[[quoteright:349:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/edge_of_tomorrow.png]]
[[caption-width-right:349:''"Come find me when you wake up."'']]
->''"Battle is the great redeemer. The fiery crucible in which the only true heroes are forged. The one place where all men truly share the same rank, regardless of what kind of parasitic scum they were going in."''
-->-- '''Master Sergeant Farell''' to '''William Cage'''

''Edge of Tomorrow''[[note]]alternatively titled ''Live Die Repeat''[[/note]] is a 2014 American sci-fi[=/=]action film [[FilmOfTheBook based on the light novel]] ''Literature/AllYouNeedIsKill''[[note]]Which was used as the title for the Japanese release[[/note]] by Hiroshi Sakurazaka. The film stars Creator/TomCruise and Creator/EmilyBlunt; it was directed by Creator/DougLiman and written by Creator/ChristopherMcQuarrie, and produced by Creator/WarnerBros

[[TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture In the near future]], an alien force known as the Mimics have invaded Earth. Humanity has fought the Mimics for years; when the planetary war reaches a seeming standstill, the military raises a massive force for an all-out assault meant to drive the Mimics back for good. Major William Cage (Cruise), an American PR officer, is roped into joining the first wave. The military strike fails in spectacular fashion, but Cage does manage to kill a strange Mimic during the assault. The blood that spews from the dying Mimic dissolves Cage's body; he dies on the beach where the strike began.

...and awakens the day before the strike.

Cage is now trapped in a GroundhogDayLoop of continuously repeating events; his only way out is with the help of Rita Vrataski (Blunt), [[OneManArmy a war hero]] who helped the military achieve a massive victory over the Mimics. Cage and Vrataski work together across numerous cycles of [[TagLine Live-Die-Repeat]] to improve Cage's abilities as a soldier and figure out how his predicament can ultimately push back the invaders for good.

This is probably the first time ever that Hollywood adapted a Japanese LightNovel. It only adapts the basic premise, though--past the first act, the film and the book follow vastly different storylines.

Warner Bros. announced a sequel, ''Live Die Repeat and Repeat'' in April 2016. When it will come out given the director and its leads are busy, [[DevelopmentHell it's up in the air.]]
----
!! Trope. Example. Repeat.
* TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture: The date is never stated[[note]]Website/{{Wikipedia}} says the invasion began in 2015 and the events of the movie takes place in 2020[[/note]], but except for the powered armor, the dropships, and Dr. Carter's holographic table, all of the technology seen on-screen is present in the modern day. During the opening sequence, we see clips of several actual news networks, as well as then-current French president François Hollande. The powered armor is even possible now, given [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V87lSB5XWVs Raytheon's prototypes]] and the U.S. Army's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBcM8161ihE TALOS armor]] research. The cost of producing them on a mass scale and deploying them against opponents that can be fought more easily than Mimics--like fellow humans--makes the idea less than viable, though.
* AbandonedPlayground: Visible at the deserted trailer park behind the enemy lines.
* AchievementsInIgnorance: When Cage runs out of ammo for the first time, he appropriates a claymore mine he noticed another soldier strapping to his Jacket. ''Anyone'' with ''any'' knowledge of explosives ''whatsoever'' would know that a claymore going off will kill ''anything'' within a few feet of it -- the stamp just shows where the bulk of the shrapnel will be hurled -- and seen it as something to stay the hell away from; the soldier strapped it on as a ''[[TakingYouWithMe last-ditch suicide attack]]''. Cage, being literal ArmchairMilitary, sees the "FRONT TOWARD ENEMY" stamp, grabs it and points the stamp at an attacking Alpha Mimic, believing he can use it as a improvised close-range weapon. It kills them both, but splatters him with the Alpha's gore, giving him the looping ability. He only became TheOnlyOne capable of defeating the Mimics because he is ''literally'' TooDumbToLive!
* ActionFilmQuietDramaScene: The AfterActionPatchup scene at the farmhouse is a heartwarming moment.
* ActorAllusion:
** Tom Cruise playing a sleazy media rep who undergoes a change of heart definitely made reviewers think of ''Film/JerryMaguire''. The scene at the end, where he [[spoiler:blows the Omega up,]] is not the first time he kills something by [[Film/WarOfTheWorlds2005 feeding it a bunch of grenades]].
** Bill Paxton played Hudson in ''Film/{{Aliens}}''. Not only did the movie involve MildlyMilitary marines fighting aliens, his own character had a lot of the JerkAss qualities that Cage started off with.
** The members of J-Squad include Series/RobinHood and [[Series/GameOfThrones Ser Dontos]].
** Emily Blunt plays a woman who becomes [[Film/TheAdjustmentBureau involved in a]] [[Film/{{Looper}} time-travel plot.]]
* AdaptationalBadass: The Jacket suits. In the novel and manga, the Jacket's weapons can't damage a Mimic's armor. Jackets are used to provide covering fire for heavy artillery like tanks that can penetrate the armor. In the movie, a single Jacket user can kill a Mimic with the right skill and enough ammo. The Jackets are also MUCH less powerful than they are in the novels (where they're full-blown MiniMecha), so this can mostly be attributed to the Mimics, despite their more intimidating appearance, suffering from AdaptationalWimp.
* AdaptationExpansion: The movie covers a ''vastly'' wider scope than the original novel. The events of the novel were centered around a single battle in the ongoing war with the Mimics, while the movie is based around humanity's final battle [[spoiler:and ends with their ultimate victory]].
* AdaptationExplanationExtrication:
** In the novel/manga, Rita used a sword because she kept running out of ammo. Here, that's not an explicit problem (and the guns are better against mimics anyway), but she still uses a sword. On the other hand, Cage never gets a melee weapon of his own, unlike his novel/manga counterpart.
** It's never explained exactly why the mimics are attacking. Some theories are trotted out, but in the end it's dismissed as unimportant. In the novel/manga, it was because [[spoiler:with their ResetButton ability, the mimics never saw a need to do anything ''but'' slaughter everyone in their path. They were only a few light years from Earth, but didn't even bother to check if the planet was inhabited before arriving. As for what they even want with Earth, they transform planets' environments to, well, mimic that of their homeworld. This would make Earth uninhabitable for humans]].
* AdaptationNameChange: Everyone, except Rita Vrataski.
* AdaptationTitleChange: ''Edge of Tomorrow'' is the film adaptation of the light novel ''All You Need Is Kill''. The novel's name however was kept intact [[https://imusic.b-cdn.net/images/item/original/494/4548967178494.jpg?tom-cruise-2003-all-you-need-is-kill-aka-edge-orrow-mbd&class=scaled for the Japanese release.]]
* AfterActionPatchup: Which as per usual leads to an increased bonding between Cage and Rita... until she realises that's exactly what he's trying to achieve.
* AgeLift: In the original novel, Cage is much younger ([[RaceLift and Japanese]]). Both he and Rita are only around 18.
* AlienInvasion: By the Mimics. It's heavily implied this isn't the first time they've done this.
* AliensAreBastards: The Mimics seem to have no goals other than the complete elimination of humanity and [[TakeOverTheWorld conquering the Earth]].
* AliensInCardiff: Played with. The Omega is supposedly in a dam somewhere in Switzerland. [[spoiler:Which turns out to be a ruse, with the Omega actually being beneath the Louvre in Paris.]]
* AllThereInTheManual:
** It's not explicitly explained why the aliens are called Mimics in the film, aside from a mention of mimicking human tactics. In the novel and spin-off media, they're so-called because they take characteristics from any wildlife they encounter.
** The Jackets have a sort of "training wheels" mode, which most of the soldiers are using so they don't accidentally kill themselves. Cage and Rita show us what you can do when you take the wheels off.
