Hopefully you’ve gotten a chance to go see the excellent movie Edge of Tomorrow over the weekend. I took some time on Friday to go see the movie a second time, and I still love the film. Now that the movie is out I wanted to go into a deep dive into how the source material All You Need is Kill compares to the Edge of Tomorrow. This is going to be very spoiler heavy so don’t read on if you haven’t seen the film yet.
1) Major Bill Cage and Private Keiji Kiriya are entirely different
Keiji Kiriya is a Japanese soldier in the UDF, fighting for his country, as this story takes place in Japan. Keiji signed up, and wanted to fight against the mimics, while Cage was an American that never wanted to fight. By the time they do wind up fighting, they are both new to it all, but Keiji wanted to be there while Cage was constantly looking for a way out.
Keiji was also trained by Sgt. Farrell, while Cage was trained by Rita. For the most part Keiji didn’t have anywhere near as much interaction with Rita as Cage did, until the last few resets. Keiji was going to forgo everything to make himself the best he could, while it seemed obvious that Cage had fallen for Rita and was training in part because he loved her and wanted to save her.
2) Rita Vrataski from All You Need is Kill would bitch slap Emily Blunt
Don’t get me wrong, Emily Blunt was awesome in Edge of Tomorrow. She was one of the best parts of the film, but Rita Vrataski from All You Need is Kill is the real Full Metal Bitch. In the novella, Rita had killed more Mimics on her own before she gained the ability to “reset the day” and became a famous war hero. Once she gained the Mimics ability she got even better, going through several hundred attempts at the battle of Verdan. The movie version of Rita had her first battle at Verdan. She learned how to be really good, but I don’t think she would hold a candle to her novella counterpart.
Another significant change was the age of the character. The Rita in the book was somewhere between 19 and 22 years old. She signed up for the UDF illegally at 16, and fought battles for years before Verdan ever happened. I don’t think they ever say how old Emily Blunt is supposed to be, but she’s definitely older than 22, let alone 19.
3) The Mimics are much scarier in the movie
The book described them as giant bloated frogs with 4 legs, a tale, and a hard endoskeleton. I have no idea on how to describe the movie version. It seemed like they crossed a giant metal dog with a psycho octopus, and gave it the speed of a cheetah. The book Mimics are also very fast, but they don’t have the same tentacle action going on, that the movie version has.
The hierarchy between the mimics are very different as well. The movie has normal Mimics that seem to be grunt soldiers, and Alpha Mimics that are the Generals in a battle. Then there is the Omega Mimic that is the pretty much the King of all Mimics. If an Alpha dies, the Omega Mimic will “reset the day”, and use the info that it gained to help win the war next time.
In the book you didn’t have an Alpha and an Omega. The book has Antennae’s and Servers. At every battle there are several Antennae and one Server. The Antennae kind of control the standard grunt Mimics, and send information to the Server. If the Server dies, it “resets the day” and then passes that info onto the other Antennae the next time around. In order to win the battle the UDF has to kill all of the Antennae in the area, and then the Server so it can’t send the info anywhere and properly “reset the day”.
While this sounds similar, it’s very different, in that there is only 1 Omega, while there are many Servers. This has a large difference on humanities ability to win a battle, and the progression of the war.
4) The War, and our world are very different
In the book, the Mimics landed over 20 years before the battle in Japan. The Mimics were sent by an alien race looking to colonize a planet. They didn’t know if there were sentient life forms on this planet, and they didn’t have time to check. They sent the Mimics to help terraform earth to make it more habitable for them when they get here. The Mimics landed and initially were very peaceful. The problem was that they eat earth and excrement poison gas that was transforming the planet. Humanity attacked and tried to stop them, which started the war. The Mimics evolved, and got smarter and stronger with better weapons and started to win.
In the movie, they landed 5 years before the battle of Europe. There really isn’t any info on what they are doing or why, or what started the fight. We just know that there was a lot less time for this all to escalate so far.
Because of the time difference, the world of the book and the world of the movie are very different. Having a World War for over 20 years where parts of the world are wiped out, means that you start running out of stuff. Some things become extinct, and can only be read about in books. The novella version of Rita being so young, only knew of war growing up, and it made her a very different person from the one we have seen in the movie.
Another distinction in the war is that in the movie, we only won a battle because the Mimics let us think we won. They regroup and change tactics to make it easier to pummel us later. In the novella humanity legitimately won those battles. The movie definitely had a much bleaker outlook on our prospects of survival in the end.
5) The endings are drastically different
In the novel because Keiji and Rita have both stolen the alien’s abilities at some point, they both act as Antennae. Unfortunately that means that the day will keep resetting as long as both of them are alive. The only way for the day to end is if one of them dies. So at the end of everything they have an all-out slugfest with each other to see who is worthy of surviving the day and fighting for humanity. Keiji winds up killing Rita, and goes on to become the next hero of the UDF for the battles to come.
