tom cruise time travel movie

Log in or sign up for Rotten Tomatoes

Trouble logging in?

By continuing, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes.

Email not verified

Let's keep in touch.

Sign up for the Rotten Tomatoes newsletter to get weekly updates on:

Upcoming Movies and TV shows
Trivia & Rotten Tomatoes Podcast
Media News + More

By clicking "Sign Me Up," you are agreeing to receive occasional emails and communications from Fandango Media (Fandango, Vudu, and Rotten Tomatoes) and consenting to Fandango's Privacy Policy and Terms and Policies . Please allow 10 business days for your account to reflect your preferences.

OK, got it!

Movies / TV

No results found.

What's the Tomatometer®?
Login/signup

Movies in theaters

Opening this week
Top box office
Coming soon to theaters
Certified fresh movies

Movies at home

Fandango at Home
Netflix streaming
Prime Video
Most popular streaming movies
What to Watch New

Certified fresh picks

Hit Man Link to Hit Man
Am I OK? Link to Am I OK?
Jim Henson Idea Man Link to Jim Henson Idea Man

New TV Tonight

Star Wars: The Acolyte: Season 1
Ren Faire: Season 1
Sweet Tooth: Season 3
Clipped: Season 1
Queenie: Season 1
Mayor of Kingstown: Season 3
Becoming Karl Lagerfeld: Season 1
Criminal Minds: Season 17
Power Book II: Ghost: Season 4
Erased: WW2's Heroes of Color: Season 1

Edge of Tomorrow

Where to watch.

Rent Edge of Tomorrow on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, or buy it 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.

Critics Reviews

Audience reviews, cast & crew.

Major William Cage

Emily Blunt

Rita Vrataski

Brendan Gleeson

General Brigham

Bill Paxton

Master Sergeant Farell

Jonas Armstrong

Movie Clips

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, edge of tomorrow.

Now streaming on:

"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.

Now playing

Glenn Kenny

The Idea of You

Bad Boys: Ride or Die

Brian tallerico.

Gasoline Rainbow

Peyton robinson.

Film Credits

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

Latest blog posts

Everybody Wants Some!! Told Us Everything We Needed to Know About Glen Powell

Cannes 2024 Video #9: Festival Wrapup

The Future of the Movies, Part 3

Handmade Magic: Jason and the Argonauts

Watch This /
Entertainment /
Mass Transit

Tom Cruise trains through time travel in new 'Edge of Tomorrow' trailer

By Kwame Opam

Via ComingSoon.net

Share this story

In Edge of Tomorrow , Lt. Col. Bill Cage, played by Tom Cruise, is trapped in a Groundhog Day -esque time loop as he lives and dies fighting against an apparently unstoppable alien threat. The only way out is for him to get better at fighting the invaders, and with each death comes new skills and experiences that will help him and Special Forces soldier Rita Vrataski (played by Emily Blunt) take the aliens down. The new trailer gives an even clearer glimpse of their plight, as Cage intones early on that he's been fighting this losing for "an eternity." Check it out when it hits theaters on June 6th.

Summer Game Fest 2024: all the news, trailers, and announcements

Tesla ceo elon musk could leave if $56 billion pay package not approved, shareholders warned, windows won’t take screenshots of everything you do after all — unless you opt in, what to expect at wwdc 2024, ‘apple intelligence’ will automatically choose between on-device and cloud-powered ai.

More from Entertainment

Apple will reportedly face a $539 million fine over Spotify’s antitrust complaint

How to live your life in text files

A 10th-gen iPad in an Apple Smart Folio on a wood table.

The best Presidents Day sales happening now

Screenshot from the 27th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards featuring the event’s two hosts Greg Miller (left) and Stella Chung (right).

The DICE Awards show is the celebration developers and fans deserve

Supported by

Movie Review

Killed in Action by Aliens, Over and Over Again

Share full article

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.

Explore More in TV and Movies

Not sure what to watch next we can help..

The director Pablo Berger broke down how he brought a New York street scene to life in “Robot Dreams,” his Oscar-nominated animated film about the friendship between a dog and a robot.

Cleopatra Coleman’s versatility has allowed the actor to stay relatively anonymous, but that may change with “Clipped,” her new docudrama about an N.B.A. scandal.

The documentary “Jim Henson Idea Man,” directed by Ron Howard, doesn’t ignore the Muppet mastermind’s faults, but the tribute has a lot to teach creators everywhere .

If you are overwhelmed by the endless options, don’t despair — we put together the best offerings on Netflix , Max , Disney+ , Amazon Prime and Hulu to make choosing your next binge a little easier.

Sign up for our Watching newsletter to get recommendations on the best films and TV shows to stream and watch, delivered to your inbox.

Entertainment
REVIEW: <i>Edge of Tomorrow</i>: Being Tom Cruise, Forever

REVIEW: Edge of Tomorrow : Being Tom Cruise, Forever

T he movie begins with world news services — the BBC, Sky News — reporting the invasion and near conquest of Europe by extraterrestrial entities. Even CNN interrupts its 24/7 coverage of that Malaysian plane, giving Wolf Blitzer a chance to report an actual breaking story. And at the end (no spoiler alert necessary), we learn that “Russian and Chinese troops are moving across Western Europe without resistance.” That’s supposed to be the good news.

So we’re in the movies’ favorite nightmare fantasyland, Armageddon — or, through most of Edge of Tomorrow , a replay of the D-Day invasion, but with Allied forces deploying from London to fight not the Nazis but the Mimics. Described as “a spectacularly evolved, world-conquering organism” and looking like jellyfish or octopuses with limbs resembling Rastafarian locks, these alien beings take on the properties of the creatures they have encountered and assimilated. With tremendous speed and agility, they pop out of nowhere and zap , you’re dead — you and virtually all the other soldiers you hit the beach with. The Mimics can achieve this because they’ve been through this battle many times before and “an enemy that knows the future can’t lose.”

(READ: When Tom Cruise went nuts on Oprah )

The only way to survive, and perhaps save the mission, is to catch a dose of the Mimics’ strength. You die on the battlefield, and then are instantly reborn back at the Heathrow training base, where you sharpen your warrior skills while memorizing every detail of the Mimics’ movements. Landing for the second or hundredth time on the beach, at the exact same future time, you relive your fatal nightmare, but with crucial tweaks: now you can anticipate the enemy’s feints and score some kills. Guiding you is a luscious, superefficient soldier, Rita Vrataski — the Angel of Verdun, or the Full Metal Bitch — though each time you meet her, she doesn’t know who you are.

Tom Cruise is the Groundhog Day grunt, and Emily Blunt the Angel Bitch, in Edge of Tomorrow , a furiously time-looping joy ride and the smartest action film of the early summer season. The movie’s only static element is its title, which oddly suggests a mashup of TV soap operas. Director Doug Liman and screenwriters Christopher McQuarrie, Jez Butterworth and John-Henry Butterworth could have borrowed a name from any number of James Bond films — You Only Live Twice , Live and Let Die , Tomorrow Never Dies , Die Another Day — to describe its hero’s curse and gift. Or they could have kept the title of Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s 2004 source novel: All You Need Is Kill . (It sounds exactly as cool in the original Japanese: O ru Yu N i do Izu Kiru. )

In Steven Spielberg’s 2005 War of the Worlds remake, Cruise was an ordinary dad trying to outrun an alien takeover. In last year’s Oblivion , he was a career soldier battling his own clone. As Major William Cage in Edge of Tomorrow , he is, at first, the anti-Tom. A former ad agency spin doctor, Cage joined the service to create promos that would entice civilians into deadly combat. He’s the Don Draper of World War III.

“I do this to avoid doing that,” he tells the hardass General Brigham (Brendan Gleeson). “Can’t stand the sight of blood. Not so much as a paper cut.” Unlike the gung-ho Maverick in Top Gun , which launched Cruise to stardom 28 years ago, Cage is spoiling not to fight.

(READ: Tom Cruise fights Tom Cruise in Oblivion )

Brigham stockades the reluctant warrior and attaches him to a squad of soldiers due to be dropped on the beach tomorrow. And now he’s a private with a coward’s rep, to be bullied by his master sergeant (Bill Paxton) and his gruff new mates. (Cruise looks great at 51 — he could be a fit 40. Still, wouldn’t his fellow soldiers wonder why a guy approaching middle age has the army’s lowest rank? Answer: No, because it’s a movie! ) With precious little training in weapons operation and maneuvering his bulky robot uniform, Cage lands on the beach and sees his squad promptly wiped out. In one weirdly funny image, a cargo plane drops to the earth, smashing one soldier. This is the Saving Private Ryan beach invasion, played a second time as tragic farce.

Yet on Spielberg’s Omaha Beach, there was no fabulous babe, no female Audie Murphy for an out-of-place, out-of-time soldier to bond with. Rita used to be “in the loop” with the Mimics, but not now: “I had it and I lost it.” But when she realizes that Cage has somehow got on the enemy’s wavelength — a fact she must face anew each time she sees him, since he’s come back from the future — she trains him at Heathrow and fights bravely with him. As the periods of their endlessly repeated first meeting lengthen, they escape the beach for a deserted farmhouse; then the Thames River, infested with swimming Mimics; and finally Paris in search of the Omega Mimic that directs all the others.

(READ: Richard Schickel on Saving Private Ryan )

For most of the film’s two hours, Liman keeps the plot plates spinning with the suave dexterity he showed in Swingers , Go , The Bourne Identity and Mr. & Mrs. Smith . (Liman had a down phase with Jumper and Fair Game , but all his pictures have addressed the lies that are taken as truth and the mystery of even a hero’s personality.) Photographed by Dion Beebe in the desaturated khaki colors of Saving Private Ryan and World War Z , the movie figures its viewers are bright enough to grab the premise and parlays that belief into audience exhilaration. Each succeeding visit to Heathrow or the beach is shorter, sometimes only by a second; the rhythm accelerates vertiginously, the tension tautens. Only toward the climax, when the live-die-repeat cycle is abandoned, does Edge of Tomorrow go logy. But it’s two-thirds of a sensational ride — one you can ride over and over without buying additional tickets.

Revealing the timidity of the X-Men: Days of Future Past premise — one man going back in time to connect with a younger version of an old friend — Edge of Tomorrow is also a metaphor for moviemaking: the film is all about rehearsal, about living and learning (or dying and learning) and gradually turning mistakes into triumphs. Cage has not only read the “script” of the Mimics’ war but has infused it into his central nervous system. In that sense, it’s a demonstration of the 10,000-hours-of-practice theory popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers . Keep doing something forever and maybe you’ll get it right.

(READ: Lev Grossman on Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers )

In a complicated scenario with just four prominent roles (Cruise, Blunt, Paxton and Gleeson), the two leading players must radiate star quality and sex appeal. Solemn and toned to the max, Blunt proves a strong partner for an actor who can still earn the sobriquet Tom Terrific. More often than most Hollywood hunks, Cruise steps outside his comfort zone to embrace weird characters — in Magnolia , Lions for Lambs , Tropic Thunder and Rock of Ages. But it’s also cool to see him bend the familiar action-fantasy format and, as he does here, stick the landing.

