(Sound) The crazy underappreciated
Edge of Tomorrow just turned three years old.
And wouldn't you know it, it's even getting a sequel.
- Yup, real dumb title too.
Live, Die, Repeat, and Repeat.
- Yeah, we're gonna have to talk about titles quite a bit on this one.
So let's go ahead and get started.
Here's your spoiler warning folks.
It's time to ask, what's the difference?
(Music)
- Reload.
- So first up the afore mentioned title business.
Dug Limen's 2014 film Edge of Tomorrow,
was later changed to Live Die Repeat when it was shipped out on Blu-Ray.
- Hence the super dumb sequel title that will probably change too.
- But neither one of the films titles match the source material it was based on,
that title is All You Need is Kill.
Hiroshi Sakurazaka's 2004 Japanese light novel,
which is an illustrated style of novel aimed at teens,
was then itself translated into a manga, a full-on graphic novel.
- So there are a handful of versions of the story floating around, but
the one we're dealing with is the manga version published in early 2014.
Because for one, the manga leaves out only superficial details from the original
light novel, and two, the manga's artwork is just real cool, (Sound).
So, that's what we're doing.
- So, let's start with the first and most obvious difference.
Tom-Freaking-Cruise.
He plays Major William Cage, an army PR man with a flashy smile and
absolutely zero spine.
He had an advertising firm before the war broke out and
he had joined up as a publicist specifically to avoid fighting.
- I can't stand the sight of blood.
Not so much as a paper cut.
(Laugh) - When we first meet him,
he's making the talk show rounds, drumming up support for
the latest innovation in jacket technology, which is going to win the war.
Or at least that's what he's selling.
- The main character in the manga, however, is Keiji Kiriya.
A young Japanese soldier, probably in his early 20s, maybe even a teenager.
There are two similarities between Cruz's William Cage and Keiji Kiriya.
One, their names sound a little bit alike.
In fact, Keijii's developing skill in combat ultimately earns him the nickname
Killer Cage, which sounds even closer to William Cage.
And two, they're both nervous rookies about to enter their first day in combat.
- The other main character is, of course, Rita Vrataski.
In the movie, Emily Blunt's character is known as the Angel of Verdun and
is also single handedly responsible for humanity's lone victory against the minix.
Which is the driving force behind the balls-out offensive
the United Defense Force is currently planning.
- The manga Rita, which sounds like a pretty good drink when I say it out loud,
is a younger child-like American girl who's earned the nickname the Valkyrie.
And she doesn't have just one victory under her belt, she's travelled around
the globe with US Special Forces, helping out wherever it's needed.
One similarity to her movie counterpart,
they're both also known as Full Metal Bitch.
A nickname that's way less fitting of the teenage manga Rita than of
the battle-hardened movie Rita.
- Wow, it's the full metal (Sound) - And if there's a third main character,
I suppose it would have to be the Mimics.
In both book and the movie, they're an alien race with the ability to loop time,
an ability they use to never lose a battle.
In the movie, they're portrayed as swirling tentacle monsters that jump and
jitter their way around the battlefield, shooting fiery orange rockets.
- The manga Mimics,
which sounds like a pretty good Halloween costume when I say it out loud, are giant,
spherical creatures with pointy appendages, creepy little eyes,
and giant mouths that fire javelin like rounds that just absolutely destroy dudes.
The manga does offer more detail on the mimics,
describing their process of chewing up earth and drinking the water, only to
barf it back out in a from the mimics find more hospitable, which is super gross.
Getting into the plot,
Edge of Tomorrow opens with a news montage detailing the fight against the mimics,
which started in Germany five years prior to the events of the movie.
The aliens have spread through Europe and
are currently being held back at the English Channel.
In this flurry of news clips, not only do we need PR coward William Cage, but
we also learn about Emily Blunt's Rita Burtasky.
And how she's become an ass kicking Uncle Sam poster child for hope.
And "Cage" is all too happy to use her.
- Meanwhile in the manga, the battle against the Mimics is more global.
With the bulk of the action taking place on the southern coast of Japan, and
it's been going on for much longer than it has in the movie.
