The Rewatchables - 'Edge of Tomorrow' With Sean Fennessey and Chris Ryan

Episode Date: March 23, 2020

Live, pod, repeat. The Ringer’s Sean Fennessey and Chris Ryan record the same episode of ‘Edge of Tomorrow’ starring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt over and over again to save the world from an audio invasion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I die within five minutes of landing on that beach. The invasion failed. We lose everything. Now I live the same day over. You have to die Until you change the outcome No way coming Finish it

Edge of tomorrow rated PG-13 starts June 6th This is the rewatchables Edge of Tomorrow A.K.A. Live, Die, repeat. I am Sean Fennacy. I am joined via Zoom with Chris Ryan. Chris, what's up? What's up, Sean? How you doing, man?

I'm hanging in there, Chris. We are doing a remote rewatchables. This is a first for us. How are you feeling about sharing in the community of film via Zoom? Well, I'm feeling pretty prepared because I've already done this podcast 300 times. Yes, we are living, potting and repeating. Edge of Tomorrow is an interesting movie for us to talk about here, Chris. There are so many complexities around the making of the movie and there are so many fascinations around the stars of the movie and especially the director of the movie. I'm just going to give you a couple of data points before we get started. This movie is directed by Doug Lyman, who has never quite made a movie like Edge of Tomorrow, aka Live, I Repeat, and that's going to be

notable as we talk through this movie. It was written by quite a few people, but only three people were credited. It was written by Christopher McQuarrie and Jez Butterworth and John Henry Butterworth. It was adapted from the 2004 Japanese light novel. All You Need is Kill by Hiroshi Sakharakazah. And the cast is a, it's a Tom Cruise movie. Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Bill Paxton, Brendan Gleason, Noah Taylor. It was released on June. June 6th, 2014 by Warner Brothers. It had a budget of $178 million and a box office of $350 million worldwide. It was nominated for zero Oscars. It has a Rotten Tomato score of 90%, which doesn't mean anything and also an audience score of 90%. Its tagline was lived I repeat. We will come back to that shortly. Chris, one thing that I'd like to start by talking about here with this movie is this movie takes place in 2020. Did you know that?

I didn't. I knew that it was released on the anniversary of D-Day, but I did not know that we are actually in the current live, die, repeat, edge of tomorrow timeline. How are you feeling about being six months away from having to go to war? I would love to fight mimics.

It's the things you can't see that are really the tough part. Look, man, the thing about this movie is that it is saving Private Ryan meets aliens. Except instead of Ripley, the movie is about Paul Reiser's character. And that is the most ingenious thing.

I mean, like, first of all, the way in which Lyman and Cruz and everybody making this movie just kind of captures the romance, for lack of a better term, because I know that obviously it was a tremendous, you know, a tremendously violent time in the world.

But the way that they capture the iconography and romance surrounding World War II is really the special sauce of this movie that I thought we could we could kind of go back and forth on this. You and I both love World War II movies and Doug Lyman managed to make one this decade or this past decade.

Yeah, it's a fascinating choice by him to make it that sort of a movie because it didn't have to be that kind of a movie. It could have been a much more pure science fiction story. All you need is kill is definitely more in that vein than it is in the vein of the movie that he tried to make. This is like a really,

a weirdly grounded movie for a movie that features alien black spaghetti monsters and the alpha and the Omega and all of the ridiculous kind of sci-fi trappings that a lot of the story carries on. But before we get too far into either the making of it or what this movie means, I feel like there might be some confusion

about whether or not this is a great movie. Because it was kind of a big flop. You know, it's one of the lowest grossing kind of mega releases of Tom Cruise's career. It famously was sort of tracking quite poorly leading into its release and did even worse than expected. and it did get a big second life when the movie was kind of rebranded on DVD and Blu-ray.

Where do you think it kind of exists in the broader universe of the Tom Cruise action movie? I remember this movie being so much better than I thought it was going to be that it threw off my understanding of whether I even liked it or not. I love this movie. I've seen it like probably five or six times since it came out, maybe even more than that with the cable rewatches. But it kind of reminded me a little bit of World War Z. Z as well, another really expensive, somewhat troubled blockbuster that I think people were like,

boy, this is going to be a real flop. This is going to be a real piece of shit when this hits the streets. And it was actually so much better than what I was expecting that I came out being like, is that a minor masterpiece? And that's definitely how I felt about Edge of Tomorrow. I think Edge of Tomorrow is a much better movie than World War Z. But they exist kind of in that same micro genre of smashing expectations blockbusters. Yeah, when we were having our conversation about the Godfather 3, we were talking about the movie media and the way that reporting on movies can sometimes infect your perception of them. And this movie was famously like a really difficult production and it took a long time to be released. They started filming it in mid-2012 and it did not come out until summer 2014.

And, you know, Doug Lyman is a, he's a tricky cat, man. He's made some of the most kind of important popcorn movies of the last 20 years. You know, he's probably best known for making the firstborn film and for making Mr. and Mrs. Smith. But he's also the director behind Swingers and Go and a lot of really interesting experiments. He's also made some pretty bad movies. What's the, what's that? Jumpers, bro. Christian Jump Jump Jumpers.

You knew it. You knew it right away. That movie's not good. Are you into that movie? No. But my favorite bit of. about Doug Lyman is, if you read the accounts of the making of his movies, you would think that the end result was much different than what wound up on screen. But more than that, it's like,

you would think that you were talking about like a Michael Chimino or like a Francis Ford Coppola or like a Werner Herzog who's just like, nobody understands me. I need the actual, I need a cruise ship to drag up a mountain to show man's, like, inhumanity of man. Doug Lyman is doing all that stuff where he's just like, you know what, we're going to get rid of day one of shooting on day two of shooting. But he's making Mr. and Mrs. Smith. You know what I mean? It seems like, so you went through all of this trouble, but ultimately you knew that you were making a movie about what if Brad Pitt and Angelina like to fuck and blow stuff up? Or what if Tom Cruise died a bunch but kept coming back to save the world? It's not exactly Heaven's Gate that he's sacrificing,

he's like selling the farm for here. I respect it though. I think you got to take, the thing about it is Doug Lyman really respects genre. And to make these movies good, you have to take them seriously. Even if the ideas are very dumb, even if it's a bad excuse to let Brad Pitt and Angelina fucking fall in love in a spy movie, the fact that he is so rigid about the way that he sees the movie, I do think it creates great results.

In the past, Lymania, which was this anxiety that he created on set when he was always changing things and he had this kind of ramshackle, freewheeling approach to movie making, seemed like a bad thing. I think Edge of Tomorrow is the first time I ever read movie stars talking about the experience as a positive. Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt seemed to, and maybe it's just because they love

the movie, but they seemed to love working with Doug Lyman who just wanted to erase everything and start over again. And we can talk about what that means in terms of this movie because even though it's incredibly fun, pretty smart, very funny, and the action is really well done for the most part. You can see a little bit of the fraying at the edges of the story because you can see that Doug Lyman is just tearing the story up every single day. Yeah, I mean, especially in the third act, which they did not really have when they went into production. Yeah, and with such a complicated premise, it's kind of insane to approach a movie that way. Right. Right. You know, obviously he was drawn to the central relationship between Cage and Rita, and he was probably really drawn to this

idea of recreating this kind of WW2 sense of collective action and staging a D-Day essentially, although I thought the great twist being that this D-Day is doomed from the beginning is a really smart thing to put into the story. And that's where you really get his specific talent. I've been trying to put my finger on it because, you know, he spends all this money and he makes these blockbusters and they're not exactly these probing portraits of the human experience, but they do have really uncommon moments of humanity. I mean, I know I've mentioned this before, but I find that the moment in born identity

where Damon and Fomka Potente are on the run in Europe, and he dyes her hair and cuts her hair for her, is like, like, that's not supposed to be in a movie like that. And Lyman repeatedly throughout his career has been able to, like wedge those things into these films. And you see it again in the, in edge of tomorrow, in one of my favorite scenes in the movie, which is at the farmhouse before they, they kind of get to the helicopter. Over and over again, it's almost like he runs down these productions to their very raw nerves. And out of that finds these incredibly human moments despite the kind of like superficial or fantastical elements going on in the actual story.

