Sci-Fi Storm

After the surprise that was Edge Of Tomorrow (we ended up enjoying the film, aside from some confusing twists), it’s no surprise that a sequel is in the works. And in an interview with Collider, Director/Producer Doug Liman gave a few clues as to where the sequel is heading.

In the original, a cowardly public affairs officer (Tom Cruise) is busted in rank and sent to the front lines in a war against aliens called Mimics where the humans have been losing badly – and is promptly killed. But he immediately wakes up, back on the base – on the day he arrived, and lives out the same sequence again, always returning when he dies. In a SF military version of Groundhog Day, he learns to survive a little longer, and convinces Sergeant Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt) of what is happening. She trains him more and more until he knows what to do to kill the “alpha” Mimic.

“That is the only sequel that I’m considering doing, and it’s because first of all the story is so amazing—much better than the original film,”, said Liman, “and I loved and loved the original film—and second of all, it’s a sequel that’s a prequel.”

We’re not entirely sure what that means yet…will it start post-war and then loop back to the beginning? Whatever it is, Liman appears to want to “reinvent” the sequel.

“I’ve had some radical ideas about how to make a sequel that would interest me, in the same way that I had ideas of how you make an independent film and then Swingers came along and it was like ‘Aha, that’s the perfect movie for me to test these ideas out on.’ I had these intellectual ideas on how you should make a sequel that are unlike how anybody else makes a sequel, and this script and this idea fit perfectly into that idea. So it’s gonna revolutionize how people make sequels. And again that’s why I try to do things like Invisible that are just, the revolution’s sort of built into the idea. It’s more heresy in the film world for me to pitch things that are sort of unheard of.”

A script has already been written Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse (Race), although no plans for when filming will begin have been made yet.

It appears there is something beyond the Edge Of Tomorrow…Deadline broke the news yesterday that Frankie and Alice writing duo Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse have been named for a sequel to the Tom Cruise sleeper hit, and that director Doug Liman would return to direct. Original writer Christopher McQuarrie would be involved in some capacity.

No details on any sort of plot were given, but it is expected for Cruise to reprise his role.

Edge Of Tomorrow is set during a time when aliens called Mimics have invaded and control continental Europe, while NATO’s forces struggle just to hold the line. It follows a relations officer Major William Cage (Cruise), who has no combat training, and after defying orders to cover a major assault against the Mimics, wakes up on a base demoted to private and assigned to a combat squad. During the assault, he is killed covered in alien blood – and then wakes up back at the base, reliving the same day. From then on, any time he is killed, he returns to that very moment.

He teams up with Sergeant Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt), a famous soldier who recognizes his abilities as she had the same ability, until she was injured and received a blood transfusion which removed it. The two through trial and error work on ways to defeat the Mimics, with any failure resulting in Cage’s death in order to reset time.

This movie has me intrigued…at first blush, it seems part Groundhog Day, part Starship Troopers, but I sense an interesting plot line somehow…

Edge of Tomorrow is based on the Japanese light novel [asin=1421527618]All You Need Is Kill[/asin] by Hiroshi Sakurazaka. It stars Tom Cruise as Lt. Col. Bill Cage, a non-combat officer pressed into combat in a losing battle to fight off an alien attack on Earth. Undertrained and killed quickly, he suddenly awakes back at training, and relives it all again, and dies again, only to wake back up, for some reason in a time loop. He finds Special Forces soldier Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt), who experiences the same thing. The two of them take advantage of the loop to increase training, becoming better and better…possibly enough to change the results of the battle…