Messer'd Review: 'All You Need is Kill' vs. 'Edge of Tomorrow'

"Your mother must have been disappointed when the abortion only killed your conscience." - Rita Vrataski, All You Need is Kill

Two things. First, the above quote is out of context, but I thought it was something that really summed up the badassery and lives up to the name: FULL METAL BITCH. The character, Rita Vrataski appears as a "Jacket jockey" in Hiroshi Sakurazaka's novel, All You Need is Kill, which was first published in 2004 in its original Japanese, and then translated and printed in English in 2009.

Second thing, I had no idea that the film, Edge of Tomorrow had a previous source material. When I saw the preview for it, I had gone to see the new Godzilla, a movie I don't regret seeing twice because I thought it was a lot of fun despite what any hardcore fans thought of it. That first preview looked really nice. I am really excited for science fiction cycle of interest to be coming back into everyone's view and Tomorrow looked really neat. I even saw past that it was a Tom Cruise film and thought I would give it a chance. It wasn't until I saw a post on Facebook less than a week from release that I discovered the film was actually based on a novel. Finally having the time to check out stuff like source material, I got the book and told myself I couldn't see the film until I read the book. (Also waited for discount day at the theater.)

A few people I know (and I found out) knew of the source material quite well and had been looking forward to this film. Although I nearly experienced them simultaneously, having read two-thirds of the novel only a few hours before I watched it, I feel their pain.

This movie sucked.

The book isn't all that long and I finished it in less than four hours. Sakurazaka draws you in the story immediately, beginning with the main character, Keiji Kiriya, in the middle of battle in his Jacket, dodging Mimic javelins and giving a few thoughts on what death is like because for the first time, he is going to die. What he doesn't know, is that the strange Mimic he kills after being saved by the FULL METAL BITCH--or her other name that I really enjoy, the Valkyrie--he dies and wakes up in his bunk with his finger holding his place in an American detective novel. This happens in a matter of pages and as I read it, I was already excited for the film because what a way to start a movie! 

All of my screenwriting professors (who are making movies and shit, so they know a thing or two) always told me to start in the middle. Come in late and leave early. All those little things about scriptwriting that make a tight story that will never bore the audience. When I continued to read Sakurazaka's book, I felt that it was already a really great script. A hair under 200 pages, the damn thing could have been plopped into Final Draft and boom, done. 

But that's not what the film did.


The movie sets up the whole world, as most movies do: meteors rained down and these creatures overtook our world. The whole thing centers in Germany...what? It was in these first few minutes, as well as seeing that Tom Cruise's character is named William Cage, that told me the only thing that would be like Sakurazaka's book was the big-picture concept. In itself, the concept is really cool, but to lift some of these characters, like Sergeant Farrell, and put them in an utterly westernized version that eliminates the cultural and personal struggles that the characters face during their fight against total extinction.

The book is set in Japan and we learn that the Mimcs (which look more like bloated dead frogs that can shoot high-frequency vibrating javelins from their bodies) mostly live in the water because they are highly evolved starfish. Yep, starfish, so stay with me on this.

Meteors were not the cause of humanity's downfall, but somewhere light years away is a terra-forming foe that created nanobots to reform planets for habitation for their species. The book does a very good job explaining this about halfway through and because the writing is full of so much movement and action, you don't care that the information is coming this late and really, it serves as a turning point for the story, when Keiji finally understands what is happening to him as he has repeated the day he dies about 158 times.

Step in the Valkyrie.

Rita doesn't die within the first five minutes like she does in the movie. She is actually the most badass 22-year-old you will ever read about in your life. She's American, too, and travels with a special force that wins all the battles. Actually, the Valkyrie wins all the battles because Rita figured out how to defeat the Mimics. Her backstory is also fantastic, unlike the lying woman in the movie who can't save herself. Yes, the movie paints Rita as the Angel of Verdun, when it is actually Florida that she saves, but we can't have the US attacked, now can we?

I could speculate that this kind of setting probably stems from the fact that Tom Cruise isn't well liked in places like Germany (or much of Europe, for that matter) because of his relationship with Scientology, but I'll let others come to that conclusion. What I will speculate is that a place like Japan and Africa (which the latter pretty much gets completely annihilated) aren't high-risk enough to have largely American and European audiences care. Mostly American audiences because we only desire to see ourselves repeat D-Day over and over again because it's the only heroic thing we've ever done. (So this pretty much makes the Mimcs Nazis.)