You're right. It's fascinating. And he does it at breakneck pace. This movie was shot seven days a week using two crews to film 20 days in addition to what had already been scheduled. You mentioned the scrapping the first day. They spent the entire first day of production filming scenes and then basically just deleted them and started over again, which is immensely expensive for a production. Let's talk about Cruz. Do you, you know, I think this is probably the last great non-franchised Tom Cruise movie. I had literally, literally. have this in my notes. I just, I have that exact sentence in my notes. So, I mean, what happens with him is so interesting. In the run-up to this movie, he had been making a lot of original stories, Valkyrie, Night and Day, Jack Reacher, and Oblivion, all of which did not do well at the box office. Jack Reacher did okay. Valcary did okay. This movie did okay, ultimately when you include International Box Office. But I think that this movie is kind of like, it's like the final, you know, stab in the chest. It's like it's the, there is no repeat after live, die after this movie where he realizes that he needs to cling to Mission Impossible and, you know,

for worse, the mummy and stuff like that. What do you make of this as sort of like the death knell of the original Tom Cruise movie? Yeah, well, I mean, Lyman has said that the reason why he was drawn to doing this movie and doing it with Cruz is because it was a different kind of cruise character. It was a guy who was actually not good at his job, you know, and for the most part, It's only through hundreds and hundreds of relived days that this character becomes a super soldier. When we start out, he's not even that good of a PR guy. You know, the PR that he's peddling is the same that five or ten other people like him are peddling on television networks in that great expository moment montage in the beginning of

the movie where we kind of, it's the kind of Tony Scott download moment where you just learn everything you need to know about the world going into the action set pieces. but for Cruz, you know, this is just like, it really maximized everything that he's good at, that grin, that run, the appeal that he has to both genders, and his ability to kind of lightly laugh at himself, but never in a sort of self-loathing way.

And I think it's kind of a singular performance for him, certainly of the decade. I think it's probably his best performance since either Tropic Thunder or War of the Worlds. What do you think about him as an action star because if you take the sci-fi stuff that he's done and you take this sort of top gun stuff that he's done like is that ultimately what his legacy is going to end up being because of the way that he's spent the last 20 years as somebody who is running and somebody who is sort of charming the female

counterpart but not necessarily romancing her the way that he would and say jerry mcguire like is he just is he just a more charming clin eastwood at this point i don't even know if there is a comparison point for somebody like him i mean he almost now at this point seems to be closer to like 90s action stars like he's continuing what would have happened had Bruce Willis stayed in shape. You know what I mean? Like I don't even know who to compare him to because he's not actually, I think there was a moment when he did Jack Reacher. I was like, oh, this is kind of interesting because like what if Tom Cruise just turns

into like a sort of Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan? Charles Bronson, yeah. Kind of guy. But he obviously like, he understand. I think for all the chances he takes and for all the responsibility he takes on by usually producing the movies he makes and is now kind of. of almost hermetically sealed his career after being very open to working with the likes of Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg and Oliver Stone in the beginning part of his career.

He's now kind of repeatedly going to Chris McQuarrie and a couple of other people and doing those kinds of things. And it's been a while, you know, I guess the really great what-if of his career is he had initially been attached to something to once upon a time in Hollywood. And you just never ever see him kind of getting associated with those kinds of roles of significance. So when you can find something like Edge of Tomorrow where there is some meat on the bone, I think you have to really just appreciate it for what it is. I personally, I love those Mission Impossible movies, but it's not because of Ethan Hunt or because of Tom Cruise doing a good acting job. Yeah, I agree. And you mentioned Chris McCoy, who's one of the co-writers of this

movie. And it's weird to say, but I think the Rosetta Stone for 21st Century Tom Cruise is Valkyrie, which was a movie that Macquarie wrote and was directed by the now basically vanished Brian Singer. But Macquarie had a huge hand in sort of producing and coordinating the movie. And he built this relationship with Cruz. And Cruz has largely depended upon him for the last 12 to 13 years as his kind of creative partner and shaman. And Macquarie is obviously the writer of usual suspects and an Oscar winner and has had a very good and kind of up and down career. but he has basically spent the last 15 years being the attache

of the Tom Cruise movie machine and that might sound like a diminishing thing to say about a filmmaker, but honestly, I've interviewed him in the past on the big picture and I think people really love the movies that they make together.

Those Mission Impossible movies are some of the most reliable, mainstream Hollywood movies that you're going to be able to find. There's two more theoretically coming next year if the Hollywood productions ever get back on track. And McCuery is an interesting guy, Because I think he started out as kind of a genre genius.

And then it seemed like he was trying to morph into something slightly more personal and realized that that wasn't going to work. And now has pivoted completely back to unpacking the trappings of the sort of like the hero type, the hero figure. You know, like Jack Reacher is a hero figure that he was adapting from in many ways. Cage is like a is a complicated hero figure. Obviously Ethan Hunt is a complicated hero figure. he kind of comes back over and over and over again to this similar archetype that plays really well with what you're talking about with Cruz, where he kind of has to be bad at his job, but also unflappable and needs to get better as time goes on and needs to be a romantic interest, but maybe not sexy exactly.

Like there are all of these kind of mitigations that come with all of the things that McCory wants to do with him. Yeah, they're cruise rules that are probably like too complicated to outline specifically here, but like I would love to kind of hash out at one point on a podcast. like what are the rules of 21st century Tom Cruise movies where it's like he can do this but he can't do that. Like we can never think he's like this, but we can always think he's like that. What is what is one you can think of? What is one thing that Tom Cruise can never do in a movie? Well, I haven't, I can't remember a single movie where he is not the Messiah in of this, of the last 20 years pretty much.

I mean, that in some way, shape or form, he is, he saves. he saves the world and it often is a chosen one of some sort which we can get into the religious allegories involved in that and knowing what we know about his personal life but i find it easier to just kind of like talk about cruises and movie star he definitely has that messiah complex where i think he sees the story that he wants to tell in any context is one of a guy plucked from obscurity thrown into extraordinary circumstances and ultimately saving the day, saving everyone. Let's recklessly speculate.

Do you think that that is something that is literalized, that is discussed at the outset of a movie, whenever he's a part of it? No, I would imagine, I mean, for sure, like, yes, I'm sure that there's on some level that discussion happens. I just think it's some of the material he's drawn to. Because otherwise, this is a guy who still, I would have to imagine, even in this day and age,

still is one of the few his name green lights some movie names. And so other than like, was it Lions for Lambs that like, that plays like a CIA guy or a diplomat or a senator, I think that's the last time I can remember him in a

non-spectical movie. But he could get Darkwater made immediately if you wanted to play the Mark Ruffalo part, right? He definitely could. I think, I always think of 1999 as the turning point for him, where he kind of lays it all on the line in both

Magnolia and Eyes Wide Shut, and he's not recognized for those movies, and he doesn't win, and he doesn't get told that he's one of the great actors of his generation. And then so he has kind of a, fuck it, I'm going full action and going to make people happy move. And he, you know, he's sprinkled in a few choices here and there that are a little bit outside of the realms of that. He actually made another movie a few years ago with Doug Lyman called American Made, which I think is a pretty underrated kind of lower budget, similarly like reckless Messiah kind of story. That's not bad, but isn't great. But for the most part,

he's stuck so closely to this action plot that it isn't bad, but we know what he's capable of. So it feels like we're missing out on something. And we're missing out on something, like, we're missing out on the graying temples of Tom Cruise.

That's sort of like, as he gets more aged, and he was 53, I think, when this movie was made or 52. And we're not getting this sense of him kind of going through the stages of life, the way that we do with other actors.

You know, even with the most beautiful and charismatic actors, the way that we have with Robert Redford or Merrill Streep or even Denzel Washington, you know, the way that those movie stars let us see them evolving and aging. He just, he's just never given us that. It's fascinating. Yeah.

What was that Denzel Washington movie from like two years ago where he plays the lawyer? Oh. It was the Dan Gellroy movie. Yeah. It was Jay Israel Esquire, right? Jay Israel Esquire. It was called Roman. J. Israel Esre. Yes. Like, where's Tom Cruise's Roman J. Israel Esreire? Uh, I don't know. I would watch it. I would watch it. But that's obviously not what this movie is about at all. No, but I do think that this movie has a lot that something's like, say, Oblivion doesn't. You know, and I think actually this movie coming on the heels of oblivion, I remember for myself in 14 when this dropped, I was like, he literally did just make this movie, right? Like, didn't he just make a post-apocalyptic?