* AlwaysSaveTheGirl: This becomes a problem for Cage. From Rita's perspective Cage is almost a complete stranger, as she meets him for the first time every reset, and she learned during her own loops not to get attached to anyone anyway. From Cage's perspective he trains and fights along side her for hundreds of days. Cage forms a bond with her that makes it increasingly harder for him to let her go when he [[DoomedProtagonist repeatedly fails to save her]]. During one particular loop she realizes that he has been deliberately not going as far as he can because of this trope, and attempts to [[TheNeedsOfTheMany force him forward]] by provoking a Mimic attack that kills her. Cage resets and enters a HeroicBSOD in the next loop. [[spoiler:Fortunately for both Cage and Rita, he discovers during that loop that the location of the Omega they've been working towards for hundreds of cycles is in fact a trap set by the Mimics, and they are forced to find a new approach that avoids the unwinnable beach invasion entirely.]]
* AmericaSavesTheDay: Set up with "Operation Downfall" on the Normandy invasion. {{Subverted|Trope}} after it becomes clear that the Mimics were expecting the armies, leading them into the slaughter. [[spoiler:Restored when the American-led portion of the allied forces manage to destroy the source at the end, preventing said slaughter.]]
* AmusingInjuries: During Cage's TrainingMontage and DeathMontage.
* {{Animesque}}: Being an adaptation of a [[Literature/AllYouNeedIsKill Japanese light novel/manga]], multiple anime influences are visible, ranging from the PowerArmor, {{BFS}}, the relationship between the male and female leads, the StockJapaneseCharacters of the squad, and even several of the action setpieces.
* AnswerCut:
** When Cage mentions to Rita that he cannot help her because he is not trained for combat, we see her making a funny face. Then cut to the TrainingFromHell montage.
** When Rita ask Cage "Who is crazy enough to follow us", the scene cuts to Cage bumping into two members of J Squad.
* AnyoneCanDie: And frequently instantly with no warning. There's a lot of firepower flying around; even when Cage temporarily saves a character, it is usually ''quite'' temporary.
* ArmchairMilitary: Despite being responsible for recruiting millions to fight the mimics, Major Cage hasn't seen a day of combat in his life, says he only went into the military when his advertising firm folded and tells Brigham he feels queasy at the sight of blood, and as a result he's desperately trying to avoid getting sent to do propaganda coverage on the front lines of the assault. [[DiggingYourselfDeeper When all that fails to get him out]] of his assignment, [[BlackmailIsSuchAnUglyWord he tries blackmail]]...
* ArmorIsUseless: Played with. The Jackets are very lightly armored, and one character is shown suiting up primarily naked and we can see his exposed skin. They are shown taking some extensive damage without harm, but even with the Jackets they are outmatched by an individual mimic.
* ArtisticLicenseGeography:
** While the meteor came down on Hamburg (northern Germany), the subsequent SpreadingDisasterMapGraphic showing the spreading of the alien invasion starts out around Austria (south of Germany).
** The footage of the "German" meteor comes from the 2013 [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor Chelyabinsk meteor]] in Russia.
** Curnera dam, Germany, where the Omega supposedly is, is presumably the dam to a real reservoir called [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lai_da_Curnera Lai da Curnera]]... in ''Switzerland'' (it was corrected in the French and German dubs).
* AsLongAsItSoundsForeign:
** The news reports near the beginning come in quite a few languages, including Polish and Hebrew, and while none of the phrases are outright mispronounced or misspelled some have quite obviously been coined by a person who isn't a native speaker (for example, the "Israeli" news report is written using [[AntiquatedLinguistics archaic, fanciful grammar]] that would never have made it to the actual evening news in Israel).
* BackToBackBadasses: Rita and Cage on the battleground.
* BatmanGambit: The Mimics masterstroke hinged on humanity taking the bait and committing their full force to a single attack. [[HumansAreMorons They happen to be entirely correct]].
** Alternatively, they just used their ResetButton power to see what the humans' reaction to their victory would be, and then adapted their defenses to that event.
* BattleCouple: Once Cage reaches Rita's level of skill, he and Rita are this, as shown when they fight in tandem on the beach while a stunned J Squad looks on, with bonus point for BackToBackBadasses.
* BeautyIsNeverTarnished: Rita has apparently mastered the art of leaving a good-looking corpse. Apart from ''very'' few deaths, her face is always only slightly dirtied and any mortal wounds received are hidden by her uniform and armour. Of course, she had plenty of practice when she had the reset power and went through hundreds of cycles.
* BerserkButton: Never call Rita the "full metal bitch" in her presence.
* {{BFS}}: Prominently carried by Rita in most promotional posters, including the page image. Used in the film with lethal speed even though it's nearly the same size as her. Of course, she is wearing PoweredArmor, which does the heavy lifting for her. It appears to be a broken-off ''propeller blade'' ripped from a downed dropship.
* TheBigBoard: The 3D projection table operated by Dr. Carter. It provides useful {{Info Dump}}s. Lampshaded by Cage praising the stunning presentation.
* BittersweetEnding: On the bitter side of things, [[spoiler:Cage, Rita, and Dr. Carter are going to be [[TheGreatestStoryNeverTold the only people who know]] that they and J Squad are responsible for defeating the invasion; as far as everyone else is concerned, Cage is a PR hack, J Squad is a load of misfits, Dr. Carter is a crank, and the Mimics mysteriously vanished one day. Plus, the war's still razed a large portion of Europe and killed who knows how many millions of innocents that weren't saved by the looping]]. On the bright side though, [[spoiler:the Mimics are defeated, nobody has to be vivisected, and Cage has a chance at building a relationship with Rita in peace.]]
* BizarreAlienBiology: The Mimics' HiveMind and body structure are more or less completely foreign to human science, as noted by Doctor Carter.
* BlackDudeDiesFirst: Inverted. We rarely see Private Ford get killed during the loops, and [[spoiler: he's the last one to die in the final loop other than Rita and Cage.]]
* BlackEyesOfEvil: {{Inverted}}. The black eyes that [[spoiler:Cage]] later sports in the film help him figure out [[spoiler:where The Omega is ''really'' hiding.]]
* BlackmailBackfire: General Brigham's response to Cage's unwillingness to film "acts of heroism and valor on that beach," is to demote Cage from Major to Private, label him a deserter and a traitor, and sentence him to fight in the front lines against the Mimics, obviously expecting that [[UriahGambit he won't survive the experience]].
* BlackmailIsSuchAnUglyWord: When General Brigham questions Cage [[IsThatAThreat if he was trying to blackmail him]], Cage's careful answer is "I would prefer not to be filming acts of heroism and valor on that beach tomorrow." Brigham's response is, "You won't". [[spoiler:Cage soon realizes the general meant "you won't" as in, "you won't be ''filming'' them, you'll be fighting alongside them, and I don't expect you're going to be very heroic or show much valor while doing it."]]
* BlatantLies:
** One of the lines that the drill sergeant shouts at the beginning of a loop is "I'M TRYING TO BE NICE TO YOU, MAGGOT!"
** Cage, during the early loops, when Rita asks him how far they got in the previous run. Also during his training. "You okay, Cage?", followed by a panicked "Oh yeah! I'm good." when he's clearly limping from a broken leg.
* BloodlessCarnage: Blood is rarely shown unless it serves as a plot point, and save for Cage's first death, the camera always pans away from potentially gruesome scenes, even nonlethal injuries. This makes the film a rather violent PG-13.
* BoomHeadshot: Rita knows that the injured Cage is better off dead/restarted, so she shoots him in the head. Unceremoniously. Again and again.