In the movie, they walk into a situation where neither is going to get out alive, and they have to sacrifice their lives to save humanity, but Tom Cruise gets the Omega’s blood on him, and regains the power to reset the day on his death. In doing so everyone that dies is alive again, with a fairy tale ending. The war is over and humanity can celebrate.
Nerd-Base 
I think there is an error at the end of the movie: if Cage resets time to destroy the Omega, then Omega still be alive like everyone else, but Omega is dead, as other mimics. How is that possible?
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I kind of wonder that myself. If his day reset, then why didn’t everything just reset? Kind of weird.
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´cuz they totally wanted to make an happy end.
Therefore they sacrificed the logic.
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Probably a shift between different dimensions in the timeline. You don’t really have logic with time travel anyways; we’ve never done it, therefore we don’t know exactly how it works.
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It’s because now tom gained the ultimate power of the Omega and so when the day is set, it begins with him, not the omega. However, resetting the day doesn’t care who lived or died . .everyone is reset. So the Omega should’ve been reset as well on its death. I will go with my first scenario. Tom having the omega power and setting the day starts with him not the dead omega.
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lol ik im replying to a 3 year old comment but whatev
Cage gained the power of the omega, if everything was reset then technically there would be 2 omega in the same place. So maybe only 1 omega can exist at one time, so when cage went back in time his omega ability canceled out the other omega and shut it down.
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In the book, they didn’t actually reset or travel through time. They sent the memories of what had happened to the past.
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Read the manga. Then think about about, suffer headaches, take pain meds, think more, then you get it. In EoT, the way he gained the ability to reset the day was through the blood of the Alpha. In the manga, The protagonist gained the ability by killing an antennae mimic, which got him stuck in the loop since those mimics emit some kind of radiation that the human brain (unfortunately his) picked up, thus giving him the ability to reset the day through the loop. The mimics used this ability to get stronger by resetting the day and giving info the the Lead Mimic. The only way to stop the loop was to kill all servers and antennae mimics. The end of the manga ended up with Rita and the protag. fighting each other since the loop would continue unless one died(they were both exposed to that radiation). The movie made a little sense in that when he killed the Head Honcho Mimic, he got the blood in his system, thus creating the loop again. But since the Omega and the Alphas (who had the blood which reset the day) were all dead, the loop would continue without them since they were no longer part of the system. It’s confusing, but it makes sense…at least to me it does.
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It was a summer movie so they wanted a happy ending. I don’t think that was the path they planned to go with!
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well the omega died when Cage blew it up so by fusing with it’s blood (i guess) he basically became and Omega at that instant and reversed the time. At the same moment he “woke up” in the past was the time that Omega died (again i guess). because it wasn’t the Omega that reversed time but Cage himself. now it’s anyone’s guess if he still has the power of an Omega.
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biggest error is the cheat of having edges male protagonist being bobby CAGE from the beginning, killer cage is the biggest cycle to the war is over plot summary period at the end of the book. also didn’t watch the movie but i’m guess there was no talk of complementary green tea!
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Time resets not to revive the Omega, but to revive Cage, because Omega was already dead. With the Omega dead, Cage would not have been sent to the battlefield as a traitor, because the Mimics would’ve never even arrived on Earth, therefore he wouldn’t need to meet the General or be in the army in the first place. HOWEVER, for humans, time resets to the last time they woke up, which in this case was in the helicopter, as the moment when he was tased was deleted. But for him to wake up on the helicopter, the war would have to have happened. So, the explanation is that the Mimics fell all of a sudden. The one who had to be protected by the time reset was Cage, not the Omega.
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Wait, wait, so do this mean he permanently has these powers? like unless he gets a blood transfusion, he could die of old age, over and over?
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Hey, they only said that the Omega resets time after the Alpha is killed, but they did not say the Omega can reset time on its own, it is not evolved to do so (thus the Alpha is still alive when Cage drops the bomb).
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Dude, this is America, all heros have to get laid, super hero get multiple laid
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The movie is based upon the novel, not on the comic (manga).
The manga and novel have notable differences.
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Agreed. I wrote this based on the differences between the Novel and the Movie. I used images from the Manga because there aren’t any for the Novel.
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If you apply logic to a lot of Asian ideas, be prepared to find large unexplained phenomenon. The Japanese are notorious for doing this in Manga, an event occurs, there may be no logical explanation but it happens and the Manga picks up from that point. As Rygel in Farscape said in “I Shrink therefor I am” – “I don’t assume the universe obeys my preconceptions, but I know a frelling fact when it hits me in the face.”