I'm just a normal guy thrown into this thrown into extraordinary circumstances movie but I think the movie the thing that this movie has and whether it's Lyman or whether it's a combination of

because I would love to do a forensic accounting of what from whose draft of this script winds up in the final movie because I think McCreery is a very funny writer anybody who's seen Way of the Gun which if you and I ever get to do a one for us

rewatchable we got to do Way of the Gun but McCorry is a very funny writer but there's a lot of humor with like a little bit more heart in this movie and there's also I don't know

I was kind of thinking like I wonder if Jez Butterworth is responsible for a lot of the you know when he's alone in the in the pub in London right before they realize that the mimics have invaded London and are coming up the Thames

like there's a couple of different people's seasoning in this movie and I think it winds up making it pretty special and, you know, just the fact that they are able to reset so many times, and I guess we can talk about the Groundhog Day trope here, the fact that they're able to reset so many times allows them to make fun of the stakes of the movie itself. Totally. I mean, just to talk about the screenwriting process. I mean, this is getting a little ahead of half-ass internet research, but it's probably a good thing to talk about. Eight different people contributed to the screenplay of this movie. The original screenings, the original screenings, play, instead of making a pitch to a major studio to purchase the property and proceed with writing and producing a film adaptation, a company developed a spec script to show to studios. So

three arts and Erwinstaff, I think the producer's name is approached writer Dante Harper and sent him a copy of the novel. Harper found the book, quote, too complex to properly adapt, but despite the prospect of not getting paid, he chose to risk it and accepted the job, taking eight months to write the script. Upon completion, Warner Brothers purchased it for $3 million in April of 2010. The studio then hired Lyman to direct a film and Harper's screenplay was listed in the 2010 edition of the Blacklist,

a survey of the most liked unproduced screenplays in Hollywood. So, you'd imagine that if a person got paid $3 million for a script. I wish you had done that whole speech as Michael Gambon from Barton Fink. It's a wrestling picture. Tom Cruise.

Oh, Michael Lerner, you mean? Michael Lerner. Yeah, my bad. Michael Lerner. Yeah. I mean, it does kind of kind of feel like that. And it feels like a perfectly set up Hollywood story of somebody getting paid a big load of money and a big director getting hired and then a big actor getting stuck to the movie.

And then it gets off and it goes. Lyman, of course, is very rambunctious. And of course, this happens on a lot of Hollywood movies and we don't always know about how it happens. For whatever reason, on this one, we later learned that the Butterworths were brought in to work on this. And you've talked about them in the past. I think Jez in particular is a very accomplished playwright and his movie work often looks very different from his stage work. And he's worked on, I believe he's worked on some of the Craig Bonds, right? Yes, yes. He's contributed to a bunch of franchise movies over the years.

We've talked about McCory, obviously. At one point, Simon Kinberg, who worked on a lot of the sort of X-Men movies over the years, including directing Dark Phoenix, by far the worst X-Men movie that I talked about last year. Yeah. All kind of took a shot at this movie. It was Macquarie who I think put this best to Cruz, and it kind of explains why I think Cruz is drawn to Macquarie. I think when they were kind of conferring over how this movie should work

and what the tone of it should be, Cruz compared Cage's Violent Demises to Wiley Coyote and the Roadrunner saying, it's fun coming up with new ways to kill yourself. And it seems like all the versions of the movie that came before McCuary came along just didn't seem that funny. and when Macquarie came in he kind of got Cruz's tone and what he was going for

and that sort of guy who's not good at his job approach that you're talking about finally clicked into place. You know, most of the time when we talk about movies like this and there are eight screenwriters who get their hands on it,

the result is really bad. And I would love to see that forensic accounting that you're talking about of seeing what stuff stuck around. It's plausible that the shape of Dante Harper's original piece largely sits there and then mostly the details

of the plotting that the Butterworth staked out remained. But I would guess that most of the dialogue is Macquarie's. You're probably right. So where's your head at when it comes to Groundhog Day movies, to single-day loop movies? Single-day movies are interesting. It's kind of amazing that we're doing this movie

before Groundhog Day on the rewatchables. Groundhog Day is a frequent request on the rewatchables, and we've not yet done it. I think... Is it? I'm going to try to avoid too many single-day loop jokes along this whole conversation. but yeah, I mean, I think that they work well.

I think as long as they have a sense of humor about themselves and they work well. I mean, one of the best parts about this movie is that it's conscious of the movie Groundhog Day. Like the fact that Rita Vertaski is named Rita Vertaski is an homage to Groundhog Day. There is, there are, there are knowing winks at the movie throughout. And I think if you try to do this without nodding at that or, you know, like there are a lot of, you know, sort of time collapsing or time altering movies that work really hard. Last year we had yesterday, the Beatles Danny Boyle movie that I really didn't think worked at all. Because you really need to let the audience believe the premise. If you don't give them enough to accept and understand the premise, then they're not going to

get invested. You mentioned that the movie basically takes five minutes to explain what's going on on the world via news report in that Tony Scott way. And then 40 minutes into the movie, there's basically a big scene of Noah Taylor and Emily Blunt and Tom Cruise, like looking at a digital projection of aliens that is like one of the all-time expo dumps I've ever seen. Yeah, right. And you kind of need to do that stuff to keep people on the hook to keep them buying into what we keep seeing over and over again.

But thank God they waited 40 minutes to do it. Like if they had found, if he finds out about Noah Taylor after his first death, it just really changes it. Or if they start talking about mimic tech early in the movie, I'm just kind of like, man, that's where you get into Transformers. You know, that's what makes this movie different. I think there's something to be said for one of the great qualities of a rewatchable movie,

which I know some people think we get a little far afield from here, is the fact that you can watch it with different parts of your brain. And you can watch Edge of Tomorrow and be like, okay, so how many times has he died? Or when does he learn this? Or how far do it? Like how many times have they been to the farmhouse? But you can also just flip that switch off. And when Noah Taylor's talking, and I love Noah Taylor, shout out to him in Peekee Blinders, you don't have to listen.

You know, he's just like, I have this thing. You put it in your leg and then we'll find out where the Omega is. It's like, don't worry about it, man. Just like, we'll just keep going, keep it going. Yeah, that's why I like that Wiley Coyote Roadrunner comparison because it does just kind of, it works best as a Looney Tunes cartoon. You know, it doesn't work as well as a hard sci-fi. And when we get to picking nits, I'll point out a couple of things that kind of corrupt the stability. of this movie's premise.

Yeah. You know, I guess we should just talk very briefly about Emily Blunt before we get into the categories. You talk as long as you want about Emily Blunt. I think she's like the true revelation of the movie. It's kind of weird that we waited this long to get to her. I think it obviously stakes out this new territory for her is just a straight up awesome action star.

But let's clear the air really quick. How do you feel about her haircut? She doesn't look like a poodle. That's what I'll say. Okay. I think it's also 20-20 appropriate you know

nothing has aged worse about her hair that's right you know Emily Blunt is she's just the she's a badass in this movie

the movie got a lot of praise for being a kind of you know a feminist correction on the way that action movies tend to treat

female characters I think that that's somewhat true I see just a lot of Ellen Ripley in the movie I see a lot of Sigourney Weaver

and the influences that you mentioned earlier in the movie I think are right on I think Alien and the Matrix and Starship Troopers are hugely important movies in terms of tone and look. But Ripley feels like the signature character that her character is modeled on. Yeah. And there's a little bit of, you know, I think that they dabble a little bit with the idea of like these war heroes that get constructed.

And as since Cage is coming from the public relations side, he must understand this somewhat. but that the reason why Verdun goes the way it does and the reason why she's the full metal bitch and all of that iconography attached to her is because she is able to do it so many times. And is that, like, in some ways, there are no such things as real warriors or heroes. It's really just practice.

No, it's totally true. And by the end of the movie, Cruz's character gets to sort of a similar spot. He's basically as legendary a warrior because he's fought hundreds of times. We don't know how many. I hope he also has the nickname Full Metal Bitch, though.

Maybe we should just start calling you that on this show. Would you be okay with that? Go for it. It's better than some of the alternatives. Okay, let's go to the categories. Most rewatchable scene. Now, this is a complicated thing to unpack because, you know, a lot of this movie

is cut together very quickly and very fast and there aren't as many scenes as there are flashes of scenes, but I'll do my best here. I think I've got about eight here. So first Major Cage's first meeting with Brendan Gleason's General Brigham. You misunderstand, Major. I didn't ask you her to sell me. I want you to sell the invasion. Okay.

