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Stop it. This is a Great GREAT Movie.
Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt’s essentially perfect dynamic is the heart of this incredible summer-kablooie movie. This isn’t a bad movie podcast, it’s a great movie podcast, but… That said… Sometimes those great movies have Jean-Claude Van Damme in them. In this case, Joe and Greg don’t even pretend this movie has badness in it… They were too busy holding their breath and enjoying Doug Liman’s classic film, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this summer.
The film’s genius lies in its ability to mix high-stakes action with genuine humor. Just when you think you’re watching a serious war movie, Cruise’s comedic timing kicks in, turning imminent death into a punchline. It’s a blend of Groundhog Day and Starship Troopers, but, you know… Super good.
Joe’s Back of the Box
When Cage (Tom Cruise) is caught in a timeloop, he must learn to fight and make allies where he can as an alien invasion is inching ever closer to exterminating the human race. Will his partnership with supersoldier Rita Vratasky hold up? Can he figure out the right way to go? Or will he just be born again only to die a short time later? The fate of the world hangs in the balance. The edge of tomorrow will have you on the edge of your seat right up until the final credits roll…
The REAL Back of the Box
What if you could live the same day over again? What would you change? Now, what if the fate of the world were on your shoulders to make the needed changes so that the human race is not helplessly slaughtered by an alien invasion? That is the ridiculous plot of this movie. Or, its Groundhog Day but on the battle field. That ridiculous premise is executed perfectly with Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt fighting their way to big bad alien that controls time. I know, I hear myself too, but this movie is amazing, proving once again that within the right hands the craziest ideas can be perfect.
Note: This transcript has been auto-generated, so… You know… It’s not our fault.
Greg: Joe in the movie we watched this week. Tom Cruise lives the day over and over again. Kind of Groundhog Day style. Is there a day in your life that you wish you could live over and over again?
Joe: That’s a good question. There are a lot of days I don’t want to live over again, that’s for sure. But hang on, I need to grab something from the fridge. Hold on.
Greg: Okay.
Greg: But. Oh, my gosh. Joe, are you okay?
Greg: Joe, in the movie we watch this week, Tom Cruise lives the same day over and over again. Has there ever been a day that you wanted to live over and over again?
Joe: You know, there are a lot of days I don’t want to live over again. But hold on. I need to run to my fridge for a second. Hold on.
Clip: Okay, I.
Clip: Oh my gosh.
Greg: Joe in the movie we watched this week. And let’s just get to the show. All right.
Joe: I’m going to tell you a story. At first it’s going to sound ridiculous, but the longer I talk, we have to find the keys, the more rational it’s going to appear. How many times have we been here? For me, it’s been an eternity. I die within five minutes of landing on that beach along with every other soldier. What happened to you?
Joe: Happened to me. You hijacked that power. How do I control it? You have to die every day. Keep coming here and I’ll train you. I’m not a soldier. Of course you’re not. You’re a weapon. They will conquer the rest of the world unless you change the outcome. You’re not equipped for what’s happened. How many times have we been in?
Joe: What are you not telling me? It’s going to be dark in a few hours. We should just reset. Whoa!
Clip: The year is.
Joe: 2014.
Greg: We are celebrating the ten year anniversary.
Joe: Of Edge of Tomorrow.
Greg: Last month. Joe, we’re talking about Tom cruise, Emily Blunt, Bill.
Joe: Paxton, Brendan.
Greg: Gleeson in a Doug Liman film, the first movie that Tom Cruise and Doug Liman worked together on, the fifth one that he and Christopher McQuarrie worked together on Joe Skye. Tucker. What makes Edge of Tomorrow a great bad movie?
Joe: This is going to be a hard one for me because I don’t know if this is a bad movie. I’ve watched it now multiple times, and it’s really, really good. Yeah, there’s so much as well written. It’s an interesting story. We kind of have Tom cruise playing a character he doesn’t always play, especially in the beginning where he’s not the best at something.
Joe: Yeah. You know he kind of comes in. He’s a cocky media PR person and gets conscripted into the army and they attack. As of the next day. And so he doesn’t know what he’s doing. It is Groundhog Day style. So if you don’t like those movies, I guess that would make it a bad movie. But there are just some amazing action sequences in it.
Joe: The first action sequence is just beautiful. There are all these great D-Day and World War Two parallels within it that are really fun. It’s really well done. There are a lot of CGI bad guys in this, but it’s so well animated that you don’t really notice it and feel it the way you do in some other movies, where it’s clearly them shooting at a tennis ball on a screen.
Joe: So the bad parts of this movie, I struggled a little bit with them doing basically the same thing over and over again, unlike how they were trying to live the day like they’re going to the same beat and trying to get through it. Sure. I felt like there were other options that they could have tried that they kind of get into towards the end when they go off script, instead of trying to attack the aliens in the middle of the attack that they know it’s coming.
Joe: I wouldn’t have been upset with a little more backstory, a little bit more lead up of Tom Cruise’s character. I almost never say that because I love kind of starting in the middle of the action, but a little bit more I could have taken. Yeah, and this is just a nitpicky one for me, but I feel like the ending is just a little too happy.
Joe: I wish that it had ended when basically both our main characters, Emily Blunt and Tom cruise, save the day, but die. Kill the bike. That was like the perfect ending.
Greg: So you wanted a Rogue one?
Joe: I wanted a Rogue One. Yeah. Everybody dies, so nobody changes. Yeah.
Greg: Am I hearing you right? That there’s a chance that this isn’t a great bad movie? Have we, in the last couple of episodes, gotten so close to the flame that we are now just on fire, where we have just crossed the line from great bad movies into our first official episode of great, great movies? Is that what you’re saying?
Joe: It’s really possible. I’d love to hear your take. So, Greg, sweetheart, what is your thoughts on this being a great bad movie?
Greg: I don’t think this is a great, bad movie. I think the only way that you can say that this is a great, bad movie is I went into this movie ten years ago with very low expectations because it looked really stupid and I was kind of like, wow, this is no complaints. No, no, it’s that was a great movie.
Greg: And so I think the only way you could say that this is a bad movie is that the expectations for it were low, but it exceeds even rewatch expectations. This is probably the fourth time I’ve seen it, and I took zero notes and I was just so into it. And then I had to pause it, you know, like two thirds through.
Greg: And I was kind of like, I don’t have anything to make fun of here. I have just really enjoyed this movie. So I think you know, this has happened to us in the past, where we’ve gotten a little close in episodes that we’ve released. We’ve definitely recorded episodes that haven’t been released yet where we realized, oh, this wasn’t a great bad movie.
Greg: And so I think this is just officially our first release of great, great movies.
Joe: I tend to agree I had the same experience when I was watching it, and I was so into the movie that I take notes usually when I watch them throughout the movie and I do this, the drinking games and those sorts of things. And I got to say a similar point. I was like, I don’t have any drinking game.
Joe: Yeah. What’s happening? I buckled down and found some, so don’t worry. Okay, our dear listener.
Greg: We have an episode.
Joe: That’s still an episode where we’re still kind of going through the motions on this.
Greg: Show, but.
Joe: It is a really well done, well-written, well-acted movie. It’s beautiful, I think. So some of the action sequences are great, especially as I said that first scene on the beach. Yeah, that they you kind of get multiple perspectives of as the movie progresses, which is awesome. It’s funny. That’s the other piece that was it’s a sneakily funny movie.
Joe: Yeah. They really utilize humor to kind of break up the tension at different points with. And then there are some unexpected moments within it. And for a movie that the bad guy in it is just kind of faceless aliens that you just see only at when they’re about to kill Tom cruise. Yeah, they’re really scary. And the antagonist isn’t a character in this in the sense that we’re used to, like Dennis Hopper from speed.
Joe: Last week was like, you know, kind of the quintessential bad guy. Yeah, but you have them trying to solve the riddle of how to defeat them. I would say it takes that trope, the alien invasion trope, where there is only a very slim chance of success and they figure it out. And, you know, Independence Day uses this, the amazing movie that I’m blanking on with John Travolta that he did with Barry Pepper.
Joe: Oh my God. Battlefield Earth. Oh, wow. He was at this so I feel embarrassed to even have Battlefield Earth and Edge of Tomorrow in the same sentence. But that’s the kind of you know, the aliens are coming. There are much more powerful, sophisticated technological force. And, you know, we have to use scrappy human ingenuity to get out of it.
Joe: And to a certain degree, it follows that. But what it really gets into is how hard it is and how many chances and times they’re trying to figure this out so that when you get to the end and they defeat the aliens, it doesn’t feel like, wow, that was just kind of total luck. It was a lot of work and I was trying to add up and it was too hard.
Joe: But there are some numbers they throw out of like how many times? Because both Emily Blunt and Tom Cruise’s character. Yeah, get caught in a time loop. Yeah, we only see Tom Cruise’s part, but my guess is somewhere between, you know, 500 and a thousand times they’ve tried this together, you know? And so it’s like that 1 in 1000 time I get it.
Joe: So I love this movie. It’s great.
Greg: I don’t think they ever actually say how many times he looped them. I think it’s something like 28 times in the movie they show the day, start over. And she said that she saw what’s his name? Hendrix Hendrickson, something like that. They talk about some character that she saw die 300 times.
Joe: Right.
