Edge of Tomorrow - 4K Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

Edge of Tomorrow



Movie:
4K Video:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:



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Movie
Tom Cruise is nothing if not a fun actor. He’s been everywhere from Oscar winning in his younger days, to a dramatic nut bag in his aging years, but he still knows how to play the audience like a fiddle and give them what they want. I don’t know, maybe it’s because he’s short. Trying harder to make up for his lack of height in some Freudian sort of way, I don’t know, but whatever it is Tom is still a lot of fun to watch on the big screen. I liked “Oblivion when it came out a few years ago, as Cruise tends to do well in this sci-fi adventures, so color me intrigued when I realized that he was starring in ANOTHER movie alongside my future wife, Emily Blunt, called All You Need is Kill. I had read the original Japanese Manga that the movie was based on and really enjoyed it, so this was kind of a no brainer that I would be seeing it in theaters, (despite it’s weird retitling to Edge of Tomorrow) even though I was pretty sure they were going to “Cruisify” it. I watched it once. I had a good time. I watched it twice, I had a blast. By the time I watched it a third time, it was easily one of my favorite movies of the year.

Humanity has come to the brink of genocide, as an alien race, known as the Mimics, have landed on Earth and are doing their best to exterminate the human race. No one knows WHY, they just are here, and we’re doing our best to keep ourselves alive as they slaughter us in the millions. Humans have one last ditch effort in the form of robotic exoskeletons, which add massive firepower and huge amounts of augmented strength to match the mimic’s incredible power and hopefully win. The tide changed after the battle of Verdan, as one soldier, after only 3 days practicing in the suit, dominated the battlefield, killing hundreds of mimics. Now the earth defense force has sent Major Cage (Tom Cruise), the man who singlehandedly has convinced the world of the need of exoskeletons and the world’s symbol for hope as he raises moral with his public speaking. The problem is, he’s a coward who’s really nothing more than a slick talker. After being told he’s being embedded in the invasion force that’s going into France as a publicity stunt for the world to see, he balks and tries to blackmail General Brigham (Brendan Gleeson) into excusing him from duty, only to have himself knocked over the head and slipped into the invasion force as a new recruit.

Stumbling around without any influence, seen as just another maggot recruit, Cage is jammed into an exoskeleton and dropped into battle where it’s pretty obvious he won’t live past 15 minutes. Everything that can go wrong DOES go wrong as the mimics somehow know the invasion force is coming and the entire troop deployment is slaughtered in a matter of an hour. Before he dies though, Cage yanks a claymore from a dead trooper and detonates it as a mimic commander swoops in for the kill. Only problem is, as he dies, he wakes up the previous morning right where he woke up after being slipped into the new recruit ranks. Confused and scared, he tries to explain this all to Sergeant Farell (played by Bill Paxton, who just EATS up the scenery, making him one of the best characters in the movie), only to be laughed at and stuck back in with is squad of doomed soldiers. Once on the battlefield things play out exactly as they did the day before, only this time he knows they’re going to get slaughtered. Dying again, the cycle repeats itself and it becomes apparent that he is reliving the same day over and over again.

They always say, practice makes perfect, and Cage gets LOTS of practice, slowly being able to actually kill off a few mimics. This all changes when he saves that one soldier who singlehandedly saved the battle of Verdan. Saving her life and slaughtering a half dozen mimics in the process, Rita (Emily Blunt), realizes that there is something special in Cage and asks him to find her when he “wakes up”. On his next reboot on life he seeks her out and tells her what she said on the battlefield yesterday..eerrrr tomorrow. It turns out that Rita was exactly like Cage back at Verdan, which explains why she was able to singlehandedly take out the Mimic defenses (LOOOOOOOOOOTS of practice). While these mimics seem like individual units, she explains that they are actually a hive mentality, with the blue commanders that Cage killed being extremely important and rare to the alien queen, known as “The Omega”. The Omega can actually manipulate time and every time one of the commanders is killed it resets the day, and then they can repeat what happened, but with fore knowledge so that they can exterminate their prey. Now that Cage’s blood was infused with the dying mimic commander’s, he now has taken its place in the hierarchy and is resetting the day every time he dies. With this power he can now do the impossible. Relive each day and fix the mistakes of the day before, getting them closer and closer to finding this Omega and killing it. Effectively stopping the war.