You ship out for the coast in one hour. Your camera crew is standing by. You'll be on the beach with the first wave. I'm sorry, the first wave to beach. You mean the front? France. Satellites show minimal enemy movement on the coast. Little resistance. I'll excite and something to tell your grandchildren. I appreciate the confidence, General. What do you make of Gleason in this movie?

He's suplexing Tom Cruise into the, like in the actor Octagon. No, Tom Cruise is amazing in this scene. But this is just an example. I think you brought this up. Gosh, no, you know what? Greenwald and I were talking about this on when we were talking about devs. And there's a character in devs that's just kind of like a walk-on part. And we're not even getting into dev spoilers.

But it's just very obvious that the person who comes on and does it is like kind of a day player. and it winds up kind of diminishing the impact of the character in the show because you're like, I don't really need to know who this person is. But when Brendan Gleason is waiting on the other side of the door, when Tom Cruise walks in, you're just like, oh shit. This is the, this is, this is Montgomery. This is Patent. This is, I need to know who this is.

Yeah, they brought the big guns. And he doesn't have a lot of work to do, but he has enough to basically own the movie in the, in the 2.3 scenes that he's in in the movie. And anyone who's seen Troy knows that sometimes Brendan Gleason can get the ham out. You know what I mean? Sometimes Brendan Gleason can fry up the bacon,

but he really underplays this moment. This feels like the only movie he's ever appeared in which he has a shirt tucked in. He's really... He's really flexing a lot of body in this movie. He looks like Big Van Vader from WCW back in the day. He's really big and athletic and imposing.

You feel like he should be in hell in the cell? Yeah, exactly. Next rewatchable scene, obviously waking up in Master Sergeant Farrell's J-Squad for the first time, the first time we see Major Cage basically thrust into this new world. And, you know, I think that I watched this movie with my wife last night, and she tends to get really frustrated and anxious about movies where people are in situations that are not quote unquote fair and they can't control. And it's not fair when the major is stripped of all of his laurels

and forced to be bucked down to private again. Look at me. Look at where I am. I've been railroaded. It's obvious. I don't belong here. So please, Sergeant. There has to be a way I can make a phone call.

But one of the things I like about this is we see it a few times, but they don't spend too much time showing us this happening to him over and over and over again. No, they don't. I mean, like, I do wonder sometimes, like, what would have happened if he had just been like, sure, I'll make the documentary? It's like, do the mimics win? It's a very good question. I think that's true. Maybe we'll find out this fall, you know, when it happens to us.

Next, rewatch, we'll see in theirdrop, the first air drop out of the point. plane and the first battle sequence, which I think is just absolutely incredible and heart-racing and amazingly staged and features like one of Cruz's all-time great, I'm scared shitless performances. Hey, Waltz. How do I turn the safety off of my weapon? What? How do I turn? Oh, my God.

Absolutely. You know, they do such a good job because I think if you go into this movie, you have, an understanding of the premise that Tom Cruise is going to be forced to live the same day over and over again. But they do do a really nice job because you, in the same way where I'm like, wow, they really made General Brigham important by casting Brendan Gleason, the unknowns who play the J-Squad, you're not like, oh, I have some huge attachment because that's Jeremy Renner playing the guy next to him. So I know he's going to be important. So when that, when they actually get hit before the plane doors even open, it's pretty like, oh shit. I don't.

don't understand the stakes of this movie, really. And it's a great, it's a great moment. That whole first storming of the beach, I mean, it's not, it's kind of hard to come in saving Private Ryan's wake when it comes to beach storming, but they do a really good job of it. It's effective. And I think that it's pretty effective, especially in relation to how, like, undefined the mimics are. You're just kind of like, these are really aggressive mops. That's true. I think one of the things that's really good about this, too is that a movie like this usually waits a long time to show you the aliens and what you're battling. And the aliens and what they're battling are just not very interesting in this movie.

They're not bad, but they're just CGI features. Yeah. Yeah. It's not even really clear what they're after aside from maybe just the resources of the world. And so getting that out front, seeing them, the first death, the alpha death when like the blood hits his face and like melts into him and then that sets the first reset is a really great action sequence, but also after that moment, we don't really deal with the mimics for a while, which is one of

the best parts about the movie, I think, that it's not so bogged down in that stuff, the way that it would have been if this were, I don't know, like a Marvel movie or like, maybe even a Peter Jackson movie or Guillermo del Toro movie who worked on some of the designs of the mimics for this movie. They might have spent more time on the creature, and like, I just,

that's not what's important here. Yeah, I can't say that I left this movie being like, I wanted to know more about the mimics platform. just go to joebiden.com if you're interested in that the next sequence I wrote down is Cage seeking out Rita and then the training montage that ensues from there which I think is really

training montages in general are horrible and very corny and hard to do well with the exception of creed I would say that there has not been a good one in the last 10 to 15 years that might be a Blades of Glory has some good training montages Oh, sweet. Yeah. You being John Heater guy? No, that's like one of like a low-key amazing feral performance.

And great polar and Arnett too. Yeah, I'm a fan of that movie. I like the training montage. I like the drive to Leone, which eventually leads to the farmhouse. And then I think the return engagement with General Brigham is on the list. And then I guess sort of the final battle, but I think that the final battle. but I think that the final battle is sort of bad. Yeah, I mean, I think that this movie has a pretty precipitous drop off with about 35 minutes left.

We can get to that to what's age the worst. I like all the ones you've mentioned. I think the farmhouse is like it's almost like having water at the end of being in the desert because like it's such a human moment and these two characters have been forced to, at least the Emily Blunt character is constantly kind of resetting where she's at in the story. that that's the, it's really nice to actually go on a journey. You kind of realize, oh, I, I realize that that's like sort of the main engine of most stories on screen is like you're going on a journey with this character, not even in a metaphorical

way, but like actually moving a little bit. If I, I would just throw in the other one that you missed here is, I think it's like on his third or fifth time back, he walks into the J-Squod camp with Farrell and he reads everybody's poker hands. And as a connoisseur of poker hand reading, if not, I don't have that ability, but I love it when that happens in movies or when Daniel Negranu does that. It was awesome when he's just like, Gordon's working on a flush with spades and like everybody's just getting mad at him because he's gnarcing out their hands.

But there's a card game under the bed. Thanks a lot, asshole. Kimmel's working on a flush, spades, no clubs. And you're going to make me those cards. Am I right? Yeah, everybody loves to watch the smartest guy in the room, too. And that's what happens to Cage is he gets to become the smartest guy in the room and every room he's in because he's had every experience so many times. Those are really fun scenes. I do think even though the final 30 minutes or so is pretty flawed to use a recent rewatchables term, I do think that the final, basically the final action shot of the movie and then the final final sequence, the very ending of the movie are both really good. Basically the moment when Cruz opens his hand in the water, as the alpha is dying and shows the key rings, the grenade rings,

and then cut to him waking up two days earlier again, where the movie first started, and then that final moment when he approaches Rita, and she says, if I got something on my face, is a pretty great, like, kind of zippy, fun ending for a movie that, you know, if in different hands, might have ended a bit more gravely.

So what's your most rewatchable scene? I'm going to go for storming at the beach, theirdrop landing. they also do a really good job of explaining like the physicality of those mech suits that they're wearing which obviously like call back to the to the sort of loading robot suit that Ripley wears an alien but you get the feeling that those are very tactile that they're heavy that they're not exactly turning these people into human buzz saws that there's a lot of strength that goes into like being able to drag your ass across a wet sandy beach in one of these things and I know that

they didn't really use CGI for those. They used pretty much like real suits for the most part. So I just think it immediately distinguishes the movie. And since they basically redo that scene four or five times, I'll go with that one. That's a really good call. And about those suits and just about the way that the movie is made, I think one of the reasons why it's so good and why it feels so different and in many ways better from a lot of the CGI spectacles we have today is because it's only,

the CGI is actually quite sparing. And the way that they made the movie, if you look at any of them making a featureettes. They're basically using green screens that are portable, that are almost like giant like pads that, that, that, that, that production, uh, assistants are running with or stunt coordinators are running with as the actors are running. So it's not like the way they would make a Marvel movie where every single actor is on a giant stage that is completely green. Right. And then they're animating everything behind them. No, they like built a beach in a studio, right? Yes, exactly. They built an entire beach. I mean, they built an entire Heathrow airport. You know, everything.

thing is very practical in this movie except for the aliens, which really makes it so much better. There is a Heathrow airport. You can just shoot there. I mean, they staked it out and apparently they were going to do it and then they opted not to decide to just build

an entire airport as an army base, which is, you know, I think his madness sometimes does create these very unique and tactile results that make the movies that much better. And maybe people don't think that Edge of Tomorrow is the kind of thing you should be analyzing to these depths, but too bad.