* BottomlessMagazines: Averted; Cage is shown running out of ammo when using his Jacket's firearm several times. Played straight when their Jackets are mounted on ships. This causes him to, at least on one occasion, ask for additional batteries, ammo and grenades when he knows how far he has to go.
* BreakHisHeartToSaveHim: When Rita finds out that Cage refuses to go on past the farmhouse stage, [[spoiler:as she never makes it out alive, she pulls this on him to remind him that it's not just her life at stake]]. It works, but a little too well; come the next loop, Cage is [[OneManArmy hellbent on reaching his objective]] [[HeroicBSOD no matter the cost to himself]].
* BritainIsOnlyLondon: Unlike France (where we've got the Normandy beach and the mentioned-but-not-shown Verdun), the UK is given this treatment aside from a brief glimpse of the cliffs of Dover, though a news report at one point does mention several towns between the coast and London as the Mimics push inland.
* BugWar: The Mimics are a HiveMind horde of tentacled StarfishAliens with a FantasticCasteSystem.
* TheCallKnowsWhereYouLive: Kinda. In one loop, Cage gets fed up and sneaks off the base to [[DrowningMySorrows drown his sorrows]]. In doing so, he discovers that the Mimics are going to overrun London once they've won the beach battle in France. Indeed, no matter how far Cage chooses to run, the only way he's getting any peace is if the humans win.
* CameBackStrong: While Cage doesn't change physically during his loops or gain new powers, Cage gradually builds up combat skills and knowledge of the future thanks to his experience of dying repeatedly. He thus ascends from an officer with no combat experience to a battle-hardened veteran.
* CarCushion: Exaggerated, when both Cage and Rita land side-by-side on top of the same car after falling into a crater at the Louvre.
* TheCassandra:
** Dr. Carter was fired from the government even though he was completely right about the Mimics.
** In one loop, Cage tried to outright warn everyone about the future. They duct taped his mouth shut as a result.
** In another, when Cage has ditched the fight to get a drink, he tells a bunch of bar patrons about how he's fought the war hundreds of times. They just assume he's a coward and a deserter.
** Cage implies that every time he tries to convince someone, he's already tried to do so hundreds of times offscreen (each time ending in failure). This usually has him pull out all the stops by predicting every action down to the second in his on-screen attempt. [[spoiler:It usually still doesn't work.]]
** Rita mentions that she was also this a bunch of times back when she had the power. She usually ended up worse than Cage owing to her lack of expertise as a marketer/spokesman.
* ChekhovsBoomerang: Early on, Cage witnesses a soldier strapping a Claymore to his chest, presumably preparing for a TakingYouWithMe moment. [[spoiler:When the soldier is killed, Cage grabs the claymore and uses it to blow up a charging Alpha; the resulting splatter of Alpha blood is what causes his deaths to reset time. The same Claymore is reused in the final battle, when the same soldier uses it for a successful TakingYouWithMe moment against a charging wave of Mimics.]]
* ChekhovsGun:
** Dr. Carter pulls out a strange-looking gadget upon first meeting Cage, but then nothing comes of it. [[spoiler:When Cage learns that the 'visions' of the Omega's location were a fake set as a trap, Dr. Carter reveals that the gadget is an attempt to recreate a transponder that could be used to find the real location; this prompts Cage to track down and steal the original.]]
** When time is reset Cage finds himself back on the airbase about to be woken up. The only other time we see him sleeping is at the very beginning when he is brought to London by helicopter and is woken up as they approach Whitehall. [[spoiler:That is the moment to which time is reset at the end of the movie after Cage kills the Omega and absorbs its blood.]]
** Early on, Rita's inability to loop again was due to a blood transfusion performed on her. [[spoiler:This happens to Cage at the very end of the film.]]
* ClosestThingWeGot:
-->'''Dr. Carter''': The transponder requires a live Alpha to make it work.
-->'''Rita''': We don't need one. We got the next best thing. (pointing at Cage)
* CombatClairvoyance: TheMovie. Whoever is in control of the time loops, can use the RippleEffectProofMemory to study the enemy's every move and plan accordingly.
* CombatPragmatist: Rita Vrataski. After Cage takes a mimic mortar round to the chest to save Rita during one of his loops, Rita casually rips out the battery of his suit, rendering him defenseless against a Mimic emerging from the sand moments later.
* ConditionedToAcceptHorror: Gradually, and with the help of Rita's tutelage, Cage begins to treat his deaths and those of his squaddies as more an annoyance rather than the trouser-soiling reality.
* ContagiousCassandraTruth: After dying in the frontal assault several times, Cage tries to warn the rest of J-Squad that they would be killed on the beach, but they duct tape his mouth shut. After dying several more times, he encounters Rita who tells him to find her next time he wakes up. When he tells her about how he has fought the same battle numerous times, Rita says that she went through the same thing some time before, and had secretly partnered with Dr. Carter, the foremost expert on the Mimics, and who had discovered their ability to reset time to help them win the war by modifying their battle tactics. Cage then asks that if they know so much about the Mimics, then why don't they take that information to the high command, Rita responds that she did in fact tried to warn high command of what was happening to her, but she ended up either locked up in a psychiatric hospital, or dissected to see if anything could be learned from her physiology. As for Dr. Carter, when he presented high command with everything he had learned from the Mimics, and that he his device required the blood of an Alpha to track the source of the Mimics' powers, he was labeled a crackpot and dismissed.
* ContagiousPowers: When he's exposed to the Alpha Mimic's blood, Cage gains their ability to reset time. Cage hilariously suggests having sex with Rita to give her the power, but she tried that back when she had it and it didn't work. [[spoiler:When he kills the Omega in the climax, its blood lets him jump back one day further, and when he gets there it's already dead.]]
* ContrivedCoincidence: Justified. Events that in another story would be very unlikely coincidences are actually the result of Cage already living through them multiple times and thus knowing where everything is and what exactly he needs to do to succeed. The audience simply does not see the iterations that led to this. This is how Cage knows which abandoned vehicles still have fuel in it and have keys inside. He and Rita go directly to a farmhouse that has a working helicopter in the backyard because Cage has already explored the area and knows where it is.
* ConvenientCranny: On a couple of occasions Cage escapes an Alpha this way.
* CoolPlane: The quadcopters that deploy the troops.
* CosmicHorrorStory: The Mimics arrived on a meteor and thanks to their Omega's ability to control time, humanity has ''no'' chance of defeating them with their own means; it's through two lucky flukes that Rita and then Cage are able to hijack that exact same power for themselves. One character even theorizes that there are hundreds of other Mimic bearing objects in space, just waiting to find the right planet to crash into.
* CrazyEnoughToWork: The whole plan about using [[spoiler:the downed dropship as speed cruiser plowing through Paris]] in the final loop.
* CruelAndUnusualDeath: Some of the deaths that Cage suffers are these, though one notable one is [[spoiler:[[HeroicSacrifice Rita in the end]]]]. Cornered by a Mimic Alpha [[spoiler: that's she's not even allowed to kill if she could, because it'd reset the loop for the Mimics]], it delivers a NoHoldsBarredBeatdown to her that culminates with ''ripping her in half.''
* CurbStompBattle: The Mimics are delivering one to humanity, mostly because of the way they fight (loop time back over and over again so that the Mimics know what they need to do in order to win.) The one time they don't do this was [[spoiler:deliberate in order to get humanity to commit all of its forces to one final battle that they will horribly lose.]]
* CurseCutShort: A RunningGag.
** Every time someone tries to call Rita a "full metal bitch", the B-word is always cut short, drowned in other sounds, etc.