Greg: So I think those are the only numbers we actually get. But you have to assume it’s hundreds and hundreds and hundreds.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: This is a super funny movie. In fact, the original script wasn’t, it was pretty dark. And the guy who wrote it, his name isn’t on the movie anymore because they changed it enough. But he was paid like $1 million for the script, and it was pretty dark. And then they just really tried to add as much comedy as they could.
Greg: And comedy, in fact, determined how the movie ended. They decided to follow what comedies do and ended on a on a better day. And so it’s because of the comedy they were trying to find that they, they got to that ending. This movie started $75 million. So I think that’s why it has a happy ending.
Joe: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I’ll be honest. Like, that’s a very small quibble for me. Yeah. As you know. And it says more about me as a person probably than anything else. I’m not mad that they ended it on a happy note, you know, and how they do it. It’s there’s some nice symmetry to like the movie begins and ends kind of with the same shot and the same moment.
Joe: Yeah. So all of that, it’s really well done. Yep. I was like ready for them to like credits rolling when they kill the bad guy because, you know, they break the time loop. And so you shouldn’t go back to the beginning of the loop as basically was my thought. But you know, I can’t fault I mean, that’s a very minor quibble.
Joe: Again, this movie is so well done and it’s so fun. And it was it was I saw this maybe a year ago or so. Yeah. The first time I saw it, I had the same kind of thought. When it came out, I was like, yeah, oh, you know, it.
Greg: Looked so stupid.
Joe: Yeah. And it.
Greg: I mean, if you look at the best movies that have come out in our lifetimes, the expectations are low. Usually, I don’t know, go back to Die Hard. Why would Bruce Willis be good at an action movie that looks horrible? Now, ten years later, Johnny Mnemonic had come out and we were like, we don’t need another Keanu Reeves movie where it’s the future.
Greg: And then The Matrix comes out. And I had, you know, people told me, you got to go see it. I was like, nah, he’s already fooled me with Johnny Mnemonic. I’m not gonna go see The Matrix. He’s probably see The Matrix. Bruce Willis again. He did that Mercury Rising movie with the kid in it, and I heard it was horrible, so I didn’t go.
Greg: And then the next year is in The Sixth Sense, or like pretty soon after that, he does that again. And with this movie, it had a couple things going against it. The year before, Tom cruise had been in that film oblivion.
Joe: Which is awful, but it will definitely for sure do.
Greg: We’ll definitely get to it’s a beautiful movie. Joe Kozinski, the guy who did Tron Legacy and Top Gun Maverick, made it. And it was it was okay.
Joe: It’s nothing special. Yeah, it’s one of our movies that would fit right in on this podcast. Right.
Greg: But also, like, do you remember that movie Elysium?
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: With Matt Damon that came up. I want to say the year before this, it had like the mech.
Joe: Suits in it. And I want to.
Greg: Say that I had already tired of the mech suits by the time Edge of Tomorrow came out. People just love these suits so much.
Joe: Yeah, this is.
Greg: Such a big deal. And I was like, oh my gosh, another one of those. So I was not interested in Tom cruise doing another future movie after oblivion. It was too soon. Too soon. Tom.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: I was not ready for a max suit movie. Who wants that? But I it seemed to be getting some pretty good reviews. So I went to it and I was like, is it just me or was that great?
Joe: Yeah. And that was a great movie. Yeah.
Greg: And I think ten years later, I think it’s further cemented.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: The fact that our show is called Great Bad Movies. We’re going to get a lot of hate online.
Joe: We’ve already gotten one. One person who, like you, are much kinder than I was in my in their thoughts. I was ready to. And this person’s living air, even though they were very kind about their supposition that our show should not be called great bad movies. Yes. Anyway, it’s our podcast I’ll Get Drunk podcast? Yeah.
Greg: And you know what? We should just say that this is a great movie podcast. This is not a bad movie podcast. There’s been, you know, a ton of bad movie podcasts. There’s a great movie podcast. That being said.
Joe: Sometimes greatness also has some badness in.
Greg: The movies we tend to watch. Also have some asterisks, some, some things to talk about and joke about. But this is not one of those movies. Really?
Joe: No. Not really.
Greg: I mean, he is. Tom Cruise is so good in this movie. Emily Blunt is so good in this movie. I forget that half of the frame in this movie all the way through just about is special effects. You forget? Yeah, because it’s so otherworldly. It just does. I don’t know how they did it, honestly. I don’t know how they did it.
Greg: The action in it is potentially second to none. I mean, what movie would you put this on par with action wise?
Joe: I’d have to put it in the category of like alien action movies. And I feel like we’ll do a podcast around the best action movies. It’s up there. Although Mission Impossible six is still, I think, the best action movie I’ve ever seen. Okay, this is very close. It’s interesting. Both Tom cruise movies, that one relies almost no special effects.
Joe: I mean, there’s definitely special effects, but like not driving the action scenes and this one has it. I think what it proves to me around special effect action scenes is if you have a good story and interesting characters in the middle of it, with a good story, you can layer in the CGI well and it didn’t feel like too cartoony.
Joe: I don’t know how else to say it. There are moments like there on the sand, and you can see the sand is moving right from the alien. They don’t spend a lot of time when they’re fighting the aliens, or there’s not a lot of like, battle back and forth, like a classic fight scene where they’re they go hand to hand, combat.
Joe: The action scenes when they’re fighting the aliens are pretty quick. Yeah. Which I think is a really smart decision. I was like they kill them quick or they’re killed quick by the aliens. That’s not, you know, one alien dragging out over and over again you know. Right. So I think that helps it. But you know I’d love to know if you have any of the behind the scenes on how they made this or what they were trying to go for it, because that feels different than a lot of these other ones.
Joe: And there are other ones. But I feel like the Marvel movies sometimes lean way too heavily into, CGI. And then I get lost in that. We’re just like, all right, that’s a CGI battle, and that’s fine. But yeah, you know, it’s not interesting.
Greg: Well, there’s a lot of different directions we could go. We should start with Doug Liman. He directed this movie, and he apparently is a notoriously, horrible person to make a movie with.
Joe: Good director, terrible person.
Greg: Well, no, he’s a great guy. He’s just changes his mind a lot. And so his movies tend to kind of take forever to make because he’s constantly kind of like, I don’t, I don’t like that. Let’s redo that. And so if you don’t know who Doug Liman is, we first heard about him because he directed swingers with Jon Favreau, Vince Vaughn, that he made a movie called go, which John August was a great podcast with Craig Mazin on script writing.
Greg: It’s called script Notes. He wrote that, and then he made The Bourne Identity and the Bourne Identity was like the worst production in history. It was going to be Matt Damon’s third strike. It was going to be his third movie. That was a failure, and he just assumed he wasn’t going to really work again. But then The Bourne Identity kind of changed.
Greg: Spy movies and action movies changed James Bond’s. They fired Pierce Brosnan after The Bourne Identity came out and rebooted that, and then he made Mr. and Mrs. Smith with Brad and Angelina famously, which is a movie that we’ll get to.
Joe: Oh yeah, for sure.
Greg: So he had made some pretty good action movies, but he had also made jumper, that movie with Hayden Christensen before this. And all of these movies were just all over the place during their production. So the secret to Edge of Tomorrow was he had the same stunt coordinator that he had had for a few of those movies, this guy named Simon Crane.
Greg: And so he understood how Doug Liman worked, and he knew how to set things up for success so they could kind of revisit shots, revisit scenes, revisit whatever they needed to, and they would kind of keep that stuff going. And so they were supposed to film that beach sequence, which was really kind of based on Normandy. And we haven’t gotten into this on this podcast yet, but something I’m learning as we go in this podcast is I definitely enjoy directors of movies, but I, I’m starting to track with stunt coordinators, and they are a definite throughline to movies that I love the most, where the energy is kinetic.
Greg: So Simon Crane is the reason that the action in this movie is so good, and he’s actually the one filming it. He’s the one directing it. Doug Liman is just kind of hanging out and producing at that point. He’s not actually directing those things. And so Simon Crane is the reason that those scenes are so good. And Simon Crane’s history is incredible.
Greg: So if we could just, like, take a quick left turn to Simon Crane’s career, first of all, he did Rogue One. He also did Salt Lake, which is a movie we will definitely be getting to. He has done a ton of James Bond movies throughout the years. He’s also the guy who jumped from plane to plane and got $1 million for it in cliffhanger.
Joe: Oh, I knew there was a reason he was on our show. He is the.
Greg: Stunt guy that did that for $1 million, so he is just all over the place. He’s worked with, like Fincher on Alien three. He’s worked with everybody. And then the special features for this movie, Edge of Tomorrow. He says Doug Liman is just about the most infuriating collaborator he’s ever had in his career, because he’s just constantly changing his mind, he said.
Greg: But it always gets better. Every time we redo something, it’s better, so you kind of can’t fault it.
Joe: I feel like on a movie like this to at almost works in its favor because it’s about the same thing over and over again and revisiting and trying to do something, you know, iterating. Right. It’s interesting. You know, apologies to Mr. Crane, for us. But, you know, that scene and cliffhanger could have been a body double.
Joe: I’m sorry, Mr. Crane, but I love that that’s our throughline on this show.
Greg: So totally. I mean, we will get to this, but, I mean, I have started to notice that favorite movies of mine have similar stunt coordinator. So I’ll start bringing this up back to Edge of Tomorrow. The way that this movie was made was they didn’t go to a beach to film. They built a beach on the backlot, and they were supposed to film the beach sequence for two weeks.
