Film Friday: Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

Hollywood has been on a science fiction bender of late. Unfortunately, the films it’s made have been super-mediocre despite the high production values and interesting concepts they embrace. Indeed, Oblivion, After Earth, Elysium and Gravity all underwhelmed and disappointed. Even Prometheus didn’t live up to expectations. So imagine my surprise to find that Edge of Tomorrow was truly an excellent film!

Plot

Based on the Japanese novel “All You Need Is Kill” by Hiroshi Sakurazaka, Edge of Tomorrow takes place in a world in which an alien race has landed in the heart of Europe and driven the humans back all the way to Russia in the East and Britain in the West. Until recently, the humans had been unable to put up even token resistance against these creatures, which look like car-sized octopuses made of flailing razor sharp arms. But things are about to change for the humans with the invention of battle suits. These suits give humans a chance to win hand to hand combat, which is how the humans won their first battle at Dunkirk. Now the military (the United Defense Force) plans an invasion of France.

As the story opens, the General in charge calls Tom Cruise into his office. Cruise is a Major in public relations, and he’s an unlikable coward. The General orders Cruise to accompany the invasion and take pictures so he can sell the invasion to the public... and defuse any negative publicity in the event the humans lose. Cruise panics upon hearing this and tries to escape this duty. When the General leaves him no choice, Cruise threatens the General and ends up under arrest.

When Cruise wakes up, he finds himself inserted into a combat unit. The other soldiers are told that he’s a private and a deserter who tried to impersonate an officer. He is given no choice but to join the invasion as an ordinary soldier.

When Cruise lands on the beach, he realizes that the invasion is chaos and the humans are getting slaughtered. He has no idea what to do. Before he can make up his mind, however, he is killed... yes, killed. Only, Cruise doesn’t die. To the contrary, he wakes up to discover that he has moved backwards in time to the point where he first woke up under arrest. And every time he gets killed after that, he comes back to that same point to relive the same day. If he wants to live, he’ll need to figure out how to win the war.

Why This Film Worked

I wasn’t expecting much from this film. Tom Cruise has not exactly been hitting them out of the park lately, and I’m dubious about Hollywood’s ability to do science fiction well. Moreover, the concept behind this film is one that I’ve seen done a million times by every science fiction series ever, so this seemed like it would be highly derivative. But, much to my surprise, I really enjoyed this film. In fact, I would say this is an excellent film.

What made me like this film was that it did everything right for a change. First, the film had very, very high production values. The effects are great and they aren’t overused... this is not a fighting robots film. To the contrary, this is a smart film and it handles the concept very well. The "reliving the day" story concept typically involves the main character being put into a position where they must relive the exact same events over and over, learning little bits each pass through until they are able to overcome all the hurdles they face to doing whatever it takes to stop them from repeating the day. But many directors get bored of the concept and all but abandon it a few minutes in, with the exception of the inevitable montage of the main character repeating some specific moment over and over. Even worse, most directors abandon the rational world and allow their character to get away with impossible and unbelievable things just to make the story work.

This film doesn’t do that. This film maintains the concept throughout and it actually presents an interesting twist on the character’s desire to relive the day. Usually, the main character struggles to end the day. That is their goal and the story is focused on them figuring out how to do that. In this case, Cruise actually has to fight to make sure the day does not end before he can solve the mystery they face or else he will die on the beach. This adds interesting drama later in the film. Moreover, the director becomes more sophisticated in his use of this element as the story moves forward. Indeed, after a few standard shots, the director begins to stretch his creativity and the shots of Cruise reliving the days become more unexpected and more interesting. Then, at the ending, we are shown a final battle which must be waged with the knowledge that this time, there will be no reset.

At the same time, you never feel like Cruise does anything impossible – he does, but it never feels that way. What’s more, you feel throughout that Cruise earns every advance he gets. Highlighting this is the fact that we often see Cruise fail, and doing so in expected ways. This gives the film a strong “what will he do now?” feel. And strengthening this is the fact the challenge Cruise faces keeps getting bigger as the film proceeds. So as he conquers each hurdle, his victory is often the discovery of an even larger hurdle. This raising of the stakes helps elevate the intensity of the film throughout.

