A science fiction nugget, not necessarily very identified by the general public, “Edge of Tomorrow” with Tom Cruise is a real success, and undoubtedly the best adaptation of a video game to date.
Let’s immediately get rid of the ambiguity hovering in our title. There is no question here of starting again the refrain – a bit boring – on the bad adaptations of video game licenses to the cinema. But to return to Edge of Tomorrow, the excellent sci-fi film by Doug Liman and starring Tom Cruise in great form.
Without doubt the film which has best and most intelligently assimilated certain codes from the world of video games, particularly in its narrative structure. Even though the basis of the film is based on a light novel signed by Hiroshi Sakurazaka and published in 2004, All You Need is Kill.
An observation which is all the more pleasing to see as Hollywood unfortunately still produces far too many often illegible action films, with chainsaw cutting, sometimes very clumsily attempting to imitate video games.
Live, die, start again
Like a Master Chief in Halo or a character straight out of Call of Duty or the infantry in the game Titanfall, Tom Cruise plays William Cage in Edge of Tomorrow, a former advertising executive who became a Major in within the army.
But what he prefers is hanging out in the back with the canteen girls. He’s never fought in his life, and doesn’t really want to change that. However, one day and without him understanding, he is sent to the front like the others, with his exoskeleton on his back, to help eradicate the alien threat. But shortly after landing on a futuristic Omaha Beach, he and his comrades are instantly massacred.
Warner Bros.In return, he becomes aware of a strange power, “bequeathed” by the Mimic (the alien) who killed him: he can come back to life each time, the day before the day of the fight where he is supposed to die . Despite his efforts being almost inhumane to him, he actually dies all the time. And try to survive a few more minutes the next day. “Live, die, start again”, as the film’s poster aptly proclaims. Literally the video game concept of Die & Retry.
Learning through failure in the face of difficulty. A bit like, to take a video game comparison that gamers know well, a Souls Like; a genre of game widely popularized by the creations of the Japanese studio FromSoftware, renowned for their high difficulty, particularly with their seminal game of the genre, Demon’s Soulsfollowed by the trilogy of Dark Souls.
Permanent death at the end of the adventure
Cruise is our on-screen incarnation. He embodies our condition as Gamers, sometimes frustrated or put off by the difficulty in a game. He loses a life, and almost immediately regains one. Extra Life like in a platform game.
No more Permadeaththis permanent death which no longer offers a second try and definitively ends the adventure in a game. In the film, the more Tom Cruise tries by trying different approaches like so many possible paths in a video game, the more he progresses and advances, mastering and even outwitting the Patterns alien enemies; that is, the techniques of the enemies.
To improve his chances of survival, Cruise/Cage is trained by a legend within the military, who has survived countless battles. And that legend turns out to be a woman, Rita Vrataski, solidly played by Emily Blunt, who once had the same power as William Cage before losing it.
A badass female character, a cross between Samus Aran from Metroid and Ripley from the Alien saga. An authentic warrior woman like you might come across – although not so often after all – in video games.
Warner Bros.The two train, with the well-understood aim of killing the “Boss” of the aliens, called “Omega”, and thus allowing them to carry out the equivalent of a gigantic Reset in order to win the war, in the words used by the character Rita Vrataski.
A Reset so, like in a video game. The two characters then move together, as in a cooperative game, whether on foot or in a vehicle, their finger always locked on the trigger button of their High Tech arsenal that we never stop seeing in games video, like in a new opus of the Call of Duty franchise.
Full of great action sequences, sometimes filmed with an over-the-shoulder view like in a TPS (Third Person Shooter) Gears of War style, carried by an impeccable and self-deprecating Tom Cruise, Edge of Tomorrow is really a film to (re)watch or discover, even if you don’t really have the soul of a Gamer . And that is very bad! We are impatiently awaiting the sequel, which has been announced for years but which finally seems to be back on track.
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