Film Review: Adaptation - Edge of Tomorrow: Live. Die. Repeat.

Fig 1: Poster.

'Edge of Tomorrow: Live. Die. Repeat.' is a 2014  film adaptation of a novel, called 'All You Need Is Kill''. The audience is looking at the story through Major William Cage's eyes (played by Tom Crusie), as he is forced to join the military forces to defeat an alien nation which has invaded Earth. The film is set in the future and is set out to appear as a video game.

The film is a quite rare example of an adaptation aimed at video games, that represents the original story and keeps its major events, plots and is true to what it is supposed to mean. The plot remained same as the source material's, as well as how the story starts out with a new recruit joining the special forces, with little or no experience. At their first battle both protagonists kill an unusual alien, which causes them to be able to repeat the day or events again and again after they die. 

The film also lives up to the novel's visuals, as they are illustrated, showing how things are supposed to look, from the aliens that they need to defeat, to the guns, machines and suits, to the main character himself. They might not perfectly match the illustrations, the film was still able to capture the key aspects of the visuals.

Fig 2: Novel vs. Film.

As mentioned before, the film is set out as a video game would, where the character starts as inexperienced and possesses little skills in whatever task they need to complete. As they die multiple times, they gain experience in that specific task. As we see in the film, as William dies, he wakes up at a certain point in the story and repeats the day until he dies again and again. We see him slowly realising what is happening and keep acting differently to change what is happening. He continuously gets better at battle and is able to prevent some things from happening, but also keeps dying.

Furthermore, in video games, especially war related ones, the character reaches a level when they need to face the boss and defeat it. When in the film the 'boss' alien is defeated, William wakes up and things have changed, although he is not able to come back to life if he dies. But the humans are able to defeat the aliens and it results in the effect of 'winning the game' or 'completing it'.

List of Illustration:

Figure 1: Poster. [online] At: https://www.heyuguys.com/edge-of-tomorrow-poster/ (Accessed on 23/11/2017)

Figure 2: Novel vs. Film. [online] At: http://thehypedgeek.com/hollywoods-history-with-anime-adaptations/all-you-need-is-kill-and-edge-of-tomorrow/  (Accessed on 23/11/2017)