An aging star can’t push envelopes forever. According to the Internet Movie Database, Cruise is becoming his own Cage, planning to star in the sequels Mission: Impossible 5 , Top Gun 2 and Jack Reacher: Never Go Back . Twist that last title and you have a suitable name for his current, very savory film: Always Go Back .

More Must-Reads from TIME

How Joe Biden Leads
TIME100 Most Influential Companies 2024
Javier Milei’s Radical Plan to Transform Argentina
How Private Donors Shape Birth-Control Choices
What Sealed Trump’s Fate : Column
Are Walking Pads Worth It?
15 LGBTQ+ Books to Read for Pride
Want Weekly Recs on What to Watch, Read, and More? Sign Up for Worth Your Time

The Nerds of Color

Pop culture with a different perspective.

The Time Travel and Ending of Edge of Tomorrow Explained

Originally posted at Reappropriate

I went to see the new Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt science-fiction film Edge of Tomorrow , which is based on the Japanese novel and manga All You Need is Kill .

The racial cross-casting of Cage’s character aside — he is inspired by Japanese protagonist Keiji in the manga — this film is phenomenal. Nerds and feminists — and especially nerd feminists — will adore this movie. It’s sharp, funny, entertaining, compelling, and visually stunning. Haters of Tom Cruise get to see Tom Cruise get killed about a hundred times in stunt scenes that Cruise himself described as “channeling Wile E. Coyote” on The Daily Show . Emily Blunt’s Rita is stellar: she is the aspirational super-soldier, and not the simpering girlfriend; she’s also got a bad-ass giant sword. Those who loved Pacific Rim ‘s portrayal of a male-female peer relationship that was largely non-sexual will adore the relationship between Rita and Cruise’s Cage in this film.

Basically, it’s just really good. Go see it. I’ll wait.

Okay, now that you’ve seen it — did you have all kinds of thoughts and questions about those aliens and the “time travel” in this movie? Snoopy and I did, too, and we geeked out over a late-night dinner about the science of how what happened could have happened. Here’s what we came up with, and I’m posting about it because — goshdarn it — I think we really figured this thing out.

Spoilers! This post will spoil the entire movie.

The “time travel” of the Edge of Tomorrow Mimics isn’t really time travel, it’s consciousness-traveling (similar to the conceit of the travesty that was X-Men: Days of Future Past ): the Mimics — and by extension Cage — are not physically traveling from one timepoint to another; instead, their minds are jumping backwards to an earlier timepoint, allowing them to alter the course of time by making decisions informed by a possible future.

But, how does this really work? What is the relative role of the Alphas (the glowing sentinel Mimics) and the Omega (the central core that Snoopy thought was heavily inspired by Starship Troopers ‘ Brain Bug)? And, isn’t this just one giant incubator for alternative universes? (To that last point, the answer is yes.)

The Mimic is an organism whose sole purpose is to conquer planets, and has evolved a complex self-defense mechanism to ensure its own propagation. The Mimic drones are the “claws” — the Mimics’ primary defense system. The Alphas are “sentinels” that exist to gauge the degree to which any threat makes it past the drones; if something kills an Alpha, this indicates sufficient danger to instinctively trigger the Mimics’ final self-defense mechanism: the looping.

And how does that work? In addition to its primary function to coordinate the actions of all drones and Alphas, the Omega has an additional characteristic. The Omega Mimic exists simultaneously at three points in time. If you think of time as a linear dimension, each of us occupies a single point on that line. The Omega Mimic exists instead as a line connecting three points spanning an approximate 48 hour period: the “distant past,” the “present-past,” and the “future-present.” The “present-past” point serves as the main anchor point: a fixed position in time from which to (routinely) reset the day. From that point in time, the Omega extends a version of itself towards the “future-present” like a cell that moves by extending a tendril ahead to test a space out to see if it’s safe.

A macrophage extends a "foot" out into space to "test the waters" before moving its entire body to the new position.

And, like cells, if the Omega encounters danger in that future (as evidenced by the death of an alpha) it instinctively retracts back to its first anchor point and tries going in a different direction.

And what about the “distant past?” That’s a reserve anchor point that allows the Omega to reset from even farther back in time, allowing it to never be fully committed to a single temporal direction. If things get really dicey, it will retract far enough away to move in a completely different direction, entirely. If we think of it spatially, the “present-past” and “future-present” are like taking steps after deciding to go left; the “distant-past” exists as a mechanism to abandon going left entirely.

So how did Cage get the power to loop? Well, the Alphas are “sentinels:” as deadly as a drone, but their true power lies in their blood. If the looping power is a final self-defense mechanism for the Mimics, than the death of an Alpha would be the trigger to initiate a reset. Mixture of Cage’s blood with a dying Alpha (somehow — this is never explained and defies biology) integrated Cage into the Mimic’s network of sentinel Alphas. In essence, as far as the Omega was concerned, he was another Alpha. Every time Cage died, the Omega mistook this for a signal that it was in danger and triggered a loop.

Cage was never in control of the looping power. The Omega was being fooled into looping by thinking Cage was an endlessly dying Alpha sentinel.

The visions seen by Rita, and then later by Cage, were this repair system taking effect: the Omega sent a specific signal that would attract Alphas to a single location, where they could be safely disposed of far away from the location of the Omega itself (this is to keep the Omega safe in case the defective alpha is dangerous). When Cage arrived at the dam, the drone and the Alpha stopped Cage from killing himself because they don’t want to loop again, since the whole point of the mechanism is to stop unnecessary looping. It’s unclear what they would’ve done to Cage if he hadn’t killed himself, but most likely if he had been an actual Mimic, they would have removed him from the “sentinel” network by performing a process similar to the blood transfusion, and then killed him. That’s why the Alpha wounded him, but didn’t kill him.

So what about that ending?

After a blood transfusion, Cage is essentially excised from the Alpha network, no longer being mistaken by the Omega as a “sentinel.” And then stuff happens and he kills the Omega by dropping a bunch of grenades into it. But then he wakes up in the helicopter at the start of the film and all is right with the world?

Well, at the moment of his death, Cage’s blood mixes with that of an Alpha, and he temporarily becomes a pseudo-Alpha again, which allows him to retain his memories in the reboot. Meanwhile, because the Omega was itself dying, one final loop was triggered by the Omega in a final desperate attempt to escape danger. The Omega looped not to the “present-past” point but to the “distant past” anchor point since the Omega itself wanted to escape an imminent threat to its core. Because of the Alpha’s blood, Cage went along for the ride and woke up with the Omega at the “distant past” timepoint.

But, since the Omega exists at multiple points in time (rather than a single moving point) and was actually killed in the “future-present,” the explosion actually rippled back in time and killed the Omega at all the other time points, too. So, when Cage wakes up, he wakes up at the “distant-past” anchor point along with his memories at the precise position in time that the Omega kept anchored to in reserve, and when it blows up. This allows for the lovely ending where everyone we watched die horrifically in the movie get to live again in blissful ignorance.

And does Cage now have time-traveling powers? Is he immortal? No. Being an Alpha only ever meant he was a sentinel, invoking the looping powers of the Omega upon every death. He could never himself loop. With the Omega dead, Cage is back to being a normal dude with one final lease on life.

So, what do you think? Does this make sense? Or is this all the mad ramblings of one non-physicist fangirl? I would love to hear your thoughts!

Published by

Jenn keeps a regular blog at Reappropriate.co which she updates sporadically on topics of Asian American identity, feminism, pop culture, and politics. Follow her on Facebook or at @reappropriate . View all posts by Jenn

Discover more from The Nerds of Color

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Type your email…

Tom Cruise Fondly Remembers Edge Of Tomorrow On Its 10-Year Anniversary Release

Tom Cruise fondly commemorates the 10th anniversary of Edge of Tomorrow on Instagram.
The film is remembered for its engaging time loop premise and visually stunning battle sequences.
Edge of Tomorrow 's legacy endures as fans eagerly anticipate a potential sequel.

Tom Cruise fondly remembers Edge of Tomorrow on the 10th anniversary of its release. Directed by Doug Liman, with a script co-written by Mission: Impossible 's Christopher McQuarrie (loosely based on the Japanese novel All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka), the 2014 sci-fi action film follows a solider assigned to a suicide mission who finds himself stuck in a time loop, using knowledge from each death to combat an alien invasion more effectively. Cruise co-stars alongside Emily Blunt, with the cast also including Bill Paxton and Brendan Gleeson.

Now, a decade later, Cruise shared a lengthy post on Instagram fondly remembering Edge of Tomorrow on the 10th anniversary of its release . Check out his post below:

Cruise's heartfelt message, in which he reflects on the film's creation and expresses gratitude to key people involved, reads as follows:

Its been 10 years since Edge of Tomorrow first hit theaters! I want to take the opportunity to thank Emily Blunt once again for being such a great friend and brilliant actress. I love her performance in this film. Her dedication. Her humor. Her vulnerability and power. She brought it all. This anniversary brings back incredible memories. My first collaboration with Doug Liman. Rejoining the indomitable Brendan Gleeson. And my first time working alongside the great Bill Paxton. His performance and the character he created left an indelible mark on this film. Hitting this kind of tone was no easy task. The writing and storytelling of Christopher McQuarrie made the movie work. Along with the dedication of our entire team who helped bring it to the screenit was an absolute joy creating it with you all. To everyone who has enjoyed this film over the years, thank you for being a fan. And thank you to Warner Bros. for making this film. I cant wait to share more about the great movies were working on.

Edge of Tomorrow Ending & Time Travel Explained

We break down the Edge of Tomorrow ending and explain how time travel (day resets) work within the film, and the paradoxes that come with it.

Why Edge Of Tomorrow Is Remembered So Fondly

Edge of tomorrow is underrated but is gradually gaining recognition..

With a potential sequel on the horizon, it's clear that Edge of Tomorrow 's legacy continues to endure a decade after its release, as indicated by Cruise's celebratory statement.

Edge of Tomorrow , also known as Live Die Repeat , was released to rave reactions from critics and audiences in 2014. Edge of Tomorrow reviews called the sci-fi actioner engaging, skillfully performed, humorous, and intelligent, proving that Cruise was still capable of leading a blockbuster action film after a few misfires in Oblivion and Knight and Day . Edge of Tomorrow ended up grossing just over $370 million at the box office, held back from its full potential due to some heavy competition from The Fault in Our Stars , which also made over $300 million.