It's kind of fun. Yeah, I mean, I mean, I think it's kind of fun to understand how your mainstream action movies get made. For sure. You think about this with the sort of like sophisticated Oscar kind of movies or even with animated movies, but this stuff is hard to do. And it takes a lot of people and it takes seven days a week. And it takes, you know, months and months of hard work.

Not to mention, you tend to hear this stuff about Tom Cruise movies the most because he is the quote unquote, hardest working guy. You know, he's the guy who likes to do all of his stunts. He's the guy who likes to build the practical effects and stuff. He's the guy who likes to jump out of the plane. And when you take that approach, you tend to get results that feel more real and that people feel like the movie was worth their time.

I agree with you about the most rewatchable scene. It's definitely that first battle sequence. Where are you at with the farmhouse and slash the romance between the two characters? Because I know that that is something that people were somewhat critical of when the movie was released and I was wondering whether that had aged well for you or if that was something that you were really drawn to

and you thought that those two had real chemistry, romantic chemistry. because I think they have good chemistry. I don't really necessarily care about the romance between the two characters. I don't care about it either. I don't think it's probably the eighth or ninth most important part of the movie's story, even though it does kind of climax and a kiss between them.

But it feels more like a kiss of like a farewell kiss than it does a truly romantic kiss. And a lot of critics thought that that was unearned. I don't know. I mean, Tom Cruise as a romantic figure in general, is just becoming harder and harder to understand. He keeps making movies with actresses that are about 31 years old and he's getting older and older. And I think our relationship to him as like the risky business kind of youthful sex icon has

completely gone away. Yeah, Stanley Kruber took care of that. He did. I mean, he kind of killed him as a potential partner in life. And I mean, not to mention all the personal details that we know about his life that complicated that as well. So I don't know. I could have completely done without it.

And I think that would have been fine. And I think a lot of action movies in the last five to ten years, I've actually started to dispel with the sort of pointless female third lead who the hero gets to kiss. You come back to me in one piece. Yeah. Yes, exactly. Yeah. What's age the best? I just wrote down Emily Blunt Action Star.

Yes. Emily Blunt Action Star, great two-year run for her here with this in Sicario. I would love it if she got back into this. I don't know if you consider Jungle Cruise an action movie. it's kind of more of a I don't I do consider a quiet place an action movie though that's true and I feel like especially that kind of

that really really badass ending of a quiet place when you which has a very similar like something cool happens and then the movie goes hard to credits right away after she's just done something cool looking is something that Krasinski obviously noticed in this movie and then picked up on and that movie

also posits her as a kind of like Ellen Ripley final survivor against an alien invasion kind of thing and so and obviously obviously a quiet place too, is theoretically coming out at some point in the history of movies. I just think she is that perfect combination of very tough, very cool, can do humor if you need to, but also is like very no bullshit. Yeah. And I wouldn't have guessed that the first time I saw her in a movie, but she has evolved into it really nicely. Well, the first time we saw her was probably

Devil Wears Prada. And I don't think either of us were like, this, I can't wait to see her wield a sword against robots, you know? I would say, yeah, action-blown. on Smarmy Cruz. Absolutely. I mean, it does really remind me a lot of Jerry McGuire. Yeah. I think that he's not a guy who's on top of the world necessarily, but he's a guy who's really full of himself and thinks he has all the information.

Yes, exactly. Exactly. That's a good spot for him. And it's not that far from, you know, it's almost like if Daniel Kaffey was 20 years later, you know, like he really is that guy from a few good men who's like kind of a pissant, looks good in a uniform, even though he's never had a fight in his life. It was a bag of oregano. You're a lousy fucking ballplayer, Jack.

I mentioned the combination of green screen with practical effects in real science. I also mentioned being on Afraid to Riff on Groundhog Day, which I think was a smart choice for this movie. What else do you think has aged well? The sci-fi World War II, my view, like the idea of recreating WW2 Rosie the Riveter

keep calm carry-on era England but in 2020 with sci-fi and the idea like even when he mentions I had my own PR for an advertising firm that went under and now here I am like this idea that there's like this sort of nationalization of all employment where everybody is just kind of working in the war effort quote unquote I don't really care to go back through this world

a hundred times in some sort of Netflix re-reematic of it, but I would happily spend time with people in this kind of environment. The sci-fi World War II thing is really cool to me. Which thing you, I'm going to say blunt has aged the best. What do you think? That's fine. You have my vote. What's age the worst? There's some, some practical stuff we've already hit on. Obviously, the alien plot in general, I think, just kind of doesn't matter, like what the Omega wants and how it operates and how alien blood works. and like all of that kind of, you know, scaffolding around the, the opportunity to just kill Tom Cruise 300 times, I think is not that really, it's not bad. It just doesn't really matter that much. We talked about the kiss at the end and the idea of a romantic subplot between them. We talked even about the mimics and like what the mimics do. I think they look cool, but they're not, they're not the most original version of a movie alien that we've ever seen. I thought the score is kind of blah for a movie this cool. I could have used something. Limeon loves a bit of techno.

Yeah, he does. Going back to go, right? But even in Bourne, like at the end of Born, where you're like, that was an incredible movie and then it's just like, like, just like the Moebe drops. Yeah, that's, that does feel like a remnant of being rising to power in the late 90s. Yeah. What else is the age of the worst? I think mostly for me, the Louvre stuff actually doesn't work for me also because it's so dark.

One of the cool things about this movie is how much it takes, does. action in the daylight and it also, it's not claustrophobic action. You actually, one of my favorite parts about it is, you know, this is actually one of my favorite scenes is in the trailer park where they're stealing the car. And he's like, so we get here and the only two cars we haven't tried are the station wagon and the SUV. So I'm going to go for the SUV. You go for the station wagon. And you kind of see the entire chessboard. You can see where the danger pockets are. And once we get to the Louvre, all the logic kind of falls out, obviously because he has an experience. experienced it yet. But it's also just like it's dark and you're like, I don't understand which

way is up. Why are they falling into water? And that's also where the movie kind of suffers where it's like, these people can fall 50 feet and land on the hood of a car and then get up and keep running. And it's just like for most of the movie, if Tom Cruise gets hit by a car, he dies and he has to start over again. So that's where the internal logic of the movie, I just think, becomes unknotted. Yeah, I agree. And I think it's part of the problem with going into your giant 170 $75 million action movie without the final 30 pages in the script. This does just almost feel like a different movie. And I suspect that it was shot at night,

in part because it was a siege and it's easy to take something at night. That's a strategy that happens in battle. But mostly because it's just cheaper to do CGI at night because you don't have to do every detail. We have no idea whether or not Doug Lyman was like, we have to shoot this in my garage in Pasadena. You know, he does do stuff like that. So, absolutely.

Well, okay, I'll go with the ending in general as kind of what's aged the worst. It's the key flaw of the movie. This is kind of a good segue to casting what ifs. Though filming concluded by August 2013, actor Jeremy Piven was added to the cast and extra scenes including him were filmed.

Ultimately, however, Piven did not appear in the finished film. It's a bad beat for Ari. And we just don't really see that much in the culture anymore. And it's a funny thing because it's not, this isn't exactly like casting what if it's more of an editing what if but like i i think if jeremy piven's energy was in this movie would not work no but i would have i would i wouldn't mind

if we had had like some comedian that we like pop up in j squad like just i think the guys in j squad are fine but they're it's when i watched this movie again last night i was like oh my god i can't believe they got um tom hardy to be in this you know yeah it's kind of shocking how None of the members of Jay Squad have popped off in the six years since. You know, they've all had solid acting careers working in television and film, but none of them have become big names, which is kind of unfortunate. Some key casting what ifs here. Brad Pitt was originally considered for the role of Bill Cage.

