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20 crazy details behind the making of edge of tomorrow.

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Although Edge of Tomorrow had one of the most unique and interesting stories we've ever seen in a sci-fi, the story behind the making of this movie is almost as intriguing.

After learning more about the huge amount of work that went into making Edge of Tomorrow , it becomes clear that the people behind this movie went through quite a journey. It must have been an absolute blast to be a part of the fun, but this ride had its ups and downs as well.

There were some very unique things to be taken into consideration with this particular movie. The armored exosuits were obviously very difficult to create and wear, causing some actors to literally break down and cry. Because the entire story took place over the course of a single day, changes in weather made shooting impossible in some situations. And, of course, like with any action movies, the actors suffered their fair share of mishaps and accidents.

It wasn't all doom and gloom, and like the story itself, the actors and crew finished on a high note. They overcame all the hurdles that faced them, and they did so in creative and innovative ways. Take a closer look into the making of this film, and you will find evidence of incredible ingenuity and expertise at every turn. The craziest facts behind the making of this movie might be shocking, but they're also quite flattering, revealing just how talented these people are.

Here are 20 Crazy Details Behind The Making Of Edge Of Tomorrow.

The Suits Were Based Heavily On Real Designs

Many science fiction movies are guilty of going totally overboard on the “fiction” aspect of things while neglecting the “science” part of the equation. For the most part, a lot of what went on in Edge of Tomorrow was pretty well thought out. Take, for example, the famous battle suits which made the action sequences so thrilling.

Techcrunch quoted director Doug Liman as saying “We looked at what DARPA is currently building and envisioned if we were five years into a war, and everything else just stopped, and the best minds in the world and the manufacturing prowess focused on building these suits of armor, where would we be in five years.”

For those who don’t know, DARPA stands for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and this organization really is starting to build powered armor for military applications.

Tom Cruise Did His Own Stunts

The fact that Tom Cruise did his own stunts in Edge of Tomorrow should hardly come as a surprise to anyone, but the fact that we've come to expect it doesn't make the feat any less impressive.

Even more impressively, Cruise did his own stunts while being encased in the heavy "exosuit" the entire time.

This was touched on in an article by People , which highlighted the fact that both Emily Blunt and Cruise suffered a few scrapes and bruises while doing their own stunts for this project. Unlike Blunt, however, Cruise was used to the experience, although wearing the exosuit posed a difficult, new challenge for the actor.

Emily Blunt Was Pregnant While Filming

While many people correctly guessed that Emily Blunt was actually pregnant during some of her scenes in Edge Of Tomorrow , this wasn’t actually confirmed until the actress admitted it during an interview with Graham Norton .

She had to return to set to finish up some reshoots, at which point she knew that she was pregnant. This was apparently the reason she used a stunt double for these shoots.

Cruise was confused by this, since she hadn’t used a stunt double for the rest of the filming. She then spilled the beans to him about her pregnancy, making him the only person to know about the fact that she was expecting - other than her husband.

Emily Blunt Crashed a Van, Endangering Tom Cruise

We’ve heard some pretty wild stories from behind the scenes of our favorite movies, but some of the ones linked with Edge of Tomorrow are truly incredible.

A shocking accident happened when Emily Blunt was driving a van with Tom Cruise as the passenger.

The crew needed a shot where the van was shaking, so they told Blunt to take a hard right hand turn after gathering up some speed. However, Blunt totally lost control, slamming the van into a tree.

She found the incident extremely horrifying because it could have ended Tom’s life, but both actors ended up laughing uncontrollably after the accident. Emily Blunt originally told this story on Conan .

Brad Pitt Was Considered For Cruise's Role

Like so many roles we've seen Tom Cruise in, the role of Bill Cage has become an iconic character linked with the actor, and it's hard to imagine any other man playing Cage now. If things had gone slightly differently, we might have seen a very different type of actor take on the role

. It's a pretty well-known fact that Brad Pitt was the first actor who was offered the lead role in Edge of Tomorrow , and this was confirmed during the film's pre-production phase by a Vulture article.

Obviously Pitt turned down the role, and that's when Cruise stepped up to the plate. Would the movie be that different if Pitt had starred in it? Probably not, considering Brad's past roles in movies like World War Z.

Emily Blunt Cried The First Time She Put On The Suit

Those armored suits weren’t made out of cheap plastic or Styrofoam. They were the real deal, to the point where they could probably be functional given a few more years of development. As soon as the actors put on the suits, they realized that they were much more than just cheap film props.

To put it in perspective, the suits were about 85 pounds each.

The realization that she would have to wear this suit for months emotionally crushed Emily Blunt when she strapped in for the first time and she sought comfort from her co-star Cruise, who awkwardly tried to comfort her.

Cage's Name Was Changed

Like most novels that get turned into movies, some details make it into the final script while others don't. Fans of the book will notice little signs and homages here and there, and one of these details is the name of the lead character himself - Cage.

In the novel, Cage is actually a Japanese man who finds himself in America during the alien invasion. His real name is "Keiji," but all of the Americans simply call him "Cage" - due to a mispronunciation of his proper Japanese name.

Obviously Tom Cruise is not Japanese, so they changed the character considerably as a result.

The Title Confused audiences

One thing that people will probably remember about this film is the fact that the title was a little confusing. Most of us weren’t really sure what this film was actually called.

The slogan of the movie ended up being a larger font than the actual title in some cases.

In most posters and billboards, both the slogan and the film’s title were roughly equal in size. This probably hurt the movie’s success, at least mildly, and marketing decisions like this probably contributed to a relatively poor box-office performance in America.

The original title of the novel was All You Need Is Kill , and according to an interview with Collider , Blunt actually preferred this title, saying: "That’s a bummer isn’t it? I gotta say... I loved it... I thought it was more ironic and totally more than a movie, you know?"

The Sequel will explain the first movie's ending

One of the key takeaways of the first film was that the ending was a little open-ended. While the aliens were seemingly defeated, we didn’t quite get the stereotypical “happily ever after” that so many other films are guilty of.

While it was an interesting way to close the film, it also left a lot of questions unanswered. These will apparently be answered in the sequel

That’s right, if you haven’t heard the news yet, Edge of Tomorrow is reportedly getting a follow-up movie , and the sequel will seemingly explain the ending of the first film.

This is based on a slightly cryptic tweet by screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie, which read simply: “The end of Edge I will finally make complete sense.” There is no release date as of yet.

Rita's Melee Weapon

Another detail from the book that made it into the final screenplay was Rita's use of a melee weapon. In the novel and manga it's a massive, technologically advanced battleaxe, but in the movie it's a large sword. This is pretty much exactly the same, and it's one detail which is essential to Rita's character.

Why is she the only one to carry a melee weapon out of all the soldiers?

This question might not be answered in the film, but it is addressed in the novel. In the original story, Rita carries a melee weapon because she constantly runs out of ammo throughout all the times she resets. Using a melee weapon was a key adaptation she made to her fighting style after resetting hundreds of times.

Emily Blunt's Brother Has A Brief Cameo

As soon as we are introduced to Emily Blunt's character, Rita, it's clear that she is one hell of a soldier. It's a stark contrast to Tom Cruise's character, who is a hopeless coward at the start of Edge of Tomorrow. T hat's what makes it so interesting.

On the other hand, Emily Blunt had never done an all-out action movie before, and she certainly hadn't starred as a leading lady like Rita.

We quickly learn that Rita has a nickname, and a it's a pretty awesome one - but not many people say it to her face. One person who does is an unnamed soldier who quickly gets punched in the face by Rita.

You might not know it, but that's actually Emily Blunt's younger brother!

The Kiss Before The Final Battle Shocked Tom Cruise

Yahoo News quoted Emily Blunt as she revealed the slightly awkward moment behind the scenes as she planted a kiss on her co-star. She explained: "I mean, [it was] great. I don't think he was expecting it. I just sort of planted one on him. No, it was in the script but I think he hadn't read it properly. So I think he was a bit taken aback. He was like, 'Oh my god! This is what we're doing.' Well, Tom had read the scene but he hadn't really read the stage directions. There were some new pages."

Some sources incorrectly state that the kiss was completely unscripted, but the truth is that it was just one of those uncomfortable moments that actors tend to experience every once in a while.

An Alternate Ending Was Filmed Where The Humans Lose

While Edge of Tomorrow's ending might not have made total sense, there was a feeling of coming full circle that seemed like the logical ending to this epic film. The day is once again reset, and somehow the aliens have been defeated. But that wasn't the only ending that was filmed.

According to co-writer Christopher McQuarrie , another ending was considered that involved a much darker fate for the human race.