How can you not like a movie that takes elements of Japanese Manga, genocidal war, Oblivion and mix it in with Groundhog Day? The first time I saw it, I really liked it, but I was kind of tired so I decided to go back for a second viewing. I came to the conclusion that this movie needs a second watch, because you start picking up on all the little details that are in play. Some of the plot holes are suddenly not plot holes with that information and the story flows smoother. With so much repetition as Cage has to battle the SAME villains every single day, it would get boring fast without some humor added to the mix. Rita is great as the straight man (and a gorgeous straight man at that), and Tom Cruise adds his trademark wit and charm to the film, but the real humor addition here is the inclusion of Sergeant Farell. Bill Paxton has come a long way from his days of “Game over man, gave over!” and has bloomed into a rather decent actor with a sort of rugged charm to his aging persona. In his role in “Edge of Tomorrow”, Paxton just chews and chews the scenery in a way that can only be compared to Peter Stormaire, as the over the top Sergeant from Science Hill, Kentucky. Every scene he’s in is made better, just watching him and even Tom speaks behind the scenes about Bill being a fantastic goof to work with.

There are certainly some plot holes, especially concerning the ending, and some of them are there because of trying to tweak a story that already had a coherent ending in the manga. Even so, the movie is a blast to watch as the crew obviously had a blast working together. I never would have paired Emily Blunt and Tom Cruise together, as Emily leans towards light comedies and dramatic period pieces, while Tom is king of the blockbuster role, where he KNOWS (or at least imagines) that he’s king of everything. However, the end result is quite stunning, as her abrasive cynicism and his slightly less wound up charm work well together and they form a surprising almost romance that really WORKS. You can see the toll that it takes on Cage as every day he has to wake up and not only die himself, but watch Rita die every day beside him. You can sort of see just WHY Rita was so cynical and harsh. She had been through the same thing and seen someone else die day in day out for hundreds and hundreds of times.




Rating:

Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi action and violence, language and brief suggestive material




4K Video: Video:

Edge of Tomorrow was originally one of my favorite image disc on the market some 10 years ago, and it still is fantastic. However, the upscaled 4K UHD disc is that much better, and in some ways by a goodly amount. Due to the fact that it’s a 2K upscale with HDR the textural details are not going to show a massive leap. There ARE distinct textural differences, especially when it comes to faces and clothing etc, but CGI heavy scenes are pretty similar. However, where this disc simply blows the old one away is the HDR. The HDR not only punches up skin tones and the red markings on the Angel of Versailles’ armor, but it REALLY augments the brightness of the disc and the black levels. The old Blu-ray looks great, but the heavy use of grays and gunmetal tones makes it problematic for black levels. This 4K UHD disc is nearly impeccable, with black levels so sickeningly deep that you can actually see the metal armor glint and shine with an ebony hue. Fine details in low light elements can be slightly problematic and shows noise uptick, but otherwise this is a superb looking disc that actually looks a lot better than I was expecting it to look considering the visual aesthetics of the film + the fact that it was a 2K upscale.



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Audio:

Now for something a bit more interesting, the legendary audio mix. The Blu-ray sported a 7.1 DTS-HD MA track that was known for being a raw and unfiltered track, with no high pass filters and a jaw dropping 15 second sine wave scene at the opening of the film. The audio mix is still the same kinetic bass bomb that it was before, just with some incredible overhead usage thanks to the Atmos upgrade. You can actually hear things zip overhead before Cage blows it out of the water, or the sound of falling debris raining from above. Surrounds are light and airy, dancing around the sound stage and allowing the listener to just get sucked in. It’s not massively different than the 7.1 mix, but the new Atmos tweaks are appreciated and noticeable.