So this is really interesting. It's like the question with a lot of Cruz movies is they're almost inconceivable without Cruz. I think it depends on what version of Brad Pitt we get. The Brad Pitt that we got in World War Z was so self-serious and kind of like morbid. I really like that movie a lot for a lot of different reasons, even though it's really like flawed. But it's hard for me to imagine. It would have to basically be like the winking fun Brad Pitt that we got in once upon a time in Hollywood for this to work. Yeah.

And I think he's capable of it. You know, the last time that Lyman and Pitt worked together was Mr. and Mrs. Smith. and he's kind of affecting that quality in that movie. There was a kind of a winking tone to that movie throughout that might have been effective, but Cruz is just better. I think Cruz is just clearly a better fit, and I'm glad they didn't go with Pitt. I read that Ryan Gosling was also considered for Cage, because Cage in the book, in the novel,

All You Need Is Kill is a lot younger. Ryan Gosling also famous for being either perhaps too self-serious or too self-knowing, to self, you know, sort of self-aware. He doesn't really have like a middle ground in terms of his performances. What do you think about Gosling? Gosling would have been cool, but I think I would have wanted it to be like the, I would have wanted it to be the nice guys version of Gosling, like that, the comic Gosling rather than drive or only God forgives where it's just kind

of blank and he's just this avenging angel. I really, if it's human Gosling, great. if it's if it's just like like blade runner Gosling forget it. I read that Baranese Beho was up for, um, the role of Rita Vertaski, which just seems kind of, kind of odd.

Um, I mean, you know, I guess she's best known for her work in, in the artist. Um, and is it, is a good actor.

I think, I think she was also in a, was she in a Bond movie as well. Um, oh yeah, I think so. But, uh,

yeah, I don't, I don't know. I feel like, I'm really glad we got blunt here. Yeah, me too. Chris, did you know that Noah Taylor appeared in another Tom Cruise film, Vanilla Sky? And did you know that in both films, he plays the role of a tech support?

I did not know that. I think it's been a really long time since I've seen Vanilla Sky. Do you think Vanilla Sky is rewatchable? I think most, I mean, I weirdly find almost every Cameron Crow movie up until the last couple of years to be pretty rewatchable. Like, I've seen Elizabeth Town more than once. Where are you at on Roadies? How many times have you run that series back? I'm just waiting for it to get really real outside and then I get into the Roadies rewatch. The Dionne Waiters Award for the biggest heat check. I've written down one name and one name only and that name is Gleason.

Yeah. Oh, you're not going Paxton? Oh, shit. Science. You haven't even talked about... We haven't even talked about Bill Paxton. We've talked about aliens three times on this pot already. And we haven't even even... mentioned him. I guess Paxton, I would choose Gleason, but let's let's talk about the late great Bill Paxton, one of the all-time, what really an icon of movies that we love. Like, I mean, like is, and it's just done like from one false move, aliens near dark. I just like, I miss him so much. He's just does such a good job in this movie. Just doing a little bit of Arley, Ermi, a little bit of Hudson from aliens. A lot of just kind of. Just kind of of like shit kicker dude and he crushes it in the two or three times he runs through the feral

speech and he does such a good job like the first time when he does the speech and then like the next couple of times as cruise starts to say the speech for him and he's just kind of like like what the hell but yeah i mean i don't think the movie suffers when he sort of recedes into the background but he does such an awesome job and when he pops up you're like yes good news is just hope for you private hope in the form of glorious combat Battle is the great redeemer. The fire of crucible which the only true heroes are forged.

One place where all men truly share the same rank, regardless of what kind of parasitic scum they will go in. Game over, man! He's never done anything but make a movie better. Every movie he's in, he makes better. And this is a perfect kind of a role for him. Almost like a...

It does feel like a knowing wink to aliens in a lot of ways. Yeah. But, you know, I watched a making of documentary about this last night. And like I said earlier in the in the show, Blunt and Cruz are so jazzed on working with Lyman. And they love this kind of chaotic style that he brings to the filmmaking process. Paxton seemed a little bit less excited about that. He gives like a series. He's like made Jim Cameron movies. He's like, I understand how to make one of these guy. Exactly. That's the whole thing is he was like, I was in true lies. Like I know how. to execute on a big stage in an action movie. And what I don't want is for you to be rewriting the script every time I do a take. And they literally show in this featurette in real time, Lyman cutting a line and then adding a line and then having Paxton change it. And you can watch Paxton's faces. He's trying to understand what's going on inside of Lyman's head. And he's like, respectful of the process, respectful of Lyman.

But it's all in the eyes in this interview. He's just like, yeah, this is different. You know, this is, this is not how I'm used to doing things, but you know, it's a great outcome. We're getting great outcomes here. Yeah. James Cameron, meanwhile, is like, you know, has figured out like a personal mansion forest fire protection kit. And Doug Lyman is like, what if we just like threw tennis balls and everybody? It's really great.

My favorite Doug Lyman anecdote, by the way, is the one for Mr. and Mrs. Smith where this may be apocryphal, but where people, they got off work. and Lyman paid people overtime to light a forest in Prague so that he could play paintball at night. That's really weird. Can I tell you a really weird one from this movie? Sure. One of the actors from J-Squod was reflecting on how stressed out he was during the making of this movie and how a lot of his time was devoted to,

you know, getting into character, rehearsing his lines, trying to figure out the motivations for the character, and also just physically preparing to be a soldier. and he hadn't seen Lyman for a period of days. And he was like, Lyman must be so busy. God, I can't believe. If I'm this busy, I can't imagine what he's doing. And then one day he went to the airplane hangar at the Heathrow airport that they had constructed.

And he discovered Doug Lyman in the hangar with his tennis instructor and a tennis net that had been set up. And apparently Lyman and his instructor had been doing about two to three hours of tennis lessons every morning during the making of this movie. So, um, I don't think that that means Doug Limeon wasn't working hard. In fact, maybe he was just trying to stay fit. Everybody's got a process. Um, but that sounds, that sounds kind of grueling. Yeah. Three hours of tennis lessons before filming an action movie of Tom Cruise for 10 to 12 hours a day. Yeah. Not bill for it. Let's do half-s internet research. We've already shared a lot of half-ass internet research. One thing that, um, I didn't mention that I thought was pertinent to this conversation comes up in, um, uh,

Sakurazaka's thinking about writing the novel, which is he got the idea from video gaming and resetting a game over and over until finding the winning strategy. You, Chris, as a FIFA player, I'm sure have pressed the reset from time to time while getting your ass kicked by Arsenal. I would go even further to say

that I am the type of dude who goes online to find cheat codes to give yourself like 100 lives and max pain, but that also dates when like the last time I actively played video games. Yeah. it is it was it's it's one of those things where I think that they integrate first person shooter perspective and um and video game logic in a seamless fun way whereas I find when it starts to seep

into like star wars movies where it's like I have to beat the big boss and then go to the next level I'm like give me a fucking break yeah that's the thing it this is really the best video game movie and it's not because it's an adaptation of a video game it's because it's a movie that has video game logic like you say and I can't even really think of another movie that has tried to do that maybe Scott Pilgrim versus the world would be an example of something that kind of like reflects that without actually being a game can I just drop a note in your suggestion box because I know that you're trying to think of like what should I what should I talk about in the coming months on big pick you should get really into documenting what's been going on with uncharted yeah well why don't

you explain to people what uncharted and you're just like release the David O. Russell cut of Uncharted. Uncharted is a video game. Yeah, it's about this guy named Drake something. I can't remember what is the character's name is. And it's basically been for like the last 10 years, one of the most like,

this movie will start shooting on Tuesday and then Tuesday comes around and they're just like, psych, no, it's not. And it's gone through every major actor in Hollywood for the last 10 years has been at one point going to play this kind of Indiana Jones-esque character. And,

David O. Russell has been attached to it. And I'm sure every director named Rupert has been attached to it. It's just like one of those things where it's like, and then it'll be like, you know, Derek C. in France is going to direct it. You know, it's always like randomly, you'll look at like the trades and it'll just be like Denisville and Nouve is going to direct it. And you're just like, no, he's not. Like, what are we talking about here?

But that's my, that's my hope for you is you get super into video game adaptation rumors. So you just want me to talk about what they should do with the uncharted movie? definitely. I think it's a good look. I think it's a, it's a, it's a, uh, underappreciated market. Uh, I will not be doing that. Um, a couple of other half ass internet research notes. Um, Chris, you and I have been, uh, cooped up in our house and not doing anything in our bodies are atrophying into jelly. Tom Cruise began pre-production on this movie on July 20th, 2012, less than a week after wrapping his film, Oblivion. Less than a week.