Greg: They ended up doing it for three months because it was just right there. They could go back and they didn’t like a shot from yesterday. They would say, okay, for an hour today we’re going to take a break from whatever scene we’re working on, and we’re going to go back to yesterday’s spot and just redo this one moment so that scene is better.
Greg: And so they just kind of kept doing that where they would go back and capture a better version of a moment. They were also kind of writing it as they went, which is where Christopher McQuarrie comes in. The guy behind the modern Mission Impossible movies. He had become Tom Cruise’s guy when we were covering Mission Impossible two. Robert Towne would follow Tom cruise from movie to movie and kind of work on the script.
Greg: He was a script doctor, just kind of his guy. And at this point, this is the fifth movie that Tom cruise had worked on where Christopher McQuarrie was this guy. It starts with Valkyrie, a movie that he wrote. So Christopher McQuarrie is there just putting out pages every day. He’s the one who fixed Mission Impossible for a couple of years before this.
Greg: And so there’s just this crew, and they’re just kind of like making it up as they go. And there isn’t really a script. And so the reason Emily Blunt’s character is so great is because Emily Blunt fought for that to be her character, and was in every meeting to create that character. Same thing with Tom cruise, obviously, Bill Paxton.
Greg: So that’s why it was great. Doug Liman is an indecisive director that he doesn’t just go with something like, you know, we’ll just cut that moment out or whatever. We’ll just live with how we’ve. That thing from yesterday wasn’t good enough. No, they went back and redid it. And Tom cruise said, if you want me to, I’ll work seven days a week on this movie.
Greg: And so I said, okay, let’s work seven days a week on this movie. And that’s what they did for months and months and months. So that’s my hopefully truncated behind the scenes rants on this movie. The creative process on this one is really quite incredible, and unfortunately, it just shows that, you know, if you really care about it and you’re willing to redo things and have the hard conversations, you can make a great movie like this.
Joe: On the go on the fly, really, because it doesn’t feel like it was kind of written as they go. There are some movies even like while I think Mission Impossible six is the best action movie from the action standpoint, I know they’re kind of writing that as we go. The plot is definitely feels kind of like stapled on and in between the scenes, or this one feels different, but it feels much more integrated to me.
Joe: Yeah, into the story and the arc of it and where they’re going. And so it’s pretty remarkable that they were able to do this and, and pull it all together in a movie that you end up, as you say, what, 28 times. We kind of relive the same day with Tom cruise. It doesn’t feel repetitive. You know, there are moments, but then they bring in the humor on it.
Joe: You know, there’s some great moments. I think one of my favorite moments is and like, it’s like the third or fourth time, he’s like realizing how he can escape and he gets run over by a truck, you know, just like, cut to the next day, you know, and it brings it like, oh, yeah, you would have to like there’s a lot of learning that you’d have to go through to do all of this.
Greg: The way Tom cruise put that to everybody involved was, I think this guy should be like Wily Coyote, where whenever something horrible happens to him, it can be funny. Right? And so that was his input. Let’s do that. And it’s super fun. Yeah. There’s also moments where when the day resets, I personally felt impatient, like, oh, not again.
Greg: And then they show Tom cruise doing something where he is super impatient that he has to live the day again. And it’s it’s almost like they were anticipating how the audience would feel about this. And meeting that feeling with we Got You. We understand what you’re going through because we’re going through it too. It’s just incredible. Well, so let’s talk about this for a second.
Greg: Where do you stand on the movie Groundhog Day?
Joe: I’m a big fan of Groundhog Day. I love it, okay. It’s one of those. I remember the first time I saw it. To me, it was a it was a bigger movie, a lot of expectations, you know, and I wasn’t ready for the amount of times he relives the day. I think in my head, you know, you’re thinking like 3 or 4 times, and then we get through the movie and they really leaned into how many times he does it, and it’s awesome.
Joe: I love that, you know, I’m a big Bill Murray fan, but it’s a funny movie. It’s great. So, you know, I’m a big Groundhog Day fan. So I and I like these kind of movies, I don’t mind I know that some people don’t always love the time loops and I struggle. Sometimes the time travel is just because sometimes I get a little to explain about it, and it’s sometimes it’s like you just need to not go into the science of this, and you’ve got to be, you know, I there’s some movies where they just lean too hard into it and you’re like, this isn’t real, okay?
Joe: Time travel exists. We’ll make the big leap. Stop explaining all of it, you know? And then, you know, you get into like, the oh, I made a change and something bad happens. I think The Simpsons that a really amazing episode.
Greg: I need to watch that.
Joe: I think it was a Treehouse of Horror. You know, where Homer goes back in time and tries not to hurt anything. And I’m like, it’s hilarious. But it kind of uses all the tropes that you see in time travel movies. So I struggle with time travel movies, but the time loop movies, I think are more interesting because it’s they’re trying to solve a problem.
Greg: Have you seen Palm Springs?
Joe: I haven’t, I’ve almost watched it a few times.
Greg: You should watch that. Okay. Yeah. The Groundhog’s Day movie is a divisive one, and. Oh, so I’m married to somebody who hates Groundhog Day. And so at dinner I said, hey, do you have any input for, like, stuff I should say in the podcast tonight? We’re recording this in the evening and, she said, I don’t know what’s the movie?
Greg: And I said, edit tomorrow. And she said, have I seen Edge of Tomorrow? I said, no, I don’t think you have because it’s a Groundhog Day movie. She said, oh, okay. Well then my notes are two thumbs down.
Joe: That’s rude. That’s rude. Yeah. You haven’t even seen it. You have to chance. No, no.
Greg: So you’re talking about explaining this. And there’s actually a really funny tweet by Christopher McQuarrie that he tweeted five years after this came out. And the tweet was the worst scene and edge of Tomorrow is an attempt to understand the aliens and tension, compliments of the studio. They are invaders. They invade as humans. We should not have to have this explained.
Greg: Yeah, and I can’t think of exactly the scene that he’s talking about, unless it’s that one scene when they’re kind of standing around the table and kind of explaining the rules of the movie.
Joe: Where.
Greg: It’s Emily Blunt and, the. Is that a British guy? Who’s the doctor guy?
Joe: Yeah, the doctor guy who they didn’t believe that the day was resetting and all of that. Yeah, I think that’s the scene. And or it could be when Tom cruise is able to see where the Omega is, the alien creature that is able to reset time. And so there is a little bit of, yeah, explaining this of how it works and the rules.
Joe: And she basically didn’t die and then got a blood transfusion. Right. And then lost the ability to reset the day.
Greg: There’s also a funny anecdote from that scene where Emily Blunt and Doug Liman are just really complaining while they’re filming that scene that it just has too much exposition, too much explanation. And Doug Liman turns to Christopher McQuarrie and says, we never had this kind of problem with The Bourne Identity. And Christopher McQuarrie said, how many time traveling aliens were in that movie?
Greg: This is kind of a different thing.
Joe: Yeah, I remember that scene. It is a little explaining, but it didn’t bother me. I didn’t have a like a reaction to it at all, like, oh, we’re out of the plot or, you know, it fit right into me. So I, you know, while it may have bothered them and I get the critique of it in the movie, you kind of need a breath.
Joe: Yeah. You know, there’s a lot of, like, moments where, like, a lot of action, a lot of action, a lot of tense. So those are the moments where you kind of are able to catch your breath.
Greg: When Christopher McQuarrie is making Mission Impossible movies, they have scenes exactly like that, and what they do is they create a little set that they never tear down, so they can go back and redo that scene over and over again as the plot is shifting while they film. So I wonder if they did that in this movie as well, where they just had that one room with the magic computer table and they just went back in and re filmed it until it was the perfect exposition scene.
Greg: But I rewatched it today and it was fine. I don’t know that they actually explained the intentions of the alien in that scene, so I feel like they had to do what they did there. And it’s in all of Christopher McQuarrie movies since then, so.
Joe: Right.
Greg: So I feel like we just need that.
Joe: Yeah, absolutely.
Greg: So this is episode nine of great bad movies that we’re releasing. We’ve already done Mission Impossible two. How would you compare Tom cruise in this movie, which is 14 years after Mission Impossible two? How would you compare these two movies and performances of Tom cruise?
Joe: I think he is maybe a better action actor in this movie. Obviously a mission impossible two. He is Ethan Hunt super spy. John Woo, a fine wind blowing where there’s no wind and pretty cocky as a character. And I feel like this, especially the first half of this movie, he’s pretty bumbling. I think that Wily Coyote is as an apt description, right?
Joe: He just doesn’t quite get it. He’s not a good soldier. He’s he isn’t a soldier to begin with, and he’s trying really hard, but he’s just not good enough yet. And so I really think that this is, you know, a great performance by him. Well, how would you answer that question as you think about it?
Greg: I think there’s so much more depth to this performance. Who he fights for Ethan Hunt to be a mission impossible two is pretty great for that series because he’s kind of a blank canvas, you know, although I think they’re very intentional about who Ethan Hunt is. Maybe the movie. And like we said in that episode, I think Mission Impossible two is kind of amazing because they really did kind of set it up.
Greg: Like, we can keep making these, like we’re good to go. We figured out how to make another one. We’re going to keep making these. And they they don’t really perfected until like the third one. But in this movie, he’s so smarmy in that first scene, I swear they digitally make his teeth whiter to make me dislike him more, which is just an incredible move on the part of a special effects team.