Rita came from humble pig-farming beginnings and oh, the whole coffee thing was her gesture, as it called back to her memories of her father who had told her that she could do whatever she wanted.

(By the way, this looks like my cat.)

So Rita joined the military after her entire family was killed by Mimcs and then lived 211 days over and over again because the large concept that the Hollywood movie took great liberties on (Alpha and Omega), is actually much more detailed and a whole hell of a lot smarter.

The strange Mimic that Cruise kills in the movie is actually much harder to spot because it's smaller than the rest, not some huge überbeast that is obviously different and the need to focus on this particular Mimic never leaves the battlefield. Actually, the scenery never leaves the small clutch of islands that they are trying to protect. Instead of some blood-power that came from getting a bunch of black goo all over you, the time-travel bits make much more sense. The Mimics, since full of nanobots that pour out of them and basically EAT YOU if you're not in a fully sealed armor suit, are full of signals and currents. The Mimic killed, as Rita calls it, is a server. Rita tells Keiji that there are Mimics that have to be killed in a particular order to overcome them, otherwise, the day will continue to be reset as Keiji dies each time before these Mimics are killed because it is the conscious mind that travels backwards in time (much like my favorite movie, X-Men: DoFP) to try and make the outcome different. The Mimics, because they are connected together, are all aware of this and slowly start to hunt Keiji out so the server can kill him and then the Mimics would win.

The concept is still too crazy for many to know, but there are a few more people who do, and like the movie, Rita's Jacket mechanic is in on it. But instead of being that asshat (no offense to the actor, Noah Taylor) from Game of Thrones, the mechanic is a woman. In fact, she's a Native American woman who is an MIT graduate and a completely badass nerd.

But, because Hollywood is Hollywood, Tom Cruise could not be outdone by any number of women. He has to be the hero because Edge of Tomorrow is pretty much the same plot from any Tom Cruise movie ever. Main hero who overcomes struggles saves the damsel in distress and ultimately, the world. EoT has a happy ending and maybe by now, you have guessed that the book does not. The book made me cry because it was simultaneously sad and incredibly beautiful.

Now, before someone gives me that bullcrap about books and film being different types of media, I'm going to say again, that the rule does not apply here. The book could have been very well adapted into a movie with maybe a few small shifts and some changes, but ultimately, it would have been the badass mechsuit fighting movie that had a fantastic story and some really excellent characters. It would have been better than Pacific Rim (although the monsters are much smaller) and Emily Blunt would have been EVEN BETTER than she was in its current iteration. Actually, I was started to dislike her character because she has such little character development other than her lamenting that she's not "the chosen one" for most of the movie, then she has an anticlimactic death that means nothing after the end.  

The more I think about the film, the angrier I get because there was so much potential to make this a good science fiction movie rather than another pre-summer blockbuster attempt where Tom Cruise again tries to prove to us that he is still an action hero. Which I guess he is. I don't like Tom Cruise movies because they are always the same thing and this time (although I really, really enjoyed seeing him die over and over again) I thought things might turn out differently. I was terribly wrong.

I'm not going to take it away from others that the movie was neat and it looked pretty. Some have even written posts about how Blunt as the Angel of Verdun is the heroine we all need. Once you glance at the source material, sadly, you realize that her character is developed no differently than any female co-star in a modern action movie. Her physical features were not exaggerated (thank the gods), but she lost a whole lot of awesome between source material and final product. But those who try to say that this film does something differently, I really can't see that and I'm not sure I would be able to having been exposed to the source material or not.

So rather than seeing Tom Cruise try to relive D-Day over and over as he fights tentacle Nazis and destroys GOD (Alpha and Omega are thrown around a little too often. I'm not religious, but the metaphor definitely hits you over the head too many times), go read Hiroshi Sakurazaka's novel and not the manga adaptation by Ryōsuke Takeuchi that was released in serial at the beginning of this year. Seriously, you can read this book in an afternoon. It might even be cheaper than a full-price ticket. After experiencing both, I sure am glad I spent more on the book than I did on the movie and I didn't have to support much of Tom Cruise's lament that he isn't the one fighting alien Nazis.

Hail Hydra.

