Film School Rejects conducted a rather interesting interview with
Edge of Tomorrow' screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie ("Jack Reacher"). In it, the Oscar-winning scribe is asked about two topics that people had the most issues with: excessive exposition and the film's ending. McQuarrie admits that he had to sell director Doug Liman on some of the exposition-heavy scenes. Specifically, when Emily Blunt's character explains the rules to Tom Cruise's Cage. As for the ending, people have voiced their displeasure with how the film concluded.
Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers!
If you're reading this, you've gotten out. And if you've come this far, maybe you're willing to come a little further. You remember the ending of
Edge of Tomorrow, don't you? Major William Cage (Tom Cruise) wakes up without the ability to reset the day. Cage decides to to after the Omega but he'll need some help. So, Cage and Sgt. Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt) convince the J-Squad to come with them to the Louvre. While they are flying to their destination Cage warns the J-Squad not to kill an Alpha as it would have dire consequences for all of them.
Below, is another version of the ending McQuarrie proposed, but it was ultimately rejected.
"When Tom loses the power, and they go to Paris, and Tom is preparing the team as they go into Paris where he's telling them the rules of the movie, he tells the team everything the audience knows. Basically, he told them: 'Kill as many Mimics as you want, but do not kill an Alpha. If you kill an alpha we'll be right back here having this conversation, and we won't even know it. The enemy will know we're coming and they'll kill us all.' When they get to Paris there's the classic horror movie scene where one of them gets separated from the group, and he gets attacked by an Alpha and kills it. As he kills it, you see the Omega reset the day and you see the point-of-view of the villain. We cut to the plane and hear the same speech all over again. This time when he gets to the line, 'You can bet they'll have a plan to kill us all,' the ship gets hit. As the audience, you realize the enemy knows they're coming. The problem was you were so exhausted by the time you got to that point." - Christopher McQuarrie
The story unfolds in a near future in which a hive-like alien race, called Mimics, have hit the Earth in an unrelenting assault, shredding great cities to rubble and leaving millions of human casualties in their wake. No army in the world can match the speed, brutality or seeming prescience of the weaponized Mimic fighters or their telepathic commanders. But now the world’s armies have joined forces for a last stand offensive against the alien horde, with no second chances. Lt. Col. Bill Cage (Cruise) is an officer who has never seen a day of combat when he is unceremoniously demoted and then dropped—untrained and ill-equipped—into what amounts to little more than a suicide mission. Cage is killed within minutes, managing to take an Alpha down with him. But, impossibly, he awakens back at the beginning of the same hellish day, and is forced to fight and die again…and again. Direct physical contact with the alien has thrown him into a time loop—dooming him to live out the same brutal combat over and over. But with each pass, Cage becomes tougher, smarter, and able to engage the Mimics with increasing skill, alongside Special Forces warrior Rita Vrataski (Blunt), who has lain waste to more Mimics than anyone on Earth. As Cage and Rita take the fight to the aliens, each repeated battle becomes an opportunity to find the key to annihilating the alien invaders and saving the Earth.
EDGE OF TOMORROW is being directed by Doug Liman (“The Bourne Identity,” “Mr. & Mrs. Smith”) from a screenplay written by Dante Harper, Christopher McQuarrie and Joby Harold, based on the novel "All You Need Is Kill" by Hiroshi Sakurazaka. The film stars: Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Bill Paxton, Jonas Armstrong (BBC’s “Robin Hood”), Tony Way, Kick Gurry, Franz Drameh, and Charlotte Riley. The film will hit theaters June 6, 2014.
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