The ending involves a human soldier accidentally eliminating an alpha during the final battle - despite being warned by Cage not to do so.

The day is reset once again, and the movie ends with the audience knowing that the aliens have the upper hand during this final battle. The implication is that the humans fail.

Cage Only Restarts The Day 26 Times In The Movie

The way it's shot during the many battle scenes and montages suggests that Bill Cage has reset hundreds, even t housands of times during the movie. But we only actually see Cage reset a total of 26 times during the movie.

This is a testament to the way the movie is filmed, as well as the acting of Tom Cruise. He is able to portray a growing maturity and skill in battle that makes the audience believe that he has lost his life countless times, living the same day over and over again.

It's hard to believe that, in a movie which centers around the whole "resetting" concept, it only happens 26 times.

Tom Cruise Did His Own Makeup And Hair For The Opening Scene

One of the craziest facts behind the making of Edge of Tomorrow is how the opening scene was filmed. Speaking to Den Of Geek! , Doug Liman revealed: "The opening of Edge of Tomorrow may be the most independent thing I've ever done. I filmed Tom Cruise in my editing room, and he did his own hair and makeup. So I've never been far from making an independent movie."

It's pretty mind-blowing that Tom Cruise and Doug Liman just decided, out of the blue, to film the opening scene of a blockbuster movie!

It makes us look at this scene in a completely different light, and definitely makes us respect this actor and director a lot more.

The book is inspired by video games

Gamers might have found this movie particularly enjoyable. After all, there were some pretty sweet elements that seemed like they were taken straight from our favorite levels of Halo or Gears of War .

According to the Japan Times , this was no coincidence. Apparently the author of the original novel got the idea for the story from playing video games, constantly losing his life and having to “reset” or “respawn.”

This novelist’s name is Hiroshi Sakurazaka, and he’s one of the most well-known science fiction writers in Japan. It’s a really cool concept, and one that all gamers can relate to. After all, the only way you can beat a video game is to play it again and again until you learn the levels. This is essentially what Tom Cruise’s character is doing in the movie.

The Movie Was Released On The Anniversary Of D-Day

As previously mentioned, the marketing of Edge of Tomorrow confused some people, especially when it came to the movie's slightly misleading title. A lot of great work was done in the other aspects of the marketing campaign, particularly when it came to the movie's release date.

You might not have realized it, but the film was released on the anniversary of a major world event. History buffs will know that June 6th of 2014 was the seventieth anniversary of D-Day, and that's when Edge of Tomorrow hit theaters.

It was not a coincidence, and a lot of reviewers noted that many actions scenes were similar to the D-Day landings.

35 millimeter film was also used to give a slight vibe of old war footage.

Wile E. Coyote's impact on the movie

Watching Cage "reset" multiple times in this movie was something that really made it unique, and the manner in which those demises are handled was also somewhat unexpected.

While Bill Cage loses his life in a variety of gruesome ways, Cruise kept it fresh by adding humor to some of the reset. Speaking to Hero Complex , he explained his vision for this unique montage, saying “It’s fun coming up with new ways to [end] yourself. I told the stunt guys, ‘Watch Wile E. Coyote cartoons. It’s not violent enough!’”

Speaking about one ridiculous scream he added to a reset scene, Cruise continued, “I think it set the tone of the film. [It] is horrible but it’s also funny."

The English weather struggles

One of the most interesting things about Edge of Tomorrow was that it involved the same scenes being filmed over and over again - with slight differences.

This was a director's dream come true - as he was able to fine tune each scene and get it just right with countless takes. On the other hand, it was a director's worst nightmare in many ways, as everything had to be exactly the same.

The entire story took place during one day, which meant it wouldn't make sense if it suddenly got sunny or started to rain.

This proved to be quite difficult, especially with England's ever-changing weather. We can only imagine how frustrating it must have been to wait for the weather to change during shooting!

It Was Filmed At The Same Place As Harry Potter

As previously mentioned, the film was shot almost exclusively in England, and while the weather might have been a drag in certain situations, this was somewhat mitigated by using studios. And they weren't just any studios, either.

As Hollywood Reporter reminds us, this epic blockbuster was shot at Leavesden Studios - the same location which was used for the Harry Potter films. Warner Bros. apparently bought the entire studio after all eight Harry Potter movies were done filming, giving Edge of Tomorrow one of the best shooting locations money could buy in England.

For a while, a Harry Potter tour was available which led tourists through areas nearby the busy Edge of Tomorrow set.

Do you have any Edge of Tomorrow trivia to share? Leave it in the comments!

• Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

Tom Cruise's best stunts — from Mission: Impossible to Top Gun: Maverick

Tom Cruise famously does his own stunts, here are our picks of his best death-defying feats.

Thank goodness more actors aren’t like Tom Cruise or the entire stunt industry may have been out of a job a long time ago. Cruise is well known for performing his own stunts, but what makes him stand out from his peers is that he does stunts that toe the line between hair-raising and a possible death wish. But the end result showcases some of the most incredible stunts that have ever been put on screen.

The Mission: Impossible movies are the motherlode for many of these incredible Cruise stunts, but the actor has been pushing the envelope for a long time. And, based on reports of Cruise standing on top of a World War II plane for Mission: Impossible 8 and footage showing crazy Mission: Impossible 7 stunts, it doesn't seem that Cruise — who turns 60 in 2022, mind you — is slowing down at all.

We’ll be watching those M:I films, as well as the upcoming Top Gun: Maverick , to see if any stunts from those will make this list (it's a pretty safe bet, yes) but in the meantime here are What to Watch’s picks of Tom Cruise’s best stunts. We promise they’re not all from Mission: Impossible.

Mission: Impossible, wire hanging stunt

Mission: Impossible 's evolution since the franchise’s first movie in 1996 is pretty incredible. The sandbox that Cruise and company play in has grown considerably, as have the feats they pull off. However, Cruise’s wire-hanging scene from the first Mission: Impossible remains one of the most iconic stunts from the franchise (and the actor’s career) even if it now seems tame by comparison with more recent stunts. That doesn’t mean it was easy, as Cruise apparently kept faceplanting during the scene .

Beyond the physicality of the stunt, what makes it stand out is its inbuilt narrative tension — as any noise Cruise makes will sound the alarm.

Mission: Impossible II, the knife fight

We could have easily gone for the free climbing sequence that Cruise does in the opening credits of Mission: Impossible II , but again a smaller moment proves to be more memorable. In the big fight scene between Cruise’s Ethan Hunt and Dougray Scott’s Sean Ambrose, the two get into a knife fight and at one point Hunt has to stop a knife mere inches from plunging into his eye. CGI right? Wrong. Master of perfection, Cruise wanted to use a real knife (albeit dulled) for the shot. Per The Wrap , the knife was attached to a cable so it would stop just centimeters away from Cruise’s eye.

The Last Samurai, the sword fight

Cruise upgraded from a knife to swords for The Last Samurai . He reportedly trained for more than half a year on samurai and martial arts skills so that he could be the one to perform the swordfight sequences, including one where he takes on multiple enemies in the streets of Japan. Cruise has said, in press junkets for the movie, that the sequence has more than 70 points of contact, which not only requires great choreography but excellent fight coordination to make sure nobody was injured. 

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Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol, Burj Khalifa climb

When Ghost Protocol came out, many thought Tom Cruise could be passing the torch of the franchise over to new co-star Jeremy Renner as the last two movies had seen some diminishing returns. However, Cruise climbing the Burj Khalifa — the tallest building in the world — not only became an iconic set-piece but proved he was essential in pushing the limits of what the series could do. The daring sequence is all the more impressive when you learn that it was done on a limited schedule . 

Edge of Tomorrow, the exosuits

Edge of Tomorrow underperformed at the box office but, over time, has rightly become a respected entry in Tom Cruise’s credits. The draw of the movie is its video-game-like feel — as Cruise’s character keeps dying and reliving the same battle, getting further and further along in the storyline each time. What’s impressive about it all though is the exosuit that Cruise and co-star Emily Blunt wear during the intense battle sequences. They were entirely impractical for action sequences, weighing between 85 and 135 pounds . Meaning Cruise and company were lugging around all that extra weight as they dodged explosions. 

Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation, the plane take-off

We have now reached the "Tom Cruise does crazy things with planes" section of this list. First up, him holding onto the side of a plane as it takes off in Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation . This was a heck of a way to start the fifth film of the franchise. Simon Pegg’s Benji serves as an audience surrogate when he shouts, "Oh my God" as the plane took off with Cruise’s Ethan Hunt hanging on for dear life. 