Greg: Like we’re gonna accentuate his teeth to make me dislike him as a character. I think that opening scene when he’s talking to Brendan Gleeson.
Joe: So there are lots of those where they have the choice to play it kind of different than he’s like, he’s just the classic hero. He’s pretty is one note in that he’s great. And the action sequences, I think are second to none. As I said, Mission Impossible six is the best action movie I’ve ever seen.
Greg: Mission impossible five was the year after.
Joe: This, which is also great, so it’s hard to separate. Those are kind of how I think of fast four and fast five, you know, mission possible five and six are really one movie in a sense to me. Yeah. So I’m in the tank for that, and I’m probably a little bit later to the Mission Impossible world. Then you are.
Joe: You are, I think probably a I will call you a super fan of the Mission Impossible Averse.
Greg: You know what I was thinking the other day? I mean, here it is, July 2024, and a lot of things are happening in the world. And I really just think of July 2024.
Joe: As.
Greg: Ten months before Mission Impossible eight comes out. That’s how I would mark this moment in my time in my life.
Joe: Yeah. So I yeah, I would say this is one of Tom Cruise’s best performances maybe ever.
Greg: I mean, born on the 4th of July, Magnolia.
Joe: Tropic Thunder I think he obviously steals every scene he’s in collateral.
Greg: I mean, he did those two Steven Spielberg movies kind of back to back Minority Report. And then pretty quickly after that, like a couple years later, he did War of the worlds. Well, he had done Jack Reacher two years before this. Where do you stand on Jack Reacher?
Joe: First one is spectacular.
Greg: Yeah, great. Great movie.
Joe: Great. Great movie. Yeah. Second one great awful movie.
Greg: Maybe not even great. It’s low on our scale.
Joe: Yeah, it’s an awful bad movie. It’s a no, I don’t know, it’s it’s. Yeah, it’s not good.
Greg: So it’s like they decided to make a Jack Reacher TV show on network television. Not the one that’s on Amazon Prime.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And Tom cruise was.
Joe: Starring.
Greg: And they got the director of thirtysomething, Ed Zwick, also the director of glory. I love some of his work, but yeah, the chasm of Jack Reacher one two. Jack Reacher two is akin to speed one. To speed two. Maybe not quite as bad.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: But pretty rough. So Jack Reacher one’s great. Oblivion. And then this movie comes out, that Mission Impossible five, Jack Reacher two in The Mummy, both kind of struggling movies.
Joe:
Greg: But then American Made, which is a pretty good movie directed by Doug Liman. And then Mission Impossible six, and then we got Top Gun Maverick. I mean he’s just on a tear.
Joe: He’s on a roll right now. Yeah. So yeah, it’s hard it’s hard to to fault any of his choices. And he, he tends as you would expect to someone. I mean he is a classic movie star. You know, one of the biggest movie stars in the world. He surrounds himself with good people that know how to make good movies.
Joe: And so that makes a difference. You know, you find what Christopher McQuarrie is. He’s a really talented writer. Good director.
Greg: Yep.
Joe: That’s what you need. And he’s got his own production company, so he’s got a lot of control, creative control over what he wants. The finished product, to be sure, makes sense. Yeah there’s a maverick three coming out.
Greg: So that’s what I heard. Little hesitant about that one.
Joe: I need to see it. I have not seen Top Gun two yet so really. Yeah.
Greg: Oh wow. Okay. We should get to Top Gun too. At the risk of it angering people.
Joe: Okay.
Joe: Perfect.
Greg: Let’s get to Emily Blunt. Then it’s time for us to have the conversation that needed to be had. Yeah, about Emily Blunt. Where do you stand on Emily Blunt’s career?
Joe: I’m a big fan of Emily Blunt. I think she’s great. I think she’s amazing in this. I think she’s amazing. And Sicario. I try to think of what else I’ve seen her in. I know that I’ve seen her in some other things, but those are the two movies that jumped to mind for me, of her holding her own and a very action testosterone fest movie, especially Sicario, which is kind of the point of that movie.
Joe: Her character. And I know that it’s also a story, as you’ve mentioned, the story told through the eyes of, you know, the white protagonist telling the story about Mexico and the drug wars. And I think that’s an interesting take on it. But she’s spectacular. I think she’s just a she’s an amazing actress in this and everything I’ve seen her in.
Joe: What’s your take on Emily Blunt?
Greg: I mean, I’m her biggest fan. I’m a huge fan of the devil Wears Prada, and it’s also an interesting week for us in America or on planet Earth, I guess, because there is talk of Devil Wears Prada to which I’m very excited about. I’m much more in like the rom com.
Joe: E.
Greg: Anne Hathaway movie. I think that I’m much more into those than you are.
Joe: Yeah, I think that’s fair.
Greg: It’s a second. It’s separate lane of great bad movies that I like more than you, but that was the first time I had ever seen her. She had like a little part in Charlie Wilson’s War, which is a movie that I like a lot. And then, man, I might not have really tracked with her again until the Adjustment Bureau in 2011, which is kind of like, what if the cast of Mad Men worked for some?
Greg: I think they just called the person that did. It’s like they’re angels and they’re like trying to navigate the fabric of the world and make sure that everything happens when it’s supposed to. And it’s not like a super successful movie, but it’s the sweet movie with Matt Damon. I’ve rewatched it a few times because it’s like just a nice cup of warm milk, like, oh, this feels good.
Greg: She was, of course, in The Muppets for a second, which I’m a big Muppets fan. And then she was in the five year engagement with Jason Segel. She was in Looper, which is a movie I adore. And then this she was on quite a run and then she was in Into the Woods and Sicario after this. So she kind of has solidified herself as one of the best amongst us.
Greg: So, I mean, I support her being Mary Poppins. If you’re wondering who enjoyed Jungle Cruise with Emily Blunt in The Rock, I’m the one who like Jungle Cruise with.
Joe: You’re the reason we have the Rotten Tomatoes score that we do on the audience on that. Yes.
Greg: I mean, she was obviously was she Oscar nominated and Oppenheimer.
Joe: I think so, yeah.
Greg: And then she was in the fall guy and we will be getting to the fall guy, obviously.
Joe: Obviously. Yes.
Greg: I feel like we are 15% into Emily Blunt’s long, illustrious career. I think she could work as long as she wants. And we are all better for it. A great can we talk about Bill Paxton for a second? Because twisters came out this month and there’s a bit of, recognition of Bill Paxton happening out there, which is nice to see.
Joe: Yeah. Finally. And unfortunately postmortem. Yeah. For him, I’m a big Bill Paxton fan. Yeah, yeah. He’s one of those character actors that, you know, I feel like twister was one of the only ones I can think of, right? It was like a starring role, but he’s like the sidekick. But comic relief. Yeah. That guy in a lot of movies, from aliens to, you know, even this movie, it’s like you’ve seen him in everything to True Lies.
Joe: I mean, he’s just got such memorable characters, and he’s one of those, actors also that steals every scene. He’s in.
Greg: 100%, you.
Joe: Know, you’re just like, oh, thank you, Bill, for coming through on this movie.
Greg: Totally. He I remember him kind of becoming a thing after aliens.
Joe:
Greg: Where people owned it at their house or whatever. You know, everybody was quoting Bill Paxton, but I’m just looking at his IMDb page. Who’s in.
Joe: Stripes?
Greg: He was in The Terminator. He was in Commando, he was in Weird Science. He was in Next of Kin.
Joe: Had a movie. Well, for sure beginning to.
Greg: Totally get spacey. He was a Navy Seals. Oh my gosh, predator two. This is incredible. So I heard a great story on Rob Lowe’s podcast. He was good friends with Bill Paxton. Bill Paxton was up for an Emmy against the guy who played Dexter. Michael C.
Joe: Hall.
Greg: And Michael C Hall had been nominated for that last season of Dexter. He did after he had beaten cancer. He was in remission. And so he wins the Emmy. You know how unlike the Emmy broadcast, they will show all the nominees so that they can show all of them as they’re reading the winner.
Joe:
Greg: As they read the winner, Bill Paxton looks to the person next to him. Maybe it’s his wife, and you can clearly see him say cancer card. Which is just the greatest. Yeah, I’m sure he would have said that to my C Hall. Just everyone loves Bill Paxton and he just says it like it is. Anyways, bill Paxton incredible in this movie.
Greg: And I feel.
Joe: Like.
Greg: His speech that he reads over and over again is just unbelievable.
Joe: Good news is this hope for you. Private hope in the form of glorious combat. Battle is the great Redeemer, the fiery crucible.
Clip: In which the only true heroes are forged in one place, while men truly share the same reign, regardless of what kind of person come, they will going in.
Greg: Unbelievable. What are some other moments in the movie that you loved?
Joe: I really loved the scene right before they get in the helicopter. They’ve kind of made it through the battle and they have this moment where they kind of get to this like abandoned town. Yeah, and they have a couple scenes there, like a couple go rounds of it, and there’s like a really tender moment between the two of them where, yeah, basically she realizes that they’ve done this many times.
Greg: Yeah. With the coffee.
Joe: And I thought that scene was so good because one, you kind of know where you are in the movie. Yeah. So you know something’s coming. Yep. So there’s this tension of, you know, something bad’s going to happen, but you also have this moment where you want that moment to just kind of freeze for a while and just stay there, you know?