However, there is a weird remix thing going on. Warner usually isn’t one to do this, but they’ve retweaked the LFE channel la bit, employing a steep 30hz filter. Now, before you start to freak out, it’s going to be a give and take situation, and isn’t NEARLY as egrigious as Indiana Jones, Oblivion or War of the Worlds. Those mixes had a severe volume tamp and a full 30hz filter. This one seems to be more judicious, and despite the legendary sine wave at the beginning, Edge of Tomorrow is not filled with tons and tons of sub 20hz material. The new re tweak attenuates the infamous sine wave a bit so it’s not nearly so brutal on your system (that sine wave was cool, but man alive could it make you bottom out even a $3K sub), and also the Klaxon horn when the tripon comes down is no longer clipping at the source. Also I noticed there is much less low level line noise on the sub 25hz stuff that was present in the Blu-ray. It was awesome loud and heavy, but that track had some built in noise and clipping that was frustrating if you’re nitpicky). Now, for the filter. Honestly, I can barely tell the difference bass wise. The track was mostly 35hz and above for the majority of the time outside the sine wave, and it’s hard to pick up the lack of material except for a few explosions, such as when Cage detonates the claymore and gains his power, and the omega dying. It just feels like it misses just a tad on the very end of the explosion when things dip down sub 25hz for a second or two. So as I said, give and take. The bass is still brutal and gut punching loud, with tons and tons of activity, but they did do a little sub 30hz tweaking and you can hear the difference in a few scenes for a few seconds











Extras:

• HDR PRESENTATION OF THE FILM
• DOLBY ATMOS AUDIO TRACK
• Operation Downfall – Adrenaline Cut
• Storming The Beach
• Weapons Of The Future
• Creatures Not Of This World
• On The Edge With Doug Liman
• Deleted Scenes

Final Score: ​

The Movie is not PERFECT, but it is a barrel of blockbuster fun, with Tom Cruise doing what he does best, and lots of alien carnage. The ending is a bit on the mildly confusing side if you haven’t read the manga, but it is an easily glossed over flaw as the movie is just too fun and too big to be hampered by a little Hollywood logic. I'm honestly surprised at how badly it did in the theaters, which I can only attribute to the horrible marketing that the movie had. Even in home video the marketing falls off the deep end as the name of the movie is barely visible on the case and the tag line "Live, Die, Repeat" takes center stage. Hopefully work of mouth will bring this fantastic flick back into the public's eye and redeem it's theatrical sales. The video is great, the audio very very good, and the same extras recycled onto the new set from the Blu-ray. That being said, this is still one of my favorite popcorn movies and this set is worth the upgrade in my opinion. Those black levels just make me bite my lig and go "mmmmm".


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Bill Paxton, Brendan Gleason
Directed By: Doug Liman
Written By: Christopher McQuarrie, Jez Butterworth
Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1 HEVC
Audio: English: Dolby Atmos (Dolby TrueHD 7.1 Core), French, German DTS-HD MA 7.1, Italian, Hindi, Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Spanish DD 5.1
Subtitles: English SDH, French, German SDH, Italian SDH, Spanish, Cantonese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Hungarian, Korean, Mandarin (Simplified), Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Swedish
Studio: Warner Brothers
Rated: PG-13
Runtime: 113 minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: July 5th, 2022

Recommendation: Great Watch

 

[tripplej]

Thanks for the review. Never heard of this movie, must have missed it when it was released. Will check it out.

 

[Ralph Potts]

Greetings,

Nice review Mike. We are on the same page here. Oh, you mention "Universal" when talking about the tweaking, I know that you know it's Warner Bros. but, wanted to let you know.

 

[Michael Scott]

Greetings,

Nice review Mike. We are on the same page here. Oh, you mention "Universal" when talking about the tweaking, I know that you know it's Warner Bros. but, wanted to let you know.

Lol. I must have been thinking about Oblivion when I wrote that as I was comparing the two. Thanks for the catch

 

[Asere]

Great movie, I own the BD version. Love how the opening rattles your bones. Thanks for the review.