** During one of Cage's deaths (where he saves Rita life from the projectile that killed her the first time, at the cost of getting a hole on his own chest), after [[ShootTheDog she steals his battery pack]] to power her own suit, a Mimic bursts out of the sand at him. Cage has enough time to scream "HOLY FU-" before the loop starts again.
* CutPhoneLines: One day before the invasion of France the military base has gone into lockdown which prevents Cage from calling for help.
* DamnYouMuscleMemory: Cage manages to become a competent soldier in the first act exclusively through memorizing attack patterns, once he makes contact with Rita she makes it clear that won't be enough and he has to do some actual TrainingFromHell so that he can be a OneManArmy strong enough to fight independently. Whenever we see the first time (or first dozen times) they reach a particular "checkpoint" Cage gets nervous because he doesn't know what to expect past there. [[spoiler:After obtaining the location for the Omega, Cage remarks that they "never got that far" after Rita asks what to do next. Later, when Cage gets strapped to a gurney, Rita attempts to knife him to reset the day, but he stops her from doing so because he got a blood transfusion which is what originally ended up removing Rita's ability to reset the day.]]
* DeaderThanDead: A constant worry in the film is that if Cage doesn't reset (because he loses his power or because he's won the war), anyone who dies in that timeline will stay dead. Ends up going even further with [[spoiler:the Omega]], where [[spoiler:by blowing it up and absorbing its power, Cage essentially [[RetGone kills it so hard that he and his squad never even have to go on a suicide mission to kill it]].]]
* DeadlineNews: Subverted. While Cage and Rita are driving through France, they hear a British news report about the growing failure of Operation Downfall, followed by a report that the Mimics have landed on the English southern coast. The reporter grows panicked as she says they've reached London, but Cage shoots the radio before they go off the air.
* DeadlyDodging: "Guys, can we just not do this today?" Cage, ''eyes closed,'' pulls this on Skinner.
* DeadlyTrainingArea: Rita's "training" room where Cage receives combat training. It's actually designed as a firing range, with robots that move about simulating Mimics, but Rita insists on training ''inside'' it. Once Cage gets crippled by one of the attacking robots, Rita [[MercyKill kills him]], so he can start the session all over again.
* DeathAsComedy: The movie's main source of humor. Cage's repeated deaths and his reactions are sometimes quite hilarious.
* DeathByAdaptation: Well... sort of. Rita never once kills Cage in the original novel, for a very important reason. In addition, crossing with SparedByTheAdaptation, she dies a whole lot of time while her [[Literature/AllYouNeedIsKill Light Novel/Manga counterpart]] only died once. However, the many deaths of Movie!Rita are retconned when the time resets and she lives at the end while LN!Rita's only death was [[KilledOffForReal permanent.]]
* DeathIsCheap: If you can reset time every time you die, this trope is bound to happen. Even invoked when Rita wants to reset when Cage flirts with her.
* DeathMontage: How Cage's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu0lghnPtck many deaths]] are depicted in some scenes. When Rita starts dying alongside him in another montage, it's not played for laughs.
* DecisiveBattle: Operation Downfall (the invasion of France and similar attacks on every front) is essentially the equivalent of the D-Day back in WWII: Humanity is throwing all it has in an attempt to defeat the alien horde. They fail. Over and over.
* DeconReconSwitch: The ResetButton doesn't really work if [[InSpiteOfANail you lose over and over again on that exact, same day.]] The strategy of the Mimics has always been resetting time in order to adapt to one decisive battle to win. The solution is simple. [[spoiler:[[ScrewDestiny Don't fight that battle.]] Cage, Rita, and the J Squad attacks on the night before the big battle, [[DidntSeeThatComing something that never happened before, thus something the Mimics never accounted for.]] And it works.]]
* DefensiveFeintTrap: The Mimics do this in a larger scale variation. The (intentional) defeat at Verdun allowed them to lure the humans into an ambush at France, thus crushing the entire human resistance in a single stroke. The Mimics then take advantage of most of the soldiers in Britain being across the Channel in France to send a force around them and towards London to destroy it and conquer the British Isles.
* DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment: A crate labeled "Vorsicht Gefahr" ("Attention Danger") can be seen in Cage's vision of the German Dam.
* DespairEventHorizon: Happens a few times onscreen, and probably many more loops we don't see, as Cage tries figuring out different ways to end the cycle.
** During one loop Cage completely abandons the beach invasion to escape to London, only to see [[ZergRush a massive invasion force]] of Mimics come swimming up the Thames later that day.
** A real low point for Cage is in the loop after Rita tells him that her life doesn't matter and throws it away in an attempt to get him to go forward. He doesn't try to save anyone else he normally saves during that loop, including Rita. [[spoiler:Fortunately that's also the loop he discovers that the visions are a trap and he is forced to TakeAThirdOption in the next loop.]]
** Cage also comes close to despair when he realizes [[spoiler:the blood transfusion he just received removed lost him the reset power. Then Rita shows up alive...]]
* {{Determinator}}: The heroes have to have some of this in them to get as far as they do, but they ''also'' demonstrate a definite weakness that they share with the likes of General Brigham and Master Sergeant Farell: Sticking close to "Plan A" no matter how many chances they get when better solutions are staring them in the face.
* DevelopingDoomedCharacters: Right there in the premise of the movie. Particularly the entirety of the opening, right up until Cage kills an Alpha and the loops begin. Farell and J Squad do not make any friends among the audience the first time you see them. Neither does Cage, for that matter.
* DidNotDoTheBloodyResearch: At one point in the film, a character yells, "Let's get that piece of bollocks!" 'Bollocks' is actually the British equivalent of 'bullshit' or 'nonsense'. Depending on where in the country you live it is also slang for testicles, which makes that line even funnier somehow.
* DidntThinkThisThrough: Sure, Cage, try to blackmail your superior officer/boss/the supreme commander of the human military, who has very broad leaning powers in a war for humanity's very survival. Just see where it gets you.
* DivingSave: Several examples, always subverted in that the person whose life Cages saves, or Cage himself, is killed shortly after.
* DodgeTheBullet: All over the place here. Cage even [[spoiler:ends up giving multiple master classes to Rita on how to dodge every single attack that she'll ever see, down to the pace. By the end of the film, Cage is not too shabby at dodging either, even when he doesn't already know what's coming.]]
* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything:
** Let's see -- you've got a whole bunch of ScaryDogmaticAliens that first appear in Germany before quickly engaging in several CurbStompBattle[=s=] against surrounding countries that were clearly unprepared for the war. However, the invasion strangely halts near Spain and Russia following the formation of an alliance between several nations, and remains largely landlocked with a goal to eventually expand to the United Kingdom, and eventually the rest of the world. [[UsefulNotes/NaziGermany This should sound familiar.]] The comparison to UsefulNotes/WorldWarII is made even clearer by use of HistoricalInJoke[=s=] ("Operation Downfall" was also the name of the hypothetical land invasion of Japan before use of nuclear weapons was authorized, and the actual event is more or less D-Day with aliens and mechsuits GoneHorriblyWrong). The map showing Mimic-controlled Europe corresponds almost perfectly to that of Nazi-controlled Europe on D-Day, down to the Italian front being roughly at Rome (which was liberated right before D-Day).
** Rita, "The Angel of Verdun", a sword-wielding, armoured woman who has become an inspirational figure for the whole army and had visions, is [[JeanneDArchetype more than a little Joan-of-Arc-ish]]. Verdun is also the city that was destroyed during the longest and deadliest battle of World War I.
** Cage's situation is reminiscent if a computer game. He can memorise the patterns of the baddies and figure things out through trial and error with each death requiring him just to try again.
* DramaPreservingHandicap:
** How do you tell an interesting story about a man who can remember almost all possible futures? By starting every loop in the situation where he's least able to do something about them.
