maybe $40M . That’s not your typical start to summer, but we’re in this predicament due to the strikes’ delay on feature films.

RELATED: ‘The Fall Guy’ Trailer: Ryan Gosling Cries To Taylor Swift In New Take On ’80s TV Hit

Preview-wise that start is right near Paramount’s 2022 adventure rom-com Lost City, which did $3.2M before a $30.4M opening and a $105.3M domestic final.

The most recent release date for The Fall Guy had been March 1, but Universal pushed it to this weekend after Disney and Marvel Studios moved Deadpool & Wolverine to end of July — which some now view as the true start of summer.

Universal believed big time in The Fall Guy, bringing it down to SXSW in Austin for a world premiere where audiences laughed their asses off . This was followed by a screening at the onset of CinemaCon for exhibitors with a stunt-filled Hollywood premiere on Tuesday night. The anticipation is that the Gosling factor of The Fall Guy will keep pulling women to theaters. Also, the movie, despite its insider Hollywood vibe, has a sensibility of yesteryear ’70s/’80s action titles — ones that used to conquer the middle of the country, read Smokey and the Bandit and Every Which Way but Loose.

RELATED: Summer Box Office Pines For $3 Billion: ‘Garfield’ Could Scratch ‘Furiosa’, ‘Beetlejuice 2’ Might See Best Opening Just Outside Of Season & Other Zany Forecasts

Reviews for this PG-13 movie are very respectable at 85% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. The Fall Guy , which cost $130M before P&A, expands to 4,002 theaters with PLFs and Imax.

Also getting re-released this weekend is Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace from Disney. This is to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the prequel timed to May the Fourth aka Star Wars Day. Disney will be showing the pic in 2,600 domestic theaters, including 150 Premium Large Format screens and 130 specialty motion D-Box/4D auditoriums. Advance sales have been solid since launching on March 22, peaking this weekend. The 40th anniversary re-release of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi opened to $5.1M 3-day about this time last year. The Phantom Menace will be paired with an exclusive sneak peek of the upcoming Star Wars series The Acolyte , which premieres June 4 on Disney+.

Amazon MGM Studios’ Luca Guadagnino-directed Zendaya movie Challengers ends Week 1 with $21.8M after a $1.3M Thursday, -7% from Wednesday at 3,477. It will keep a few Imax screens this weekend.

Lionsgate’s Unsung Hero is second for the week with $10.1M after a $465K Thursday, even with Wednesday at 2,832 locations.

Legendary/Warner Bros’ fifth week of Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire clocked $9.1M at 3,312 venues after a $370K Thursday, -8% from Wednesday. The pic’s running cume is $183.5M.

A24’s third week of Alex Garland’s Civil War did $9M at 3,518 venues after a $480K Thursday, -9% from Wednesday.

Universal’s Radio Silence horror movie Abigail, booked at 3,393 locations, ends Week 2 with $7M after a $323K Thursday, -19%, for a running total of $20.5M .

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