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: So and that’s what his character is doing in that scene. He’s saying, why do we need to get to the helicopter or let’s, let’s hang out here for a while.
Joe: Yeah, yeah. So I really appreciated that scene. I think from there there’s a change and I think that’s where also like he gets more frustrated when he dies and he’s trying different things. And up until that point he has been trying to like map out every single step. Yeah. They take to, you know, get one inch further. And I think at that point he kind of stops.
Joe: And I think that’s also a turning point. Whether and probably intentional, but in an intentional turning point in the direction of the movie where they are trying something different. And that was that’s my biggest qualm with the movie, is they basically, you know, however many time they, they die on the beach, maybe instead of going with everyone on the beach, you go earlier, you try something different.
Joe: You know, that’s the only thing of like, if I were living through this, I would be trying a million different variations to try something different that might change it. And that’s what happened at the end when they defeat the aliens as they don’t attack on the beach, they attack earlier. With the crew getting together and kind of coming together.
Joe: Yeah. But I guess they’re setting up that as the, the finale there. But that’s a.
Greg: Really good spot right there where it kind of starts to get a little bit dramatic. I, we should say this was based on a graphic novel called All You Need Is Kill. And her character in that book is a big coffee person. And so that was kind of an homage to that. I think coffee doesn’t exist anymore, but she has a stash and is really into it.
Greg: And so they’re kind of alluding to that in that scene in the movie. But yeah, when the day restarts and they say there’s something wrong with your suit and he says, there’s a dead guy in it, that’s his emotional state in that moment, too. You know, it’s just really well-written and and the, the emotional stakes there are incredible.
Greg: I’m so surprised to hear you say that you liked their relationship in the movie, because it it could be seen as romance. But it’s more than that. Something they thought and thought through a lot while they were making it, because they really didn’t want it to be anything other than these two people are growing close. In fact, Tom cruise says, I wish I didn’t know you because it hurts too bad.
Joe: What a.
Greg: Great line that.
Joe: Was. I feel like there’s just enough, there’s a hint, there’s no like romance and, and the way that we’re used to seeing and in action movies or in.
Greg: Movies, there is a kiss at the end. Yeah. Which, by the way, not scripted. Not planned. Emily Blunt did it. She’s like, I don’t know, I just felt it. So I did it, and I apparently Tom cruise, like, is like, what are you doing? And then he kisses her back. There’s like a, there’s like a moment where he’s like, what are you doing?
Greg: And that was the only time it happened. So that’s cool.
Joe: Yeah, I think the timing of that as, like, she’s distracting the aliens that are coming, right? And they both know they’re going to die, and they both talk about it, you know, in that moment. Yeah. And they’re not coming back from it. It’s as beautiful. I think they do a really good job of them getting close. Yeah. Throughout the movie without crossing a line that feels wrong.
Joe: I think, you know, if they had added in a love story between them, it would have felt false, like, totally. And this is my, my whole thing with with movies like this and we suspend disbelief over the big things really easily. They go, oh, there are aliens, and there’s a time loop. We go, oh, okay, I’m in. But if they stitch together a love story that doesn’t feel true to the characters, yeah, that’s what people remember.
Joe: And so yeah, so the big leaps are easier to make than the little ones. And that’s suspension of disbelief. And I think they do a really good job of not going to places that are cliche. Or I could totally see, a really dumb love story in the hands of less capable writers, directors, actors. Yeah, that would have been what you would expected, and it would have been a great bad movie.
Joe: And we would have been talking about how, yeah, terrible the chemistry was between the leads and the why are they having this moment in the middle, you know, those sorts of things that they don’t get into in this. So.
Greg: I mean, you’re saying that about a love story. I think the exact same thing could be said about an alien movie. Like, I am not in on an alien movie. I don’t really like science fiction at all because I feel like it. It’s just, hey, wouldn’t it be interesting if these facts were happening? You know, and I don’t feel connected to the people in them very much at all.
Greg: But there are a lot of movies where I do feel connected to the people, like Gattaca, for instance, was a great science fiction movie. You know, there are movies where just because it’s taking place in the future doesn’t mean it’s not a story I can relate to. And, Doug Liman said he’s not interested in making an alien movie.
Greg: He was interested in making a war movie. And so he I think he described it as, I’m making a war movie that has aliens in it, but you never, I don’t know, I never really felt like I was watching a I guess I did feel like I was watching an alien movie, but there’s just it really doesn’t give you a second to breathe, you know?
Greg: Yeah. Even when it slows down, it’s emotionally dense.
Joe: Yeah. I liken it to there’s that analogy of like and that’s a gross analogy, but like, you know, the frog being cooked in the, you know, the part where they’re turning up like, I feel like they do a really great job of there’s always tension in the movie. It doesn’t feel relaxing. It’s not like a relaxing watch of a movie where it’s like, you know, where, you know, even speed.
Joe: I love that movie dearly. I think it’s a great. But, you know, the tension in it is not the same. You know, it doesn’t feel the stakes aren’t as high, but this feels like they’re turning up the temperature slowly throughout the movie. Yeah. And you get to the end. I remember the first time I watched it when Tom cruise, his character, loses the ability to reset the day.
Joe: Yeah, it’s kind of like the beginning of the third act, really. Right. And I remember going, oh, that’s not good. Totally. No. Like, oh. Right.
Greg: The fun of like, a stake less existence is, is out the window.
Joe: Yeah. And then from there, like at even like ratcheted up even more.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: And so I really appreciate all of those little touches that they do in this movie. So yeah.
Greg: There is only one moment in this movie where I’m like, come on. And it is when he says, I feel it, I can’t reset the day anymore. After they do like the blood transfusion for him. There is no way he felt that.
Greg: But we did need to know that. And I promise you, I didn’t really understand what was happening the first time I saw this movie, so I did need him to tell me that.
Joe: Yeah, that’s.
Greg: The only moment where I’m like, oh, look, there’s a screenwriter close by telling us what’s going on, you know?
Joe: Yeah, to me, there’s a pretty fun running joke throughout the movie of her shooting him. Yeah. Killing him. Right, right. Which in this movie it is kind of funny because there are some funny moments, but that was that they had to like, oh no, you can’t kill him right now to reset the day. He can’t do it.
Greg: So totally.
Joe: I get it.
Greg: I loved Bill Paxton when Tom cruise meets him and he says, you’re an American. He goes, no, I’m from Kentucky.
Joe: At the fair.
Greg: That was amazing. There’s too many funny moments to list. But when when Tom cruise is basically like they’re explaining the universe to him and he’s like, clearly out he goes. First of all, this is a terrific presentation. Terrific. Yeah. When he says that, I laughed really hard and watched it twice. And, you know, the other moments where it’s like, it feels like the movie might start to slow down and he’s just like, pretty much Game over tomorrow.
Greg: So can we move this along? You know, like, let’s keep this moving along here.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: This movie feels like it’s three hours long because of the resetting, but it’s it’s like a brisk what is it like an hour 50 hour.
Joe: 40 like that. Yeah. It doesn’t feel long. I don’t usually I, I’m the one that’s like, wow, you could probably trim 20 minutes off of this. Yeah. This is one of the rare occasions where I could have probably had a little bit more. That’s what I talk about, the exposition at the beginning, maybe a little bit more of Tom Cruise’s character.
Joe: Yeah, just to get to know him.
Greg: But yeah.
Joe: Also the way they kind of bookend it, it works. I think the only leap of faith that I have in him getting conscripted into the Army feels a little writerly to me, sure, but I 100% forgive it because everything else is as spot on for it.
Greg: Hey, I wanted to say one thing where I said that we reset eight minutes in to the movie. That’s not right. Eight minutes in is when we start the day of him waking up on the luggage that we then go back to over and over again. So there’s really just eight minutes before we start the loop.
Joe: Interesting. Yeah. That’s awesome.
Greg: Ten year anniversary.
Joe: Yeah. That’s wild. It feels like it could have come out last year or it feels very timeless in a lot of ways.
Greg: It also feels like this is one of those like generational movies. I didn’t hesitate to buy this to watch it last night.
Joe:
Greg: I was like, well, I’m gonna, I’m gonna want this one.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: So this.
Joe: Is.
Greg: You know, we talk about like great albums through the years that just kind of hit reset either by the Beatles or by Radiohead or whatever. This is one of those movies in the mid teens, you know, that I feel like goes down as one of the greats.
Joe: I agree, I’m trying to think of if we take from like 2010 to 2019. Yeah, great movies. I’m trying to remember when. When did fast five come out?
Greg: I think it was 2011.
Joe: Yeah. They have like fast five, John Wick, if this, Mission Impossible six and five and five. David Leitch is doing some cool stuff at this time as well. I’m trying. Remember, if Atomic Blond is in this time, I think it is 2017. Yeah. So we’re in this, you know, Doug Liman with The Bourne Identity really changed a lot in action movies.
Joe: Yeah. With that movie with. Yeah, they were shot and and leaning into like, someone’s like a thinking man’s action movie. You know, it’s it’s interesting. There’s good characters. Yeah. The way the action is shot is different. Then we have John Wick, which is borrowing from the raid and the raid two. Yeah. And they are action scenes. But you know, kind of this change and the have these stunt coordinator directors and the stunt coordinator is really coming front and center.
Joe: So I feel like we’re in this new age of action movie really. And some people are doing it spectacular and some people are obviously doing it just kind of if you watched fast X, which I loved, it’s not in the same that’s that’s CGI done poorly. That’s basically what that is.