All of this makes for a very solid, smart, traditional science fiction tale done right. That makes this a rare film.

But there is one more aspect of this film which helped make it an enjoyable film: excellent acting and excellently written dialog. Science fiction dialog tends to be either clunky or filler. Indeed, much of it is just meant to pass the time between the various technical revelations related to the concept. This film was different. Cruise’s character has a bit of a silver tongue and he spends the film trying to talk various characters into believing him. Blunt’s character maintains a mysterious background that feels quite rich and she teases us with only hints about it. Finally, there is Bill Paxton, who plays Master Sergeant Farell, who has been assigned to guard Cruise and make sure he ends up on the beach. Paxton’s portrayal reminds me of R. Lee Ermey in Full Metal Jacket mixed with a pirate, and every moment he’s on screen is entertaining. All told, the characters are richly drawn and the dialog is strong and pulls you into the film. I was not surprised to find writer Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspect, Valkyrie) as the writer.

All told, I came into this film without much in the way of positive expectations. What I found was a very entertaining film that held my attention with excellent characters, strong dialog, excellent effects that weren’t overused, and mastery of a strong, smart science fiction concept. This film isn't 2001 or Star Wars, but it is the best science fiction film to come along in a very long time.

Thoughts.

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Film Friday: Oblivion (2013)

Oblivion was considered a bomb, though it did well overseas. It was also derided by the critics as a knock-off and kind of thin. So I had pretty low expectations going in. I’m not sure how much having low expectations helped, but I actually found that I enjoyed Oblivion, though it was very slow. That said, however, I have no desire to see it again, and therein lies the problem.

I’m going to go light on the spoilers because what makes this film work is the steady stream of discovery. Without that, this film is pretty worthless. So here’s the plot in a nutshell: Jack Harper (Tom Cruise) is Tech 49. He lives in a house in the clouds with Victoria, his partner and lover, and his job is to protect and maintain drones which protect these massive machines that are sucking up the oceans and turning them into electric power, which gets shipped to the humans living on Titan.

The reason humanity has moved to Titan is because of a war. The year is 2077 and 60 years prior an alien race known as the Scavengers attacked the Earth to steal our resources. When they invaded, they initially destroyed the moon, causing massive earthquakes which up-ended the Earth, destroyed our cities, and nearly wiped out humanity. Then their troops landed. The humans were losing so they fired off nuclear weapons. Those weapons made most of the planet uninhabitable, but they succeeded in winning the war. Jack’s job now is to protect the machines producing the power from the last few Scavengers left.

The story begins with Jack fixing a drone and giving us a long series of visuals about the destroyed Earth. We are shown various destroyed landmarks, like the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty and the Pentagon. We also see that the scavengers are no match for Jack, and certainly not for the drones.

At this point, you can probably already tell where this is going, and that is the problem. Had this film been made in the 1950s, Oblivion would be considered pure genius. People would talk about it in the same way they talk about 2001. But it wasn’t. It was made last year. And since the 1950s, this premise has been done to death, and then some. In fact, I think every other episode of The Outer Limits in the 1990s started this way. And from those episodes, we know that things are not as they seem. Indeed, we know that Tom is really working for the bad guys and just doesn’t know it.

Is that what’s happening here? Well, yeah, but there are several more interesting twists I won’t tell you about, like who/what Tom really is and what role Tom had in the initial invasion of Earth. Again, neither point is original, but their inclusion feels surprising enough here that it’s worth not revealing in this review.

As films go, this one wasn’t dull, despite the very thin story. The film is beautiful, even if we are talking about yet another apocalyptic film. There is a lot of tension in the film, coming primarily from the use of space. Specifically, there is a constant sense that Tom lacks the ability to monitor the world around him to ensure that he’s safe whenever he steps out of his helicopter spaceship (a bubble ship). This was very well done to keep you anxious throughout.