A decade later, Edge of Tomorrow is remembered fondly for its engaging premise. The movie's time loop , where the protagonists repeat the same day and gradually improve their skills, offers a unique spin on the premise seen before in Source Code , Groundhog Day , and many other movies. With Liman at the helm, the film's carefully crafted action sequences were intense and visually stunning. Cruise's portrayal of Major William Cage, who transforms from a reluctant, inexperienced soldier to a seasoned warrior, is compelling, while Blunt's character Sergeant Rita Vrataski is both formidable and charismatic.

In his post, Cruise thanked Warner Bros. for making the film, which is notable since the star recently formed an unprecedented strategic partnership with the studio to develop and produce movies throughout 2024. One of those movies reportedly includes Edge of Tomorrow 2 . With a potential sequel on the horizon, it's clear that Edge of Tomorrow 's legacy continues to endure a decade after its release, as indicated by Cruise's celebratory statement.

Edge of Tomorrow is streaming on the TBS and TNT apps.

Source: Tom Cruise /Instagram

Edge of Tomorrow

Director Doug Liman

Release Date June 6, 2014

Studio(s) Warner Bros. Pictures

Distributor(s) Warner Bros. Pictures

Writers John-Henry Butterworth, Jez Butterworth, Christopher McQuarrie

Cast Emily Blunt, Tom Cruise

Rating PG-13

Runtime 1h 53m

Genres Sci-Fi, Thriller, Action, Adventure

Sequel(s) Edge of Tomorrow 2

Budget 178 million

Based on Hiroshi Sakurazaka's novel All You Need is Kill, Edge of Tomorrow follows Major William Cage (Tom Cruise), who finds himself drafted into humanity's ongoing war against a seemingly unstoppable race of hostile aliens called Mimics. Cage is killed in combat, but wakes in a time loop, reliving the same battle day after day. Gradually, he realizes that if he teams up with the decorated war hero Sergeant Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt), he can exploit the time loop to defeat the Mimic army and save the human race.

Tom Cruise Fondly Remembers Edge Of Tomorrow On Its 10-Year Anniversary Release

Tickets & Showtimes
Trending on RT

(Photo by David James/©Warner Bros. Pictures/courtesy Everett Collection)

All Tom Cruise Movies, Ranked By Tomatometer

Edge of Tomorrow celebrates its 10th anniversary!

From his teen idol days in the early ’80s to his status as a marquee-lighting leading man today, Tom Cruise has consistently done it all for decades — he’s completed impossible missions, learned about Wapner time in Rain Man , driven the highway to the danger zone in Top Gun , and done wonders for Bob Seger’s royalty statements in Risky Business , to offer just a few examples. Mr. Cruise is one of the few honest-to-goodness film stars left in the Hollywood firmament, so whether you’re a hardcore fan or just interested in a refresher course on his filmography, we’re here to take a fond look back at a truly impressive career and rank all Tom Cruise movies.

Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018) 97%

Top Gun: Maverick (2022) 96%

Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (2023) 96%

Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation (2015) 94%

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011) 93%

Risky Business (1983) 92%

Edge of Tomorrow (2014) 91%

Minority Report (2002) 89%

Rain Man (1988) 88%

The Color of Money (1986) 88%

Collateral (2004) 86%

Born on the Fourth of July (1989) 84%

American Made (2017) 85%

A Few Good Men (1992) 84%

Jerry Maguire (1996) 84%

Magnolia (1999) 82%

Tropic Thunder (2008) 82%

Eyes Wide Shut (1999) 75%

The Firm (1993) 76%

War of the Worlds (2005) 76%

Mission: Impossible III (2006) 71%

The Outsiders (1983) 70%

Taps (1981) 68%

Mission: Impossible (1996) 66%

The Last Samurai (2003) 66%

Interview With the Vampire (1994) 63%

Jack Reacher (2012) 64%

All the Right Moves (1983) 61%

Valkyrie (2008) 62%

Top Gun (1986) 57%

Mission: Impossible II (2000) 56%

Oblivion (2013) 54%

Knight and Day (2010) 52%

Far and Away (1992) 50%

Vanilla Sky (2001) 43%

Rock of Ages (2012) 42%

Legend (1985) 41%

Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016) 38%

Days of Thunder (1990) 38%

Lions for Lambs (2007) 27%

Losin' It (1982) 18%

The Mummy (2017) 15%

Cocktail (1988) 9%

More Countdown

Glen Powell Movies Ranked by Tomatometer

Star Wars TV Shows Ranked by Tomatometer

The Bad Boys Movies Ranked by Tomatometer

Movie & TV News

Featured on rt.

June 7, 2024

Netflix’s 100 Best Movies Right Now (June 2024)

Vote For the Best Movie of 1999 – Round 4

Top Headlines

Glen Powell Movies Ranked by Tomatometer –
Star Wars TV Shows Ranked by Tomatometer –
Netflix’s 100 Best Movies Right Now (June 2024) –
The Bad Boys Movies Ranked by Tomatometer –
All 73 Disney Animated Movies Ranked –
30 Most Popular Movies Right Now: What to Watch In Theaters and Streaming –

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.

What Tom Cruise's Weirdest Sci-Fi Movie Gets Wrong About Time Travel

Are time loops possible according to physics?

The wacky, high-octane sci-fi 2014 movie Edge of Tomorrow has it all: Tom Cruise, alien invasions, the U.S. military-industrial complex, and a shaky grasp of the concept of time.

But how realistic is its view of time travel? First, we need to dive into the movie a bit.

In a Groundhog Day scenario from hell, the battle-inexperienced Major Bill Cage (Tom Cruise) finds himself stuck in a time loop that reboots the same day again and again — but with aliens known as “Mimics” that are hellbent on destroying humanity. Each day, Cage dies on the battlefield between aliens and mankind, and each day he awakens in the same training camp surrounded by tough soldiers capable of deploying massive robotic “mech suits” to slaughter the invading alien army.

One of these soldiers is none other than Sergeant Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt). With the help of particle physicist and biologist, Dr. Carter, Vrataski explains to Cage how he acquired his time loop skills from the very aliens they’re trying to kill.

Basically, an alien hive mind known as Omega is the brains behind this military invasion. Whenever another type of alien — known as Alpha — dies in battle, the Omega resets time, starting the invasion over again. When Alpha attacked Cage with a ghastly blue goo, he absorbed the same time rebooting abilities from Omega.

“How do I control it?” Cage asks.

“You have to die. Every day. Until the Omega’s destroyed,” Vrataski tells a dismayed Cage.

The rest of the movie shows how Cage uses the skills and knowledge he gleans during each reboot to eventually defeat the invading aliens.

By now, the time loop concept has become wildly familiar to Hollywood and has been featured in wide-ranging projects from Happy Death Day to Russian Doll . But at the time of Edge of Tomorrow’ s release, the concept still felt pretty fresh. But this kind of time travel is more the domain of the screen than anything feasible in physics.

“The sort of loops that appear in Edge of Tomorrow are not physically possible, even given the most speculative physics,” Nikk Effingham , professor of philosophy at the University of Birmingham and an expert on the philosophy of time, tells Inverse .

Reel Science is an Inverse series that reveals the real (and fake) science behind your favorite movies and TV.

How Does Time Work?

Tom Cruise on the battlefield in Edge of Tomorrow

Edge of Tomorrow features Major Cage (Tom Cruise) as an experienced soldier stuck in an absurd time-loop scenario involving aliens.

As a movie that explores the concept of time loops, Edge of Tomorrow falls squarely in the time travel movie genre. So before we can explain the physics of time loops, we have to understand the differing perspectives on travel and, indeed, the nature of time itself. We like to think of time’s arrow proceeding in one direction — forward — but it’s not really that simple.

“Physics tells against the idea that time has a direction,” Effingham says.

John Friedman , physicist and professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, tells Inverse that the “direction” of time we humans observe simply proceeds in a direction of increasing entropy — thermal energy or disorder — which has its origins in the “smooth initial conditions in the early Universe.”

The perception of time depends on where you stand. Effingham says it's possible to imagine that there are “time-reversed” people who are proceeding backward in time from our point of view while they’re traveling forward in time according to their perception. In other words: time is a finicky beast to wrap your head around.

“ Edge of Tomorrow is sheer fantasy.”

Apart from physics, there are two general philosophical schools of thought on the nature of time: A-theory and B-theory. Both have differing takes on how we view the present, past, and future in relation to each other. A-theorists believe we can delineate events as taking place in past, present, or future, whereas B-theorists view temporal events in relation to each other.

“According to the A-theory, there are real facts about who is present, and who is past/future,” Kristie Miller , joint director of the Center for Time and philosophy professor at the University of Sydney, tells Inverse . “Likewise, the B-theorist thinks that all events exist, and that the present is just where you happen to be, and the past is just times earlier than that.”

Time travel in Edge of Tomorrow is logically possible whether you subscribe to an A-theory or B-theory of time — but the physics behind it is more debatable.

There are typically two different kinds of time travel stories we see in pop culture. In the first, you go back and change the past; this kind of movie violates what Seth Lloyd , a professor of mechanical engineering at MIT and co-founder of startup Turing , which devises time travel-inspired quantum computing applications to solve societal problems, calls the self-consistency principle. In the second kind of time travel story, you go back in time and your past actions are consistent with what we know happens in the future, so that kind of time travel logically works.

In Edge of Tomorrow , Cage is obviously trying to change the past, so this doesn’t really square with what we know about the physics of time travel.

“You can't actually go back into the past and then change it because you have to be consistent with what happened,” Lloyd says.

Is There A Scientific Basis For Time Loops?

Abstract reactor. Reactor core room. Device for carrying out a controlled thermonuclear reaction. Me...

On their surface, time loops seem to superficially resemble a physics concept known as a closed timelike curve.

Let’s get this out of the way first: the term “time loop” is a general fictional invention to describe the repetition of a segment of time and is not technically a scientific concept.

“We should just make a distinction between what we know about the physics of time travel in quantum mechanics and then just, you know, the notion of a loop in time,” Lloyd says.

It’s true that, on their surface, time loops seem to superficially resemble a physics concept known as a closed timelike curve.

“So when you say time loop, the thing that comes to mind is a closed timelike curve,” Nicole Yunger Halpern , author of Quantum Steampunk: The Physics of Yesterday's Tomorrow , tells Inverse .

“The entire Universe might form a time loop if it rotated in the correct way.”

Closed timelike curves are effectively trajectories through space-time that depart from a point in time and return to that same point in time through a closed loop via a mechanism like a wormhole. Yunger Halpern says closed timelike curves are compatible with Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which delineates the physical rules around space-time and gravity. It’s possible the creators of Edge of Tomorrow were inspired by the concept of closed timelike curves and tried to mimic a proposed physics concept with a fictional time loop conceit.

Lloyd suggests imagining entering the handle of a coffee mug and exiting through the same handle back to an earlier point in time. In theory, closed timelike curves would let you return to an earlier point in time and eventually wind back in the future — such as in other time travel movies like Looper . (Lloyd’s research group also simulated one kind of model of closed timelike curves .)