** When he ''does'' learn exactly what needs to be done to win the war, how do you preserve the story's tension? [[spoiler: Taking his power away.]]
* DrawAggro: [[spoiler:Rita does this to an Alpha Mimic so that Cage can have enough time to reach the Omega's pool. [[CruelAndUnusualDeath It results in a painful death for her.]] It was not an unreasonable tactic, since neither of them were getting out of the Louvre alive anyways, and Cage was the one who knew exactly where to find the Omega.]]
* DrowningMySorrows: Cage does this when the pressure gets too much for him. [[spoiler:The first time involves running off to a local pub; the second is while he is being outfitted with his Jacket before his one-man mission to reach the dam, where Griff asks Cage if he has been drinking, which Cage's actions seem to imply as much.]]
* TheDulcineaEffect: Nicely averted. Cage initially only tries to save Rita because he thinks she can save ''him'': she's the world's most celebrated war hero with numerable kills under her belt. This leads to combat training, since she is indeed the only one who can help him. It is only after countless loops of spending time (equating to months or possibly years) with Rita that Cage decides he doesn't want to go on without her.
* DuringTheWar: The film takes place around the fifth year of the Mimics' invasion. [[spoiler:The film ends with the war's resolution, though it takes what likely amounts to several months if not years' worth of time loops before it finally ends.]]
* DwindlingParty: Things do not go well for our protagonists in the climax. [[spoiler:By the end of the final battle, every single one of them is dead. Luckily, Cage gets soaked in the the blood of the Omega itself as he is dying, and the final loop fixes everything.]]
* EarnYourHappyEnding: After God knows how many horrifying deaths, [[spoiler:sacrificing all of his friends and his loved one (by her own choice), and eventually his own life, Cage destroys the Omega and ends the war at last. But thanks to the Omega's blood getting on him after it dies, he gets to jump back to before his forced recruitment, winning the war before the final battle even starts, saving all his friends, and giving him another shot with Rita.]]
* EmbarrassingNickname: Being called the "full metal bitch" is this to Rita, who is a highly-decorated international war hero. In an interview, Emily Blunt states that it is a nickname that Rita does not wish to be called by.
* EnemyMine: Competing superpowers and blocs (including NATO, Russia, and China) form a United Defence Force to repel the Mimic invasion.
* EpicFail: A few of Cage's deaths certainly qualify:
** The first time he tries to save Kimmell by pushing him out of the way he gets squashed by the crashing dropship instead.
** The first time Cage tries to escape J Squad he is run over by a truck. Sgt. Farrell can only say "what the hell were you thinking?"
** Cage is also hit by a truck on the beach while trying to run to Rita to save her.
** Cage's first attempt to knock Rita out of the way of an attack results in him being shot through the chest.
** Cage's first attempt at training in the firing range results in his breaking his back.
** Cage's rather unsubtle attempt to ask Rita if she had tried to use sex to transfer the power doesn't go well either.
** Cage's attempt to blackmail General Brigham into excusing him from the beach assault is what sets off the whole movie.
* EscortMission: Cage and Rita's initial plan for taking down the Omega Mimic was this. Cage would escort Rita, who saddled herself with the task of killing the Omega, to where it was hiding while helping her avoid the pitfalls and ambushes along the way. [[spoiler:It's what leads to Cage's second Despair Event Horizon, when he realizes that no matter what he does, Rita will always die partway through.]]
* EstablishingCharacterMoment:
** Rita, doing the "planche" yoga hold, followed by a badass LockAndLoadMontage, underscored by a PreviewsPulse. When she walks out of the building in full PoweredArmor, one guy gets as far as saying "Bloody hell, that's the [[RedBaron full metal bi-]]" before she [[CurseCutShort punches him aside.]] Instantly we understand Rita's character - she's graceful, badass, and [[BerserkButton touchy about]] [[BrokenAce her reputation.]]
** Cage ends his first scene by trying to weasel his way out of landing on the beach, and when that doesn't work ''[[TooDumbToLive blackmail the commanding general]]'' of humanity's entire invasion force. It's idiotic, [[DirtyCoward cowardly]], and a major spot against [[{{Jerkass}} audience sympathy]], but it also shows a glimpse of what we'll see in a better light after his CharacterDevelopment: his willingness to [[TakeAThirdOption think outside the box]] and try ridiculously extreme options to avoid ending up in unpleasant situations.
* EverybodyLives: [[spoiler:Within the film timeline itself, the ResetButton undoes every death that happened from the time Cage was forced into service. On a broader scale, however, everything leading up to that still happened, so most of Europe is still a blighted, lifeless wasteland.]]
* ExcusePlot: [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] by Cage. He overhears some bar patrons discussing what the Mimics want with the Earth, and he simply gives a sharp "What difference does it make?" in reply and proceeds to point out that [[AnthropicPrinciple they were there and attacking and that was all that mattered]].
* ExpendableAlternateUniverse: As expected for a GroundhogDayLoop premise. The movie centers around Cage, and all that matters to the protagonists is that Cage gets the information he needs before he gets offed, allowing him to re-attempt defeating the enemy in what we can logically call a new timeline. What happened to the other characters in the countless other timelines where Cage failed in? The story obviously didn't focus on those, so the audience can only imagine the awkwardness and/or horror that ensues from various moments like for example, Rita having to explain why she unceremoniously killed Cage in the training base.
* ExpositingTheMasquerade: As alluded to by Rita and later explained by Dr. Carter, Cage was not the first person who was struck with his peculiar condition. They had been researching the phenomena for some time already.
* FaceNodAction: When they run out of ammo during their LastStand, Griff nods at Skinner who then ignites the Claymore to [[TakingYouWithMe take down the Mimics around them]].
* FacialHorror: Cage's face starts ''melting'' once splattered in Mimic blood. And then the loop begins...
* FailureMontage: Combined with DeathMontage for BlackComedy. Wake up, get trained, get injured, BoomHeadshot, wake up, get trained, make it to battlefield, YetAnotherStupidDeath, wake up, get trained, get injured, BoomHeadshot, wake up, BoomHeadshot, wake up...
* FalseReassurance: Cage attempts to [[TooDumbToLive blackmail General Brigham]], saying he would prefer not to be on the front lines recording war propaganda. Brigham pauses a moment, then calmly responds, "[[ExactWords You won't be.]]" Cue the scene where Cage realizes he won't be ''filming'' the war, he'll be ''fighting'' in it.
* FantasticMedicinalBodilyProduct: If the Alpha's blood gets on you while you're dying it will bring you back to life and send you back in time.
* FantasyConflictCounterpart: Major battles against the Mimics take place in [[UsefulNotes/WorldWar2 Normandy]] and [[UsefulNotes/WorldWar1 Verdun]].
* FeedItABomb: How [[spoiler:Cage ends up killing the Omega.]]
* FeministFantasy: Rita.
* FireForgedFriends: Rita doesn't take to Cage at first, but changes her mind after he stops being a jerk and starts kicking ass. In an interesting variant on the trope, from Rita's perspective she is meeting a complete stranger for the first time with every reset, while Cage builds up months or even years of memories of fighting alongside her. This means that her liking him more and more as time goes on has nothing to do with her warming to him, but instead comes down to him being a better and more likable person each time she meets him for the "first time".
* FishOutOfWater: Cage, when being thrown into battle, unskilled and unprepared as he was. However, through numerous iterations, he [[TookALevelInBadAss gets to master the art of war]].