Greg: No one was a bigger fan of the Fast and Furious franchise than me, and I am not looking forward to 11.
Joe: I know fast six is their last great one for five and six. Yeah, I will go to the mat with anyone about how great those are. Yeah, seven. I will throw in there for sure Paul Walker fans and yep, after that it’s it’s not just jumping a shark. It’s like a shark that is jumping another shark that’s dumping another shark through.
Greg: Inside a submarine.
Joe: Yes, exactly. In Russia. Yeah.
Greg: Well I will say I was disappointed by seven and eight in the theater and nine as well. And then kind of really enjoyed them on the rewatch. So we will be getting to those movies eventually. Doug Liman, though, I think he’s secretly making a movie with Tom cruise right now, actually in outer space. Did you know that Tom cruise is pulling a film in outer space kind of secretly right now with the help of NASA?
Joe: No, I did not know that. Okay, yeah, of course, of course he is. Is like, yeah, he literally is Ethan Hunt and totally, totally, you know.
Greg: So that is Doug Liman’s follow up to the remake of Roadhouse.
Joe: Which is a movie we’ll definitely get to. Okay.
Joe: I love that he did Roadhouse. Yeah. Have you watched that? No, not.
Greg: Yet. Oh my gosh. We will be getting to the remake of Roadhouse and the original. Yeah, I will just say that I am surprised that Jim Cameron didn’t make this movie. There are a lot of moments in this movie where it seems like this probably crossed James Cameron’s desk at some point, and I’m glad he didn’t make it, because I feel like Doug Liman did a better job.
Joe: I feel like as great a director as James Cameron is, he is equally bad a writer in terms of the tropes ness of his characters and motivations. Yeah, so that’s always been a struggle with me with his movies were great action. Director needs Christopher McQuarrie to come in and write his stuff for it. Yeah, exactly.
Greg: There are some exceptions. Maybe. I mean, he rewrote Point Break with Kathryn Bigelow and we’ll get the Point Break.
Joe: Oh, no.
Greg: They rewrote that movie like very quickly. And there are other times in that time period, like early 90s, where he would just like, take three weeks and write a movie that then became a massive hit.
Joe: He knows what people want. Yeah, he is a hit maker in that sense. But even point break, the writing and point break. Yeah, I.
Joe: Yeah. I’m sorry, James Cameron, you all have, Ron Howard fans coming after you and our James Cameron fans coming after me.
Greg: Oh my gosh, I can’t wait to rewatch Point Break. It’ll be incredible. Let me just read you a, quote from Christopher McQuarrie about this movie. It was a constant struggle to reconcile the size of the movie with the complexity of the movie, with the emotional demands of the movie. I think in a lot of ways we were successful.
Greg: I think in other ways we paid the price. Only time will tell what people really think of it. That’s a quote he gave three weeks after this came out.
Joe:
Greg: And this movie was not well-received. Kind of bombed at the box office. I made like $20 million its first weekend, and it cost $175 million to make no. $178 million. It seems like a recipe for failure, but I feel like they spent that money pretty well and we think made a generational movie. It eventually made $370 million worldwide, you know, and you kind of have to like, assume that a movie has to make double its budget to break even.
Greg: They also spent like $100 million marketing this. So this movie, you know, beloved kind of broke even made like 28 million in DVD and Blu ray sales. So before we get to drinking games, Joe, can we talk for a second about how the critics thought of this movie?
Joe: Sure. We also should do back of the box at some point. Oh man. Joe, in case.
Greg: Somebody has never seen.
Joe: This movie, and yet, as.
Greg: The second episode in a row, we’ve done this and they’ve gone to the last hour of us talking about it, let’s pretend somebody is walking through Blockbuster Video trying to figure out what movie to rent, and they’re picking up all the boxes and reading the back to get the synopsis to see if it’s what they should watch or not.
Greg: It’s time for you to read us the back of the box.
Joe: It’s the back of the box. All right, so here’s the back of the box as you pick it up. You look at it now, is this is this movie for me? When cage Tom cruise is caught in a time loop, he must learn to fight and make allies where he can. As an alien invasion is inching ever closer to exterminating the human race.
Joe: Well, his partnership with super soldier Rita Vera Tarski. Hold up. Can he figure out the right way to go? Or will he just be born again, only to die a short time later? The fate of the world hangs in the balance. The edge of tomorrow will have you on the edge of your seat, right up until the final credits roll.
Joe: That’s the back of the box.
Greg: I think I rent it. Yeah, actually, you know what? I might be lukewarm. That sounds like it could.
Joe: Have a.
Greg: Little science fictiony to me.
Joe: And we need to get you over your science fiction. Yeah. Phobia here in science fiction has been used for forever to also paint social issues in a way that people can see them and all of that. So I’m more a fan of sci fi and even fantasy than you are. So yeah.
Greg: Okay, so that’s the back of the box. What is Joe Skye Tucker’s real back of the box.
Joe: All right. The real back of the box is what if you could live the same day over again? What would you change now? What if the fate of the world were on your shoulders to make the needed changes, so that the human race is not helplessly slaughtered by an alien invasion? That is the ridiculous plot of this movie, or it’s Groundhog Day.
Joe: But on the battlefield, that ridiculous premise is executed perfectly with Tom cruise and Emily Blunt fighting their way to the big bad alien. The controls time. I know I hear myself too, but this movie is amazing, proving once again that within the right hands, the craziest of ideas can be perfect.
Greg: It’s a great, great movie.
Joe: Yeah, it’s a great, great movie.
Greg: Well, we think it’s a great, great movie. I think people have continued to loop back on this one quite a bit in the last ten years. Critics also really like this movie. What do you think the tomato rating is on this 70%?
Joe: That’s got to be where it is.
Greg: It feels like a 70. I think you’re.
Joe: Right. It’s 70.
Greg: You know what critics went with 91 oh.
Joe: 91 okay, audience scores got to be 70, though.
Greg: You’d think it would be about a 70. Sometimes a little bit higher than 70.
Joe: 71, 71.
Greg: Yeah. Yeah, it’s a 90. Oh so yeah this is a 70 for sure.
Joe: For sure.
Greg: When we decided to watch this movie as a little bit nervous like is that a great bad movie? I feel like the last couple times I’ve seen that I’ve really enjoyed it and not in an ironic way. So I went to read some of the comments of the critics, and this one made me realize, I can’t wait to watch this movie, and it’s perfect for our show.
Greg: It’s Tiber writing for the Boston Globe, and he says, the fact is that this is a pretty good summer kablooey movie. Yeah, and cruise is better than pretty good in it. And I think that is the perfect description of this. In fact, pretty good. Summer Kablooey movies could be the title of this podcast.
Joe: Absolutely it won’t be, but the alternate will be in parentheses.
Greg: Yeah, it is the all title of our podcast, and so let me read just a couple more because these are these are really good. David Simms, who is the co-host of the Blank Check podcast, which is amazing for The Atlantic. He says Edge of Tomorrow is the perfect mix of blustering action and sci fi thinky nonsense that is best enjoyed without picking out of too much.
Greg: That also is was my first experience with this movie. When I saw it, I was like, I don’t entirely understand what happened, but I really enjoyed it. Yeah, I did understand it this time, probably the most, but I think it was because I knew I had to talk about that.
Joe: I feel like they thread the needle really well on that, thinking this and then like, but not over explaining this as we’ve talked about, like that’s a tough thing to do in a movie that has time travel in it. Right? And these kind of the rules of the universe that they created. And so I think they do a really good job.
Joe: This is a less is more. I always feel like that with time travel, like just, okay, there’s time travel, there’s a machine that does it and we don’t need to get into quantum blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, Christopher Nolan reverse. Yes. Yeah.
Greg: Although this movie would have benefited from Michael Caine explaining the movie the way he does in every single Christopher Nolan movie.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: All right, two more reviews that I want to read to you. Richard Brody in The New Yorker, the metaphorical overlay of fantasy and history is the best thing Edge of Tomorrow has to offer. And for much of its running time, that overlay is enough to lend the movie a shiver of curious power.
Joe: I agree with that.
Greg: Curious power is a great wording there for this movie, and the last one from slate. This is a movie about Tom cruise working very, very hard to please the world.
Joe: All right. Yeah, I got check this out. Yeah, I feel like that’s every Tom cruise movie, but all right.
Greg: Especially, you know, kind of starting around this time just basically yelling. Are you not entertained?
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: By the way, he did 100% of the stunts in this movie.
Joe: That’s again the least surprising thing you could say.
Greg: All right, Joe, should we get to drinking games?
Joe: Yeah, we’ve got to get to drinking games and some of our tropes which, spoiler alert, there are only two tropes. Yeah, I had to really stretch them to get there. So. But let’s start with drinking games. So we have our stock drinking games. You don’t have to drink alcohol. You can drink coffee, you can drink water if you’re need to get some hydration.
Joe: Sure. Soda, whatever it is. So you know, we’re not advocating for alcoholism. And anyway, get some help if you need help. That’s all I’ll say. So silent helicopter. No, there are a lot of helicopters in this. Yeah, none of them silent.
Greg: Very noisy. Oh, can I pause right there for a second?
Joe: Yes.
Greg: I am watching movies in Dolby Atmos now, which has the like above.