“There are some physicists who thought that certain kinds of time loops might be possible. For instance, Kurt Gödel suggested that the entire Universe might form a time loop if it rotated in the correct way,” Effingham says

Is Edge of Tomorrow Realistic — At All?

Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt in The Edge of Tomorrow .

While Lloyd thinks time loops serve as fun narrative devices, he’s not sure about how they fit into our current understanding of physics.

“We don't know how to make them consistent with the laws of physics,” Lloyd says, adding, “the physics version of it doesn't really allow you to reset time.”

Lloyd says it doesn’t make sense that you would have different memories every time you go through the loop — as in Edge of Tomorrow . For her part, Yunger Halpern would logically expect the dead body of Tom Cruise’s character, Cage, to end up in the past — not a living version of him.

“The problem there is that if you die at the end of the loop, then you're not available to go through the loop again. So that's my sticking point,” Lloyd adds.

“It is not known whether the laws of physics allow time loops (closed timelike curves) on very small scales,” Friedman says. He says that incredibly tiny loops smaller than a proton — lasting 10^-43 seconds or with size 10^-33 centimeters — could theoretically be possible, but it’s unknown. He explains that macroscopic time loops to transport a human require negative energy — a difficult feat to achieve.

“I think its highly unlikely that there are macroscopic time loops,” Friedman adds.

Other experts are even more unequivocal.

“In the same way physics doesn’t allow for mind control and possession — even outside of time travel scenarios! — Edge of Tomorrow is sheer fantasy,” Effingham says.

Effingham says physics typically speculates about whether physical bodies can go back in time, but in Edge of Tomorrow , Cage is “psychically” time traveling and his future consciousness takes over his past body — a concept far beyond the bounds of physics.

The Mimic aliens in Edge of Tomorrow .

Samuel Kuypers , a postdoctoral researcher in theoretical physics at the USI (Università della Svizzera italiana) who is researching a model of time travel, tells Inverse the only way Edge of Tomorrow makes sense from a physics perspective is if it’s “some kind of time travel where maybe his consciousness is the thing traveling back in time — maybe it's just pure data that's sent back on the closed timelike curve.”

So, if the aliens had some kind of superior technology that allowed them to send Cage’s memories back on a closed timelike curve, the movie can clear at least one logical hurdle. But Kuypers has an even more interesting theory: Edge of Tomorrow isn’t actually a triumphant action movie where the good guys save the day — at least not in every universe.

According to physicist David Deutsch’s model of closed timelike curves, we can avoid logical problems with time travel — like the grandfather paradox — by assuming there are parallel timelines, which physicists refer to as Everett’s “ many worlds theory .”

“Time travel can only be made sense of because you travel to another timeline,” Kuypers says.

Applying this logic to Edge of Tomorrow , it naturally follows that Cage only succeeds to save the world from aliens in one timeline. In every other timeline, he dies in vain and humanity gets obliterated by blue-goo-dumping alien beings.

“My main observation about the movie is that we might have watched a tragedy without knowing that’s what we watched,” Kuypers says.

But whether you see Edge of Tomorrow as a tragic attempt to defeat aliens across time and space or a heroic Hollywood victory, one thing’s undeniable: It’s one hell of an entertaining reboot of the time loop genre.

Edge of Tomorrow is streaming now on HBO Max.

This article was originally published on March 17, 2023

Science Fiction

Screen Rant

Every tom cruise sci-fi movie ranked from worst to best.

Your changes have been saved

Email Is sent

Please verify your email address.

You’ve reached your account maximum for followed topics.

15 Best Friends-To-Lovers Romance Movies Ever Made

9 popular '80s & '90s kids books that have aged poorly, does bad boys: ride or die have a post-credits scene.

Tom Cruise is one of Hollywood's most bankable movie stars, and throughout his long and illustrious career he's made a few notable forays into sci-fi, but how do his films in that genre rank from worst to best? Cruise is rightfully often thought of as one of the last of the old-school A-list movie stars. As franchises are more and more defined by their intellectual property, the list of actors who can bring in boffo box office with just their name is shrinking rapidly. However, a Tom Cruise film is always a major event.

Cruise has been around in the business for almost 40 years, building up a string of prestigious dramas and action films that made him an undeniable force in the industry. In the 1980s and '90s, he swung effortlessly from Top Gun to A Few Good Men , from Mission: Impossible to Magnolia. He received box office clout and awards attention, and famously appeared in Stanley Kubrick 's final film, Eyes Wide Shut .

Related: Why Tom Cruise Always Insists On Doing His Own Mission: Impossible Stunts

It may seem surprising that he didn't dip his toe in the sci-fi genre until after the turn of the century, first with Cameron Crowe's audacious mess, Vanilla Sky. However, that first foray started a trend that gave us some of Cruise's most interesting and surprising 21st-century performances. From his two collaborations with Steven Spielberg to the Edge of Tomorrow, here are Tom Cruise's sci-fi movies ranked from worst to best.

5. Oblivion (2013)

There's almost no movie star with a steadier hand than Tom Cruise, but not even he can right the wrongs of this visually dazzling but immensely boring music video of a film. Oblivion 's plot concerns a security repairman on an abandoned Earth and the chance meeting that will trigger his fight to singlehandedly save mankind. Director Joseph Kosinski, who also directed the problematic Disney sequel TRON: Legacy , shoots the whole film with the self-seriousness of a cerebral space epic, but one can almost feel Cruise itching to burst out of these somber restrictions and make it a full-fledged action film. Claudio Miranda's cinematography attempts to make up for a predictable plot, and the film's look goes a long way. No matter of aesthetics could disguise a film that can't decide whether it wants to swerve wildly off the rails or barely have a pulse.

4. Vanilla Sky (2001)

Tom Cruise and writer-director Cameron Crowe reunited to make this absolutely out-of-its-mind remake of the 1997 Spanish film Open Your Eyes. The plot is difficult to parse, but the basic gist is that Cruise plays a Manhattan publishing giant who attempts to utilize a bizarre, sci-fi version of therapy to bounce back after a traumatizing car crash. It's a big swing of a movie, and while it pales in comparison to the unsettling majesty of Cruise's Kubrick collaboration, Eyes Wide Shut , it can proudly sit beside that masterpiece as one of the most interesting entries in the actor's vast filmography. It's as fascinating as much as it is largely unsuccessful, its psychological thriller underpinnings consistently playing second fiddle to its nightmarish imagery, the most famous example being Cruise running through a totally empty Times Square. This is a wild, out-there performance from the movie star, but a charmingly odd reunion for its director and star after Jerry Maguire.

3. War of the Worlds (2005)

Early on in Spielberg's 2005 update of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds, Tom Cruise has a full-on panic attack realizing that the dust that's covering him is actually the ashes of people vaporized by the invading, underrated, and horrific Spielbergian Tripod aliens . It's an early harbinger that Spielberg isn't interested in making just another popcorn movie. War of the Worlds may remain Cruise's highest-grossing domestic hit, but that doesn't take away from the fact that this is one of the director's and star's bleakest, most deeply terrifying films. In fact, many Spielberg fans and critics have lumped this film, along with 2004's The Terminal and 2005's Munich, into an unofficial trilogy focused on America's mood post-9/11. While the former is more heartwarming and the latter more awards-focused, War of the Worlds transcends both, and the "trilogy" moniker, to become one of the most harrowing and definitive American films about that terrible day 20 years ago. This is a movie filled with nightmarish and horror movie imagery, from a sea of floating corpses to the terrifying nature of the Tripods. Cruise's shocking ease at slipping into the shoes of a single dad everyman gives a grounding center to this blockbuster portrait of sheer terror.

Related: Every Tom Cruise Movie Where His Character Dies

2. Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

Instantly one of the most pleasant surprises of popular filmmaking in the 21st century, this Doug Liman-helmed actioner didn't just have the smarts to mash up the genre with Groundhog Day , it also formed a remarkably electric pairing with Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt. Cruise is phenomenal, but the big surprise here is that he's kind of playing a big old scaredy-cat, ceding scene-stealing status to Blunt, who comes into her own as a full-blown, blockbuster-leading movie star here. Their chemistry is rock solid, the screenplay feels consistently fresh and genuinely funny, and Liman's direction keeps things moving with a refreshing dynamism that never lets the film's inherent repetition grow stale. Cruise has forever been one of the action genre's most outstanding performers, but it's arguable none of his blockbuster offerings have ever felt as surprising, as fresh, and as flat-out fun as Edge of Tomorrow. W ithout a doubt, this is one of the best action movies of the decade and certainly one of Cruise's best outings in the sci-fi genre.

1. Minority Report (2002)

Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg had been in talks to collaborate for years before Minority Report , but few could have imagined that their first film together would be as moody and haunted as Minority Report. Filmed long before 9/11, the film's depiction of societal paranoia and surveillance, where futuristic cops can arrest people just for knowing they're going to commit a murder, hit the zeitgeist in a chilling and downright uncanny way. That's partly due to the source material, a 1956 novella called The Minority Report and written by Philip K. Dick , whose works have inspired other sci-fi tentpoles like Blade Runner and Total Recall. However, it's the mash-up of Spielberg and Cruise, along with the chrome steel cinematography of Janusz Kaminski, which transforms the story into a Maltese Falcon for the 21st century. Spielberg marries genre mastery to a world-weariness that clashes with his most trademark films and Cruise's typically sturdy performance brings a tragic heft, and lots of running, to this underappreciated screed against an America abandoning its principles.

Next: How Mission: Impossible 2 Changed Tom Cruise's Career (For Better And Worse)

SR Originals
oblivion (2013)

5 Great Sci-Fi Movies Starring Tom Cruise

Your changes have been saved

Email Is sent

Please verify your email address.

You’ve reached your account maximum for followed topics.

5 Ways The Original '90s X-Men Series Is Better Than X-Men '97

Wednesday season 2: casting steve buscemi was the right move for the netflix series, captain america 4: fans believe they've figured out giancarlo esposito's character.

Tom Cruise is considered one of the greatest movie stars of all time, thanks to his tremendous work as Ethan Hunt in the Mission: Impossible franchise, as well as his iconic roles in Top Gun and Risky Business . However, Cruise has also found success in big-budget sci-fi films, including a couple of them directed by Steven Spielberg.

While characters like Hunt and Maverick are portrayed as invincible men who can't be defeated, the protagonists that Cruise embodies in his sci-fi epics are vulnerable individuals who get caught up in complicated situations, such as going to war against alien forces, getting involved with murder cases, or trying to regain important memories. Cruise also has strong interactions with female characters in terms of working with them to understand the main conflict, which sometimes includes messing around with the conventions of time and space.

Updated May 26, 2022 by Mark Sammut: Tom Cruise is back in the headlines with the release of Top Gun: Maverick, and the sequel has garnered an incredible reception so far. Over the course of his storied career, the actor has tested his skills by diving into a wide range of genres and styles, including science-fiction. This article has been expanded to include more information about Tom Cruise's best sci-fi movies , including where they can be streamed. A section regarding the movie star's upcoming projects has also been added.