* FlatEarthAtheist: The United Defence Force top brass, the J-Squad members and the UDF military in general. They live in a world which is under attack by ''alien invaders'' who are unlike any living thing we know, but when their top scientist discovers that those aliens have the ability to go back in time, they just flat-out refuse to believe it for no other reason than ArbitrarySkepticism. What makes their behaviour more irrational is that they are not really in position to downright dismiss any new intel about the invaders. They've been fighting a losing war for last few years and their survival is at stake -- at this point, they should be desperate for any new means that would help them turn the tide. They are offered one, but facing a choice between giving it a try or going on as they did, keep getting their asses kicked and risking the death of them all, they decide [[TooDumbToLive to take a chance with the latter one]].
* ForcedEuthanasia: Most of the film takes place with main character [[Creator/TomCruise William Cage]] in a GroundhogDayLoop as a result of his blood getting mixed with that of an alien. While this allows him to go through months or even years of TrainingFromHell in just a day, it comes with the drawback that a blood transfusion would remove the alien blood and break the loop, which means he absolutely has to die if he's at all injured, leading to a montage of his mentor (and former possessor of this power) [[Creator/EmilyBlunt Rita]] [[OneManArmy Vrataski]] shooting him whenever he gets injured, often as he tries to drag himself away or proclaims that he's only slightly hurt.
* ForcedTutorial: In-universe. Cage has to go through the military base scene every time he resets. He has to learn to ''fight'' if he has any hope of getting out of the reset. Some of his later iterations of the recruitment dialogue are very reminiscent of someone trying to impatiently rush through an UnskippableCutscene conversation as quickly as possible. Cage's {{Speedrun}} on the battlefield also counts.
* {{Foreshadowing}}:
** Pretty much everything Sergeant Farell says before the invasion qualifies. Highlights include Cage being "baptized" (by the Alpha's blood), how the man will be reborn (via the time loops), and how if you've got enough guts and smarts you can master your own fate (Cage's TrainingFromHell making him a strong and savvy opponent for the ResetButton Mimics). Battle being the one great redeemer also foretells Cage's CharacterDevelopment from a snivelling coward to a hardcore badass.
** Rita mentions that the victory at Verdun was a feint by the enemy to lure humanity into a misplaced confidence in victory. [[spoiler:This also turns out to be the case of the 'visions' that led Rita and later Cage to believe that they have found the location of the Omega.]]
* GallowsHumour: Repeatedly, at first from the members of J Squad and then from Cage and Rita themselves.
-->'''Skinner''': Mate. Mate! There's something wrong with your suit... there's a dead guy in it!\\
''(umpteen deaths later)''\\
'''Skinner''': Mate. Mate! There's something wrong with your suit...!\\
'''Cage''': [[IronicEcho There's a]] [[ShellShockedVeteran dead guy in it]].
* GenreMashup:
** ''Film/GroundhogDay'', WWII movies, AlienInvasion, and PowerArmor tropes were thrown together in a blender to make this movie. Several reviewers noted that, while specific elements of the film are hardly original, if not outright derivative, [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools they really work well together]] and the result is greater than the sum of its parts.
** Thanks to the die-reload plot device with Cage, reviewers have also noted the presence of a number of video game tropes. (In point of fact, video games were the author's primary inspiration for the original light novel.)
* GetItOverWith:
** [[spoiler:After Cage's one-man mission to reach the dam -- where the Omega was supposedly hiding -- and sacrificing everything just to get there only to find that it was never there all along, Cage yells at the advancing Alpha Mimic to "finish it already". Unfortunately for him, the Alpha Mimic is content with just [[OhCrap making him bleed out]].]]
** Any time Cage sustains an injury that would prevent him from continuing (from a broken leg or ''full paralysis''), Rita kills him so he can start over. Eventually, he starts accepting it.
** On a couple of occasions when Rita gets killed, Cage just sits there staring at her corpse while ignoring a Mimic charging towards him.
* GilliganCut: Cage's first attempt to tell Farell the truth. The scene immediately cuts to Farell's men dragging Cage by his arms while he shouts he's not insane. Not too long thereafter, after Cage demonstrates his foreknowledge of things he shouldn't know, the scene cuts to [[DuctTapeForEverything him being gagged]].
* GlassCannon: The [[PoweredArmor Jackets]] provides their users with truly impressive firepower, including built-in, hand-held machine guns and retractable, shoulder mounted ''anti-tank cannons'' and ''rocket launchers''. Unfortunately, there is next to no actual armor protection.
* GoodScarsEvilScars: Rita has one scar on her forehead which underpins her badass status, but doesn't spoil her beauty.
* GotVolunteered: Cage is thrown into front line combat against his will when he refuses to go in to film a war documentary and tries to blackmail his way out of it.
* TheGreatestStoryNeverTold: Every time Cage resets the day, he is [[RippleEffectProofMemory the only one who remembers]] the heroics and tragedies that occurred during that run through. During the final battle, Cage, Rita, and J Squad all know that it is a SuicideMission and even if they succeed, no one will know what they did. [[spoiler:The final reset brings them back to life, but only Cage remembers their heroics and sacrifice, and only Rita and Dr. Carter would even believe him if he said what happened. J Squad and Sgt. Farrell never meet Cage for the rest of the film.]]
* GreekLetterRanks: The alien Mimics have three biological castes. The basic foot-soldiers are just called Mimics. The Alphas are the commanders, and are also capable of sending their memories into the past should they die. And the Omega is the supreme leader of the entire HiveMind, and possesses a time-reset ability similar to the Alphas.
* GreenRocks: The blood of Alpha and Omega Mimics has magical time reversing power.
* GroundhogDayLoop: The premise. Unlike the TropeNamer film, the phenomenon is [[JustifiedTrope given an explanation]].
* GuysSmashGirlsShoot: Inverted. Cage primarily shoots while Rita frequently uses a {{BFS}}.
* HandWave: The inability of Rita and Cage to transfer the reset power the same way the Alpha can is given this treatment. During training, when Cage suggests he simply give the ability to Rita rather than learn to use it himself, she dismisses him with a simple "I've tried everything, nothing works" and the point is never revisited. This is required to cover an AdaptationInducedPlotHole, since in the light novel, Rita [[spoiler:has unknowingly become a different but necessary part of the looping process, making reverse transference impossible.]]
* HeadsIWinTailsYouLose: Fighting against the Mimic horde with Alphas in their ranks is this for the human forces, not that they know about it. If they kill the Alphas, the Omega just resets time in order to adapt and come out on top. If they don't kill the Alphas, the Mimic horde comes out on top. The only way to actually beat them is to kill the Omega.
* HellishCopter: Cage stalls into giving Rita the helicopter keys because he knows it's going down.
* HelmetsAreHardlyHeroic: Rita and Cage don't use helmets much. Rita does it because she wants to get the looping power back and a helmet would deflect the splash, Cage does it because he ''wants'' any head wounds he receives to be lethal -- bleeding out wouldn't cause him to loop. Lampshaded about halfway through the movie, where Cage says they're "just a distraction" and helmets don't appear to be very useful against Mimics anyway.
* HeroesGoneFishing: Cage manages to give everything the slip one day, grab a motorcycle and go to a bar -- undoubtedly wanting a day off. This ends up plot important because he learns that [[spoiler:each day when the invasion fails, the mimics plow on through to London.]]
* HeroicBSOD: Cage undergoes a few.
** His first leads him to simply desert and heads to a British pub to [[DrowningMySorrows drown away his sorrows]], only to find that the Mimics would eventually overrun London.
** His second comes after [[spoiler:watching Rita die at the farmhouse.]] This one is so horrible that the DrillSergeantNasty who awakens him (who every other time prior to that treated him like garbage to be sorted) quietly hands him his gear in recognition of a fellow soldier's ThousandYardStare.
** Played with when Cage is on the gurney [[spoiler:after his blood transfusion]]; it looks like he's about to have his third BSOD, but then Rita comes out and the whole thing is averted.
