In Edge of Tomorrow, Major William Cage experiences a time loop every time he is killed in battle fighting a horde of aliens called mimics. He also falls in love with a fellow soldier named Rita Vrataski along the way. Even though this might sound familiar, Edge of Tomorrow is more than a Groundhog Day meets Aliens movie mashup. It’s a magic trick. I’d like to explain what I mean by exploring my favorite sequence in the film.

The Setup

After the first day in which Cage gets drenched in an Alpha’s blood, he relives that same day over and over. And we’re with him every step of the way. Sure, the movie tricks us a couple times by having him learn some skills offscreen. But for the most part we watch him make mistakes and figure things out one step at a time.

When he gets hit by a falling ship or fast-moving truck on the battlefield, he learns to run a little faster. When he gets injured in training, he anticipates the machine’s attack the next time. And when one plan doesn’t work to get off the beach, he comes up with another one.

One day is different, though. Cage has had enough of the war, so he sneaks off the military base and goes to have a drink at a pub in London. That’s when everything changes. He realizes that he’s not just fighting a battle in France because, once he loses that battle, the aliens come after civilians in Britain – and most likely the rest of the world.

Now he sees the true stakes. And that’s not the only thing that shifts. This is where the movie’s greatest parlor trick begins.

The Switch

The next shot we see clues us into the fact that something has changed. We’re over Rita’s shoulder as she listens to Cage in the training area destroying robotic versions of mimics. This is the first time that she’s gone to find him there. Up until this point, he’s always gone there to talk to her. It’s almost like they’ve switched roles. Or we have switched our perspective.

We then cut to Rita and Dr. Carter discussing the location of Cage’s visions. They think they know where the Omega is. Notice the framing of this scene. Rita is silent, but she and Dr. Carter are in the foreground of most shots, while Cage is in the background. We even get a closeup of Rita’s face while Cage is expressing his hopelessness. Even when the camera slowly zooms in on Cage, we see him only in a medium shot. As a result, he feels detached and far away.

When we cut back to Rita and Cage in the training area, she approaches him and finally speaks. She gives him hope that he can get them off the beach, telling him that she’ll train him in the ways of combat. However, we the audience already know that she’s been doing that for probably months at this point. So, when Cage says, “You already have,” we feel pretty smart because we’re in on his secret.

But that’s all about to change.

The Conversation

On the beach the next morning, Cage and Rita have finally worked out all the kinks in their plan. They work like an effortless machine, killing every mimic in their way. At one point, we see Cage from the perspective of his old squadron. He saves their lives and doesn’t even stop to receive any recognition.

From there, Cage tells Rita about his plan to commandeer a vehicle. Rita gets a minivan up and running, not knowing there is a mimic in the trailer. It attacks them when they think they’re safe, and Cage has to take drastic measures to kill it.

During the drive, they share a conversation that has a lot of implications. He reveals that she’s told him things about herself, like a childhood story about her brother, as well as her middle name (Peyton) and the name of a doomed man she fell in love with during her time reliving the same day some time ago. We’ve never heard any of those things, so we don’t know if they are true or false. But they touch a nerve with Rita, making her either deny them or tell him never to bring them up again.

The minivan has just enough gas to bring them to an abandoned farmhouse with a helicopter in the backyard. Cage wants to siphon the gas in the helicopter for the minivan, but Rita is adamant that they should fly it to the Omega’s location in Germany. Their discussion gets interrupted by Rita’s groan of pain. Cage then treats a serious wound she received from the fight with the mimic in the trailer, and then something interesting happens.

The Giveaway

Rita tells Cage that she wants to kill him in order the reset the day because she’s tired and in pain. She’d rather just start fresh, but Cage doesn’t want to end things so hastily. He sees something she (and the audience) can’t. Before she shoots him, he offers to serve her coffee with three packets of sugar because he knows she likes it that way.

However, that sugar detail gives away his game. She’s amazed he was able to find coffee and sugar so easily. But her amazement quickly turns to realization when she puts the pieces together. This isn’t the first time they’ve been to this farmhouse. The whole time, it really felt like Cage was making things up on the fly and being genuinely surprised by what happened.

In reality, he was playing a part in an elaborate parlor trick. The movie managed to fool the audience into believing that we were seeing that whole day through Cage’s eyes. But we were actually seeing it through Rita’s. What a delight that was! And it has the perfect payoff.

The Secret

Rita refuses to listen to Cage’s warnings about a mimic that kills her as soon as she starts the helicopter. He urges her to hunker down and stay safe while he risks his life. She asks why it matters to him what happens to her, and he responds in a heartbreaking way. Instead of saying he loves her (because that wouldn’t mean anything to her since she’s only known him for a day), he says, “I wish I didn’t know you… but I do.”

Cage knows intimate details about Rita that different versions of her have revealed to him over the course of possibly years of adventures together. From his perspective, they’ve lived and died together hundreds of times. From her perspective, he’s just an acquaintance.

She starts the helicopter and, just like Cage predicted, a mimic attacks and mortally wounds Rita. Cage manages to kill the mimic and then kneels down and tenderly holds Rita’s hand in her final moments. Feeling the life ebbing out of her, she finally understands the depths of his love for her. So she shares her own with him by revealing, “My middle name… is Rose.”

She then passes away, and Cage has just a few seconds before he is killed, too.

That moment changes Cage. In a way, they both told each other that they love each other in their dying moments. They revealed hidden things about themselves that they can’t share with anyone else because no one else would understand what it means without the experiences they’ve lived through.

And Cage has to wake up with the knowledge that he has lost the love of his life, and she doesn’t remember any of it. She is so stubborn that she would rather die than fail to do her duty, even if it costs her her life. He can’t handle seeing her die again, so he chooses to go alone to find the Omega. That leads to a series of events that conclude the movie on a happy note where Cage and Rita get to live happily ever after together.

Through Rita’s Eyes

This small section of Edge of Tomorrow is my favorite because it’s so different than the rest of the film. When Cage is receiving his training, the audience is also being trained to see things in a specific way from his perspective. And then the film brilliantly pulls the rug out from under us.

In contrast, Groundhog Day always gives us Phil Connors’ perspective. It never fools us into seeing events from anyone else’s perspective. You could say that we get to see a little of that on his final day during his dance with Rita Hanson. Hey, the love interest in both films is named Rita! Anyway, she gets to learn all the amazing things he’s done that day to serve people across Punxsutawney. However, we already knew what he was doing, so it’s not exactly a mystery to the audience.

Edge of Tomorrow managed to accomplish something special. Near the end of the film, General Brigham calls William Cage’s knowledge of things before they happen a series of impressive parlor tricks. Those are indeed impressive. And his greatest one is when he tricked the audience into thinking they knew more than him. But he was many steps ahead of us. We got to see through Rita’s eyes for just one day, and that helped us understand how much he had come to love her.

For a man named Cage, he sure knew how to think outside the box.

This is the Deja Reviewer bidding you farewell until we meet again.

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