Vanilla Sky

This sci-fi picture reunited Cruise with Jerry Maguire director Cameron Crowe, which also combines psychological thriller with romance. Cruise plays David Aames, a publicist with plenty of privilege who appears to have everything: a successful job, a beautiful partner, a nice home, a fast car, etc. However, when a car accident nearly kills David, he (and the audience) tries to solve a complex puzzle that questions what is real and what is fantasy (similar to Christopher Nolan's complex film Memento ).

RELATED: Underrated Sci-Fi Movies From The 1980s & Where To Stream Them

Along with having a heavily disfigured face and needing to wear a mask to help him heal, David also finds himself in a love triangle with two seductive women: his partner Julie (portrayed by a wild Cameron Diaz) and Sofia (played by Penélope Cruz). David also has reflective conversations with a psychologist (played by Kurt Russell), who tries to help David figure out if he murdered anyone after being charged with a murder he doesn't remember nor believe he committed. Like Memento or Inception , this feature is a test for its protagonist to question his sense of reality and to figure out what makes his life happy and enjoyable.

This action-packed sci-fi film features an apocalyptic future in which Cruise portrays Jack Harper, one of the last remaining humans on Earth in 2077 after alien scavengers destroy the Moon and leave the planet in turmoil. Harper uses combat drones to encounter all the scavengers left on Earth, but when he learns that the scavengers are actually humans trying to defeat the alien artificial intelligence threat called Tet (which controls the drones), Harper also discovers that there are clones of him (and several other humans) who are loyal to Tet and become a major threat to humanity.

There are eye-opening images of a broken-down New York (including the New York Public Library in ruins, and the Empire State Building and city bridges left uninhabited and in darkness). As Harper, Cruise's character is reminiscent of Arnold Schwarzenegger's role in Total Recall due to the fact that Harper has dreams based on his past, which involve memories of previous missions he's had as a commander for NASA. Harper's dreams help him remember his true identity and the love he shares with his wife Julia (also a soldier). Along with Cruise's complex role, Morgan Freeman also stars as a rebel leader, and there are high-octane action sequences that include shootouts and chases involving big space aircraft.

War Of The Worlds

Steven Spielberg's adaptation of H.G. Wells' novel is intense and hard-hitting as Cruise plays Ray Ferrier, a dockworker who is divorced and spends time with his children during a weekend gathering at his home. Ray is considered a flawed husband and father, but he is put to the test when blue spaceships with sting rays invade Earth to take out humanity. Ray does everything he can to protect his teenage son Robbie and young daughter Rachel from harm.

RELATED: Things That Early Sci-Fi Got Right About The Modern World

While the effects involving the alien creatures are massive and loud, what makes this sci-fi feature effective is the drama surrounding Ray and his family. Ray proves to his kids that he is capable of providing safety for them, even if that involves bumps along the road (running out of food and water, trying to find shelter to keep warm, etc.). The paranoia surrounding the human characters also provides plenty of drama, especially in a scene where Ray has to fight numerous civilians who intend to steal his minivan or another moment in which a paranoid man (well played by Tim Robbins) believes everyone is going to die. The best action scene occurs when Ray is grabbed by one of the alien tripods but manages to slip a pack of grenades inside, destroying it before the pod can take him away.

Edge Of Tomorrow

The Bourne Identity director Doug Liman crafts a unique spin on time travel in this ingenious sci-fi picture involving William Cage, a U.S. Army Major who is skilled in providing public affairs to an army called the United Defense Force (UDF) in their fight against powerful aliens called "Mimics." However, when Cage is ordered to fight aliens with a squad in France, he fears for his life and ends up dying and repeating the same day over and over again ( a nod to Groundhog Day ).

This is one of Cruise's most vulnerable roles because his character isn't a professional when it comes to combat and fighting in a war. However, by reliving the same day repeatedly, Cage manages to get better at facing the aliens and anticipating their every move. His partnership with Sergeant Rita Vrataski (a tough Emily Blunt) is also engaging because as she helps him become a skillful warrior, Cage provides Rita with information about how to destroy the Mimics. While the film is most intense, there are comedic scenarios in which Rita kills Cage many times whenever he fails and messes up during training, or when Cage constantly meets the same members of a squad and memorizes their actions and personal histories.

Minority Report

Before War of the Worlds , Spielberg and Cruise collaborated for this sci-fi action thriller based on Philip K. Dick's short story of the same name. The story revolves around Chief John Anderton (Cruise), a cop who works for a police program that solves murders and crimes before they occur. When Anderton finds out that he is wrongly accused of murder, he becomes a wanted fugitive.

This is Cruise's best performance in a sci-fi feature because he manages to portray an intelligent but conflicted detective who intends to clear his name, as well as a husband who misses his wife. The scenes in which Anderton and his unit use advanced technology in his "Precrime" police program to track down would-be killers is fascinating because it's all so far ahead of its time, along with flying police cars and vehicles used in elaborate chase sequences when Anderton is a suspect being hunted down by fellow cops. The film effectively combines elements of the noir and chase film in a whodunit thriller with cool tech, along with strong supporting work from Colin Farrell and Max von Sydow (who aren't what they seem).

These sci-fi features are not only filled with action and/or psychological tension, but they also display Tom Cruise's versatility as an actor, portraying characters who go through tremendous obstacles. Audiences will have to wait and see what type of film Cruise will do in space with Elon Musk .

Upcoming Sci-Fi Movies Starring Tom Cruise

Throughout his career, Cruise has periodically dappled in science fiction, but he is not exactly synonymous with the genre. However, that might be set to change as the actor is reportedly working on two sci-fi projects, one of which is particularly ambitious.

SpaceX Project

In 2020, a rumor hit the rounds stating that Tom Cruise will be teaming up with Elon Musk's SpaceX to film a movie in space, specifically the International Space Station. Information regarding this project was scarce for quite a long time, but recent reports state that production is likely to start once the actor completes his work on the upcoming Mission: Impossible sequels.

Doug Liman is attached as the movie's director, and he also shares writing credits with Christopher McQuarrie. Universal Pictures will be handling the production. Nothing about the story has been revealed, so it remains to be seen whether this feature opts for a more grounded or extravagant tone.

Live Die Repeat And Repeat

A sequel to Edge of Tomorrow is in the pipeline, with reports even suggesting that the script is complete. Unfortunately, as exciting of a prospect as this is, the likelihood of it coming to fruition is not that great. Despite most key members showing interest in producing this follow-up, Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, and Doug Liman have struggled to align their schedules to make it happen. Live Die Repeat and Repeat is also likely to be an expensive undertaking, and while the 2014 release did not bomb at the box office, it was also not a runaway hit.

MORE: Rebel Moon: Everything We Know About Zack Snyder's Next Movie

Underappreciated Sci-fi Movie Remakes

Game rant's ultimate sci-fi guide, underappreciated a24 sci-fi movies.

Movies & TV

The 32 greatest Tom Cruise movies

The Mission: Impossible and Top Gun star has had us all at "Hello"

For decades, the name Tom Cruise has been synonymous with Hollywood movies. With so many classic movies under his belt, it's not hard to understand why.

Though his career has had its share of controversies, Cruise has maintained high altitude as one of Hollywood's most bankable movie stars in its history. Raised in near poverty under an abusive father, Cruise took up acting in high school after he was cut from the varsity football team when he was caught drinking beers before a game.

After starring in his school's production of Guys and Dolls, Cruise caught the acting bug and moved away - first to New York, then to Los Angeles - to pursue a career in TV and movies. He made his movie debut in the 1981 movie Endless Love, and then had a supporting role in the film Taps. After several more small parts, he starred in Paul Brickman's Risky Business, where Cruise won over audiences everywhere with a killer lip-sync routine.

With numerous accolades and just as many controversies to his name, Tom Cruise is the definition of a Hollywood superstar whose presence alone can move mountains. With a career still going strong, we rank the 32 greatest Tom Cruise movies of all time.

32. Oblivion (2013)

Well into his career as a top-tier Hollywood star, Tom Cruise and director Joseph Kosinski aimed to prove that the old ways of original, star-driven spectacles could still draw audiences without attaching a known superhero IP. Enter: Oblivion. Based on Kosinski's own unpublished graphic novel (which Kosinski said was always just a pitch for a movie anyway), Tom Cruise stars as a maintenance technician in the far future who, on the brink of retirement, is drawn into the mystery of both himself and the true nature of the war that destroyed Earth. Oblivion was a modest success at the box office and drew mixed reviews from critics. But it has aged very well, being an expansive original sci-fi epic with breathtaking imagination.

31. Knight and Day (2010)

From director James Mangold comes Knight and Day, a satirical action romp that set fire to romantic comedy conventions. Tom Cruise leads the movie as a spy on the run from the CIA who bumps into, and then whisks away, a beautiful vintage car dealer played by Cameron Diaz. (The two previously starred together in Cameron Crowe's Vanilla Sky.) Although Knight and Day was just the first of many Hollywood rom-coms that felt obligated to double as action movies to attract a wide demographic, the movie succeeds with legitimately impressive set-pieces that violently whip Tom Cruise across the screen.

30. Tropic Thunder (2008)

Tom Cruise being unrecognizable in heavy makeup and prosthetics, all while playing a sleazy Scott Rudin-type caricature, is like only the fourth or fifth funniest thing about the R-rated comic blockbuster Tropic Thunder. In Ben Stiller's napalm-coated parody of Vietnam War films and the pampered lives of Hollywood stars, Cruise features in a minor supporting role as Les Grossman, a truly gross man and ruthless studio executive. Cruise's role was meant to be a secret, though leaked paparazzi photos and internet blogs ruined that fun by spoiling it ahead of time. Nevertheless, Cruise's sharp and venomous performance was and still is hailed by critics and audiences as one of Cruise's all-time best movie roles.

Sign up to the GamesRadar+ Newsletter

Weekly digests, tales from the communities you love, and more

29. The Firm (1993)

In 1993, two movies were based on John Grisham novels. The first was The Pelican Brief, a legal thriller starring Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington. The other was Sydney Pollack's The Firm, with Tom Cruise leading in an adaptation of Grisham's 1991 novel. Cruises plays a young, talented Harvard Law grad who is recruited by a prestigious Tennessee firm who specialize in mob clients. Soon enough, Cruise finds himself in the crossfire between the FBI, the mob, and his own colleagues ready to sell him out. Although The Firm is one of Cruise's more overlooked movies in his career, it makes a solid case for being one of his greatest.

