Edge of Tomorrow Ending- Oy

We finally saw Edge of Tomorrow yesterday. It was a great movie! Well, except for the last two minutes' wonky ending. We were at the Hill Country Galleria and went to dinner afterwards at All-Star Burgers, where other people around us were dissecting the ending as well. Warning- major spoilers ahead!

There are many reviews and blog posts written about this already, so I just toss my own opinion in with their thoughtful contributions. We had to look at others' comments to see how people are either explaining away the inconsistencies or simply shaking their heads and giving the film credit for being great up until the ending.

Let's assign days to simplify things for purposes of discussion. Assume Monday is the day that Cage flies in to see the general, gets arrested, knocked out and sent to participate in the invasion. Tuesday is the day of the invasion.

There are 2 inconsistencies:

1) Every time he dies on Tuesday, Cage resets time to Monday at the moment he wakes up post-arrest.  The last time he dies (after killing the omega on Tuesday), time is reset to EARLIER Monday morning, prior to Cage meeting the general.

2) Cage kills the omega in the early hours of Tuesday morning, but on the last reset, the general says there was an electrical event in Paris in the early hours of MONDAY morning and there will be no invasion on Tuesday.

The best explanation of Inconsistency #1 we saw is that the day is always reset to the last time he woke up on Monday. Since he is never arrested in the final scenario, he last wakes after a nap in the helicopter on the way to meet the general. Did he wake up in the helicopter in the opening scene? I can't remember. If so, that makes perfect sense. Otherwise, it's sort of random to assume that, but I can go with this theory.

Inconsistency #2 has no reasonable explanation. I'll go with the general feeling of other moviegoers that because the mimics are controlling time, the death of the omega is absolute, so while the humans who died on Tuesday are alive at reset on Monday, the omega and mimics are still dead. (Although, when Cage is controlling time, HE is always alive at reset. Gah.)

There is then a critical issue though- if it's Monday and the omega died on Tuesday, outside the time continuum, WHEN did the omega die? I don't know how they could explain this, but having it die on MONDAY is not correct. Since it died on TUESDAY, it either is still alive on Monday or it just magically disappeared without a trace on Monday. The general can't say that there was an electrical event at the Louvre on Monday. There simply wasn't. That happened on Tuesday.

I like the reviewer who said that it would have made more sense to have Cage and all the others die in the battle at the Louvre along with the omega and the other mimics. It felt right, even though it was sad. Cage made the long and incredible journey from frightened media officer to hero soldier who saves the world. Time should have continued. The invasion should have happened, this time with absolutely no mimics and no casualties. The armed forces would have found the dead heroes in Paris and they could have received posthumous accolades galore. And they would have been amazed at Cage's ability to have defeated the omega, since he had no combat training at all. (Or... had he? HA.)

It felt really cheesy to have everything tied up with a happy ending bow and that Tom Cruise Hollywood smile. Meh.

We recommend just leaving the theater after the mimics die. Yep. Just stand up and walk out. You'll be very happy with that! :)