While this is the marquee stunt, it probably wasn’t the most dangerous for Cruise in Rogue Nation. An underwater heist scene saw Cruise train to hold his breath for as long as possible. His commitment to acting fooled the stunt coordinator a few times into thinking that Cruise might actually be drowning. 

The Mummy, plane crash

The Mummy may be one that everyone (including Cruise) wants to forget, but credit should be given where it's due to a great stunt and that’s exactly what the plane crash sequence in the movie is. In order to nail the stunt — that saw Cruise scramble to survive a plane crash with no gravity — everyone involved had to do a real zero G flight (often referred to as the "vomit comet") to capture the look of a free fall.

American Made, the empty cockpit

Tom Cruise is actually a pilot (as he showed when he landed a helicopter at the global premiere of Top Gun: Maverick ), which came in handy when making American Made which is about an American pilot who becomes a drug runner for the CIA in the 1980s. However, in one memorable stunt sequence Cruise was on the plane (dumping cocaine bales) with no one actually flying the aircraft. Director Doug Liman told Yahoo! Movies that it was nerve-racking to watch. "It’s one thing to have Tom Cruise alone in the airplane flying it — that’s already outrageous — now he’s alone and he’s not even in the cockpit so he’s gone beyond." 

Mission: Impossible — Fallout, HALO jump

Tom Cruise has held onto a plane, he’s dumped bales of cocaine out of a plane no one is flying and did a free fall crash sequence, so jumping out of a plane with a parachute shouldn’t be all that impressive, right? Well it is when it’s an infamous “HALO” jump. A HALO jump is a military maneuver where you jump out a plane at 30,000-40,000 feet and don’t open your parachute until about 800 feet above the ground. Tom Cruise did this in Mission: Impossible — Fallout , as did the camera crew, impressively enough. A reddit video clip shows just how they captured the scene. 

Top Gun: Maverick, canyon flight

One of the biggest parts of Top Gun: Maverick 's promotional tour was the actors talking about the rigorous training they went through so they could be filmed in the cockpit of the F18s used in the movie as they did these incredible aerial sequences. None of which is more impressive than the canyon run that Tom Cruise's Maverick does in the movie.

Most of the movie is training for what has been described as a nearly impossible mission (something Cruise is familiar with) to fly through a mountain canyon, low to the ground and at a high speeds to try and avoid the enemy. Jon Hamm's Cyclone doesn't think it can be done and is ready to offer new instructions to the pilots, but Maverick does the run and proves him wrong. It's an incredible sequence as we feel like we're along for the ride with how the camera is positioned.

While Cruise is a pilot himself, the plane was actually flown by a real-life Navy pilot for the scene. But Cruise is living just about every other part of this scene and it is a true joy to watch on the big screen.

Michael Balderston is a DC-based entertainment and assistant managing editor for What to Watch, who has previously written about the TV and movies with TV Technology, Awards Circuit and regional publications. Spending most of his time watching new movies at the theater or classics on TCM, some of Michael's favorite movies include Casablanca , Moulin Rouge! , Silence of the Lambs , Children of Men , One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest and Star Wars . On the TV side he enjoys Only Murders in the Building, Yellowstone, The Boys, Game of Thrones and is always up for a Seinfeld rerun. Follow on Letterboxd .

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Edge of Tomorrow

Watch out for that alien tentacle—it’s a doozy.

Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

As you may have heard, the new Tom Cruise movie is basically an alien-invasion Groundhog Day , in which our hero must live the same day over and over again, trying to do it a little better each time. But whereas the Harold Ramis–Bill Murray classic is a comic meditation on getting over yourself and learning to appreciate life, Edge of Tomorrow is about something else: making action movies.

It begins with the sort of montage you’ve seen in a million other Hollywood blow-’em-ups, particularly post-9/11: a series of clips from faux-news broadcasts, which quickly convey that in this version of the near-future a mysterious alien race that looks like the demon spawn of the Flying Spaghetti Monster has invaded the Earth and rapidly annihilated much of it. Europe, in particular, is a bloody mess. In a few of these clips, we see a military spokesman named William Cage (Cruise), who looks like the slick propagandist that he is. You may recognize him from the many other films in which Tom Cruise has played a callow hustler of one kind or another, from The Color of Money to Rain Man to Jerry Maguire . The most obvious precedent is Lt. Daniel Kaffee, the Navy lawyer from A Few Good Men , who, like Cage, begins his movie hoping to avoid real work or risky entanglements.

Cage’s Colonel Jessup is Gen. Brigham (Brendan Gleeson), British leader of the United Defense Force, the international military effort to thwart the extraterrestrials. He orders Cage to the front with a camera crew, the better to sell his impending, D-Day–like invasion of alien-dominated France to a worldwide audience of potential recruits. When Cage refuses and then runs— Tom Cruise does like to run —Brigham has him handcuffed and shipped to the front with new orders: to join the squad of grunts who will storm the beach first and surely be slaughtered. He shortly is.

And then he wakes up: back at the base, in handcuffs, experiencing the previous day all over again, Phil Connors–like. How or why this is happening is not clear at first, but on one of his repeat trips to the invasion, Cage finds the Virgil who can guide him through this hell: Rita Vrataski, a legendary UDF soldier called the Angel of Verdun because of her miraculous feats of alien-killing in that old French city best known for a brutal WWI battle. Rita—the name, as Manohla Dargis points out , may be a nod to Andie MacDowell’s character in Groundhog Day —is played by Emily Blunt, whose surprising performance as an utterly convincing badass may be the best thing about this movie. Vrataski, too, had a period of chronic do-overs and, unlike Cage, she knows why: It has to do with those murderous extraterrestrials, called (for reasons that were never quite clear to me) Mimics. They can control time, and because Cage killed one of the “Alpha” Mimics, that time control was passed on to him. He now has the power to “reset the day.”

Perhaps the speculative biology and metaphysics of all this is clearer in All You Need Is Kill , the illustrated Japanese novel by Hiroshi Sakurazaka that Edge of Tomorrow is based on. In the movie, though, it’s just graspable enough for you to focus on what really matters: watching Tom Cruise get killed over and over and over again. Vrataski takes Cage under her wing—or, rather, under her giant, weaponized cricket bat —and schools him in the art of near-future warfare. Then they attempt to memorize the events of the beach invasion so that they can duck and weave and kill their way to the lead alien beast, a kind of central brain that, as we learn in a looong scene of exposition, directly controls the littler creepy-crawlies causing all the carnage across the continent.

If that sounds like a video game, it should. Sakurazaka’s novel was inspired by playing one , and Edge of Tomorrow is essentially a cinematic version of Halo in which a single player gets unlimited lives so that he can learn to dodge all the enemies and win the game. That repetition would get tedious if not for the comic brio that Cruise and director Doug Liman bring to the butchery: Again and again, Cage tries and fails to dodge some weapon or vehicle or alien tendril and amusingly goes down.

This practice-makes-perfect routine looks a lot like an actor rehearsing his stunts—and as Cruise is fond of reminding us, he does his own stunts. This is surely not a coincidence: Liman and his screenwriters have built in enough nods to other movies— Groundhog Day , Alien , Saving Private Ryan , and so on—to make clear that the meta-ness is the point. This is a movie about Tom Cruise working very, very hard to please the world.

And please me he did, though I was already a fan. Not that the pleasure was particularly profound: Despite the movie’s allusions to World Wars I and II, Edge of Tomorrow is utterly shallow when it comes to war, giving us an inhuman enemy we are never asked to understand and a small cast of fellow soldiers who are mostly forgettable. Lately, it seems, we don’t expect anything more from a Tom Cruise movie : He’s taken on a string of big-budget, crowd-pleasing action flicks, after avoiding them for most of his career . Watching his physically expert but psychologically thin performance in this one, it’s hard not to feel as though he, too, is caught in a time loop of sorts, doing variations on the same thing over and over—and getting very good at it, but with much less than the fate of humanity at stake.

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Edge of Tomorrow

A soldier fighting aliens gets to relive the same day over and over again, the day restarting every time he dies. A soldier fighting aliens gets to relive the same day over and over again, the day restarting every time he dies. A soldier fighting aliens gets to relive the same day over and over again, the day restarting every time he dies.

• Christopher McQuarrie
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• 1.2K User reviews
• 637 Critic reviews
• 71 Metascore
• 11 wins & 38 nominations

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Did you know

• Trivia While filming the car chase scene which includes a minivan, Emily Blunt was instructed to drive fast and then to take a right hand turn so that the van would shake. However, Blunt missed her mark and she drove the car right into a tree. She later said that it was both hilarious and terrifying, as she almost killed Tom Cruise , who was in the passenger seat, but both of them started laughing after the incident.
• Goofs On the map seen at the start of the movie, the capital of Slovenia, Ljubljana, was misplaced in Croatia.