28. Valkyrie (2008)

In this solid World War II thriller from Bryan Singer, Tom Cruise leads as one of several German Nazi Army officers, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, who seek to enact Operation Valkyrie – a national emergency plan to take control away from Adolf Hitler. In preparation for the role, Cruise spent months devouring history books and even interviewing members of the real von Stauffenberg's family. Because von Stauffenberg had several physical disabilities including a lost left eye and a missing right hand, Cruise spent a lot of time affecting those ailments while doing things like dressing himself and writing letters. The results speak for itself, with Cruise dependably engaging as a soldier loyal to his country and not a political ideal.

27. Days of Thunder (1990)

While Tony Scott's Days of Thunder was criticized during its 1990 release as a derivative copycat of his own box office smash Top Gun, Days of Thunder still burns rubber like few movies can. Set in the world of professional NASCAR, Tom Cruise plays hotshot rookie driver Cole who clashes with veteran driver Rowdy (Michael Rooker). Eventually these rivals become brothers on the track, with Cole driving Rowdy's car against their common enemy, a cheat named Russ Wheeler (Cary Elwes). Even if Cruise is basically playing Maverick again, Days of Thunder easily satisfies anyone with a need for speed.

26. Mission: Impossible 2 (2000)

After Hong Kong director John Woo made his way to Hollywood in the '90s, the legendary action filmmaker collaborated with Tom Cruise on the first sequel to Cruise's 1995 mega-hit Mission: Impossible. The follow-up sees Cruise return as daredevil agent Ethan Hunt, who teams up with a beautiful thief (Thandiwe Newton) to secure a modified disease held by her ex-lover and rogue IMF agent (Dougray Scott). While a box office hit, Mission: Impossible 2 remains divisive among M:I aficionados, being one of the more elaborately designed and even melodramatic entries in the otherwise stone cold sober series.

25. Legend (1985)

Mystifying but magnetic in equal measure, Legend is basically a dark Disney fairy tale through the eyes of master filmmaker Ridley Scott. Tom Cruise stars as Jack, a free-spirited forest dweller who must stop the demonic Lord of Darkness (Tim Curry in the illest devil makeup you've ever seen) from plunging a fantastical world into eternal night. Although Legend was praised for its gorgeous production design, critics complained the movie was nothing more than a pretty storybook in motion. Honestly they are kind of right, as Legend severely lacks forward movement and meaty action. Still, the movie is drop-dead gorgeous to look at, with a score by Tangerine Dream that feels otherworldly.

24. Jack Reacher (2012)

While it's true that Lee Child's literary antihero Jack Reacher is a walking, talking slab of meat and that Tom Cruise is decidedly not that, Cruise still kills it in the role. In the first Jack Reacher movie from director Christopher McQuarrie, which adapts the ninth Reacher novel One Shot from 2005, Cruise plays the title hero, an ex-U.S. Army Major and military police investigator who is mysteriously named by a mass shooting suspect in custody. Never mind that Cruise is several shirt sizes smaller than what Reacher is supposed to be. His movie has all the muscle and swagger to make up for it.

23. Magnolia (1999)

In Paul Thomas Anderson's celebrated (and quite long) ensemble drama inspired by the music of Aimee Mann, a number of interrelated characters look for happiness in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles. While the movie features a number of actors like Jeremy Blackman, Philip Seymour Hoffmann, William H. Macy, Julianne Moore, and John C. Reilly, a standout among them all is Tom Cruise, a misogynist motivational speaker who lectures rooms full of men how to pick up women. While Cruise's character Frank lacks humanity on paper, Cruise's performance imbues rare pathos into the role that you might find yourself pitying him instead of spitting at him. The Oscars seemingly agreed and nominated Cruise for Best Supporting Actor at the 72nd Academy Awards. In a 2015 interview on Marc Maron's WTF Podcast, Anderson revealed that the inspiration for Cruise's role was pickup artist Ross Jeffries.

22. Risky Business (1983)

You only need a pair of white socks, a white button-up shirt, and Ray-Bans to dress as one of Tom Cruise's most memorable movie characters for Halloween. In 1983, a young Tom Cruise became a movie star overnight with the release of Paul Brickman's Risky Business, which is about an overachieving high school senior who parties up with a sex worker while his parents are on vacation. Often compared to The Graduate in its timeless portrayal of promising youth indulging in self-destructive vices, Risky Business launched Tom Cruise to Hollywood stardom, and for good reason. He's simply sensational, an instant star in the making who makes it impossible to hate him while he's kicking his feet up to some old time rock 'n roll.

21. Minority Report (2002)

In Steven Spielberg's blockbuster adaptation of Philip K. Dick's sci-fi novella from 1956, Tom Cruise plays a psychic cop in the future year of 2054. While his department of "Precrime" use the power of foreknowledge to apprehend criminals before they actually commit a crime, Cruise's John Anderton winds up being accused of a crime yet to happen and races to prove his innocence. A dizzying mix of crime noir, speculative science fiction, and whodunit mysteries, Minority Report entertains as a strange hybrid of Total Recall and The Fugitive, made sublime simply because of a master like Spielberg present on directing duties. Eerily and quite fittingly, a lot of the movie's speculative future technology like multi-touch interfaces, eye scanners, and autonomous cars have come to fruition in our real world.

20. Mission: Impossible 3 (2006)

Before J.J. Abrams took on both Star Trek and Star Wars, he made his directing debut with the third Mission: Impossible installment. Tom Cruise returns as Ethan Hunt, now retired from the IMF, who is forced back into action to hunt down a sinister arms dealer played by Philip Seymour Hoffman. While Mission: Impossible 3 was a hit when it opened in 2006 and considered by many much better than John Woo's previous film, Mission: Impossible 3 struggles to stand out in the shadow of other sequels like Ghost Protocol and Fallout. Still, M:I 3 is solid popcorn fare with Cruise doing what he does best.

19. The Last Samurai (2003)

Despite its awkward optics of Tom Cruise in samurai armor, The Last Samurai is a majestic period drama that teeters between prestige war epic and pulpy action movie. (When a film stages Tom Cruise in a fist fight with ninjas, you know you're dealing with something that's hard to pin down.) Directed by Edward Zwick and following in the tradition of stories like Dances With Wolves, The Last Samurai sees Cruise play an American captain who bears witness to the last generation of samurai amid the Meiji Restoration of 19th century Japan. An elaborate metaphor about modernization and adaptation, The Last Samurai is one of Cruise's most dad-core movies of his career, a high-grossing blockbuster that also earned several Oscar and Golden Globe nominations, including a Golden Globe Best Actor nomination for Cruise.

18. Vanilla Sky (2001)

In Cameron Crowe's sci-fi psychological drama Vanilla Sky, itself a remake of Alejandro Amenábar's 1997 movie Open Your Eyes, Tom Cruise stars as the playboy owner of a major publishing company in New York City who becomes disfigured in a vehicular crash caused by an obsessive lover (Cameron Diaz). In the aftermath, Cruise becomes smitten by a beautiful woman (played by Penélope Cruz) as his sense of reality starts to fracture. With a memorable plot twist and ambiguous ending, Vanilla Sky blew moviegoers away to become a massive box office hit despite being unpopular with most critics. In the years since its 2001 release, Vanilla Sky has become a must-see cult movie.

17. A Few Good Men (1992)

You can't handle the truth, but Tom Cruise can. In Rob Reiner's acclaimed film version of Aaron Sorkin's 1989 play, Cruise stars alongside other acting heavyweights like Jack Nicholson, Demi Moore, Kevin Bacon, Cuba Gooding Jr., and Kiefer Sutherland. Cruise plays a Navy lawyer who must defend two Marines accused of killing another soldier. Memorably explosive and gripping with nary a single bullet fired, A Few Good Men culminates in an iconic courtroom confrontation that reveals the difference between following orders and fighting for justice.

16. The Color of Money (1986)

You can almost feel Paul Newman hand the torch of Hollywood heartthrob to Tom Cruise in Martin Scorsese's smoky and cool 1986 picture The Color of Money. A sequel to The Hustler, Newman returns as Fast Eddie Felson, who partners with an up-and-coming pool shark (Cruise), and his tough girlfriend (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) as they play their way to an Atlantic City tournament. While The Color of Money was compared unfavorably to The Hustler at the time of its release, it has earned greater appreciation as yet another showcase of Scorsese's talent - not to mention longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker's - and the pairing of Newman and Cruise representing the changing of the guard between two generations of Hollywood.

15. Rain Man (1988)

In this acclaimed drama directed by Barry Levinson, Tom Cruise plays a selfish and arrogant Lamborghini dealer who learns, after his estranged father's death, that he has a grown autistic savant brother, Raymond (Dustin Hoffman, in an Oscar-winning performance). As the two embark on a cross-country roadtrip in their late father's 1949 Buick convertible, they develop a bond long past due. Rain Man was a massive critical and commercial success in 1988, and it's a movie that still holds power to thaw even the most cynical hearts.

14. Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

In 2014, Doug Liman helmed a cult classic sci-fi that paired Tom Cruise with Emily Blunt, making a real movie star out of her in the process. Essentially Groundhog Day meets Starship Troopers, Tom Cruise plays a public affairs military officer, Major William Cage, who is forced to the frontlines of humanity's war against a violent alien race. Somehow, Cage ends up in a time loop, forced to repeat his first day on the battlefield until he teams up with a war hero (Blunt) to break the cycle. Despite mismanaged marketing including a clunky title, Edge of Tomorrow impressed a lot of critics and performed well enough at the box office. But its high production budget meant it wasn't the heroic success it could have been. In the end, Edge of Tomorrow maintains appealing status as a muscular, one-and-done sci-fi.

13. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011)

With J.J. Abrams lost in the final frontier with 2009's Star Trek, the job of directing the next Mission: Impossible was accepted by Brad Bird. Previously a director of animated family movies like The Iron Giant and The Incredibles, Bird revived the Mission: Impossible series with a clear eye and sharp sense of spectacle, helming an installment that saw Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt climb the Burj Khalifa and ingeniously sneak past guards at the Kremlin. The fourth Mission: Impossible was no reboot, but it was without question a rebirth that kicked off a new era for the aging franchise.

12. War of the Worlds (2005)

In a 2005 interview with Empire magazine, Steven Spielberg said that for the first time in his movie career, he was making "an alien picture where there is no love and no attempt at communication." We don't dare correct Spielberg, but he's wrong about one thing. In his magnificent and harrowing remake of War of the Worlds, Tom Cruise plays an estranged father who tries to get his children to safely reunite with their mom (and his ex-wife) in Boston. Only love can make a father go to the extreme lengths that Cruise does in War of the Worlds, which is still one of the darkest and finely crafted movies ever by Spielberg.

11. Mission: Impossible (1995)

The original movie that lit the fuse to one of the most dominant movie franchises in Hollywood history is still a mighty sight to behold. In the first Mission: Impossible, directed by Brian De Palma, Tom Cruise makes his first appearance as Ethan Hunt, an agent for the Impossible Missions Force who tries to figure out who framed him for the murder of his team. Being an adaptation of the popular 1960s television show (which is where the franchise's iconic theme song came from), the '95 Mission: Impossible established the formula and standards for all of its subsequent sequels. Throughout the 1990s, you couldn't throw a rock without seeing a parody of the memorable "wire scene." It can still make audiences sweat even now.

