After kicking off the blockbuster season around a year ago with Oblivion, Tom Cruise will return this summer for yet another science-fiction actioner and today brings a new look at the project. Coming from director Bourne‘s Doug Liman (who recently signed up to helm the Tom Hardy-led Splinter Cell), Edge of Tomorrow looks to mix a Groundhog Day concept with a wild premise, as Cruise takes on a character that must defend Earth from an alien attack by repeatedly dying and going back into combat.
In a recent Q&A, Liman says we can expect something far different for the actor. “The world has seen every single movie he’s ever done, so it’s great to have the opportunity to come up with a character he hasn’t played before, and a Tom Cruise you haven’t seen before. You know, he’s a total coward in this movie, all the way through,” he says. “He squeals in this movie out of fear, and he does an amazing squeal. Other movie stars, in my experience, would be more hesitant in being that vulnerable.” Check out the second trailer below for the film also starring Emily Blunt, Bill Paxton, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, and Jeremy Piven.
The story unfolds in a near future in which a hive-like alien race, called Mimics, have hit the Earth in an unrelenting assault, shredding great cities to rubble and leaving millions of human casualties in their wake. No army in the world can match the speed, brutality or seeming prescience of the weaponized Mimic fighters or their telepathic commanders. But now the world’s armies have joined forces for a last stand offensive against the alien horde, with no second chances.
Lt. Col. Bill Cage (Cruise) is an officer who has never seen a day of combat when he is unceremoniously demoted and then dropped—untrained and ill-equipped—into what amounts to little more than a suicide mission. Cage is killed within minutes, managing to take an Alpha down with him. But, impossibly, he awakens back at the beginning of the same hellish day, and is forced to fight and die again…and again. Direct physical contact with the alien has thrown him into a time loop—dooming him to live out the same brutal combat over and over.
But with each pass, Cage becomes tougher, smarter, and able to engage the Mimics with increasing skill, alongside Special Forces warrior Rita Vrataski (Blunt), who has lain waste to more Mimics than anyone on Earth. As Cage and Rita take the fight to the aliens, each repeated battle becomes an opportunity to find the key to annihilating the alien invaders and saving the Earth.
Edge of Tomorrow opens on June 6th, 2014.