Rita Vrataski : What do we do now?

Cage : I don't know. We've never gotten this far.

• Crazy credits There are no opening credits, the title doesn't appear until the closing credits.
• Connections Featured in Film '72: Episode dated 5 March 2014 (2014)
• Soundtracks Massive Mellow Written by Daniel Lenz Performed by Daniel Lenz Courtesy of RipTide Music

User reviews 1.2K

• Jul 4, 2021
• Is "Edge of Tomorrow" based on a book?
• What song is playing when the movie ends?
• June 6, 2014 (United States)
• United States
• -Director Doug Liman in Official Movie Interview
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• Live Die Repeat: Edge of Tomorrow
• Trafalgar Square, Westminster, Greater London, England, UK
• Warner Bros.
• Village Roadshow Pictures
• RatPac-Dune Entertainment
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• $178,000,000 (estimated)
• $100,206,256
• $28,760,246
• Jun 8, 2014
• $370,570,268

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• Runtime 1 hour 53 minutes
• Dolby Digital
• Dolby Atmos

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Movie Review

Killed in Action by Aliens, Over and Over Again

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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.

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The Best Tom Cruise Stunts in Movie History

Tom Cruise loves to do his own dangerous movie stunts, and from Top Gun to Mission Impossible, he's done several deadly, iconic scenes on film.

Tom Cruise is best known for his action-adventure roles in movies like Mission Impossible , mostly because he has recently almost exclusively acted in some of the hugest, best action movies of recent years The actor has an unparalleled work ethic and meticulous dedication to the art. Many actors slow down as they age, but Tom Cruise only gets better at his craft. Every year he takes on a new project that is bigger and more dangerous than the year before.

We love watching larger than life heroes on the big screen, but there is nothing worse than a movie that breaks its own believability. Something about Cruise's publicized skills as one of the action movie stars who do their own stunts adds an element of realism and an extra layer of suspense to his already thrilling movies. Cruise's unparalleled work ethic and dedication to his craft makes him able to push the boundaries of acting to dangerous new heights. Here are the best and most dangerous Tom Cruise stunts to get your heart racing.

8 The Mummy: Free Fall

The Mummy (2017) starts with a team of archeologists bringing a mummy back from an excavation. When a strange flock of birds attacks their plane, Nick Morton and Jenny Halsey find themselves in a free-fall. As usual, Tom Cruise wanted to do the stunt for real. An airplane used to train astronauts took Cruise, co-star Annabelle Wallis, and a small crew up 25,000 feet in the air to achieve zero-g. The plane free-fell for 22 seconds before landing on the ground, and the entire stunt was difficult to perform and film, largely because of the inability to really practice and replicate that practice beforehand.

7 Edge of Tomorrow: Stunts in Suites

According to ScreenRant , Emily Blunt cried the first time she put on the costume for this movie. Usually such elaborate and heavy suits would be digitally added onto the characters after the fact, but Tom Cruise never does things halfway. The metal armor in The Edge of Tomorrow weighed 85 pounds, and it weighed on the actors both physically and emotionally. The actors were attached to cables to help them move around through the set more easily. This stunt may not have been Cruise's most dangerous, but acting through the cumbersome costume is still a great feat in of itself. He manages to be affable, fun, frightened, and extremely engaging throughout Edge of Tomorrow , which remains one of the best Tom Cruise movies of all time.

Related: Tom Cruise Can't Stop Smiling While Doing His Own Stunts, Despite a Lot of Broken Bones

6 Mission Impossible Rogue Nation: Underwater Vault

In Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation , Ethan Hunt breaks into an elaborately secured underwater vault. Of Course, Tom Cruise insisted on learning to actually hold his breath long enough to complete the stunt. Tom Cruise learned to hold his breath for over six minutes by the time he completed training. Usually actors only hold their breath for ten seconds at a time while filming underwater scenes, and everything is then edited together. The stunt was filmed in giant pool of water 20 feet deep, and Cruise himself had to convince the safety and compliance officer to allow the actor to preform the stunt. Cruise actually blacked out a few times during filming, according to stunt coordinator Wade Eastwood.

5 Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol: Climbing the Burj Khalifa

This is one of Cruise's most controversial stunts. In Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, Ethan Hunt climbs the Curj Khalifa (one of the tallest buildings in the world) and breaks in from the outside in order to avoid an intense security system. Cruise wanted to climb the exterior of the building, but the production's insurance wouldn't have it. The actor found his own insurance company to insure him for the stunt after the production's wouldn't, and did it without the approval from the film's safety professionals. After Cruise crashed head-first into the building, Skydance Production CEO David Ellison memorably recounted :

In true Tom fashion, while we were all arguing amongst ourselves about how we were the largest idiots known to mankind for putting ourselves in this situation, Tom reset back to one with the stunt guys and nailed it perfectly on the second rehearsal. And we all kind of looked at each other and were like, 'Well, that's why he's Tom Cruise.' We shot it the next day. We shot it twice and it was spectacular.

Regardless of whether you agree with Cruise's tactics or not, everyone agrees that the stunt looks phenomenal on the big screen.

4 Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation: Dangling from a Plane

In Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation , Ethan Hunt sneaks onto a plane and waits for Benji (his tech support) to open the door. Benji doesn't open the door in time, and Ethan is left dangling from the plane while it takes off. In real life, Tom Cruise literally hung from the plane as it took off. In an excellent little featurette on the scene, Cruise states that he was so nervous for this stunt, he couldn't sleep the night before. Luckily, all the proper safety precautions were followed, and Cruise survived another day.

3 Mission Impossible Fallout: The Halo Jump

Production for this film famously shut down after Tom Cruise broke his ankle jumping form one skyscraper to another. However, the much more dangerous stunt of the movie was Cruise's Halo jump. A Halo jump is a high altitude low open jump from a plane, and Cruise was the first actor ever to do it. According to this featurette by Paramount Pictures, Cruise jumped out of the plane at 25,000 feet. Not only did Cruise do the stunt himself, but he also needed to position himself carefully close to the camera and other stunt doubles in order to act the scene out.

Because the scene took place at night, the crew could only practice and film this scene once per day just before the sun set. The scene comes when Ethan Hunt and his partner need to land in Paris quickly but undetected. It adds suspense and intensity to the already fast-paced Mission Impossible: Fallout movie.

2 Top Gun Maverick: Low Flying

Some of Cruise's best stunts are yet to come, but we should get to see one of them later this summer. Top Gun: Maverick is the anticipated sequel to the 1986 film, Top Gun . Cruise will return as Pete "Maverick" Mitchel to train a new group of pilots for a special mission. Joseph Kosinski, the director for Top Gun: Maverick , said that the Navy gave Tom Cruise special permission for some stunts in the film. We get to see a glimpse of Cruise flying at dangerously low attitudes in the latest trailer. The director also said that Cruise is the first ever to do a real launch off a carrier and land on a carrier in a movie.

Related: Here’s Why Top Gun Remains Such an Iconic Classic

1 Mission Impossible Seven: Bike Jump

At CinemaCon, behind-the-scenes footage of Cruise's biggest stunt yet appeared, which was being filmed for Mission Impossible 7 . Tom Cruise rode a motorcycle off a cliff in Norway in order to shoot an ambiguous shot for the film. Some sources say Cruise practiced the jump 13,000 times and practiced skydiving 500 times to ensure he could get the real thing right. Filming the stunt at such heights seemed to be almost as difficult. The director of photography practiced using new cutting edge cameras during each of these takes to make sure he could actually film the stunt when Cruise finally preformed it on location. The film crew built multiple ramps so that Cruise could work his way up from jumping off a small height to jumping off the mountains.

We don't know where this stunt will fit into the new movie, and we still know very little about the movie's plot. Mission Impossible 7 's release date has been pushed back several times due to COVID, but hopefully those delays are behind us, and we will all get to watch Cruise defy gravity on July 14, 2023.

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Edge of Tomorrow is the best movie there is about what it’s like to be Tom Cruise

Cruise finally stopped making hard work look easy

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Share All sharing options for: Edge of Tomorrow is the best movie there is about what it’s like to be Tom Cruise

There are no other movie stars like Tom Cruise . And despite his litany of hits across an over 40-year career, there’s no better movie to explain his stardom than 2014’s Edge of Tomorrow .

Director Doug Liman ’s future-set action movie about humanity’s war with robots casts Cruise daringly against type as Cage, a stiff bureaucrat in a suit, terrified, cruel, cowardly , and almost completely incapable… at least, at first. But when he suddenly gets the power to reset to a certain moment in time when he dies (and with a little training from Emily Blunt’s legendary war hero), he slowly begins to learn how to fight, how to lead, and how to win the war. It’s basically Groundhog Day with robots, guns, and giant swords .

