An alternate ending forEdge of Tomorrowalmost added an extra layer of time travel complication for Tom Cruise’s hero. Christopher McQuarrie wrote a bunch of Tom Cruise movies before becoming the director he collaborates with the most. McQuarrie has directed everyMission: Impossiblemovie since 2015’sRogue Nation, in addition to acting as screenwriter and producer on projects likeTop Gun: Maverick. Another of their key collaborations isEdge of Tomorrow, a sci-fi thriller where Cruise’s character Cage is doomed to repeat the same day over and over after becoming infected with some unique alien DNA.
Despite a positive critical response (it currently stands at 91% onRotten Tomatoes), the blockbuster was considered a financial disappointment in 2014. Even so, there is still hope fora possibleEdge of Tomorrow 2,and love for the film only seems to grow with each passing year.Edge of Tomorrow’sending and time travel ruleshave both inspired debate too, with some feeling the story wraps itself up far too neatly.This finale sees Cage blowing up the Omega alien and saving the world, though he’s the only one who remembers what happened.
Edge of Tomorrow Cast and Character Guide
Doug Liman’s Edge of Tomorrow movie surrounds Tom Cruise with a talented cast of actors, many of which being veterans in the science fiction genre.
What Happened In Edge Of Tomorrow’s Alternate Ending - Changes Explained
McQuarrie wanted to add a dark twist to Edge of Tomorrow’s finale
The movie’s story kicks into gear when Cage is killed by the Omega - only to become infected with its time-altering blood. This means thateach time Cage died inEdge of Tomorrow, the day would automatically reset. It’s only when he is unwittingly given a blood transfusion that he loses this ability, so during the finale, he and his comrades only have one shot to find and destroy the Omega. Speaking withFilm School Rejectsback in 2014, McQuarrie revealed an alternate finale forEdge of Tomorrowthat would have made thingsevenmore complicated.
When Tom loses the power, and they go to Paris, and Tom is preparing the team as they go into Paris where he’s telling them the rules of the movie, he tells the team everything the audience knows. Basically, he told them: ‘Kill as many Mimics as you want but do not kill an Alpha. If you kill an alpha we’ll be right back here having this conversation, and we won’t even know it. The enemy will know we’re coming and they’ll kill us all.’ When they get to Paris there’s the classic horror movie scene where one of them gets separated from the group, and he gets attacked by an Alpha and kills it. As he kills it, you see the Omega reset the day and you see the point-of-view of the villain. We cut to the plane and hear the same speech all over again. This time when he gets to the line, ‘you may bet they’ll have a plan to kill us all,’ the ship gets hit. As the audience, you realize the enemy knows they’re coming. The problem was you were so exhausted by the time you got to that point.
Edge of Tomorrowhas to barrel through a lot of exposition to set up the plot, but by the time the final act arrives, the objective is very straightforward: kill the Omega or die trying.McQuarrie’s original finale reads like a delightfully dark twist, but it was based on an earlier version of the story that was also darkerin tone. When the movie became lighter and funnier, this reveal would have been an unwelcome note of irony just as the end is in sight.
Why Edge Of Tomorrow Didn’t Use The Alternate Ending
One thing the Tom Cruise time travel adventure didn’t need was MORE exposition
It’s almost an unavoidable consequence of any time travel movie that there will be reams of exposition about how the process works.Edge of Tomorrowis terrifically entertaining and well-paced, but it still has the obligatory scenes of characters explaining how the Omega blood works or the almost video game-style rules surrounding the use of time travel.Edge of Tomorrowdropped this alternate ending plan because it required yet more exposition to work, and as McQuarrie said, viewers were “exhausted” by this point.
There’s an intensity to Edge of Tomorrow’s final chapter because there is now consequence to every single death; there are no more loops or resets.
By the third act, audiences are ready for the story to resolve, so another reset and explanation for why the reset has happened sounds, frankly, tedious. There’s an intensity toEdge of Tomorrow’sfinal chapter because there is now consequence to every single death; there are no more loops or resets.Having the Omega restart the mission with none of the heroes being aware would have added more layers to a narrative that simply didn’t need itby that point.
How Edge Of Tomorrow’s Alternate Ending Made The Movie More Confusing
Edge of Tomorrow’s time travel rules have already come under fire
McQuarrie also stated he always wanted the film to end with Cage in the helicopter, and the lingering question of whether he actually experienced the events of the story.The logic of this ending is confusing, since Cage has suddenly reset to daysbeforehis previous save point, and the movie offers no explanation as to whythis has happened. It’s still an emotionally satisfying note to close on, but it feels like the story cheats to get there. McQuarrie’s alternate finale would have made the timeline even muddier and harder to track.
One of the reasons Cruise and McQuarrie’s films tend to connect with viewers is that they work hard to keep audiences emotionally invested. They would rather have the story made emotional as opposed to logical sense, and havingEdge of Tomorrowclose with mankind defeating the aliens and Cage reuniting with Emily Blunt’s Rita is a crowd-pleasing way to cap off things off. This is despite the myriad plotholes it opens up, andthe introduction of an additional time loop late into the third act would have only raised further questions.
Edge of Tomorrowis based on the Japanese light novelAll You Need Is Killby Hiroshi Sakurazaka.
Edge of Tomorrow’scurrent ending might not be perfect, but as per McQuarrie’s thoughts on the film, a “harsh” finale wouldn’t have worked either. The ending also leaves the door open for a sequel, considering Cage still has some Omega blood inside him; whether or not it ever happens is another question.
Edge of Tomorrow
Cast
Edge of Tomorrow features Tom Cruise as Major Bill Cage, an officer unversed in battle, who becomes ensnared in a time loop during an alien invasion. As Cage relives the same day repeatedly, he teams up with a skilled warrior, played by Emily Blunt, to alter the course of the war.
