Few blockbusters have been as acclaimed in recent years as ‘Edge of Tomorrow’, the stupendous science fiction film starring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt. However, the end of it is still under debate and many consider it the weakest of the entire function, but the truth is that it was about to be very different.
“We weren’t interested in doing that”
Christopher McQuarrieco-writer of ‘At the edge of tomorrow’, explained at the time how he wanted to end the film and what was the reason why they did not want to bet on an unhappy ending despite thinking that this would probably have convinced the public more:
I have always defended that it has to end in the helicopter. You have to ask yourself again, “Did the movie happen? Did any of this actually happen?” To do that, there were a million things to do with the writing and visually to serve that ending. That gave us a lot of challenges and discussions. a lot to get across what the movie needed emotionally. I know the ending was somewhat controversial, with some people not liking it. I think the only way to make those people happy would be to end the movie in a way that wasn’t happy. We weren’t interested in doing that, it had to end in a way that wasn’t harsh.
In addition, he had no problem going into detail about what that alternative ending of the movie was like and also in the reason I didn’t think it would work too well either:
When Tom loses power, and they go to Paris, and Tom is preparing the team as they go to Paris where he is telling them the rules of the movie, he tells the team everything the public knows. Basically, he told them, ‘Kill as many as you want, but don’t kill an Alpha. If you kill an Alpha, we’ll be here again having this conversation, and we won’t even know it. The enemy will know we are coming and they will kill us all.
When they arrive in Paris there is the classic horror movie scene where one of them gets separated from the group, and is attacked by an Alpha and killed. When he kills him, the Omega is seen to start over and the villain’s point of view is seen. We go to the shot and hear the same speech again. This time, when he gets to the line: “You can bet they’ll have a plan to kill us all,” the ship is hit. As an audience, you realize that the enemy knows that he is coming. The problem was that you were so exhausted when you got to that point…
For my part, neither of the two endings drives me crazy, since surely what suited the movie best is that Cruise’s character sacrificed himself in a heroic act to save others. The outcome ends up being an intermediate solution that does not end up working too well. Also, I’m starting to lose faith that we’ll ever see that sequel we were promised years ago…
In Espinof:
‘Al filo del mañana’ is broadcast tonight on laSexta starting at 10:30 p.m.