Edge of Tomorrow with Tom Cruise? This is the movie that taught everything about video games and their codes!

Let’s clear up the ambiguity in our title right away. This is not to start the refrain – a bit boring – about bad adaptations of video game licenses in cinema. But back to Edge of Tomorrow, Doug Liman’s excellent sci-fi film starring Tom Cruise in fine form.

Undoubtedly, the film that best and most intelligently adopted certain codes from the world of video games, especially in its narrative structure. Although the film is based on a light novel published in 2004 by Hiroshi Sakurazaka. All you need is to kill.

An observation that’s all the more pleasing because Hollywood unfortunately still produces too many action movies that are often incomprehensible, chainsaw-like, sometimes very clumsy attempts to imitate video games.

Live, die, start over

A mainstay in Halo or a character straight out of Call of Duty or foot soldiers in Titanfall, Tom Cruise plays William Cage in Edge of Tomorrow, a former advertising executive turned major in the army.

But what he prefers is hanging out with the diner girls. He has never fought in his life and he really doesn’t want to change that. However, one day and unbeknownst to him, he is sent to the front like the others, with his exoskeleton on his back, to help eradicate the alien threat. But shortly after landing on futuristic Omaha Beach, he and his comrades are killed instantly.

Instead, he becomes aware of a strange power “bequeathed” by the Mimic (alien) that killed him: he can come back to life every time, the day before the battle where he is supposed to die. Although his efforts were almost inhuman for him, he actually always dies. And try to survive a few more minutes the next day. “Live, Die, Begin Again”, as the movie poster rightly states. Literally a video game concept Die and try again.

Learning through failure in the face of adversity. A bit like comparing video games, which gamers know well, a spirits like; A game genre that became widely popular with the creation of a Japanese studio FromSoftware, Known for their high difficulty, especially the main game of the genre, Demon spiritsA trilogy followed Slow spirits.

Permanent death at the end of the adventure

Cruise is our screen persona. It epitomizes our condition as gamers, sometimes frustrated or put off by the difficulty of the game, he loses a life and almost immediately regains one. extra life As in a platform game.

No more PermadeatThis permanent death that does not offer a second try and finally ends the adventure in the game. In the film, the more Tom Cruise tries different approaches, like so many possible paths in a video game, the more he progresses and advances, mastery and even cleverness. templates foreign enemies; That is, the technique of the enemies.

To improve his chances of survival, Cruise/Cage trains a military legend who has survived countless battles. And that legend turns out to be a woman, Rita Vratsky, played with tenacity by Emily Blunt, who once had the same powers as William Cage before losing them.

A badass female character, a cross between Samus Aran from Metroid and Ripley’s Alien Saga. A real female warrior like you can be found – although not very often – in video games.

The two train with the well-thought-out goal of killing an alien “boss” named Omega, and thus allowing them to execute the giant equivalent. overload In order to win the war, these are the words used by the character Rita Vrataski.

A overload Just like in a video game. The two characters then move together, as in a cooperative game, on foot or in a vehicle, their finger always locked on the button to fire their high-tech arsenal, which we never stop seeing in video games like in the new opus. Call of Duty franchise.

Full of great action scenes, sometimes shot above the shoulders like in TPS (Third person shooter) in Gears of War style, carried by a flawless and self-deprecating Tom Cruise, Edge of Tomorrow is definitely a movie to (re)watch or discover, even if you don’t really have a gamer’s soul. And that’s too bad! We’re looking forward to the sequel, which has been announced for years, but finally seems to be back on track.