The film is good too at dripping out a continuous stream of clues. (Skip this paragraph if you want to avoid spoilers.) For example, we get Tom having a dream involving a woman. That’s the first sign that something is amiss with Tom, especially as we are told they had their memories wiped for some reason. Who is this woman and what does she mean? And why wipe memories at all? Doesn't that seem suspicious? Interestingly, this dream also shows Tom in New York City before the invasion, which shouldn’t be possible if the invasion happened 60 years ago. So something is already wrong with the story. Then there’s the radiation zones. Radiation doesn’t sit, it travels. So the idea of radiation borders doesn’t make a lot of sense and should tell us that something is amiss with the radiation zones that are meant to keep Tom out of other areas. Then you have the drones, which act like they want to kill Tom. This foreshadows the idea that the drones are hostile to humans... which makes no sense if they were built by humans. Then Tom saves the woman who is his real wife, but again, how could they be the same age if she had been asleep for 60 years.

These clues and the way Morgan Freeman tells Tom to figure things out for himself rather than just telling him what he needs to know keep the movie interesting and keep you excited about solving the puzzle of what is going on. That is more than enough to make this a worthwhile film to watch. It is interesting.

But it also makes the movie worthless in terms of re-watchability. This movie depends entirely on the mystery it builds and the suspense in each individual scene... will they get him or not. And once you know the answer to the mystery and once you know when he’s in danger and when he isn’t, there just isn’t anything left in the film that you want to watch a second time. The story doesn’t resolve itself in a rousing way to make you stand up and cheer, so you can’t revisit the feeling of triumph. The romance is pro-forma and cold, so you can’t fall in love all over again. The film isn’t funny, the dialog isn’t beautiful or surprising. The action scenes aren’t spectacular. The world they create is sparse and uninteresting and not the sort of world that sparks fantasies. All you have is a mystery, a mystery that vanishes once you’ve seen the film.

For a movie like this to stand out after the flood of poor science fiction that pillaged ideas like this and made them all feel derivative, the film needs a second act. It needs Tom to stumble upon a second world to explore, where the story could become more than “wasteland Tom learns the truth.” Or it needs some strong emotional story in which Tom struggles against himself to realize what it means to be human and to do the right thing against real odds – face the impossible choice. Even revealing the past through some sort of flashback story would have helped. It needed something.

So here’s the thing. Nothing about this film is original. In fact, it’s horribly derivative. Nothing about this film is deep or memorable. The film isn’t an enjoyable story that you want to see again, it doesn’t present a world that will pull you in and make you want more, and it doesn’t have characters that you care about. But what it does have going for it is an interesting mystery about what exactly happened. In that regard, I definitely recommend seeing this film... just don’t buy the disc.

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Does Tom Cruise Die In War of the Worlds?

Does Tom Cruise die at the end of Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds. You’ve probably never heard that before and there’s no direct evidence that he’s dead, but I think he does.

Think about the odds that Cruise can walk from Staten Island to Boston in the middle of this alien invasion AND finds that these aliens have somehow missed the neighborhood where his ex-wife lives in the heart of Boston. Keep in mind, the aliens literally wiped out every other building along the way. Doesn’t that seems oddly coincidental?

Further, his ex-wife and her parents all look happy and normal, just like they’d stepped out of a J.Crew Catalog. There are no signs here of people who fled from aliens, people who have been living without water, food or electricity for days/ weeks, people who have been living in fear of death.

Also, Cruise’s son is with them. This kid was last seen charging into a hopeless battle, a big mass of fire. Yet, somehow, he survived and decides to give up his incredible desire to fight back so he can rush to his mother’s house in Boston? How does he arrive before Cruise? And why is he dressed the same as when Cruise last saw him? He lives here, his clothes are here, why not change out of what he wore to walk from NYC?

None of this rings true.

Also, why does Tom’s son suddenly respect Cruise when he has hasn’t throughout the film and when Cruise has done nothing to earn his respect that he could possibly know about? The ex-wife suddenly being so friendly with Cruise also seems odd. Yes, Cruise brought back her daughter, but he let her son run off into a battle.

None of this is impossible to believe, it just feels “too perfect.”

Tom’s destruction of the tripod which captured him seems odd as well. How can they be that easy to destroy? And why didn’t anyone else try this before? Even the soldier with the grenades didn’t think to try this, why not?