* HeroicSacrifice: Several during the climax. [[spoiler:Griff and Skinner stay behind to [[YouShallNotPass give Cage an opening]] while he and Rita make their way towards the Omega, and [[DrawAggro Rita distracts an Alpha]] -- and finally, Cage knows diving into the Omega's pool is a one-way trip.]]
* HistoricalInJoke:
** The movie was released on June 6th in America, the same day of the D-Day invasion back in World War II (specifically, on the 70th Anniversary). The movie's opening conflict is essentially D-Day in the future gone horribly wrong... and the landing takes place in France.
** Operation Downfall was the name of the planned invasion of Japan during WWII. It didn't happen due to the Soviet invasion of Manchuria coupled with the atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki prompting Japan to surrender.
* HistoryRepeats:
** Some old British gentlemen at one point discuss how this entire war resembles UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. Considering the major human counter-strike is set to occur at ''France'' in what greatly resembles D-Day, one can see where they're coming from.
** A potentially tide-turning victory against the aliens was won near Verdun, also the site of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Verdun a major, months-long battle]] in UsefulNotes/WorldWarI which was itself intended as a DefensiveFeintTrap by the Central Powers to "bleed France white" and ended up as something of a PyrrhicVictory where both sides suffered horrific casualties. The meat-grinder at Verdun also led to the Battle of the Somme in an attempt to grant the French forces some relief and was one of the bloodiest battles in history and holds the dubious honour of the largest loss of life in a single day in UK military history.
** A major landing operation aimed at securing Normandy's beaches to allow the UDF to move into Europe. It's pretty much Operation Overlord repeating itself.
** Operation Downfall was the name of the planned invasion of the Japanese homeland. While the Allied forces would most likely have won (especially with Russian support), it would have been the most bloody engagement of the war, at least for America. And just like the Japanese Downfall, the one in the movie is averted due to the actions of a small team flying in with a single plane.
** Cage develops something of a one-sided relationship with Rita due to the nature of the looping, and it is heavily implied that she had one of these during Verdun. When she recognizes the parallels and the resulting implications, she does not react well. It's implied that part of her ShellShockedVeteran status is down to trying and failing to save a friend (possibly a lover) hundreds of times and failing repeatedly, and that she only "won" after she stopped trying to save him. This is what leads to her own decision to sacrifice herself in the same loop where it's discussed, in an attempt to force Cage forward and make him understand that she's expendable if it means victory.
* HoistByHisOwnPetard: [[spoiler:The Omega. Its greatest ability (to reset time) is also its greatest weakness, and it can be passed on to its enemy. Not only that, but it can only reset time when one of its Alpha mimics dies. It cannot actually reset itself in the event of its death... meaning it is literally [[MeaningfulName the end]] once it is killed.]]
* HollywoodTactics:
** Operation Downfall does not look like a well-thought out plan. Aside from a single throw-away line in the beginning of the movie, it appears downright suicidal. The entire UDF strategy seems to boil down to "just gather everything we've got and make them charge head-on at the enemy". There is no ongoing surveillance of the area they want to assault (which would likely detect heavy Mimic defence already prepared to wipe out the invading force -- and make UDF either change plans or abort the attack altogether), [[FiveRoundsRapid no artillery preparation of any kind]] (which could destroy or at least weaken Mimic fixed defences and make the drop much safer and easier) and the invading troops (which consist almost exclusively of infantry, with symbolic armoured support, and thus are quite vulnerable to heavy fire) are deployed in the open, with no cover of any kind, making them ludicrously easy targets. If this is how humans had been fighting this war, then Mimics didn't actually need those time-looping abilities of theirs to win.
** Not to mention, the very idea of committing the ''entirety'' of your forces and ''all'' your resources to a single attack is something not even remotely competent military leader would decide to do. One of many obvious reasons why you just don't do it is that if your attack fails, you will be rendered unable to continue the war... which is exactly what happens in the movie after invading forces are slaughtered. This is [[HandWave handwaved]] in that humans had grown desperate by this point and Operation Downfall is their last-ditch effort to turn the tide anyway, but still -- if General Brigham has no ideas on how to fight this war beyond [[ZergRush zerg rushing]], he should either take heed of somebody else's advice or just resign and be replaced by someone more competent.
** Speaking of slaughter... seeing the battle going ''this'' badly and his troops getting wiped out where they stand, any ''sane'' commander would call off the attack and order his forces to withdraw, saving as much as they have left. Apparently, no such order is given in the movie when Operation Downfall is underway and all those poor sods taking part in it are just kept being sent straight into the grinder, until they are all dead. Truly, this is one of the most inane, most suicidal portrayals of warring humanity ever put in a movie.
** To be fair about the above, Brigham does make a PlotDump in the beginning of the movie that addresses many of the above:
*** Poor recon: General Brigham does say at the start they scouted the beach and found it lightly defended. And presumably, it was during the unseen first time the UDF landed. Then they killed an Alpha, the day reset, and the Mimics knew just where to sneak in their forces for an ambush.
*** Committing the entirety of your forces: He also notes that the Normandy landings are one prong of the offensive, with the remainder of the human military forces (Chinese, Russian, etc.) attacking from continental Europe in a concentric attack that's supposed to meet at Paris. Unfortunately, the movie doesn't really bring that up again.
*** Artillery preparation doesn't quite work against enemies that don't have fixed defenses and really like burrowing.
** Not to mention, the Mimic's SaveScum ability means that any decisions made by UDF high command retroactively become the worst possible ones.
* {{Homage}}: ''Film/TheAmericanizationOfEmily'', in which James Garner plays a combat-avoiding Navy staff officer forced by an admiral to go to the D-Day invasion to film acts of heroism. James Garner even returns to England to a pub scene just as Cage does. Also, Emily is reluctant to get emotionally close because of all the deaths (of relatives) she has experienced, similar to Rita (played by Emily Blunt) being likewise reluctant because of all the deaths (of Cage).
* HopelessWar: While they are unaware, humanity will be overrun by the Mimics, no matter how well they fight. It's only thanks to Cage entering the Mimic GroundhogDayLoop that they even have a chance, and he can't actually hope to change the tide of the battle, but instead has to kill the Omega before the slaughter.
* HowManyFingers: When Cage and Dr. Carter meet and Rita reveals that Cage is looping, one of the first things Carter does is ask [[GodTest how many fingers he's holding up]]. The first time through, Cage says he doesn't know, but the next, he says it's two fingers before the question is even asked.
* HumansAreSpecial: The exact reasons Cage (and previously Rita) was able to absorb the time reset power of the alpha mimic is not understood. The IgnoredExpert, Dr. Carter, muses that they might not be accustomed to humanity, but that's as far as the film gets on that subject.
* HypocriticalHumor: After Cage and Rita help themselves to the minivan, its radio can be heard advising people that if they're in a vehicle, to lock doors and stay inside. They've already ripped off the doors, and shortly after Cage rips a hole in the roof and sticks his upper body outside in order to blast a Mimic.
* ICanStillFight: During the TrainingMontage, Cage's leg gets broken but he crawls around pretending that he can still fight in order to evade getting killed. Rita is having [[BoomHeadshot nothing of it]].
* IdiotBall:
** Sure, Cage, try to blackmail your superior officer/boss/the supreme commander of the human military, who has very broad leaning powers in a war for humanity's very survival. Just see where it gets you.
** At the start of the loop on at least 2 occasions, J Squad and Master Sergeant Farrell.
*** The very first loop they put a clearly untrained and panicked man into a suit with more firepower than a modern tank, with nobody giving him the slightest instruction or actually paying attention to what the hell he's doing even when he starts messing with his suit. The movie plays it off for a laugh when he accidentally switches the language on his suit to Japanese, but he could just have easily have accidentally fired off one of the suit's heavy weapons and killed everybody in the dropship, and in fact he DOES (eventually) manage to accidentally turn the safety off.