All You Need is Kill can be found here.

Edit: If you liked the movie, that's great and I'm glad you found it enjoyable. I just hope you can give a little credit to the source material and its own awesomeness.

Messer'd Review: "Tuf Voyaging" by George R. R. Martin

"Cats are most intelligent animals. In fact, it is well known that all cats have a touch of the psi." - Haviland Tuf, Tuf Voyaging

If you love cats and you love space adventure and you are a Martin fan, then this collection is for you.

Yes, I said, collection, because this book is not a novel at all. Although it portrays itself as one, the book is instead a collection of short stories that Martin published in science fiction magazines since the mid seventies. The book is comprised of seven of these stories and was originally published in 1986. The story begins with The Plague Star, and then going on from there in a chronological order that tells an entire adventure of the very strange space trader, Haviland Tuf and his cats, Havoc and Mushroom (don't get too attached, this is a GRRM novel, after all).

I won't belabor you with the details of what happens in the book because it is pretty exciting. We begin on Tuf's ship, the Cornucopia of Excellent Goods at Low Prices, and we adventure with a mixed group of space academics and stuffy shirts (Celise Waan will definitely get under your skin in the same way Cersei Lannister does) towards something they learn is called, the Ark.

Yes, Ark much like Noah's Ark. The Ark is a defunct biowar seedship of the Ecological Engineering Corps, or, ECC, which was part of the old Federal Empire that originated from Earth. This ship is enormous and has collected various samples of things throughout the universe. This Corps had mastered the art of cloning and genetic mutation, but due to some war that poses questions of ethics when given that kind of power (a theme that motivates the stories), these people no longer exist and the ship has been abandoned for hundreds of years in distant space.

Although this Ark mimics that of the biblical one, Martin's panache for shaking up religious motifs in literature does not disappoint and is actually quite pleasing, but then you also have to consider that these stories precede his Songs of Ice and Fire (or for the uninitiated, Game of Thrones).

I mentioned the distasteful character Celise Waan. Her dialogue reminds one so much of Cersei that you cannot dismiss the connection. Also, in the beginning we are introduced to Rica Dawnstar who could be an early iteration of Gerold Dayne in SoIaF, called the Darkstar. Their characteristics are very similar (except Rica gets to ride a motherfucking DINOSAUR) and throughout the stories, many of the characters feel like early samplings of what characters were to come. Later, Tuf meets a woman referred to as, Ma Spider, named Tolly Mune who has a character development very similar to Jamie Lannister.

Writers (and yes, I do speak for myself) are notorious for weaving our older works into the rest of our writing throughout our life. While it may be hard for some to see the pattern, prolific writers like Martin (and the god of proliferation himself, Stephen King), are very easily traced when it comes to this arc of story development, character building, and themes that unfold throughout.

Over all, I really enjoyed this collection and even some of it got me a little angry, because while Martin is an unsung science fiction writer (because SoIaF dominates it all because of the show) some of his stories have slipped through the cracks. One of which, that caught my attention so well, was how the EEC perish in the first story, The Plague Star.

If you are a Halo fan, there is a chance that you owe that to GRRM. Why? Because The Plague Star was first published in 1985 and the story of the EEC and their war sounds a lot like that of Halo. As the story unfolded, I could not help but see similarities of the fight of the EEC and their enemies, the Hruun (from which I understand them to be sort of like sentient dragons???) that goes all the way into a war of plagues. The EEC rig their ship to unleash a torrent of monsters and disease to the Hruun as they board the Ark, very similar to the first Halo where you encounter the plague-like Flood as you go towards the library, led by a crazy robot (a little similar to the cybertech named Jefri Lion, who aides Rica and Tuf around the derelict ship by lighting their pathways), and ultimately, there are some cool weapons you encounter including plasma turrets, a needler (carried by Rica) and other weapons and concepts (mech suits) that begin to set off alarm bells.

Whether the creators of Halo made these connections, I cannot say, but I will say that the book was an excellent read. Martin does a great job developing characters and immersing you in a fantastic journey about space, cloning, and the ethics of genetic modification. If you are like me, and waiting for book six, then Tuf Voyaging will surely tickle your fancy.

Also, this book has a ton of awesome cats, so yeah. CATS.

Tuf Voyaging is available at most booksellers, and is especially cheap through Amazon Prime.