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Ha! Farscape reference. I love it!
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Awwww, so Rita dies in the end in the novel…how the hell does that happen!? T_T wasn’t she more badass than ze dude… tsk…tsk… and I was planning on trying to read it… guess that plan is scrapped… *sigh
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rita has 150 or so loops before here co dies when she breaks free, Keiji over 200 hundred where he gets his hands an a giant ax to save ammo from ritas mechanic, he talks to her on his last to loops, they drink real coffee bang, early morning raid happens on the second of the 2, he had fought beside her for over 150 loops gains more and more experience rita attacks him after they take care of the mimics back up loop system, with intent to kill so keiji fights back fierce fight both get non clean hits until keiji lands a decisive blow holding her while she dies he tells her he loves her, rita had red armor and was FM Bitch, while grieving keiji goes on a rampage, picks up the nickname Killer cage dawns blue armor, and becomes the hero in place of Rita the war needs to win,( book in Japan, rita is a antenna only one could live and she wanted to pass on the torch)
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Rita had 200 loops and Keiji 150, but he won because he was watching her fighting all the time so he knew what to do.
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Rita had 211 before stopping the loop and Keiji had 159 and everything sorted out on the 160th. I am so bummed that Rita died…
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Because Rita warred and battle solely to kill mimics, she is second to none in dealing with mimics, the novel even implied that Keiji’s skill is still behind Rita’s.
The difference is, Rita learned how to kill mimics by killing mimics, she perfected the art of killing mimics. Keiji on the other hand, learn how to kill mimics by mimicking Rita, He saw her fight countless of times in the 160 iterations of his loops and fried her fighting style into his brain. Thus why, he is not only an expert on how mimics fight, but also on how Rita fights. This is how he bested Rita.
Btw, 200+ loops is Rita’s experience, Keiji’s is 160 loops. He had steeper learning curve than Rita, because he already have a model for his fighting style. I also didn’t think they bang in the novel. It could have been implied, but if so, it is very very subtly hinted….
And please… read the novel… I’m not saying it is better than the film… but it is one hell of a read.
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Rita want to die; because despite the explanation, the ending of the book is misleading. Do note that Rita, unlike Keiji have Never die before, her 200+ loops is the Server try to reset time to avoid dying and she still kill it every single time plus the 158 times of Keiji’s loops which she does not remember. Time does not reset when Keiji die, it reset when the Server got killed, Keiji’s brain just happen to have the ability to keep a continous memory proof is on loop 159 when Keiji kill it, time also reset when he’s still alive. (Which mean Rita not remember the loop make no sense since her brain should also be conditioned to recognize the loop.) Either way, She kill it plus all backup 158 times, time still reset, when Keiji kill it, time reset, which mean at some point, her brain degraded to the point when she is now count as the back up and unless she die (which never happened before) the loop can not be broken. It’s not one of us has to die, Keiji always dieded, remember. Also she told him to escape the loop before his brain “become like mine”. She looped way more than him.
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Rita want to die; because despite the explanation, the ending of the book is misleading. Do note that Rita, unlike Keiji have Never die before, her 200+ loops is the Server try to reset time to avoid dying amd she still kill it every single time plus the 158 times of Keiji’s loops which she does not remember. Time does not reset when Keiji die, it reset when the Server got killed, Keiji’s brain just happen to have the ability to keep a continous memory proof is on loop 159 when Keiji kill it, time also reset when he’s still alive. (Which mean Rita not remember the loop make no sense since her brain should also be conditioned to recognize the loop.) Either way, She kill it plus all backup 158 times, time still reset, when Keiji kill it, time reset, which mean at some point, her brain degraded to the point when she is now count as the back up and unless she die (which never happened before) the loop can not be broken. It’s not one of us has to die, Keiji always dieded, remember. Also she told him to escape the loop before his brain “become like mine”. She looped way more than him.
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I liked both. The novel had a lot of back story and satisfying techno-babble regarding jacket mechanics and warfare. I felt the movie was more elegant in character de elopement by virtue of Cruis’s performance; exquisitely nuanced.
They DEFINITELY banged. “The next morning Jin Yonabaru woke up on the floor. He did not sleep in the top bunk.” Means Kaije wasnt there to help his drunk butt to bed because he was busy getting busy with the angel of death. It isn’t subtle at all! It describes him falling on his face because he isn’t used to walking up in her place.
And squill, buddy, you need punctuation.
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i know its not big of a deal but im kinda bothered by the fact that rita as a sword and not a giant axe of frecking 200lbs and she is only using it for like 50% of the movie cause after that she just has a gun like everyone else and in addition because she doesn’t have her time-loop power anymore, she pretty much just is a little more powerful but still just a normal soldier like everyone else!
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