But beyond just being an incredibly kickass action movie — which it is — Edge of Tomorrow is also an incredible deconstruction of Cruise as an actor. For years, Cruise’s on-screen MO has been effortless charm and talent. He was a brilliant lawyer who won an impossible case the instant he decided to try in A Few Good Men , he was a pool shark who could beat the pros in The Color of Money , and he was the best pilot at a school full of the best pilots in Top Gun . But Edge of Tomorrow was the first movie to let us in on a secret Cruise would spend the entire decade after exploring: Appearing effortless takes a tremendous amount of work.

Edge of Tomorrow is like a movie made of behind-the-scenes footage. It’s the cinema of grueling, endless hard work, and the incremental improvements determination can get you. Cage dies over and over and over again. His development as a savior of humanity is, like anyone’s development at anything, decidedly nonlinear. Sometimes he makes genuine progress, getting a few feet further into the battlefield before the robots mow him down. Other times, he tries something new and dies faster than he ever has before. But even in those failures, Cruise’s trademark focus comes through — in his tight-lipped sneers or the way he tenses his jaw and narrows his eyes — and we see the improvement building. And slowly, by the end of the movie, Cage looks as effortless in battle as Tom Cruise felt in the ’80s.

And that effort — the hard work and grueling failure — is the real secret to Cruise’s success . Watch any behind-the-scenes footage of his Mission: Impossible movies and it’s impossible not to see little bits and pieces of Cage in there. In fact, a major part of the promotional campaign for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One was how many attempts it took for Cruise to nail the stunt where he jumps a motorcycle off a cliff and parachutes away .

Hard work is more than just a part of Cruise’s movies now; it’s baked into why he wants you to see them. He’s way beyond effortless cool now, and we have Edge of Tomorrow to thank for that. Now that he’s in the latter half of his career, Cruise is finally ready to let us know that he’s not just the biggest star in Hollywood, but the hardest-working one, too.

Edge of Tomorrow is streaming on Apple TV Plus, or rentable on Amazon , Apple , and Vudu .

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Tom Cruise's amazing stunts from 'Mission: Impossible' to 'Top Gun: Maverick'

Following is a transcript of the video: 

Narrator: In this scene from "Mission: Impossible -- Fallout," Ethan Hunt jumps 25,000 feet out of a plane before landing in Paris. A risky move like this would normally require a stunt double, but that's actually Tom Cruise, and that background behind him is not a green screen.

The actor is famous for almost always doing his own stunts, no matter how dangerous. From climbing the world's tallest building to hanging off the side of a plane to pulling off perhaps one of the most dangerous helicopter chases ever captured on film, Cruise is always finding new ways to top himself. And he's not stopping anytime soon.

At more than 2,700 feet, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai is the world's tallest building. So it was only a matter of time before Cruise decided to climb it. For this stunt, the actor had to climb 1,700 feet in the air, so he had to wear a special harness attached to strategic points in the building. To do this, the crew needed to break 26 different windows -- with permission, of course. This harness was so tight, Cruise said it cut off his circulation. The 65-millimeter IMAX cameras and additional helicopter shooting the scene only had a limited amount of time to record, so they had to move fast. But Cruise wasn't just climbing the building. He also had to fall four stories and run down the surface of the building in a move known as an Australian rappel. All of this required a lot of preparation. Cruise practiced by climbing up a makeshift glass wall heated with artificial lights to replicate the hot temperature of the windows on the Burj Khalifa. Stunt coordinator Gregg Smrz estimated that Cruise and the crew put in at least 200 hours of rehearsal time. This isn't Cruise's first experience climbing, however. In 2000's "Mission: Impossible 2," he climbed a 2,000-foot cliff in Utah attached to nothing but a thin safety rope and had to jump 15 feet from one cliff to another.

The stunts in "Edge of Tomorrow" were tough, but it was actually the costume that made it even more so. Throughout the film, Cruise's character wears metal exoskeleton armor, something that typically might be added on through CGI. But Cruise wore a real suit, sometimes for up to six hours a day straight. One version weighed 85 pounds, and another version weighed around 130 pounds, thanks to a sniper rifle and missile launcher on the back. Here's what Cruise normally looks like running in a scene. Compare that to this shot of him and his costar Emily Blunt running while both wore the suits. In another stunt for the film, the actor was attached to a wire and thrown across the room while wearing it. To take some of the weight off and help them run more easily, Cruise and Blunt were often attached to cables. It took Cruise 30 minutes to get into the suit and 30 to get out. The team eventually got that down to around 30 seconds.

While Cruise had plenty of experience flying planes in "Top Gun," in "Rogue Nation," he decided to go into the air in a rather unconventional and more terrifying way. For the film's opening scene, he had to cling onto the side of an Airbus A400M that took him up 1,000 feet at a speed of 100 knots for six to eight minutes. The plane took off, did a complete circuit, and landed -- all with Tom Cruise secured to the side with this wire that would later be erased in postproduction. Because the plane went so high into the air, Cruise had to wear special contacts to protect his eyes from flying debris and strong gusts of wind. Plus, the crew had to make sure takeoff conditions were absolutely clear. If they ran into even a single bird or some rocks on the runway, it could severely injure the actor. The stunt had to be performed over and over again until the actor, director, and crew felt they got it right. For Cruise, he didn't feel confident in the take until he had gone up eight times.

The fifth "Mission" entry contained not one but two death-defying stunts, this one involving military-style preparation. In the film, Ethan Hunt needs to open an underwater vault. The vault itself was created using CGI, but Cruise still needed to work underwater for the sequence, which clocks in at just about six minutes long. He started by jumping off a 120-foot ledge into a tank filled 20 feet high with water. Then Cruise needed to film takes while holding his breath for four to six minutes. According to Cruise, most underwater sequences might have an actor hold their breath for up to 10 seconds, so this was definitely a challenge. He trained with free-diving expert Kirk Krack on a breath-hold special operations program designed for military personnel. Part of his training involved breathing exercises that would lower his standard heart rate, essentially training his body to use less oxygen. And he wouldn't just be sitting in the water during the shoot -- he would be swimming around. Why so long? Well, they had just 10 days to film the sequence, so director Christopher McQuarrie shot in a series of continuous takes, meaning the actor couldn't easily pop up for air.

While Cruise hasn't gone to space -- yet -- he has performed a zero-gravity stunt. In "The Mummy," he had to hold his breath underwater yet again, dodge explosions, and even fight Russell Crowe. The biggest standout stunt was this sequence, in which a cargo plane plummets to the ground. Cruise was offered the chance to shoot it on a soundstage, but he declined and opted for the real thing. To imitate the experience of the crash where the characters float up into the air, they shot on a plane that NASA typically uses to train astronauts. They decked out the inside of the plane with padding to make it look like a real cargo plane. The plane couldn't go into zero-gravity mode until it was at about 25,000 feet. Once at that position, it would free-fall for 22 seconds. During that time, Cruise endured four high-altitude flights. The sequence was eventually wrapped after a whopping 64 takes. And while Cruise's stunts usually require a lot of rehearsal, the actor actually said that that was quite tough here, as floating in the air makes things unpredictable.

Cruise has flown a plane and hung onto the side of one, but for "Fallout," he also learned to fly a helicopter as part of an aerial chase sequence. The 2018 film contains an array of the actor's most daring stunts, like this motorcycle chase, in which the actor rode through the streets of Paris, sometimes at 100 miles per hour. For the helicopter chase, Ethan Hunt flies through dangerous mountain terrain to stop a nuclear bomb. Before shooting, Cruise worked 16 hours a day to hit the required 2,000 hours of helicopter training. There would be up to 13 helicopters close to each other in the sky at once, so Cruise and the stunt team carefully planned out every little move in advance using these toy helicopters. And the actor needed all the preparation he could get, as he would be acting, piloting, and operating the cameras mounted to the front of his chopper all at the same time. All that planning was crucial, particularly for this 360-degree corkscrew dive, a move that's challenging even for professional pilots. According to Matt Evans, an instructor at the school where Cruise trained, the stunt involves starting with a descent, rolling into a turn, and then holding the turn as you go down. While that's happening, the actor can never take his hands off the controls.