And what about that walk to Boston? This film meticulously followed Cruise’s every moment of the journey right up to the point where he blew up the tripod. Suddenly, we skip days or weeks ahead right to where Tom heroically tells the military to shoot the stumbling tripod and then skips again to his ex-wife’s house where we get an overly-happy ending where everybody looks just like Tom remembers them and all sins are forgiven? None of this fits the early part of the film. It feels more like a dream.

And that brings me to the final clue. This whole final scene is bathed in a strange, fuzzy light, which is normally reserved for “other worldly” sequences or dreams.

I suspect what’s going on here is that Tom died in the tripod and what we are seeing as an ending to the film is either a last second heroic fantasy Cruise has before he is killed or this is Cruise in the afterlife. Either way, I think he’s dead.

Thoughts?

Also, can you think of any scenes from other films which aren’t what they appear?

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Film Friday: Minority Report (2002)

I want to like Minority Report, but I can't. It’s based on a Philip K. Dick short story, and I usually enjoy movies based on his stories (see, e.g. Blade Runner and Imposter), plus it’s got a strong cast, excellent pacing, an interesting plot and some deep themes. But there’s just something wrong with the film and Spielberg knows it.

** heavy spoiler alert**

The Plot

Directed by Steven Spielberg, Minority Report is the story of John Anderton (Tom Cruise), a Washington, D.C. police officer who works in the world’s first “PreCrime” division. PreCrime is a new concept whereby a group of “pre-cogs” (psychics) predict murders in advance. Anderton’s division is charged with arresting the murderers before they can act. But things go horribly wrong for Anderton when the pre-cogs announce that he will murder someone he doesn't even know. Soon he is chased by a Justice Department overseer (Colin Farrell) and discovers he was framed by his boss (Max von Sydow).

On the surface, Minority Report sounds like a smart film. It purports to deal with issues of free will versus destiny and it raises interesting questions about when a crime becomes a crime. Unfortunately, Minority Report is not a smart film and it fudges all of its themes. I think Spielberg knows this too, because he tries to distract the audience at key moments.

Free Will v. Destiny

Minority Report pounds away on the issue of free will versus destiny. Indeed, this is mentioned in almost every scene. Normally, this would be fertile ground for interesting science fiction storytelling, but something feels wrong with this theme throughout the film. And that something is that Spielberg uses an unworkable concept of destiny and then tries to cover up his failure rather than fix the problem.

For the film’s setup to work, the audience must believe the pre-cogs are infallible because we need to believe they can predict people’s destinies. If we don’t buy that premise, then there is no destiny to challenge Anderton’s free will. Thus, this idea is reinforced to us by almost every character throughout the film repeatedly telling us that the pre-cogs are never wrong. Even when we are finally told they can be wrong, we’re still told they are never wrong. . . they just sometimes “disagree” (hence, one gives a “minority report”).

But this is a false premise. For one thing, it's just never believable that there is any real destiny here. It is easy to believe in destiny when it’s something beyond your control, e.g. you will meet an old friend. But it’s impossible to believe in destiny if destiny requires a conscious act, e.g. murder. Think about it. If the cops show up at your door and tell you that you’re destined to murder your wife, does anyone really think you would feel compelled to go through with it? Indeed, the very concept of PreCrime wipes out the destiny element because they are stopping the murders. Hence, there is no destiny here, there is only a possible future which can be changed -- not to mention the pre-cogs apparently can disagree about the future. Therefore, the idea that Anderton is fighting destiny seems rather fraudulent from the beginning.

Moreover, the only reason Anderton appears to have a destiny is because every character repeatedly tell us that Anderton’s destiny is inescapable and because Spielberg manipulates the plot to cause it. Indeed, what Anderton does makes no sense. He should go to his boss and tell him, “this is a mistake. I’m not killing anyone and I’m going to go sit quietly in a cell until this prediction expires.” Instead, he foolishly decides to track down the guy he is supposed to kill. . . because that will somehow clear things up? Of course, Spielberg tries to make this seem plausible by having the other cops chase him. But it's hard to image a law that could convict him if he simply sat down and never killed anyone.

