In 2014, perhaps the best sci-fi movie in a summer full of terrific sci-fi movies was Doug Liman‘s Edge of Tomorrow, the darkly comedic tale of a coward (Tom Cruise) made to fight in an Earth vs. Aliens war and bestowed with the strange “gift” of being able to relive a day after dying, like a hyper-violent, gallows-humor-filled Groundhog Day. The movie—later retitled Live Die Repeat for some reason—didn’t perform as well at the box office as some had hoped, but it did well enough to warrant a sequel, and according to director Doug Liman, said sequel will be smaller, and will be the end of the saga.
In an interview with MTV’s Happy Sad Confused podcast (via Collider), Liman shared his idea for a sequel, going introspective more than big ol’ spectacular.
I think what people tend to do with sequels is they just make them bigger. And I’m like, ‘No, a sequel should be smaller.’ You did the first film as sort of the ad campaign for the sequel, so now you don’t need as much action, and in the case of Edge of Tomorrow, people obviously loved the comedy and they loved the situation … so we can do way more focused on Tom’s character and Emily Blunt’s character, and there’s a third character in the sequel that’s gonna for sure steal the movie. We can focus on that. I don’t need an action sequence every two minutes. People usually think the other way about sequels, a lot of times there’s not any story left for the sequel.
That’s a fairly novel approach to such a movie. Indeed, most sequels blow up the spectacle more than deliver on story. I will say, though, for my money, this year’s Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2 made a much more insular, character-driven story while still having lots of effects and vistas and action.
Liman went on to say that the sequel—given the unruly name of Live Die Repeat and Repeat—will be the end of the story, another fairly refreshing angle. Most movie studios are trying to launch a lengthy, sustained franchise. “There’s the completion of the story we set up in the first movie,” Liman said, “and the relationships between Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt—because, remember, at the end of the first movie, she doesn’t know who he is, and that’s gonna launch us into an amazing new direction.”
So the war definitely isn’t over, and there’s going to be a scene-stealing new character, but will focus more intently on relationships. It’s actually a pretty cool approach to a movie, I think. And Cruise and Blunt’s repartee in the first one was easily the best part of it, so things seem to be shaping up rather nicely.
What do you think about more edges of more tomorrows? Let us know in the comments below!
Images: Warner Bros
Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Twitter!