Joe: You,
Greg: Channel. And what I’ve learned so far in Dolby Atmos is anytime there’s a helicopter in a movie, the Dolby Atmos people are having a party. There’s a party at Dolby Atmos headquarters because anytime there’s a helicopter, they’re like, I got you. It’s so it was amazing in that way. Okay.
Joe: Keep going. All right. So push in and enhance. I gave this one to you because they’re some of the sequences where he has the visions of where the alien is. And then they kind of overlay that with the projector in the room with the three of them, and they’re trying to find where the bad alien. So you can drink with that one.
Joe: Yeah. When two people share a slow motion look in the middle of chaos, this movie has about 3 or 4 of those. Yeah. Awesome. I was so happy about that. There’s also explosions with silent suffering and ringing in the ears that happen a couple different times. I was also very happy about those are we don’t get those often in our stock drinking.
Joe: It’s true. That’s true. Does the opening credits scene lock into place with the sound? So I’m giving this one to you, but there is no credit. There’s no title of this movie.
Greg: So how are you giving it to them?
Joe: I think because it’s such, we’ve never seen that before, so it’s there’s no credit at all. So you got a label? You drink? Yeah. You drink. Yeah. That’s right. Or drinking I love it. Okay. Flashback to dialog. There’s a lot of flashbacks in this and resetting so you can drink on that or not. That one’s kind of that one’s iffy for me.
Greg: Sure.
Joe: I did not have a with the crazy CGI and bad over the. There are no bad effects on these. The special effects team on this is spectacular, incredible, incredible. I didn’t really even have great bad shots, because there really isn’t a lot of shooting at the bad guys, you know, or the bad guys shooting at them, because the bad guys are aliens and they don’t have guns.
Greg: So I’m going to say that there are a lot of times in this movie where they’re a great bad avoiding the aliens when they’re right there. Like, it seems like. So the aliens in this movie have like, these tentacle things, and it just seems like if they even got close to you, you would get hurt. And yet they’re like, running right up to these things and, like, punching them and somehow not getting scraped.
Greg: And so there’s like great bad not getting hurt by aliens when they totally should have, like, lost an arm or something.
Joe: Yeah, I’ll give you that one. Think I got the dealer’s choice. And what do you think on that one?
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: Okay. Are the streets inextricably wet? No, but I’m giving this one because the streets are inextricably underwater at the end of.
Greg: The movies and extremely well.
Joe: Yeah. Yes. And the the fact that they have to fly a plane through the water, like there’s no reason that they need to have a foot of water at that point. So that is a totally true drink at that point. We don’t have a give us the room. And there are obviously no Interpol references. So that was our stock drinking game.
Joe: So fair amount of them actually. And this not bad thing. Yeah. All right Greg sweetheart, what is one of your drinking games that you have for this?
Greg: Like we said, the day resets 28 times, so this movie could be potentially very dangerous for drinking games. So I’m just going to say any time the day resets with him waking up on the pile of bags, that’s not something we see every time.
Joe: Okay I like that. That’s awesome. Yeah. My first one is every time there’s a World War two reference. Oh that’s good.
Greg: How about every time Bill Paxton gives the Great Redeemer speech.
Joe: Oh at the author.
Greg: And if Tom cruise gives it for him that’s two drinks.
Joe: Oh night. That’s. Yeah. Or finish a drink. Whatever. Whatever. You got that. Yeah I have every time there is a funny in air quotes death that Tom cruise has.
Greg: Okay I have anytime Emily Blunt shoots Tom cruise.
Joe: All right. That was my next one. Okay, okay. But sometimes they’re funny and sometimes aren’t. Mostly they’re funny.
Greg: Mostly they’re funny.
Joe: Yeah, yeah. The first one I thought was such a beautiful shock. Yeah. It’s like, Something’s broken. What is it? Oh, it’s my back. And then she just shoots him in the head.
Greg: I can only feel my lips. Is that what he says? And he’s like something poking his lips out.
Joe: And then there’s another one. Ray’s like, I think I’m okay. And then he’s like, I don’t know. This.
Greg: What a weird thing to laugh at. But I laughed every time. Yeah, every time he tells somebody what’s going to happen next in the scene.
Joe: Oh, okay. I have something very similar. I have every time they referenced a conversation, they had in the future. So there’s a couple times where, like, we’ve had this conversation before or about, you know, yeah.
Greg: We will get to a movie called.
Joe: Next Nicolas Cage.
Greg: Which has a bunch of those moments where it’s like, it was amazing. It just hasn’t happened yet. There’s a couple moments like that I’ve missed you.
Joe: Yeah. Which is just.
Greg: Perfect for us.
Joe: And I have another one. I’ll piggyback on that one, which is every time they mention how many times I’ve had this conversation before.
Greg: Oh, that’s a good one. Anytime somebody says there’s a dead guy in it.
Joe: Okay, that’s a good I have. Every time there’s a laugh that releases the tension. Take a drink. Wow. Okay. And then I have. Every time you hear the Alpha scream, oh, that’s a good one. Which is a that’s a pretty scary alien. So they’re like, the soldiers and they’re the alphas, which are pretty scary. And then the Omega, which is the one that controls time.
Joe: But the alphas are pretty scary.
Greg: So 100%. And that’s how he resets. He kills an alpha and the blood gets on.
Joe: Yeah, the blood apparently be off. Yeah.
Greg: Now Tom cruise is in. Is controlling the resetting of the day. It was a terrific presentation.
Joe: Terrific. Yeah. Nailed it. I have two tropes that we have, and I had to search hard for this, but we have a reluctant hero, especially at the beginning. And then we have a conversation in the middle of a car chase. So they’re like, it’s like, oh, yeah. And or they’re driving away from the battlefield and they’re having a, you know, so that one’s a little iffy, but there’s no other real tropes that we have here.
Greg: And this is the section you’re calling. You might be watching a great bad movie if.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Or signs you’re watching a great bad movie.
Joe: Yeah, exactly.
Greg: It’s not a great bad movie. So it kind of doesn’t.
Joe: Yeah, yeah.
Greg: All right, Joshua, we get to some important questions.
Joe: Let’s do it.
Greg: Did this movie hold up Ben.
Joe: Yeah I think it did.
Greg: Does it hold up now?
Joe: I think it’s even better now.
Greg: That’s exactly what I have as well. It’s even better.
Joe: Now.
Greg: We didn’t know we had.
Joe: To have gold as what we have.
Greg: I mean, a great bad movie is a movie you think is going to be great, and then it’s a little bit bad, or you go in with low expectations and you say, you know what? That movie actually wasn’t that bad. And that’s what happened with this movie.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: How hard do they sell the good guy?
Joe: They don’t really. It’s a sign of a really good movie. They sell Emily Blunt character a little bit. Oh that’s true, but then you kind of realize why. And she is an amazing soldier. But she also had this power before, which is why she’s a great soldier.
Greg: The angel of Verdun.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: How hard do they sell the bad guy again?
Joe: Not very much. So you kind of see how bad the bad guy is or how bad the aliens are, but they know there’s some talk of of them, but they don’t really do the classic sell the bad guy.
Greg: Next question is, why is there romance in this movie?
Joe: Oh, there isn’t. There’s there’s moments of connection that feel authentic, but there’s no romance.
Greg: It’s very grounded. It’s probably real romance. Yeah, it’s not bad movie romance. This is good movie romance.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Next question is, are we bad people for loving this movie?
Joe: Perhaps, but maybe not. This is a good movie. I don’t know, it’s a great movie. I can’t I can’t go there. We’re not bad people. No, no, no.
Greg: I don’t know if you’re ready for this.
Joe:
Greg: Does it deserve a sequel.
Joe: A sequel? I would absolutely be in on a sequel. I’ve actually heard that there are rumors and talks of a sequel for the.
Greg: Live, die, repeat and repeat is what I heard. The title of the script was perfect.
Joe: I mean.
Greg: I don’t know if it deserves a sequel. Well, it deserves a sequel. I don’t know if it needs one.
Joe: Yeah, I don’t think it needs one because this movie is it’s perfect.
Greg: It’s a risk. It is a risk. And if it’s not a Groundhog’s Day scenario, then we say, I liked it better when it was Groundhog’s Day scenario. If the sequel is a Groundhog Day scenario, we might say too much Groundhog Day.
Joe: Exactly.
Greg: But you know what? I trusted him with it. It’s been ten years, Emily Blunt.
Joe: We’re going to watch it. I mean, so, yeah.
Greg: Apparently Emily Blunt said in 2020 that they had a script that they really liked. And then Doug Liman, like weeks ago, said, we still talk about it all the time. He and Tom cruise sat down a couple months ago to rewatch this movie, and Doug Liman’s take on it was, you know what? Pretty good movie. It was like he was watching a Ron Howard movie.
Joe: Yeah.
Joe: Shots fired here on out again. Yeah.
Greg: But if the sequel is going to be called lived, I repeat and repeat, we probably need to talk about how this movie kind of had two titles. It seemed when it came out Edge of Tomorrow and Live die, repeat. Apparently the marketing department of Warner Brothers has said they never changed the title. They just really boosted the live die repeat tagline when it was available for rent.
Greg: But all over the world, it seemed like that was the title.
Joe: I remember when the previews ran for this before it came out and live die repeat was all it was and that was what turned me off to it. I was like, I’m not interested in that movie. Yeah. And I feel like that ended up taking away from how good a movie this is.
Greg: Yeah, I agree.