The story opens with Keiji dying and
Rita Vrataski standing over him, asking an innocent question about green tea, and
promising Keiji, I'll stay with you until you die.
But Keiji wakes up in the barracks the night before the invasion,
thinking it was all a dream.
- So while the manga begins with Keji already stuck in his loop.
We live with Bill Cage for a full day before he gets into the battle.
He tries to literally run from his CEO,
gets kicked around by the fantastic Bill Paxton, Rest in Peace.
- Tomorrow morning you will be baptised, born again.
- And doesn't even learn how to turn his gun's safety off before getting thrown
into action on the beaches of Northern France where he dies after blowing up
a claymore mine, and getting his face melted off by the blood of an alpha mimic.
It's only then that he wakes up at his first loop.
- Ahh!
- In both the movie and the manga, Cage and
Keiji lived a few loops before they truly believe what is going on.
For Keiji in the manga, on his fourth loop he borrows his buddy's handgun and
kills himself,
waking up in his bunk immediately, or moments earlier I guess, technically.
Point is, it's the fifth loop that gets Keiji to determined to see this through.
He even starts keeping track of his loops by writing numbers on
the back of his hand.
- For Cage, it's less clear how many loops he goes through.
In fact, throughout the film,
Dug Limen uses this lack of clarity to shift the dynamic between Cage and
Rita in very interesting ways, often within individual scenes.
However, after a few loops Cage is just determined to get off the beach, and
his plan is to track down the Angel of Verdun herself to help him.
And when he shows that he knows exactly what's going to happen and
when, Rita immediately recognized the ability,
saying come find me when you wake up, setting Cage off in a new direction.
- On your feet, maggot!
- Keiji in the manga,
beginning with his fifth loop, is just determined to kill a mimic.
He begins training with his sergeant every loop in a similar way to
Cages training with Rita in the movie.
At this point in the manga we also get a similar trial and error montage.
Seeing Keiji quickly progress loop 12 to 47 to 99 to 123 to 154.
Along the way he attracts Rita’s attention during a fight in the cafeteria
in which he's clearly one step ahead of his opponent.
- The cafeteria fight does introduce an idea in the manga that’s
absent from the movie completely.
Keiji is experiencing this fight for the first time, and
is still able to predict and anticipate his opponent's moves.
Unlike a similar scene from the movie, Keiji has not lived this day before.
Implying whatever powers he's inherited from the mimics,
allow him to break down time at will.
Not just memorize a sequence of events through repetition.
- It's soon after this cafeteria fight that redefines Keiji on the battlefield,
who at this point is doing an excellent Rita Vrataski impression, having watched
her fight over and over again, even using one of her trademark battle axes.
But it's not until this point, halfway through the manga,
that Rita finally reveals she knows what Keiji is going through.
- The second half of the manga kicks off with a ton of Rita's back story,
something we get none of in the movie.
None that's reliable anyway.
- Well maybe I made it all up just to keep you quiet.
- Manga Vrataski,
which sounds like a super indy foreign film director when I say it out loud,
grew up in Illinois, and, get this, her name isn't Rita Vrataski at all.
On the pages of the manga, her name is actually blacked out, and
we never find out what it is.
When Mimics show up to her quiet childhood home,
both her parents die in the attack, leaving her orphaned and super angry.
Too young to join the United Defense Force, she stole a passport from a refugee
named Rita Vrataski and signed up to kill as many mimics as possible.
- It's also this section of read a back story where the manga details how the time
loop works by following Rita quickly through her first loops.
In the bound to retake the Florida peninsula,
she kills a mimic with an antenna and begins looping immediately.
Once she figures it out, she equates the mimics to a network with servers and
backups and
sets out to destroy the network by killing certain mimics in a certain order.
And she does after 211 loops.
- This is not super different from the movie,
where the specialized mimics are referred to as alphas and omegas, but
one key difference is how they pass on their time capability.
In the movie, it's in Cages blood,
having been douse with it when he died the first time and began looping.
In the manga it's tacky on particles admitted by the server mimics
that changed Rita and Keiji brain chemistry.
