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Edge of Tomorrow: Live Die Repeat tells the story of Major William Cage locked in a loop
that resets each and every time he dies.
Eventually he escapes the loop, kills the aliens and saves the day,
but not before he's re-lived the same loop dozens, hundreds or even thousands of times.
So, exactly how many times does Cage live, die and repeat?
How many tomorrows are in Edge of Tomorrow?
And, how many times is he called a 'Maggot'?
Let’s find out.
To make things easier to track, we’re gonna break all the different loops and repeats
in this movie into three different sections, then add them together for our grand total.
First category is death.
Throughout the movie Cage is killed by a mimic 10 times, shot by Rita eight times,
also squashed by a ship, squashed by a tire, hit by a truck,
blown up by a ship, and drowned once each for a grand total of 23 deaths.
So far so good. He dies 23 times which means he actually lives the same loop 24 times.
Cause he's still alive at the end of the movie, so 24 loops.
Next up all the happenings Cage anticipates.
In some scenes, it’s obvious that he's been here before,
even though it’s our first time as viewers seeing it.
For example, Cage is able to duck these punches with his eyes closed.
We’ve never seen this setup before, but obviously Cage has. That’s what we’re
accounting for in this section.
There are five anticipation scenes.
Early in the movie, Cage interacts with Rita on the beach.
It’s a new setup for us as viewers—we haven’t witnessed this scene before.
Cage knows where four different mimics are going to be and kills them right away.
Clearly he’s lived this moment before.
But how many times?
Well, if each of these mimics killed him their first time, then he’d have done this at
least four times (to be able to kill them first.)
So, we’ll add four loops.
In another scene Cage insults Sarge then knows to do 50 pushups before he’s
even been asked.
Again, he’s been here before.
Add one loop.
In the alleyway fight we mentioned, Cage avoids being hit and ducks four attacks.
Add four more loops.
At the trailer park, Cage says they’ve tried every car except these two—
and there are eight other cars visible.
Assuming each car took one loop to try, we need to add 8 more loops.
Finally at Whitehall, Cage and Rita make at least 7 moves to sneak in, and 8 more to
persuade General Brigham to hand over the device to locate the Omega.
He’s been here at least 15 times before.
Total for this section is 32 loops.
The third and final section is for skills and behavior we haven’t already covered,
and that can’t be measured very ‘cleanly’ because the movie just doesn’t give us
enough information. So, what follows are best-guess 'estimates' of how many loops
these remaining five items would take.
With the help of Rita, Cage transforms from a totally green rookie with no combat experience
to a prolific mimic-killing machine.
We see about 3.5 minutes of training in the movie.
But clearly it'd take a lot more time than this.
So, how long—or rather, how many loops would Cage need?
It’s hard to say.
On one hand, each loop lasts until Cage dies.
So, theoretically he could train for days, months, even years and become an expert
all in one loop.
On the other hand, with the mimic hoard overrunning the earth, Cage might only have
three or four days tops before he’s killed, no matter what he does.
For the sake of argument, let’s say each loop can last no longer than ten days.
Also for the sake of argument, let’s compare Cage’s mimic combat training to what’s
involved in becoming a Navy SEAL—a real-life process that takes
at least a year and a half to complete.
It’s not a perfect analogy, but it’s something.
One loop every ten days spread across a year and a half means it’d take about 55 loops
for Cage to become an all-star mimic killer.
Whew.
And with this impeccable number no one could ever disagree with, let’s move on.
Cage dies at the beach eleven times in the movie—more than any other location we see—and
Rita dies here eight times—also a record high.
We see them rehearsing again and again where to look, stand, move and shoot.
They work up and review a detailed battle map with dozens of markings.
Even with all of this it’s a struggle.
“We can’t get off that beach!”
Fifty or sixty loops feels like too low of an estimate.
The mimics are too quick, and Cage is too frustrated for it to be that easy.
We’ll add 300 loops here with the understanding that, more than any other number,
this one is a pretty wild guess.
Cage knows some private details about Rita—like the name of a former love interest,
and stories from her childhood.
And sure, some of this stuff would come out in the course of just being together, but
you get the sense Cage was consciously trying to pry some of this information from Rita.
We''ll add ten loops for these efforts.
Our first visit to the farmhouse is clearly not Cage’s first time at the farmhouse.
He knows where the helicopter keys are, where mimics are buried, where to find clothes,
and food, and exactly how Rita likes her coffee.
Finding all this stuff would take some time, but wouldn’t necessarily require a lot of deaths.
We'll add ten loops here.
Cage learns to fly the helicopter completely by trial and error.
How long would this take?
Or rather, how many times would you die before you got the hang of it?
If you could practice undisturbed by starting it up then playing with the controls before
liftoff, or staying close to the ground it wouldn’t be too bad.
But remember there’s a mimic close by that attacks when you start the engine,
so you’ve got to get airborne right away.
For this reason instead of 5 or 10 deaths, we’ll put this figure at
40 deaths-by-helicopter and/or mimic before you’ve got the hang of it.
Total for this section is 415 loops.
Which makes the grand total for the movie at least 471 loops.
That’s more than four years in 3-day loop average, or 6.5 years in a 5-day loop average.
But not so fast – what’s with the ‘at least’?
This number might be spot on, but it’s better to think of it as a sort of bare minimum.
The real total would probably be higher. Maybe by a lot. Here's why:
Consider the scene where Cage ditches J-Squad by rolling under a truck.
We added just one loop for this: He's killed the first time we see it, then escapes the second time we see it.
But, who’s to say in this made-up world that this character
wasn't squashed TWICE by the truck before he got away?
Or FIVE times? Or TEN?
Or, what if he’d tried ditching J-Squad earlier in the day by hiding or playing sick
or stealing a car or whatever, but we never see these misguided efforts?
Cage could and probably would have tried dozens of different behaviors
at any fork in the road
only a fraction of which we see in the movie.
That’s why, since we can only count what we see, our total is probably too low
and can’t be more precise.
So yeah—at least 471 loops.
What we can count?
Number of “Firey Crucible" lectures,
number of "Cobra" yoga poses,
And number of times Cage is called a “Maggot.”
From intense and even comedic combat scenes on the beach to a clever alien nemesis,
this movie is a really fun ride.
Some loops are easy to count, others are almost a total guess, but the take home message has
got to be: if you find yourself in a repeating loop, bring along your sense of humor and
make you look good while running.
That’s it for our breakdown of Edge of Tomorrow.
What did you think of our review?
How would you live if your life reset every time you died?
What movie should we break down next?
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