In "Mission: Impossible 2," Cruise's character jumps out of a helicopter, but that scene was shot using a green screen. In "Fallout," Cruise decided to actually jump out of a plane and became the first actor to do a HALO jump on camera. HALO stands for high altitude, low opening. He jumped from a height of over 25,000 feet but didn't open his parachute until he was below 2,000 feet. This military move allows a soldier to jump into battle undetected. The actor practiced in a giant wind tunnel constructed on the set, and then, according to stunt coordinator Wade Eastwood, jumped out of a plane around 100 times. And a trained stunt-camera operator also had to jump out of the plane with Cruise to get the shot. To make sure every facial expression was still visible on camera, the crew developed a special helmet for Cruise with a light in it, allowing him to breathe properly while falling.

In the long-awaited sequel to Tom Cruise's 1986 breakout film, Cruise is back in the cockpit of a fighter plane. The film was shot on real military aircraft carriers, and Cruise flew in real planes. A new camera system allowed the crew to put six IMAX-quality cameras inside the cockpit. In the original "Top Gun," one of the F-14s had three cameras total mounted onto it. But it wasn't just Cruise going solo -- the rest of the cast trained alongside him. Cruise and the rest of the cast needed to actually fly for an even better viewing experience. Despite the potential risks, there are aspects of flying one simply couldn't see if they used green screen, like these distortions in the face.

What's your favorite Tom Cruise stunt? Let us know in the comments.

More from Movies Insider

• Main content

'Edge of Tomorrow' Works Because Tom Cruise Is Playing a Coward

Major William Cage is not like Ethan Hunt!

The Big Picture

• Tom Cruise's role as Major William Cage in Edge of Tomorrow showcases his comedic talent and his range beyond typical action hero roles.
• The film allows Cruise to have a genuine character arc, demonstrating self-sacrifice and bravery.
• Cruise and Emily Blunt's dynamic chemistry enhances the film's narrative and adds depth to their characters.

Tom Cruise has been one of the biggest movie stars in the world for four decades, but he’s somehow having a new renaissance in his career over the past decade. While Cruise’s string of hits in the 1990s emphasized his ambition to work with auteur filmmakers and give versatile performances, it seems like Cruise’s current work is only in service of the audience. Cruise continues to push himself to deliver outrageously entertaining maximalist spectacle , and the success of the last few Mission: Impossible films and Top Gun: Maverick indicate that audiences will follow him no matter where he goes. Interestingly, one of the more underrated films from this era is the sci-fi action flick Edge of Tomorrow , in which Cruise took a completely different type of challenge — he had to play a coward.

Edge of Tomorrow

A soldier fighting aliens gets to relive the same day over and over again, the day restarting every time he dies.

What Is 'Edge of Tomorrow' About?

Directed by Doug Liman , Edge of Tomorrow takes place in 2015 when a group of alien invaders known as “Mimics” have taken control of Europe, forcing troopers to head to the frontlines in mech-suits to ward off their seemingly brilliant opponents. Major William Cage (Cruise) is simply a “public affairs” officer with no combat experience who aims to use his superior position to avoid duty, but he’s punished and sent directly to the frontlines. After attempting to desert, Cage finds himself squarely under the command of the no-nonsense veteran Sergeant Rita Vrataski ( Emily Blunt ). Although they’re initially at odds, Cage finds that he must seek Rita’s help if he’s to escape the time loop he’s been caught in, wherein he keeps dying and coming back to life only to repeat the same day over and over .

Edge of Tomorrow sets up a premise that borrows from both Groundhog Day and Independence Day , but Cruise’s performance is a lot closer to Bill Murray ’s Phil Connors than Will Smith ’s Steven Hiller. He’s a reluctant hero who doesn’t even want to be a hero, which couldn’t be more different from Ethan Hunt or Pete Mitchell. The use of the time loop trope allows Cruise to have a genuine character arc where he has to prove himself, learn new skills, and discover the value of self-sacrifice and bravery. It also allowed him to flex his comedic chops in a way that he hadn’t been able to since his work in the 1990s. Cruise’s dynamic performance as a lovable loser makes Edge of Tomorrow rank among the most entertaining original blockbusters in recent memory.

'Edge of Tomorrow' Shows Off Tom Cruise's Comedic Abilities

Despite being one of the biggest box office draws in history, it’s easy to forget that Tom Cruise is already an acclaimed performer . This is someone who has worked with Oliver Stone , Steven Spielberg , Stanley Kubrick , Michael Mann , and Paul Thomas Anderson , so he’s picked up a few things about playing a nuanced character. What’s brilliant about the writing of Cage is that the script doesn’t go over the top in making him unlikeable; he’s simply the product of an unfair system that risks the lives of those who can’t afford to luxuriate in a comfortable corporate position like he can. He may be blissfully mean-spirited, but he’s not necessarily a war-mongering militarist like his superior, General Brigham ( Brendan Gleeson ).

It’s also easily forgotten how funny Cruise can be. We see an awkward, goofy side of him in Edge of Tomorrow that’s been absent in his performances (except for a little detour in Tropic Thunder ) since Jerry Maguire . This is exemplified when he’s awkwardly introduced to his new team of companions in the barracks and desperately tries to escape from duty. Seeing Cage demolished and killed in different ways as he tries to find any means to avoid actually doing anything productive allows the film to have a morbid, dark sense of humor. While it’s quite similar to a sequence in Groundhog Day when Phil continues to attempt suicide, it’s even funnier here as a self-aware reference to Cruise’s history of performing dangerous stunts . Cruise even helps shed light on the supporting cast as Cage begins to mess with his fellow soldiers by predicting their activities each time he’s reincarnated.

However, Cage’s cowardly nature also gives the film a direction, and it makes him a more inspirational character. There’s a bit of The Twilight Zone magic within the story about an ordinary man called on to do extraordinary things, and Cruise gets to show how Cage slowly learns about his own abilities as he trains with Rita. Having an inexperienced character allows the film to provide exposition in a naturalistic way, as Cage is hilariously unprepared for all elements of combat . These scenes would all be infinitely less interesting if Cruise was playing an action hero like Ethan Hunt , who already knows how the gadgets work.

Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt Are a Dynamic Duo in 'Edge of Tomorrow'

There’s a good deal of the Alien legacy in Edge of Tomorrow, and Blunt certainly gives a performance worthy of Sigourney Weaver ’s Ellen Ripley . In a reversal of roles, Rita is the hard-edged, cynical veteran tasked with helping Cage. The film sets off a fun dichotomy where Rita obviously wants to figure out the aliens’ plan herself, but must train a goofball like Cage because he’s been infected and can retain his memories. There’s a plot-centric reason for them to stay together, and the chemistry between Cruise and Blunt steadily convinces the viewers that they’re learning to appreciate each other.

Having Cage initially be a cowardly deserter gives him a sensitivity that makes this relationship more interesting. Cage isn’t just learning about how to fight in a mech-suit and pick up clues about alien biology, but also how to improve himself and reflect on his life choices. He’s forced to open up to Rita and finds a newfound respect for the soldiers he wouldn’t have thought twice about before. There are some quiet moments of intimacy in which we see how much Cage has grown , particularly when Rita reveals how she was once caught in a traumatic moment, reliving the death of her lover.

The 10 Best Tom Cruise Action Movies, Ranked

Edge of Tomorrow was an anomaly for many reasons. Although it was loosely based on the graphic novel All You Need Is Kill , it felt like a completely original work of science fiction that didn’t intend to start a franchise or launch a universe. Those looking for a generic sci-fi action movie may have been surprised to find a surprisingly earnest, hilarious, and emotional story about the planet’s most unexpected hero. Through Cage's unexpected journey in Edge of Tomorrow , Tom Cruise manages to convince us that he’s still a hero — he just has to learn how to be.

Edge of Tomorrow is available to rent on Prime Video in the U.S.

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Emily Blunt Almost Killed Tom Cruise On The Set Of 'Edge Of Tomorrow'

Senior Entertainment Reporter, HuffPost

"Edge of Tomorrow" cost a reported $178 million to make, which means there will be plenty of explosive special effects and a bevy of complicated stunts. Emily Blunt verified that during a June 4 appearance on "Conan," revealing that one of those stunts nearly caused her to kill Tom Cruise.

The "Groundhog Day"-esque sci-fi blockbuster, about an officer who continually repeats a day in which he battles extraterrestrials, found Cruise performing his own stunts, as he is known to do. At one point, Blunt was driving a stunt car with a trailer behind it and Cruise in the passenger seat -- or, as she put it, "not his favorite place to be." A few harrowing minutes later, the actress almost caused his demise by wrecking the car into a tree. Watch her relay the story below.

