Illegitimi non carborundum

Okay so there are a lot of things to like about this movie. I mean a lot, which is why it’s kind of baffling to me that it kind of fizzled in the box office. There’s Emily Blunt being beyond kick-ass. Really intensely cool battle scenes. Time travel. Tom Cruise’s on screen death on at least a dozen occasion. In terms of sci-fi recently, there hasn’t been much but superheroes (which has developed its own little genre) and what has been there has been kind of weak. It’s even got some really genuinely funny moments. This is a good movie, but I have several major problems with it, outside of the fact that I really don’t like Tom Cruise.

The first is the love story. It’s not a problem of chemistry, because the chemistry between them is actually kind of great, highly antagonistic though it may be. It’s just a problem of the fact that all of the deep moments are kind of swallowed by the time loop and the movie preys on relationship development that isn’t actually there. And you have to realize that the sheer number of times Emily Blunt shot Tom Cruise in the face is staggering (and wonderful). I can see it coming from his side. I can see unrequited. I don’t see it the other way. At all.

The second is the ending. Because it had the right ending. The entire movie has death after death that doesn’t count. Then there’s a huge deal made of the fact that this death counts. They have one of those moments where it’s acknowledge that neither of them get out of this. That the mission is more important than the people. And they die beating the enemy.

And then the fucking undo it, back up again and have the aliens just leave. Which doesn’t even make sense within their own convoluted mythology. Not to mention it leaves this horrible alien menace able to go on and keep killing people, but a least not on our planet so it’s fine, right? NO, IT’S NOT. FOR JUST A SECOND I THOUGH THIS MOVIE HAD SOME BALLS AND THEN NOPE, YET ANOTHER COP-OUT “FEEL GOOD” ENDING.

Those of you who’ve hung around realize by now that this is probably my biggest writing pet peeve. I just want people to live with consequences. I don’t want heroic deaths erased. It makes the movie feel empty and contrived in a way that it wouldn’t have if you’d just ended the damn move five minutes earlier.