Joe: It’s not a summer blockbuster. I feel like this would be a better release in After Thanksgiving. It was marketed as a summer blockbuster, but it doesn’t really feel like a summer blockbuster action movie. To me.
Greg: It’s more of a Thanksgiving kablooey movie.
Joe: Yes, exactly.
Greg: Okay. What do you think of the title? All you need is kill.
Joe: As a graphic novel? I think it’s fine. Yeah, as a movie, I think it’s pretty stupid.
Greg: Yeah, that’s what it was called. I think while they were filming in, Doug Liman was like, I hate that name for this movie. That’s not the movie we’re making. I also think Edge of Tomorrow is a pretty stupid name, but it’s the one that I associate with this film and I think this is an amazing movie, so I’m cool with it.
Greg: Does it deserve a prequel? No, no, I’m with you there.
Joe: You could probably make one based on Emily Blunt characters. Oh, run. Yeah, but I just think start the timeline where you want this timeline to start. Don’t create it. And then, oh, we can make all this money. So we’re going to do these prequels, which I know how the story ends. That’s why I hate prequels. Like I know how the story ends.
Joe: So tell me how I don’t care about how this the story began. Sure. After I’ve already watched the movie. So that’s why I hate prequels.
Greg: Even if you know in the prequel that everybody dies like Rogue One.
Joe: Even in that movie, I get the premise of that movie. I don’t think I’ve actually seen Rogue One. Yeah, I wasn’t interested in that story of how Princess Leia got the message out. Okay, awesome. I’m very anti prequel, as people should know by now. Okay, I.
Greg: When you said we could go back and see Emily Blunt’s time after time, we know that she probably fell in love with Hendrickson. Hendrix, whatever his name was.
Joe: Hendrix. Yeah, there’s.
Greg: A great story there. Now, I do wish there was a prequel that it was called.
Joe: Sorry I Said anything.
Greg: It’s called the Angel over. Done. And we go through her adventures.
Joe: Joe, next.
Greg: Question is how can this movie be fixed? AKA who should be in the remake?
Joe: This movie is as close to perfect as you get, so I don’t feel like there is really any need to remake it or change any of the casting or anything like that. So my answer is you don’t need to fix it.
Greg: Yeah, I’m really reaching to try and find an answer to this, but there is something that I think about this movie that we haven’t talked about yet, and that is the third act was kind of written and prepared while they were filming. They had no idea how this movie was going to end. And that whole, we’re going to get the Jake squad and they are going to help us go to the Louvre to get the Omega on paper.
Greg: Love it when they have to, like, do the helicopter thing just skimming the.
Joe: Water to.
Greg: Get over to the Louvre. That feels a little dumb to me.
Greg: As it’s happening, I just think, why are we doing this? This feels like someone bought a sequence at the action sequence store, and we’re stitching it onto this. There’s just something where it’s a little bit threadbare. It’s a little bit stretching at the seams for me. So if they were going to remake it, I think there would be a better way for them to emotionally get that whole scenario better sewn into the fabric of the movie.
Joe: I would agree with that. I think there are a couple moments in that they’re moving cars with their mech suits, and they’re being really loud. They’re very close to the Omega, which is a great point, and there are no aliens around you. That’s where like veer is a little bit of a great bad movie. Well, it was in that sequence, definitely.
Joe: But once they get into the loo, then we’re back into the regular movie 100%.
Greg: And the tell is at the beginning of that sequence. Whatever the helicopter thing is called, digital flies over the digital camera and makes the digital camera digital shake, which is a total like 2009 2010 A-Team move.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Which I was going to like. Oh boy. Oh. I forgot about this part of the movie. So that’s a little bit of, some CGI ness happening there. Yeah, there’s just something about it. It doesn’t quite feel real the way the rest of the movie feels real. Right.
Joe: So there’s like ten minutes of this movie where it’s a great bad movie. Yes. The rest of it is a great, great movie.
Greg: Our next episode will be a long review of just those ten minutes.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: I also feel like there could have been more. Brendan Gleeson agreed. Really like him. Did you know he’s only seven years older than Tom cruise?
Joe: No. That’s crazy nuts.
Greg: But love Brendan Gleeson. So all right Joe, next question. What album is.
Joe: This. All right. This is going meta for you. And I’m dying to know what your album is too. But this album is the 1965 classic Look at Us by Sonny and Cher, which first single is I Got You, which is wow, the song from Groundhog Day that resets Bill Murray’s day. That is what album this is.
Greg: Shut down the podcast. We’ve reached perfection. Yeah.
Joe: This will.
Greg: Be. We’re gonna sign off forever. We should go out on the Greatest Moments podcast that is the greatest answer you possibly could have said.
Joe: Awesome.
Greg: Okay, so for me, I was thinking that this is a cover movie to Groundhog’s Day.
Joe: Okay, nice.
Greg: So I was trying to think of cover songs or cover albums that I really like. We live in a time now where there are cover albums and I don’t like them. I usually think that they’re like four sandwiches shy of a picnic basket, you know? It’s like not quite everything. It should be. It’s a good idea, but not an execution.
Greg: But, you know, like back.
Joe: In.
Greg: The 60s and 70s, people would just cover each other’s songs all the time.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And so I immediately thought of Aretha Franklin. Speaking of the 60s, late 60s, early 70s. And Aretha Franklin would do this a lot, where she would cover people’s songs and would turn it into something entirely her own, which is kind of what this movie does to Groundhog’s Day. So, I mean, you could look at respect. That’s right. How about Otis Redding?
Greg: She does an incredible cover of, Change Is Going to Come by Sam Cooke on that same album, but the most stark cover that is just so different than the original version and makes it its own thing, is her cover of Simon and Garfunkel Bridge Over Troubled Water, which never officially came out on an album, but it was a single, like it was a number one single or whatever.
Greg: For her, it’s on her greatest hits. Well, first of all, she performed this on her live at the Fillmore West album, which is incredible. I just got that for my birthday for my in-laws. They might have been at that concert, man, let’s have crazy stories from San Francisco. But she also performed it on the Grammys after Simon and Garfunkel had broken up.
Greg: But they won like five Grammys for that song that night, and she played her cover of it. It is incredible. So everybody should go to our Great Bad Movies music playlist on Spotify and listen to those two songs. So not an album. She did record that song during the sessions for one of her albums, but didn’t put it on that album.
Greg: So it’s just a song, but, you know, it was the 60s. It was a singles culture. All right. So we usually rate this movie. We’ve already done this. We don’t need to say if it’s a great bad movie, a good, bad movie, okay, bad movie, bad bad movie or awful bad movie, this is just a great, great movie.
Joe: Yeah. Agreed. Yeah. I was trying to come up with can I conceivably give this a great bad rating? I can’t, it’s a great, great movie.
Greg: It is. All right, Joe, we did it.
Joe: Yeah, we had the conversation that needed to be had about the edge of tomorrow. In fact, probably no one else really needs to talk about this movie after this, if we’re being honest.
Greg: Yeah. We gave everybody a ten year window, and then we, I think we put a lid on it. I think we sealed the deal.
Joe: Yeah, absolutely. Okay.
Greg: Oh, I just noticed the time. I am supposed to go do this thing called the battle. I don’t know if you’ve heard of this. I watched a documentary about it on Netflix, and, I don’t know, this documentary said that it’s the great redeemer, the fiery crucible in which only true heroes are forged. So I thought, you know.
Joe: I’ll give it a try. Yeah, that sounds sounds interesting, but yeah. Anyway, this has been great, but I have a meeting with a general about some PR, so I hope that goes well. That absolutely should go well.
Greg: You know what? That actually totally works for me because I do. You have like a do you have a good mattress that you sleep on? I have been having trouble sleeping on this mattress. I’m going to try just a bunch of military bags at Heathrow Airport and see if I can just sleep on that real quick, I think.
Joe: Yeah, I probably get the best night’s sleep of your life, honestly, you know? Yeah, that’s good, because I’m going to meet with my, physical trainer today. I hope I don’t break my back again. Oh, yeah?
Greg: Well, that’s great, because there’s someone called the Angel of Verdun who’s walking straight towards me with a gun in her hand. I don’t have a good feeling about this one, so, I gotta go.
Joe: Yeah, good luck with that. I. Anyway, I have to go meet some friends at the beach. I hope they’re not too many people there today.
Greg: So I feel like I just feel weird. I had this weird day today where I was really opinionated about something, and the guy just looked at me and said, have you been drinking.
Joe: Like some B.S.? Like you?
Greg: So I’m gonna go.
Joe: Yeah, that sounds good. Anyway, I got this weird alien blood on me today. I hope there are no side effects from that.
Greg: I bet you’ll be fine.
Joe: Yeah. Okay.
Greg: I am going to go google why Kentucky isn’t in America, so I should probably go.
Joe: Yeah, that’s probably a good idea. Anyway. Lastly, I’m running. I have a triple feature tonight. I’m watching, Groundhog Day, The Edge of Tomorrow and Palm Springs. So that’s amazing.
Greg: That works for me. And actually, I’ll join you for one of those, because tonight I was going to do a triple feature of Groundhog Day, Groundhog Day and Groundhog Day.
Joe: Oh, I think right. Okay.
Greg: All right. Well, thank goodness for a good summer Kablooey movies.
Joe: Absolutely.
Greg: I’ll see you soon.
Joe: See you soon.