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Tom Cruise's Wildest Stunts in His Movies, from 'Top Gun: Maverick' to 'Mission: Impossible'

Stunt double, who? Tom Cruise has become synonymous with the dangerous stunts seen in his action-packed movies because he performs all of them himself. Between running down the world's tallest building in Mission: Impossible  to flying a jet in Top Gun: Maverick , here's a roundup of the adrenaline junky's most intense scenes

Tom Cruise's Cliff Jump in Mission: Impossible II

There's nothing that amps Tom Cruise up more than doing his own dangerous stunts , which he has done numerous times throughout the Mission: Impossible franchise.

In the second installment, one memorable and nail-biting scene involved a 2,000-foot cliff in Moab, Utah.

Not only did Cruise scale the cliff with his bare hands, but he jumped a 15-foot gap from one side of the cliff to another with nothing but a thin rope holding him for safety. (Oh, he also hung onto the cliff's side by only his fingertips before pulling himself up.)

"I was really mad that he wanted to do [the stunt], but I tried to stop him and I couldn't," director John Woo told Entertainment Weekly . "I was so scared I was sweating. I couldn't even watch the monitor when we shot it."

Tom Cruise's Knife to the Eye in Mission: Impossible II

Cliff climbs and frightening jumps weren't the only hard-to-watch stunts in the second installment of Mission: Impossible . While our eyes were nearly shut watching this next stunt, Cruise insisted his be wide open.

The infamous "knife-to-eye" scene involved a real knife being propelled full force at his eye, stopping precisely one quarter-inch away from his eyeball, as opposed to somewhere vaguely near his eye like director Woo had suggested, per the Mission: Impossible II Blu-Ray behind-the-scenes clip.

Tom Cruise's Skyscraper Run in Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol

One of Cruise's most famous stunts took place in Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol when he scaled down the side of a building. But not just any building! He scaled the world's tallest building, Burj Khalifa, located in Dubai.

To complete this daunting task, Cruise's character Tom Hunt sported special suction gloves in order to reach the 130th floor of the 2,722-foot skyscraper before rappelling down and concluding with a giant leap of faith.

"One night, after one of the earliest shooting days, I bolted up in bed realizing that we had our star dangling about a mile up in the air on a thin wire and my brain was screaming, 'What the hell are we doing?' " director Brad Bird told the New York Daily News .

Tom Cruise's Exoskeleton Armor in Edge of Tomorrow

While the stunts in Edge of Tomorrow were nonetheless next-level, it was the costume that posed even more of a challenge ! Cruise sported metal exoskeleton armor, a detail that's typically added via CGI in post production.

But naturally, the daredevil actor opted to wear the heavy suit — with one version weighing roughly 85 pounds, costume designer Pierre Bohanna told Entertainment Weekly .

"They're brash, quickly-made pieces of equipment. So you've got to see the guys struggling in them," Bohanna said. "But it's a massive worry when you take something like this and put someone like Tom in there. It's a massive ask for anyone to put up with, let alone somebody that important."

Tom Cruise's Plane Hang in Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation

The Top Gun alumnus is no stranger to action-packed air travel, but his stunt in Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation is incomparable to say the least.

While Top Gun had Cruise daringly fly and pilot fighter planes, Rogue Nation saw the actor cling onto one from the outside!

Using only his fingertips, he dangled 1,000 feet in the air from the side of an Airbus A400M at a speed of 100 knots for six to eight minutes, the film's photography director, Robert Elswit, told The Hollywood Reporter .

In order to safely accomplish the stunt, Cruise was attached via a wire that was later erased in post production. He also wore protective contacts to shield his eyes from flying debris and intense gusts of wind, per CNN.

Tom Cruise's Zero-Gravity Stunt in The Mummy

Ever wonder how actors recreate a cargo plane plummeting to the ground? Ask Cruise, who did just that during the infamous plane crash sequence in The Mummy .

In true Cruise fashion, the actor opted for 64 takes in zero gravity, as opposed to the suggested sound stage alternative, per Variety .

Tom Cruise's Helicopter Hang in Mission: Impossible Fall Out

Cruise was offered to shoot this daunting Mission: Impossible Fall Out scene on a backlot with a green screen, but that's just so out of character.

To complete the stunt, the actor endured 16 hours of intensive helicopter training every day for more than a month in order to pull off the scene's difficult maneuvers and climactic downward spiral, per the Los Angeles Times .

"It's all Tom flying, 100 percent of it. There's a lot of jeopardy," the film's stunt coordinator, Wade Eastwood, told the outlet.

As for the crash sequence, "It's kind of like being in a theme park ride but really dangerous because your limbs are flying everywhere and all you need to do is catch your wrist in the wrong place and that's a permanent injury," costar Henry Cavill added.

Tom Cruise's Building Jump in Mission: Impossible Fall Out

Did you really think hanging off the side of a helicopter, plummeting 40 feet to the ground , and doing a downward spiral were the only missions accomplished by Cruise i n Fall Out ? In the film, he also had to leap from one building's rooftop to another.

To film the chase scene, Cruise was attached to two safety harnesses as he sprinted off one building, leaped off, and crashed against the side of the other before hoisting himself up (only to then keep running again).

Unfortunately for Cruise, the "easy" stunt did go wrong, resulting in a broken ankle for the actor, he told Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show .

Tom Cruise's Cockpit Scene in Top Gun: Maverick

In the blockbuster sequel to Cruise's 1986 Top Gun , the cockpit scene in Top Gun: Maverick was — you guessed it — extremely dangerous.

All of the actors were professionally trained to pilot their individual fighter planes themselves.

"We worked with the Navy and the Top Gun School to formulate how to shoot it practically because if we're going to do it, we're going to fly in the F-18s," said Cruise in a behind-the-scenes Paramount Pictures video clip.

Tom Cruise's Motorcycle Jump in Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning

The seventh installment of the Mission: Impossibl e franchise, Dead Reckoning Part One , which is set to release in 2023, will see Cruise take on one of his most daring duties to date .

In the film, he rides a motorcycle off a massive ramp, flies into the sky, and parachutes his way down to safety — all while cameras are rolling and helicopters are following him to get the shot, per Today .

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Normally when Tom Cruise dies in a movie, it's a very big deal.

But in Edge of Tomorrow , Cruise's character dies again and again and again. #LiveDieRepeat is even the Twitter hashtag for the film, directed by Doug Liman.

"It's storytelling. You're going to get the audience used to the experience of it," says Cruise. "And then you get to have them laugh with it."

It's not all laughs in the time-traveling sci-fi adventure due out June 6, 2014 (with a trailer dropping online Wednesday). In the not-distant future killer aliens start a sustained, seemingly unbeatable invasion of Earth.

Novice fighter William Cage (Cruise) is thrown into a major alien assault, before finding himself in a time loop that forces him to live out the same ill-fated, brutal combat over and over.

But with each battle, Cage gains increasing skill alongside his comrade, Special Forces warrior Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt).

Blunt, 30, the British actress who starred in 2006's The Devil Wears Prada and as Queen Victoria in 2009's The Young Victoria, says her role is a dramatic change.

"I've discarded the bonnet and corset for an exosuit and a huge sword, it seems," says Blunt. "I was looking for something very different from anything I have done before. This was definitely that."

Blunt trained six days a week for three months to get herself into alien-battling shape, focusing on everything from weights to sprints to yoga, aerial wire work and gymnastics.

"I even learned Krav Maga, a lethal martial arts using pretty much everything including your teeth to destroy," says Blunt. "That was pretty fun."

The action veteran Cruise says he wanted to play alongside the "natural athlete" Blunt after seeing her perform as a ballet dancer in The Adjustment Bureau . He was not disappointed.

"She showed up and that girl was ready to roll, she was so fit," says Cruise. "She is a badass and she totally crushes it here."

Even Cruise needed to train extensively to deal with the visually impressive metal exosuit that allowed for full movement but weighed 85 pounds on average.

"One of the suits with the angel wings had a sniper rifle and missile launcher on my back and weighed about 130 pounds. I'm having to sprint in it," says Cruise, who helped develop the suits. "It's physically grueling."

In early days, the suit took as much as 20 minutes to even get into before the film team fine-tuned the design ("in the end we timed it and to get me into the suit took 30 seconds," says Cruise). And actors even had specially made rigs on set to take the weight off their shoulders between takes.

Despite the physical demands, the futuristic apparel was striking enough to set the fights and stunts around "what worked and what looked cool with the suits," says Cruise.

The 51-year-old actor, whose last film Oblivion was set in Earth's future, insists he didn't mean to go on a sci-fi action bender.

"Look, I make all different kinds of movies," he says. "When Doug (Liman) came to me and said what the story was and the design, I thought, 'This is going to be cool. It's going to be very different than anything I've done before.'"

Blunt, who is married to actor John Krasinski and is now seven months pregnant, says the effort has made her want to return to action films in the future — with one caveat.