Wow. Um, I, I, I love the moment. moment at the farmhouse scene where she's like, you know how to fly this helicopter. And Tom Cruise is like, I know how to take off. I don't know how to land. And then like 10 years later, he's just flying helicopters in Mission Impossible. Yes. I was going to note that. That's a great point. And I'm sure it started here. I'm sure this is where he got his taste for flying. Yeah. The scene outside the Louvre Museum, when the aliens place on the surface of the ship and start opening away on the fuselage resembles the one with the sentinels at the end of the matrix, which I mentioned earlier in this conversation.

I mentioned those, the chroma key green screens, which visual effects artists later used to extend the beach with plates shot at Saunton Sands and North Devon. It was intended for the battle scenes to be reminiscent of coastal battles during World War II, such as the invasion of Normandy, which you mentioned in the Battle of Dunkirk, which we talked about on this podcast with Quentin Tarantino last year. So Cruz is well known for doing his own stunts, obviously,

and he did them in Edge of Tomorrow, and you mentioned those heavy metal suits. he wore those suits for real every day, as did Emily Blunt. The battle suits weighed 85 pounds on average, and one of the heavier versions was 130 pounds due to being equipped with a mock sniper rifle and rocket launcher.

That's an ex-imposed, guys. Between takes, the actors would be suspended by chains from iron frames to take the weight of the suits off their shoulders. That's truly like aliens, being locked into the machine. Yes. It was never stated in the moment.

movie, but in the novel, the reason why Rita uses a melee weapon is because during her resets, she would often run out of ammo, which resulted in her deaths. How do you feel about her blade? It's iconic. It's such a cool, I mean, it's actually practically

really stupid. It doesn't seem like the mimics are like really vulnerable to sword fighting. Although she gets a couple of licks in, but as just like having it over her shoulder and the graffiti on the bus that says, middle bitch where it's just like got got her picture and the whole like death squad thing that

they've got going with the skeleton masks in her crew for those for those few minutes that that that whole thing is happening it's it's such a cool wrinkle to the movie i think probably the most iconic shot in the movie is when blunt's characters first introduced and she's doing the plank fuck yeah can you do that plank chris no but she can't she can literally do it um she she casually demonstrated the ease with which she did that quote yoke move throughout. Joey Pants Award. Is there a Joey Pants winner here?

You know, Terrence Maynard, who is Sergeant on your feet, Maggot, has popped up in, I think he's in Revolver, at least of Guy Ritchie. And if you watch, like British TV, he pops up a lot. Like we said, man, the J-Squad people, like are not in a lot of stuff. Kimmel, I think I've seen a couple of times. Kimmel was on Game of Thrones. he was Dantus Hollard in Game of Thrones

Yeah And he's he's like He's probably the most familiar Character actor in the mix there I guess Charlotte Riley too Who plays Nance She's been in some stuff a lot She's in Piki Blinder's as well

Yeah She goes full hillbilly elegy in this movie Why don't you get yourself Nice hot cup shut the hell up Is she playing a British hick? I don't know Is that a thing I mean, there are, I think there are British Hicks, but they don't sound like that.

Okay, so she just made up a, maybe that's just some 2020 lingo. I guess we should just go with Tony Way as our, as our Joey Pants. Okay. The Julianne Moore Award for Overacting. Is it Julianne Moore? Are we on Vincent, Hannah? What are we doing? It's by the time I get to Phoenix.

He'll be rising. He'll probably leave a note right on the door. Give me all you guys! You thought I couldn't do it on Zoom during Corona? It's like a sal for the quarantine. The Vincent Hanna Award for Overacting Goes to, who does it go to?

Paxton? I have it for no disrespect I gave it to Charlotte Riley. Wow. Okay. Well, we'll settle there. She is going to the max in this movie. Do we do, let's do picking Nets.

I got a bunch of stuff I need to talk to you about here. rapid fire it for me. Let's see it. Let's hear it. Well, you know, near the end of the movie after they've been locked up, it sure seemed like they broke out of that hospital fairly easily. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

When she's just like, how come you couldn't just break out of this? A couple more here, Chris. What's up with that weird scene where Rita sees cage training in the mimic simulator and says, I could help you, I could train you, even though she's been training him for the longest period of time. And even if she doesn't know that, why did that scene appear in the movie?

It feels like left over from another script. That was like, we need that, like, they bought like two minutes of that techno song and they needed footage for that. Although I think it probably is trying to just contribute to the confusion of, you know, how many times he's done this and the idea of that he's accumulating the experiences. My biggest picking knee is just like, how long would it take every day to explain the situation to her? I mean, obviously there's like the open sesame code of, um, find me when you wake up. but they really don't do the he meets her. He says, I'm you. They go to meet Noah Taylor and then they start training.

How many hours are in the day? You know what I mean? It's a great point. I've got some deep dive plotting issues that are problematic here. One, this is important. Rita couldn't know she lost her ability to restart the day unless she died and the day didn't reset. In that case, she would be dead so she couldn't know it didn't reset. I mean, you're melting my, you're really cooking my noodle right now.

So she would never be able to be like, I thought she just loses it when she gives blood, where she gets blood. But how did she know she lost it? That's the thing. Wow. I don't know. She could just feel it the way that he feels it. Well, yeah, because that's the thing.

It's like when he does the blood transfusion, I think he's like, I can feel it. I can feel it. Because she's going to kill him in the hospital. But he knows that. He knows that that's possible because she's told him it's possible. but who explained that as a possibility to her. The whole thing is confusing. I got more.

This isn't the only hole. The mimics trap cage to a German dam ostensibly to get their time control power back by bleeding cage to death. However, death by blood loss would be no different than any other violent ways the cage died before. Since one dies after losing about half of one's blood, which means the cage would still have the power after death by blood loss. The mimics would have had to give cage a blood transfusion instead. We're the mimics going to give Cage a blood transfusion? Is this like a plot on New Amsterdam? I don't know.

I got more. Though initially it seems that it is Cage and Vertaski's first visit to the farmhouse, Cage later reveals that the two have been there many times. If so, they could have taken steps not to run out of gas, for instance, by searching out abandoned vehicles from which to siphon gas long before the minivan runs out. Indeed, they would have had no reason to return to this particular farmhouse. So I do get the impression.

that that is not a heavily developed area of France that they're traveling through. So maybe there just isn't any gas, but that's a good point. Like he, that, that, for his emotionally moving as that moment is

where she's like, you know, how many times have we been here? It does feel like, he's weirdly like, not manipulating her, but like he, they're just kind of like playing it out in a weird way

where he's like telling her, um, like who's Hendrix and what's your middle name and stuff like that. where he knows where this is all going, but why keep going to this trap? Right. Okay, one really final, big, important plot issue, knit to pick.

When Cage and Rita steal the transponder from the General in London, there is no reason for them to try and escape. They could have used the device in the General's office and then killed Cage to eliminate the risk of being captured. Also, why can't they just be like,

can you please ask your security guards to let us leave? Yes, exactly. You're the General. Well, but did the security guards, did they chase after them because he called them? Did he set them up the same way he set up cage at the beginning of the movie? Right, right. But if he obviously was going along with it.

But if he would have just used the transponder in his office, they would have been good. And then he could have just shot himself in the head and it would have been fine. I have a quick nitpick, if that's okay. What are we going to do about Rita's body count and all the extrajudicial killings that she's got on her fucking jack? because every time this guy twists an ankle, she puts a bullet in his head. So nobody goes into that room and is like, hey, how come you just executed this major? Especially this major who just broke his back during a training exercise?

Like why did you treat him like old yeller? What is happening here? I do find all of those scenes where like he's like broken his neck and he's just like, I can move my lips. and she's just like pop pop. But yeah, I was just like, what's the next thing that happens for Rita when she's just got a dead body in her gym?

Court martial. Yeah. Yeah. And that's where Daniel Caffy comes in, defends Rita. You cut these guys loose. You cut these guys loose. Okay.

So the lesson here is obvious, which is don't write your movie while you're shooting your movie. At least not one that involves time travel. and alien robots. Good point. If you want to write a simple Eric Romer style love story

and you want to write it in real time, don't worry about it. Let it rip. Go for it. Best quote. I mentioned on your feet maggot. Hey mate, I think there's something wrong with your suit.