10. Interview with the Vampire (1994)

In one of a handful of movies where Tom Cruise plays the antagonist, Neil Jordan's 1994 film version of Anne Rice's 1976 novel features Cruise as the sinful vampire Lestat, who bites and transforms a Louisiana plantation owner named Louis (Brad Pitt). Together the two spend hundreds of years drinking human blood, eventually adding a little girl named Claudia (Kirsten Dunst) to their circle. Moody and atmospheric, Interview with the Vampire is a mid-'90s gem that feels most effective around autumn time. While the picture mostly belongs to Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise is unavoidably handsome and haunting as a seductive vamp who can really sink his teeth into all who look at him.

9. Collateral (2004)

With an off-putting blonde dye job and a steel gray suit that never wrinkles, Tom Cruise inhabits the part of a disturbing and charismatic hitman who hires an unsuspecting L.A. cab driver (Jamie Foxx) to take him up and down the City of Angels for one violent night. Arresting and unstoppable, Collateral is a fine demonstration for both Michael Mann as a filmmaker and Cruise as an actor, the latter keenly locked in as a man so skilled at his deadly job that he seems inhuman. Collateral is simply one of the coolest movies ever made. It makes a complimentary double-bill with Mann's own Miami Vice, both being emotionally-charged neo-noir action thrillers whose digital camera lenses harness an abstract uncertainty of the new millennium.

8. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)

It may be the lowest grossing entry in the Mission: Impossible series, but that doesn't mean Dead Reckoning doesn't soar. While being so late into his career, Tom Cruise proves he can still hang - or ride off cliffs - with the best of the industry in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, the first of a two-part installment. With a plot centered around Cruise's Ethan Hunt and the IMF fighting against a rogue artificial intelligence, Mission: Impossible existentially wrestles with the precipice of Hollywood cinema's imminent evolution (or extinction) as an artform. With a diverse cast of exceptionally beautiful people, including Hayley Atwell, Rebecca Ferguson, Vanessa Kirby, and Pom Klementieff, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One feels like an old school action epic in spirit that executes with cutting-edge style.

7. Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

In Stanley Kubrick's last movie as a director and released posthumously after his heart attack, Tom Cruise plays an affluent New York doctor who infiltrates a masked orgy hosted by a dark and secret society. And it's all because his wife, played by Cruise's then-real spouse Nicole Kidman, admitted she almost cheated on him. With loads of sexually explicit imagery that really tested the boundaries of the MPAA's R rating, Eyes Wide Shut was initially divisive among critics and audiences before earning retrospective praise as a sterling classic of the 1990s. Its reputation still precedes it, being one of the most provoking and captivating movies Kubrick ever made.

6. Born on the Fourth of July (1989)

The second installment of movies that illustrate Oliver Stone's artistic interest in the Vietnam War (of which Stone himself is a veteran), Born on the Fourth of July sees Tom Cruise play an eager volunteer for the U.S. Marine Corps who changes his tune during his deployment and physical paralysis in Vietnam; returning home, he becomes a vocal anti-war activist. Revered by critics and a smash hit at the box office when it opened in December 1989, Born on the Fourth of July earned Cruise's first Oscar nomination for Best Actor. Stone was initially dismissive of Cruise, finding his appearance in Top Gun "fascist." In an L.A. Times interview from 1989, Stone said he changed his mind when he thought Cruise's "golden boy" image would be interesting to see shatter. Said Stone: "I thought it was an interesting proposition: What would happen to Tom Cruise if something goes wrong?"

5. Jerry Maguire (1996)

When Tom Cruise yelled "Show me the money," audiences responded with a massive $273 million box office gross for a modest movie about a sports agent in love. In one of Cruise's all-time greatest movies, the star plays a hotshot sports agent whose crisis of conscience leads him to swing for the fences with just himself, a loyal accountant and single mother (Renée Zellweger), and a middling player for the Arizona Cardinals (Cuba Gooding Jr.). A warm time capsule of mid-'90s era professional sports and Hollywood romances, Jerry Maguire made us all learn how to say: "You complete me." Honestly, it had us at hello.

4. Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

When movie theaters were struggling in the era of COVID-19, Tom Cruise flew to the skies and saved the industry for all. With $1.4 billion gross in ticket sales, Cruise's return to the cockpits made sonic booms to keep theaters open, all while delivering an effective and emotional story about legacy and personal limits. Set over 35 years after the original Top Gun, Cruise's "Maverick" is assigned to oversee Top Gun at NAS North Island, where he must train a new generation of students for a very dangerous mission. As close to dying and seeing heaven as cinema can get, Top Gun: Maverick takes all our breaths away.

3. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015)

When Tom Cruise hung on to the side of a moving airplane in the first 10 minutes of Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, we knew instantly this is a sequel that was built different. In the first of several M:I films helmed by Christopher McQuarrie, the IMF reunite after their disbandment to fight The Syndicate, an international black ops group made up of rogue agents from around the world. Not only is Rogue Nation just a fist-pumping great time, it also introduces franchise favorite Rebecca Ferguson as Ilsa Faust, a disavowed MI6 agent working undercover. 2015 was a crowded year for tent poles, with blockbusters like Mad Max: Fury Road, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Jurassic World, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens all vying for attention. Rogue Nation didn't sell the most tickets, but there's no arguing it wasn't one of the year's best.

2. Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018)

Man, even just its trailer can get the adrenaline going. In Christopher McQuarrie's second Mission: Impossible film, Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt and the IMF race against time after a job in Berlin to obtain dangerous plutonium cores away from terrorists goes belly-up. Forced to pay for saving his team over saving the world, Ethan must stop a terrorist mastermind, played by Sean Harris, from blowing everything up. Among the people standing in his way: August Walker (Henry Cavill), a muscular CIA assassin. Featuring some of the most intricately designed set-pieces in the entire franchise, Mission: Impossible – Fallout is the platonic ideal for all M:I sequels by doing one thing and one thing well: Letting Tom Cruise run wild.

1. Top Gun (1986)

Sometimes, a movie comes along and changes everything. Top Gun, directed by Tony Scott and starring Tom Cruise, isn't just a perfect summer movie only Hollywood could deliver; it's a movie that understands what moves people, what draws them into dark rooms and casts spells to make them feel like they can fly. Set at the U.S. Navy's Fighter Weapons School - aka, Top Gun - in San Diego, the movie stars Cruise as a young pilot who sets out to prove himself among the best of the best. While critics in 1986 didn't heap universal and unanimous praise on Top Gun, the movie soared to become one of the biggest commercial hits of all time. Mirroring its own story, Top Gun permanently cemented Tom Cruise's status as a Hollywood titan. At the time Cruise was a rising talent, but through Top Gun, he brandished a killer smile and scorching charisma that made him find his place among the stars.

Eric Francisco is a freelance entertainment journalist and graduate of Rutgers University. If a movie or TV show has superheroes, spaceships, kung fu, or John Cena, he's your guy to make sense of it. A former senior writer at Inverse, his byline has also appeared at Vulture, The Daily Beast, Observer, and The Mary Sue. You can find him screaming at Devils hockey games or dodging enemy fire in Call of Duty: Warzone.

Netflix's Hit Man director Richard Linklater argues that movie stars absolutely still exist, with Glen Powell being the perfect example

The Watched review: "Apply logic and the wheels come fully off"

Summer Game Fest Live 2024 stream – when it starts and how to watch it on YouTube, Twitch, and more

Minority Report

John works with the PreCrime police which stop crimes before they take place, with the help of three 'PreCogs' who can foresee crimes. Events ensue when John finds himself framed for a futur... Read all John works with the PreCrime police which stop crimes before they take place, with the help of three 'PreCogs' who can foresee crimes. Events ensue when John finds himself framed for a future murder. John works with the PreCrime police which stop crimes before they take place, with the help of three 'PreCogs' who can foresee crimes. Events ensue when John finds himself framed for a future murder.

Steven Spielberg
Scott Frank
Philip K. Dick
Colin Farrell
Samantha Morton
1.4K User reviews
249 Critic reviews
80 Metascore
20 wins & 91 nominations total

Chief John Anderton

Danny Witwer

Director Lamar Burgess

Pre-Crime Cop

Lamar Burgess' Secretary

Jad's Technician

Office Worker

(as Vene Arcoraci)
All cast & crew
Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

More like this

Did you know

Trivia (at around 1h 2 mins) The scene where Lois Smith (Dr Iris Hineman) kisses Tom Cruise was not scripted. Tom's reaction is of genuine surprise.
Goofs (at around 1h 24 mins) Given that Anderton is a man on the run it would make sense to revoke his access rights to PreCrime. However in the movie he is able to access sensitive areas using his old eyes. His ex-wife does the same later in the movie (at around 2h 5 mins) to access the prison. However, the system might not have worked in an optimal and complex way, and being a chased man might not have affected access rights.

John Anderton : Why'd you catch that?

Danny Witwer : Because it was going to fall.

John Anderton : You're certain?

Danny Witwer : Yeah.

John Anderton : But it didn't fall. You caught it. The fact that you prevented it from happening doesnt change the fact that it was *going* to happen.