These problems undercut the very theme upon which Spielberg bases the whole film. He pounds away relentlessly at the idea that Anderton is struggling against destiny, but there is no destiny, there is only pretend destiny created by Spielberg’s manipulation and the constant barraged of characters telling us there is a destiny. What Spielberg should have done instead is drop the destiny farce and explore the theme of how many innocent people we are prepared to lock away to prevent all murders. That is the obvious theme within his setup. But Spielberg dodges that one, probably because it’s a difficult question of morality.

How Can A Possible Future Be A Crime?

The second problem stems from the believability of the whole concept as a law enforcement tool. If the police knew you would kill your wife at some particular hour, do you really think society would lock you up as a murderer? It’s not likely. Arresting someone for something they haven’t done yet flies in the face of two thousand years of Western jurisprudence and runs counter to human nature. More likely, the role of the PreCrime division would be to stop you and maybe send you for a mental health hearing. Interestingly, Spielberg tries to hide this issue by making sure that each killer we see is caught just as they are about to strike so the audience never gets a chance to ask if this is how the system would really work.

What’s more, it seems inconceivable that our legal system would trust the pre-cogs. For one thing, the minority reports all but disqualify the pre-cogs as legitimate predictors of fact as compared to possibility. But even beyond that, I still can’t conceive of a method for testing their accuracy that would stand up to court scrutiny? Did they sit around for decades predicting every murder while the government compared their predictions to trial results? It just seems implausible that courts would send people away based on the visions of three druggies lying in a fish tank. Also, consider both von Sydow’s death and the death of Anderton’s “victim.” Both are clearly suicides with Anderton never pulling the trigger in either instance. Yet, Anderton is identified as the killer? Can’t the pre-cogs distinguish between murder and suicide or self-defense? How many rape victims and shopkeepers were arrested for murder? And why would anyone trust a system that can’t separate these important details?

Spielberg sees these problems as well. Thus, he gives us Colin Farrell, who plays some sort of Justice Department overseer or auditor. His role is to assure the audience the government, i.e. the Justice Department, watches this program carefully and finds it legitimate. He also plays the skeptic who is quickly won over, which is a gimmick to alleviate the audience’s doubts.

The Plot Holes

The plot really is nonsense. First, it falls into the standard “boss did it” cliché, which we discussed the other day. Secondly, I can’t for the life of me figure out why Anderton’s boss (von Sydow) decided to set Anderton up? Sure, he mouths something about protecting the program from Anderton discovering that he killed someone in the past to protect the program, but Anderton only found that out after von Sydow set him up. So the only reason I can see for von Sydow setting Anderton up is to cause the plot.

Further, the explanation of how von Sydow did the original murder makes no sense. We’re told he got away with it because the cops would have ignored his attempt as it would have appeared to be an echo of the prior murder attempt. But wasn’t there a ball (“report”) with his name on it? Didn’t that make anyone suspicious that this was more than just an echo?

There’s a huge problem with von Sydow killing Colin Farrell too. Spielberg through von Sydow tells us that von Sydow can get away with the killing because Anderton stole the head pre-cog and, thus, the cops have no idea a murder is being committed. But how is von Sydow going to explain the body in his office? How can he hope to blame Anderton for this? Has the future somehow lost the ability to run ballistics tests and gun powder residue tests? Only D.C. is on the pre-cog program, surely the FBI can figure this one out.

There are other problems too. For example, von Sydow wants to roll out the PreCrime concept nationally, but how can he do that when they only have three pre-cogs and only one of them is actually gifted enough to make the whole program work? Why are all the killers in the cryoprison Caucasians? Even more interestingly, this is supposed to be Washington, D.C., what happened to all the blacks? And why does D.C. look like some sort of Blade-Runner version of Hong Kong?

Conclusion

As I said above, I want to like this film. I like the actors and I generally enjoy films made from Philip Dick’s work. The plot sounds like it should be interesting and the themes should be deep and give you something to think about. But the film simply doesn’t work. Spielberg is talented enough to hide his mistakes and keep the viewer from seeing them right away, but they gnaw at you. And the film completely breaks down when you think about it. That’s why I can’t like this film: Spielberg fudged the whole thing. . . and he knows it.

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