Year after year, our cynicism towards Hollywood blockbusters only grows stronger; with mediocre mainstream cinema now undeniably at its most prevalent, masses of media buffs have resorted to cheaper and stronger in-home entertainment. In 2014, a temporary beacon of hope arrived...in the form of Doug Liman’s Edge of Tomorrow, which completely flabbergasted the standard by combining visceral summer popcorn fun with the following rarities: an emotional narrative with tangible stakes, a humanly flawed protagonist, but most of all: powerful thematic coherence. The kind of things that stimulate our minds, stir our souls, and spend years echoing in our subconscious.

On the surface, the film chronicles the attempt to fend off an invincible alien attack, but is first and foremost a tale of human experience, placing us in the eyes of a cowardly major thrust into active combat, forced to learn from his mistakes through various time loops, and gain the limitless courage expected of a soldier. The film’s seamlessly intricate weaving of character and theme helps not only sustain the world’s stakes, but equally that of Major Cage’s, maintaining a palpable tension from his every attempted resistance and enlightening character interaction. Liman’s focus on facial reaction shots and surreal sound editing within his battle sequences helps key us into his frantic mindset, helping his audience emotionally share and recount similar incidents of immature apprehension and faintheartedness. Its Groundhog Day-esque structure proves equally beneficial, creating an involving atmosphere of growth and making prime utilization of set-ups and payoffs for greater thematic advantage.

Our needs and expectations for this protagonist are established with minimal effort, with the comic Sergeant Farrell working as film’s moral mouthpiece, declaring that fate can be controlled through readiness and discipline, despite Cage’s initial physical & mental incapacity to believe so. However, his encounters with Sergeant Vrataski say otherwise, whose battle-hardened self has defied the artificial fate established by the aliens, becoming a renowned “angel” figure not just for the military landscape, but for Cage’s own mindscape, honing him into the common humanity and inevitable human sacrifices of the battlefield. In the latter half, Liman makes surprising reversals of audience expectation to further underscore Cage’s new synthesis of growth: facing death on the London bridge rather than running, avoiding Rita’s orders not for his own life but rather her’s, and exposing the moral flaws of his stubborn superior rather the latter’s initial exposure of his.

Simple, powerful storytelling techniques that confirm Edge of Tomorrow as a perfectly cathartic encapsulation of the hero’s journey that establishes humans, not inferior pressures and processes, as the Alpha and Omega of their own fates. If future filmmakers can prove to exhibit this level of care for their blockbuster narratives, then maybe we can love them again.