- However in the movie, Rita loses her power after Verdun,
which is how she stopped looping and in fact warns Cage that's the only rule.
If you start to die, you better finish dying, otherwise you're out.
In the manga though, Rita breaks the loop after killing the network of
mimics in Florida and because her brain has been altered she keeps the power.
This allows her to travel around the world, going through battles then looping
backwards to change the strategy used by the United Defense Force.
- She also allows herself to be studied and utilized as a weapon in the manga,
something expressly forbidden by movie Rita.
Which sounds like a girl named Rita who
refuses to watch TV when I say that out loud.
- Both the film and manga spend some time developing the one sided relationship that
develops between our two heroes.
In the movie, we see Keiji trying desperately to keep Rita safe until
he kills the omega mimic so she can make it out of the loop alive as seeing her die
over and over again begins to take a toll.
In the manga they stay up all night talking and
enjoying having somebody to share the brutal looping experience with.
- However, as the manga nears the end, Keiji and
Rita work seamlessly together to take down the work of mimics in Japan.
And as Keiji deals the final blow to kill the mimic server
he wakes up in his bunk again, still stuck in the loop.
- Meanwhile in the movie just when Keiji thinks he found
the omega he discovers it's a trap.
Being led by visions to a dam in the mountains of Germany, he
realizes it was all a ruse by the mimics to find him and take their power back.
Which is the same thing that happened to Rita at Verdun,
which he now sees was all part of the mimic plan to give mankind hope.
And lure them into an all out attack in which the mimics can take out
all of our forces at once, dastardly.
- So moving into what is essentially the third act of the manga, as Kejii and
Rita try to take down the network for the second time, Rita suddenly attacks Keiji.
She realised that when the attack protocols adapted their brains,
they themselves became anthenna mimics.
And so as long as they're both alive, they will never get out of this loop.
She forces the two of them into a fight to the death, the ultimately Keiji wins.
He then moves on to slaughter the rest of the mimics and earn a victory in Japan.
- The movie takes a longer route with Cage and
Rita going back to London to get a device that will help them locate the real Omega,
which they find underneath the luve in Paris.
However when their escape doesn't go smoothly, Cage loses his powers.
- I can't reset the day anymore.
- Ultimately without the safety net of time looping,
they fight their way into Paris knowing they don't make it out alive.
But when Cage blows up the omega and
once again gets all gooped up in alien blood he wakes back up.
This time two days prior instead of just one.
- He also wakes up to find the mysterious power surge from Paris has essentially
wiped out all the mimics across all Europe that morning,
two days before Cage blows up the omega underneath the Louvre.
Which is wierd, maybe that's the day the omega kept resetting to so
when Cage reset with the omega's blood that's when he went back to as well?
I don't know, there are a handful of theories about how that works,
not the least of which the studio wanted a happy ending.
- Either way the manga ending is a cleaner ending.
After Cage destroys the last of the Japanese mimic network
he spends time mourning the loss of Rita, whom he'd grown to care for a great deal.
Even paints his jacket sky blue in her honor because it was her favorite color.
- But instead of killing all the mimics, Gay Happy Ending,
Keiji takes Rita's place with the US Special Forces team.
He still has his looping ability and
the war gets the mimics still very much ongoing.
- So at the end of the day,
we've got an adaptation that is ultimately very Hollywood-ified.
The main character goes from being a kid to an adult who goes from coward to hero.
The bad guys' motives are less clearly defined in the movie.
The mechanics are simpler in the movie, swapping out tachyon particles changed
the physicality of my brain for alien blood got in me.
And the day is saved, even if it's saved in a difficult to understand way.
- And that's not to say it's a bad thing.
Like we said at the very top, this is a crazy underappreciated movie.
All You Need is Kill is simply the darker more tragic take on the story, and
they're both really cool.
- Well, here's hoping they come up with a better title for
the sequel then Live Die Repeat and Repeat.
But in the meantime, be sure to subscribe to Cinefix for more What's The Difference?
(Music)
(Noise) - What the hell were you thinking?