Crazy credits The DreamWorks and 20th Century Fox logos appear underwater, which ties into the opening shot of Agatha in the tank.
Alternate versions Spencer Treat Clark was credited as "Sean at Nine" in release prints of the film, because he appeared in a scene that was deleted so close to the film's release that the credits had already been finalized and couldn't be changed. Clark played a grown-up version of Anderton's young son Sean, in a fantasy dream scene that took place after Anderton has been put in containment toward the end of the film. The entire scene was removed from the film just before release.
Connections Featured in Siskel & Ebert: Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood/Ivans XTC/Undercover Brother/Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner/Bad Company (2002)
Soundtracks Symphony No. 8 in B minor D. 759 'Unfinished' I. Allegro moderato Written by Franz Schubert Conducted by Carlos Kleiber Performed by Wiener Philharmoniker Courtesy of Deutsche Grammophon GmbH, Hamburg Under license from Universal Music Enterprises

User reviews 1.4K

SnoopyStyle
May 24, 2014
How long is Minority Report? Powered by Alexa
Given that John Anderton admits that he thought of finding and killing the person who had taken his son every day, how does he not realize it is this hypothetical murder that his brown ball indicating premeditation must refer to?
What music plays during the first precrime sequence?
What is the song that the guard is playing on the organ?
June 21, 2002 (United States)
United States
Official Facebook
Second Sight
Butter Island, Penobscot Bay, Maine, USA (final panoramic shot of log cabin on desert island)
Twentieth Century Fox
Dreamworks Pictures
Cruise/Wagner Productions
See more company credits at IMDbPro
$102,000,000 (estimated)
$132,072,926
$35,677,125
Jun 23, 2002
$358,372,926

Technical specs

Runtime 2 hours 25 minutes

More to explore

IMAGES

Tom Cruise trains through time travel in new 'Edge of Tomorrow' trailer
Back in Time: Time-Travel Movies
On Tom Cruise and Time Travel Stories
Tom Cruise and Emma Stone in a time travel movie : r/aiMedia
Edge of Tomorrow 2014 -- A Time Travel Movie Trailer
10 Film Time Travel Terbaik Ini akan Buat Kamu Terpukau

VIDEO

Tom Cruise owns every driving licence (Mission Impossible Best Chase) ⚡ 4K
Our journey to cruise day on Carnival Mardi Gras! Albany , GA and Cocoa Beach, FL
5 Must-Watch Movies on Time Travel
Tom Cruise
Best Time Travel Romance Films
Tom Cruise Mission Impossible III problems driving A Veyron

COMMENTS

Edge of Tomorrow
Edge of Tomorrow is a 2014 American science fiction action film directed by Doug Liman and written by Christopher McQuarrie and the writing team of Jez and John-Henry Butterworth, loosely based on the Japanese novel All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka.Starring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt, the film takes place in a future where most of Europe is occupied by an alien race.
Tom Cruise Movies List
4. Losin' It. 1982 1h 40m R. 4.9 (5.3K) Rate. 51 Metascore. Set in 1965, four rowdy teenage guys travel to Tijuana, Mexico for a night of partying when they are joined by a heartbroken housewife who is in town seeking a quick divorce. Director Curtis Hanson Stars Tom Cruise Jackie Earle Haley John Stockwell.
Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
Edge of Tomorrow: Directed by Doug Liman. With Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Brendan Gleeson, Bill Paxton. A soldier fighting aliens gets to relive the same day over and over again, the day restarting every time he dies.
Edge of Tomorrow
Ethan B One the all-time great sci-movies. Must see. Rated 5/5 Stars • Rated 5 out of 5 stars 06/07/24 Full Review Tarek J Maybe my 2nd or 3rd favorite Cruise movie. What a surprise when I saw ...
Edge of Tomorrow movie review (2014)
Cruise plays a PR officer who relives the same day of a war against alien invaders over and over again. Based on a novel, the film explores the concept of time travel, fate and heroism in a bleak and chaotic world.
Edge of Tomorrow Ending & Time Travel Explained
Learn how Tom Cruise's character in Edge of Tomorrow can reset time and fight aliens in this sci-fi thriller based on a novel. Discover the source of the time loop, the rules of time travel, and the ending of the film.
Edge of Tomorrow Official Enhanced IMAX Trailer (2014)
Subscribe to TRAILERS: http://bit.ly/sxaw6hSubscribe to COMING SOON: http://bit.ly/H2vZUnLike us on FACEBOOK: http://goo.gl/dHs73Follow us on TWITTER: http:/...
Edge Of Tomorrow Official Trailer #1 (2014)
Watch the TRAILER REVIEW: http://goo.gl/5D7JDPSubscribe to TRAILERS: http://bit.ly/sxaw6hSubscribe to COMING SOON: http://bit.ly/H2vZUnLike us on FACEBOOK: h...
Tom Cruise trains through time travel in new 'Edge of Tomorrow' trailer
Mar 25, 2014, 10:40 AM PDT. In Edge of Tomorrow, Lt. Col. Bill Cage, played by Tom Cruise, is trapped in a Groundhog Day -esque time loop as he lives and dies fighting against an apparently ...
Tom Cruise Battles Invaders in 'Edge of Tomorrow'
Edge of Tomorrow. Directed by Doug Liman. Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi. PG-13. 1h 53m. By Manohla Dargis. June 5, 2014. Tell me if you've heard this one before. A man wakes up and quickly realizes ...
Edge of Tomorrow Movie Review: Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt Star
Tom Cruise is the Groundhog Day grunt, and Emily Blunt the Angel Bitch, in Edge of Tomorrow, a furiously time-looping joy ride and the smartest action film of the early summer season.The movie's ...
The Time Travel and Ending of Edge of Tomorrow Explained
How does the sci-fi film Edge of Tomorrow, based on the manga All You Need is Kill, use time travel and consciousness-traveling to create a looping day? Learn the science behind the Mimics' self-defense mechanism and Cage's role in the loop.
'Edge Of Tomorrow' Review: Tom Cruise And Emily Blunt Do Time Travel
Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt star in a sci-fi film that uses a Groundhog Day-like time loop to fight aliens. The film is entertaining, action-packed and emotional, but has some plot holes and a confusing ending.
You Need to Watch the Most Ingenious Time-Loop Movie on HBO ...
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 ...
The 50 All-Time Best Time-Travel Films
Rate. 67 Metascore. A man's vision for a utopian society is disillusioned when travelling forward into time reveals a dark and dangerous society. Director George Pal Stars Rod Taylor Alan Young Yvette Mimieux. 2. Back to the Future. 1985 1h 56m PG. 8.5 (1.3M) Rate.
Tom Cruise Fondly Remembers Edge Of Tomorrow On Its 10-Year ...
Tom Cruise fondly commemorates the 10th anniversary of Edge of Tomorrow on Instagram.; The film is remembered for its engaging time loop premise and visually stunning battle sequences.
Tom Cruise filmography
Tom Cruise filmography. Tom Cruise is an American actor and producer who made his film debut with a minor role in the 1981 romantic drama Endless Love. [1] [2] Two years later, he made his breakthrough by starring in the romantic comedy Risky Business (1983), [3] [4] which garnered his first nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor ...
Tom Cruise Movies Ranked
(Photo by David James/©Warner Bros. Pictures/courtesy Everett Collection) All Tom Cruise Movies, Ranked By Tomatometer. Edge of Tomorrow celebrates its 10th anniversary!. From his teen idol days in the early '80s to his status as a marquee-lighting leading man today, Tom Cruise has consistently done it all for decades — he's completed impossible missions, learned about Wapner time in ...
Edge Of Tomorrow Ending Explained: Ready Player Tom Cruise
Audiences have grown accustomed to watching Tom Cruise risk life and limb for his movies, ... "Edge of Tomorrow" is pretty cohesive in the way it lays out the story's rules for time travel, at ...
What Tom Cruise's Weirdest Sci-Fi Movie Gets Wrong About Time Travel
Edge of Tomorrow features Major Cage (Tom Cruise) as an experienced soldier stuck in an absurd time-loop scenario involving aliens. Warner Bros Pictures. As a movie that explores the concept of ...
Every Tom Cruise Sci-Fi Movie Ranked From Worst to Best
5. Oblivion (2013) There's almost no movie star with a steadier hand than Tom Cruise, but not even he can right the wrongs of this visually dazzling but immensely boring music video of a film. Oblivion 's plot concerns a security repairman on an abandoned Earth and the chance meeting that will trigger his fight to singlehandedly save mankind.
Tom Cruise's Top 25 Movies...
Events ensue when John finds himself framed for a future murder. Director Steven Spielberg Stars Tom Cruise Colin Farrell Samantha Morton. Roger Ebert said it best: "Minority Report reminds us why we go to the movies in the first place." 4. The Color of Money.
Great Sci-Fi Movies Starring Tom Cruise
Updated May 26, 2022 by Mark Sammut: Tom Cruise is back in the headlines with the release of Top Gun: Maverick, and the sequel has garnered an incredible reception so far. Over the course of his ...
The 32 greatest Tom Cruise movies
29. The Firm (1993) (Image credit: Paramount Pictures) In 1993, two movies were based on John Grisham novels. The first was The Pelican Brief, a legal thriller starring Julia Roberts and Denzel ...
Minority Report (2002)
Minority Report: Directed by Steven Spielberg. With Tom Cruise, Max von Sydow, Steve Harris, Neal McDonough. John works with the PreCrime police which stop crimes before they take place, with the help of three 'PreCogs' who can foresee crimes. Events ensue when John finds himself framed for a future murder.

Log in or sign up for Rotten Tomatoes

Email not verified

Sign up for the Rotten Tomatoes newsletter to get weekly updates on:

Movies / TV

Edge of Tomorrow

What to Know

Critics Reviews

Movie Clips

Movie Reviews

Matt Zoller Seitz

Now playing

Glenn Kenny

The Idea of You

Bad Boys: Ride or Die

Gasoline Rainbow

Film Credits

Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

Cinematography

Latest blog posts

Everybody Wants Some!! Told Us Everything We Needed to Know About Glen Powell

Cannes 2024 Video #9: Festival Wrapup

The Future of the Movies, Part 3

Handmade Magic: Jason and the Argonauts

Tom Cruise trains through time travel in new 'Edge of Tomorrow' trailer

Share this story

Summer Game Fest 2024: all the news, trailers, and announcements

More from Entertainment

Apple will reportedly face a $539 million fine over Spotify’s antitrust complaint

How to live your life in text files

The best Presidents Day sales happening now

The DICE Awards show is the celebration developers and fans deserve

Killed in Action by Aliens, Over and Over Again

Explore More in TV and Movies

REVIEW: Edge of Tomorrow : Being Tom Cruise, Forever

More Must-Reads from TIME

The Nerds of Color

The Time Travel and Ending of Edge of Tomorrow Explained

Share this:

Published by

Discover more from The Nerds of Color

Tom Cruise Fondly Remembers Edge Of Tomorrow On Its 10-Year Anniversary Release

Edge of Tomorrow Ending & Time Travel Explained

Why Edge Of Tomorrow Is Remembered So Fondly

Edge of Tomorrow

All Tom Cruise Movies, Ranked By Tomatometer

Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018) 97%

Top Gun: Maverick (2022) 96%

Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (2023) 96%

Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation (2015) 94%

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011) 93%

Risky Business (1983) 92%

Edge of Tomorrow (2014) 91%

Minority Report (2002) 89%

Rain Man (1988) 88%

The Color of Money (1986) 88%

Collateral (2004) 86%

Born on the Fourth of July (1989) 84%

American Made (2017) 85%

A Few Good Men (1992) 84%

Jerry Maguire (1996) 84%

Magnolia (1999) 82%

Tropic Thunder (2008) 82%

Eyes Wide Shut (1999) 75%

The Firm (1993) 76%

War of the Worlds (2005) 76%

Mission: Impossible III (2006) 71%

The Outsiders (1983) 70%

Taps (1981) 68%

Mission: Impossible (1996) 66%

The Last Samurai (2003) 66%

Interview With the Vampire (1994) 63%

Jack Reacher (2012) 64%

All the Right Moves (1983) 61%

Valkyrie (2008) 62%

Top Gun (1986) 57%

Mission: Impossible II (2000) 56%

Oblivion (2013) 54%

Knight and Day (2010) 52%

Far and Away (1992) 50%

Vanilla Sky (2001) 43%