"I just don't know if I want to be wearing the exosuit again," she says. "I think I'd like to try one metal-free to see what that would be like."

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Emily Blunt says Tom Cruise told her to 'stop being such a p---y' while filming Edge of Tomorrow

"I did laugh and we got through it but the training was intense," the actress said.

Jessica is a staff writer at Entertainment Weekly, where she covers TV, movies, and pop culture. Her work has appeared in Bustle, NYLON, Cosmopolitan, InStyle, and more. She lives in California with her dog.

Emily Blunt is opening up about the grueling production of the 2014 sci-fi action film Edge of Tomorrow and a very direct comment offered to her by costar Tom Cruise .

The actress recalled the taxing stunts and costumes required of her while on Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett's Wondery podcast SmartLess , set to premiere to a wider audience on Monday, revealing that Cruise told her to "stop being such a p---y" after she expressed some concerns about a shoot.

The two played soldiers fighting a war against aliens in the film that also starred Bill Paxton and Brendan Gleeson, which required the wear of enormous robotic suits. The costume "would've been great if we had CGI'd them, but we wanted to do it practically and in a tactile way," Blunt said. "When you hear the word 'tactile,' you think that sounds nice and cozy. There was nothing cozy about wearing these suits."

Blunt's suit weighed about 85 pounds. "It was so heavy," she said. "The first time I put it on I just started to cry in front of Tom and he didn't know what to do. He just stared at me. I was like, 'Tom, I'm not sure how I'm going to get through this shoot,' and just started to cry. I said, 'I'm just feeling a bit panicky about the whole shoot.' He just stared at me for a long time, not knowing what to do, and he goes, 'Come on, stop being such a p---y, okay?'"

Blunt laughed off the comment and the two were able to get through the shoot, she said, but "the training was intense." The actress said she injured herself during a stunt. "I did this aerial stunt on wires and I was supposed to land on my shoulder, and I landed on my face," she recalled.

A sequel to the film was announced in 2019 with Blunt and Cruise reported to reprise their roles, but Blunt told EW last year that she wasn't quite sure where it stood — but said she did read a script for it at some point. "That was an amazing script, but I just don't know what the future holds for it," she said. "I did read a script that was in really great shape, but it's just a matter of if that can even happen now. I don't have the straight answer on that one."

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Emily Blunt says Tom Cruise once told her to ‘stop being such a p—’ on set

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Emily Blunt is pulling back the curtain on what it was like to work with Tom Cruise on “Edge of Tomorrow.”

In a new episode of the “SmartLess” podcast that premiered Dec. 5 on Wondery and will be available Monday on other streaming platforms, Blunt recalled Cruise telling her to “stop being such a p—” behind the scenes of their 2014 action film .

According to Entertainment Weekly , the “Devil Wears Prada” and “A Quiet Place” actor recounted her experience working on “Edge of Tomorrow” to “SmartLess” co-hosts Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett. She said that the sci-fi movie’s futuristic, mechanical costumes weighed about 85 pounds, which pushed her to her breaking point one day on set.

Review: ‘Edge of Tomorrow,’ Tom Cruise run loops around competition

Just when you were ready to give up on the summer season and its cookie-cutter, been-there blockbusters, “Edge of Tomorrow” saves the day.

June 5, 2014

“It was so heavy,” she said, according to Entertainment Weekly.

“The first time I put it on I just started to cry in front of Tom, and he didn’t know what to do. He just stared at me. I was like, ‘Tom, I’m not sure how I’m going to get through this shoot,’ and just started to cry. I said, ‘I’m just feeling a bit panicky about the whole shoot.’ He just stared at me for a long time, not knowing what to do, and he goes, ‘Come on, stop being such a p—, OK?’”

Blunt said she laughed off the remark and was able to make it through the shoot with Cruise. Though she admitted the “training was intense” and that it “would’ve been great” if the effects department had just tricked out the costumes using CGI.

“We wanted to do it practically and in a tactile way,” she said. “When you hear the word ‘tactile,’ you think that sounds nice and cozy. There was nothing cozy about wearing these suits.”

A representative for Cruise did not immediately respond Sunday to The Times’ request for comment.

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Emily blunt reveals she did her most “stressful” stunt in ‘mary poppins returns’.

'The Fall Guy' actress played the beloved character in Disney’s 2018 musical sequel.

By Carly Thomas

Carly Thomas

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Emily Blunt is revealing what movie she did her most “stressful” stunt in, and her answer may surprise some fans.

The Oscar-nominated actress may have been surrounded by death-defying stunts in her latest movie, The Fall Guy , but she recently told People magazine that her scariest stunt was actually in 2018’s Mary Poppins Returns .

“That entrance was very stressful for me,” she recalled of the scene.

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The Oppenheimer star added, “I did three takes — and then I felt my tolerance go, ‘Pfft!’ And that was it. I was done.”

However, Blunt said she noticed that director Rob Marshall wanted to go for a fourth take but she immediately shut it down.

“I did three takes and I could see Rob gearing up to do another one,” the actress remembered. “I was like, ‘Nope, no, no, no, I’m done.’ It was over.”

While Blunt also does a fight scene in The Fall Guy , where she stars opposite Ryan Gosling, some fans may have guessed her scariest stunts would have been sci-fi action movie Edge of Tomorrow with Tom Cruise, but that wasn’t the case.

“I did some wire stuff in  Edge of Tomorrow , which was probably more dangerous, because I took some spills,” she said. Her performance in the 2014 film also earned her a Critics Choice Award for best actress in an action movie.

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Emily Blunt’s Scariest Stunt Ever May Surprise You: “Mary Poppins Returns” ‘Was Very Stressful’ (Exclusive)

No, the wildest stunt of her career isn’t ‘Edge of Tomorrow’ or ‘Fall Guy’ — it’s Mary Poppins’ high-flying entrance

Emily Blunt is a pro when it comes to action-packed stunt work. Her alien-butt-kicking performance in 2014’s Edge of Tomorrow earned her a Critics Choice Award for best action actress, after all. 

But ask the Oscar nominee , 41, for the scariest stunt of her career and she — surprisingly — won’t name that Tom Cruise hit. “I did some wire stuff in Edge of Tomorrow , which was probably more dangerous, because I took some spills,” Blunt tells PEOPLE exclusively.

Related: Emily Blunt Says Tom Cruise Was 'Such a Doll to Me' on Edge of Tomorrow Set: 'I Loved Him'

Mary Poppins Returns on the other hand? “That entrance was very stressful for me,” she says. 

Inheriting the iconic Julie Andrews role in Disney’s 2018 musical sequel required more bravery than any high-octane thriller, according to Blunt. The character’s entrance “had to start in the clouds and come all the way down” toward the ground while holding an umbrella aloft," she explains. “And I'm supposed to walk effortlessly into my close-up as if it's nothing.”

Of the stunt, she adds, “I did three takes — and then I felt my tolerance go, ‘Pfft!’ And that was it. I was done.”

Rob Marshall , who directed the sequel written by David Magee and costarring the likes of Lin-Manuel Miranda and Meryl Streep , wanted to go for a fourth. “I did three takes and I could see Rob gearing up to do another one. I was like, ‘Nope, no, no, no, I'm done.’ It was over,” Blunt recalls.

Related: Oscars Presenters Emily Blunt and Ryan Gosling Lob Barbenheimer Insults as She Accuses Him of Painting His Abs

Ryan Gosling , Blunt’s costar in the new action-comedy The Fall Guy , is quick to praise the movie’s “epic” moment. “Hell of an entrance, though,” he says.

“Epic,” agrees Blunt, grimacing at the memory. 

The movie’s other memorable stunt — involving Mary zooming backwards into the depths of a magical bathtub — was no sweat in comparison. “That was okay. That was a slide,” she says.

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

As for The Fall Guy , Blunt plays Jody Moreno, the director of movie-within-a-movie Metal Storm . Directed by David Leitch , the story loosely based on the Lee Majors TV series of the same name follows Gosling’s Colt Seavers as he attempts to find Metal Storm ’s missing leading man (played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson ).

Related: Ryan Gosling and Lookalikes Wow with Fiery Stunt on The Fall Guy Red Carpet

Leitch, 48, also has a surprising answer when asked for the wildest stunt in The Fall Guy — a movie that features a world record-breaking number of car flips , fire burns and fights. “I think the biggest stunt is falling in love,” the director tells PEOPLE. 

The romance between Colt and Jody is what propels the character-driven story forward, he explains. “It's been great for us as filmmakers to plant this big love story in the middle of this action piece… Love is the most dangerous stunt.”

The Fall Guy is now in theaters.

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Read the original article on People .