Oh, right. I think there's something wrong with your suit. Yeah. There's a dead guy in it. Yeah. That's a very memorable one that we get to hear over and over again. Have I got something on my face, soldier?

Who said you could talk to me? I got something on my face, soldier. You did. You did. Tomorrow. At the beach. I think the funniest moment of the movie is when they go to General Brigham's office and they get the transponder.

And Rita says, what do we do now? What do they do now? I don't know. We've never gotten this for. That's great. You know, I feel like the movie is building towards that. What else you got on best quote? When Cage says to, I think, Griff,

he's like, listen, man, I've never been in one of these. And Griff goes, Yeah, well, I've never been with two girls at the same time. You can bet when that day comes. I'll make it work. We talked about Paxton's character. I think he's got this sort of like iconic but also ironically bad

major sergeant patter that he delivers about going into war and he says battle is the great redeemer. It is the fiery crucible in which true heroes are forged, the one place where all men truly share the same rank, regardless of what kind of parasitic scum they were

going in. There's some good right. in this movie. Yeah, man. It's a little underneath the surface. The guy loves the St. Crispin's Day speech, you know? That's true. Any other quotes you want?

No, I think you hit all the ones that I like. I mean, I thought, like, you know, just come find me when you wake up. All the kind of, like, posters quotes are really good in this movie. They are really good. Could this work as a 10-episode Netflix show in 2019? No. No, but I would watch the General Brigham show. Like the, I would watch the Brendan Gleason.

being the general patent of an alien invasion show, for sure. Sign me up. How do you feel about the prospect of a sequel, which apparently is written? Well, Doug Lyman, salesman that he is, has said that it would redefine what a sequel could be if they did it. And not unlike the history of Uncharted, which is the major film that Sean Fennesse's pod, the Big Pick talks about. it feels like every six months whenever Tom Cruise or Emily Blunt does an interview they get asked about it and they're like, we're about to start shooting.

And now it seems like Emily Blunt's a little bit more like I'm kind of busy. But apparently there's a script. I'll be kind of curious to see the next time Doug Lyman gets a blockbuster movie off the ground because I don't know, I know that he was maybe going to do

like Justice League Dark right a couple years ago. there was some talk of that. I mean, you know, we talked about Uncharted as a great kind of misbegotten production, but Chaos Walking, the movie that he shot a few years ago, is really one of the great misbegotten productions in recent movie history. God, I don't know if I know it. What is that about? Oh, it's a movie that Lionsgate produced.

It's the same company, Three Arts that produced Edge of Tomorrow. It's also a movie that has seven credited screenwriters, among them John Lee Hancock and Charlie Kaufman. It's a movie that stars Tom Holland, aka Spider-Man, and Daisy Ridley, aka Ray, from Star Wars. And it's an adaptation of a novel.

I guess this is the first part of a trilogy. And apparently it's one of just the most troubled shoots in movie history. It's now currently scheduled to be released on January 22nd, 2001. But I think it started shooting, I want to say that it started shooting in the summer of 2017. So we're talking about almost four years between completion of production. It's like a quarter of Tom Holland's life.

I know. You're right. So we'll see if we ever see chaos walking. But I think the chaos walking experience, you're right, it might make it difficult for Lyman to get a chance to do live die, repeat and repeat. Though I hope he does. I mean, we don't have to get into this now because I know you've been talking about it all week, but once movie production gets back underway,

you know, hopefully sooner rather than later, you know, there's been this talk about it being, the theatrical experience being much more for these big-ticket, franchise superhero style, Fast Furious-style movies, and that all the movies beneath that, with the exception of kids' movies, would kind of start to move over to streaming, which was a trend we had already seen.

But for the people like Lyman, and to some extent, McCquiry, who make big budget genre movies that have a little bit of personality and a little bit of their own artistic stamp on it. I wonder what they'll do. I don't know. They're probably going to be in a holding pattern for a while. Speaking of holding patterns,

let's go to unanswerable questions. Chris, how many times do you think Major Cage died? Well, so Rita says that she watches Hendricks die 300 times, which is sort of the baseline. I guess if we were going to apply the Malcolm Gladwellian 10,000 hours to get good at something, we could just divide it up like that. But I would imagine something close to like a year of deaths. Damn. It's not ideal. So this is a slightly more complicated question, but hang with me as I read through the details. So at the beginning of the movie, there is a montage of different newscasters and

footage and public officials trying to deal with the alien invasion. Aaron Burnett, yeah. We got Aaron Burnett. I hope she got to check off of that. One of the, public officials they showed was Hillary Clinton, implying that she was the president of the United States of America. In 2020. The movie was released in 2014, two years before the 2016 presidential election. Is this movie responsible for the results of the 2016 election? Oh, so you think a bunch of disaffected voters saw day at edge of tomorrow and we're like, not my president? Absolutely. What do you say? Probably. Some would say the Russians, some would say disinformation on Facebook. Some would say a backlash to an ignored

middle of the country resulted in the 2016 election. I'm saying it's it's it's it's Doug Lyman's fault. I agree. Apex Mountain. Blunt?

We're sure it's not Lyman, right? Is Lyman born? Born. It's born. Because he still had some Kwan back then, man. I think even, because he has never had everything is running smoothly.

Like even coming off of swingers, there's that whole story about how like Favro didn't talk to him for years because he had like side negotiated a deal. Did you read about that? No. There's like this whole thing where like John Favro

and Doug Lyman were really not cool with each other for a while because Lyman had like kind of like carved out some part of his agreement for making swingers that were basically he got paid where other people didn't. So even going back to then, it's not like he ever had like a really smooth go of it.

And then born. obviously, like, even though that was a huge success, very troubled shoot. And then he was removed from the franchise. I mean, they obviously decided not to go forward with him. So I think Boren would probably be his Apex Mountain in terms of that was when everybody was like, man, maybe Doug Lyman figured out action movies. But he obviously did not, didn't, he squandered it. I mean, he clearly figured them out.

I mean, his action movies are some of the best action movies. It's just that it seems very difficult to make them. And there seems to be some real risks involved in making them. It's funny to think about blunt. Like, she did appear in a lot of big budget actiony movies in the aftermath of the Devil Wars Prada. She's in the Wolfman. Remember the Wolfman? Oh, yeah.

Yeah. And she was in the Adjustment Bureau, the science fiction movie. And then Snow White, right? And then she was in Snow White a few years after this one, or the Huntsman, really, the Huntsman Winter's War. But she's usually playing that sort of that woman, that female character who doesn't have a lot to do. And this is the movie that where she really gets to play. flex her muscles literally and figuratively. It's this or Sicario, I think. For me, I mean, I know, I know that different people, there's probably some disagreements there,

but I would say this for Sicario is probably apex for me. Okay. Who won the movie? This is a great question, Sean. This is, we usually like get to the end of these and we're just kind of like, well, we've obviously made the case for, it seems more recently than not Pacino in some regard. But I'm going to say, Cruz, but I don't feel like you can easily talk me into Blunt.

There's an obvious answer here, Chris. Is it Donald Trump? It's Donald John Trump. This is tough. This is really tough. I think the Cruz and Lyman and Blunt all have kind of a lot to be proud of for the movie. I think it will probably end up being one of certainly one of the most liked Emily Blunt

and Doug Lyman movies. Cruise, I don't know where it probably fits in the top 20 somewhere. I think with Cruz, your, you're, you're grading against such a tough curve. So it's like, yes, this movie is awesome. It's, I would still put War of the World's like way ahead of this movie, you know? Yeah. No, I agree with you.

I still think it's really great and it is really rewatchable. And the resetting quality is still surprising to me. You know, like the way that it's cut and the way that it moves. Any lasting final thoughts on Edge of Tomorrow? No, I was, you kind of just touched on the last thing I was going to say is it's been a while since we did a movie where you specifically can pick it up almost anywhere within the first hour and enjoy it. I think once you get past the farmhouse, you should just reset it if you can on demand or something. But if you catch this on cable and they are 20 minutes into the movie, 30 minutes into the movie, you're in for a really good

40 minute run no matter where you are. I think it's a great call. Chris, this has been fun. I hope you're staying safe. I hope all the listeners of the rewatchables are staying safe. We're going to keep doing this show at two times a week. So please stay tuned to this feature. coming later this week. We have a very special episode. Bill Simmons and Ryan Rosillo on The Karate Kid. See you then.