*** Then again in a later loop, Cage begins screaming at them about how he knows the future and they're all doomed. Even if they reasonably don't believe his ranting, from their perspective Cage is very clearly having some kind of psychotic break, and their "solution" is to put duct tape over his mouth and stick him inside a heavily armed suit, where he could accidentally (or on purpose) kill a whole lot of friendly troops. AGAIN. The film tries to hand-wave it as a way to show desperation of the human armies (throwing penal units like J Squad into direct combat is a desperation move), but in the case of Cage, this probably goes just a little too far, even if the dispatch from General Brigham was a direct order [[UriahGambit to put Cage in the first assault wave]].
** After they manage to retrieve the Omega tracking device, Cage and Rita engage in a dangerous car chase while he attempts to use it, [[spoiler:which ultimately results in him losing his GroundhogDayLoop power]]. It seems like they could have used it safely in the general's office, but there is an edit which makes it unclear what happened between when they obtained the prototype for the first time and when the car chase started.
** [[VillainBall Firmly held]] by the Omega. The optimal response to any surprise, especially an assault on their only truly critical location, should be to kill off an Alpha ASAP and use their foreknowledge in the next loop to stop the assault before it can develop. Instead they just try to fight attacks off normally. That assumes the Mimics ''can'' [[ICannotSelfTerminate kill an Alpha]] if they want a reset, of course.
** General Brigham sees Cage, a man he stripped of his ranks and sent to the front lines far away from London, miraculously come back to his office with his most decorated soldier alongside him despite the entire building filled with people who could've stopped him. Cage then predicts who is on the phone and the reason for the call, then the secretary coming in, then the documents that the secretary is carrying minus one specific file, all of which are immediately proven correct. Cage then turns to the secretary and accurately tells her her name, her birthday, a favor that General Brigham has pulled that no one else in the world would possibly know, and that Brigham's supper was cancelled, which the secretary confirms as truthful. Cage then merely asks for a device that has no importance to Brigham and for which the General has no reason to not give him. And despite all this clear evidence of clairvoyance, not only does General Brigham still refuse to believe Cage, but he tries to have them both arrested afterwards, causing Cage to get injured and lose his powers, nearly costing the war.
* ImprobableWeaponUser: When is a torn-off propeller no longer a propeller but a sword? When Rita's handling it.
* IndyPloy:
** A couple of times Cage is asked what the plan is and admits he has no idea what happens next as he's never gotten this far.
** Everything in the final loop is more or less an indy ploy, since Cage never before did any of those things and there is a lot of improvisation after [[spoiler:crash-landing in Paris]].
* InSpiteOfANail:
** No matter how cowardly, confident, or bleakly competent Cage shows himself to be, Skinner always tells him the same joke about there being something wrong with his suit -- that there's a dead guy in it. Even when his ThousandYardStare silences Farell's usual speech.
** Rita dies at the farmhouse no matter what Cage tries.
* InstantDeathBullet: Instant Death Everything[[spoiler: except for a car crash]]. There are a lot of situations where it's essentially pure luck that Cage is instantly killed rather than lying wounded and either bleeding out or being moved to a medical facility when there's no one around to MercyKill him.
* InverseLawOfUtilityAndLethality: Cage is an ArmchairMilitary DeskJockey specialising in Public Relations. This means he pays ''great'' attention to personal details and is capable of playing people in various loops to do his biddings, a skill that becomes ''much'' more important than it initally appears as the story unfolds. This is directly contrasted with Rita, who as a ShellShockedVeteran repressed herself to the point of having NoSocialSkills and for all her combat prowess is simply unable to work with other people.
* IronicName: Operation Downfall, a massive D-Day-style assault to crush the Mimics turns out to signal ''humanity's'' downfall no matter how many times Cage tries to change it.
* ItGetsEasier: For Cage, ''dying'' seems to become easier for him to handle with each successive loop. Eventually, his flinching "wake-up" call that starts up a loop becomes one of annoyance rather than utter shock.
* JerkassHasAPoint: When Cage is [[DrowningMySorrows drowning his sorrows]] in London pub, he bluntly points out to other patrons that it makes no difference what Mimics want -- what's important is that they are here and winning the war.
* KarmaHoudini: General Brigham gets no punishment for attempting to get Cage killed in a UriahGambit at the beginning of the movie, or for vivisecting Rita during her loops, unless you count the off-screen times that Rita shoots him for not cooperating. Of course, at the end of the movie those events never happened.
* KeyUnderTheDoormat: Conveniently, Rita finds the keys to the minivan above the driver's side sun visor. Apparently, they checked ''every single car'' in previous iterations before stumbling upon this one.
* KilledMidSentence: Happens many times to Cage.
* LastStand: During the climax, two members of J Squad are injured and [[YouShallNotPass hold off the attacking Mimics]]. When they run out of ammunition, they blow themselves [[TakingYouWithMe and several advancing Mimics]] up rather than be mauled to death.
* LighterAndSofter: MUCH more so than the original book, which [[spoiler:[[BittersweetEnding had an incredibly depressing and inconclusive ending]], in contrast to the movie's EverybodyLives one.]] Also, in the book the mimics not only kill people and destroy stuff, but [[SaltTheEarth irreversibly poison the land and water sources]] everywhere they go, making them seem more like a plague than an army.
* LockAndLoadMontage: Rita gets one early on when she prepares for her departure for France.
* LonelyAtTheTop: At first, it seems that Rita's earned her "full metal bitch" nickname more through her aggressively frosty demeanor than through Cage's advertising campaign. [[spoiler:Eventually, we learn that she's also been killed, and watched her friends and loved ones die, [[ShellShockedVeteran hundreds of times]], and uses her infamy to stop anyone getting close to her]].
* LuredIntoATrap:
** The Mimic HiveMind presents an enemy with a chance to beat it in one decisive action. The enemy spends loads of time and resources in pursuing this opportunity--but in the end, they discover far too late that it is a trap. The Hive Mind destroys the enemy in one fell swoop. The Mimics are about to play this scenario out during Operation Downfall--except Cage ultimately subverts it by accidentally acquiring their ResetButton power.
** By the end of the second act, Cage also discovers [[spoiler:that the visions he and Rita have been receiving from the Omega are fake. It's all part of an elaborate trap to lure him to another Alpha and force him to bleed out without killing him, allowing the Mimics to reabsorb their time-altering looping ability.]]
* TheManyDeathsOfYou: Both Cage and Rita have this in spades.
* MaybeEverAfter: [[spoiler:Cage seeks out Rita one last time after the final reset, but the film ends before we see what becomes of them.]]
* MeaningfulName: Cage. As in ''caught in a time loop''. "William Cage" is also a rough westernisation of the original protagonist's name "Kiriya Keiji".
* MentalTimeTravel: The primary object traveling back in time is information.
* MercyKill: {{Invoked}}. Rita insists that Cage should kill himself (or let himself be killed by somebody else) if he is K.O., crippled, or otherwise incapacitated. [[spoiler:This is because doing otherwise might result in him being given a blood transfusion or just bleeding out, which would rob him of the time-warping power.]]
* MildlyMilitary:
** Despite going through ROTC in college, Cage treats being in the army as just another PR job and does not treat the chain of command seriously. It is clear that he is too used to dealing with politicians, journalists, and PR officers. He tries to treat General Brigham as just another paper pusher and is slapped for it hard. He should know that when a four-star general tells you to do something, [[ThatWasntARequest it is not a suggestion]] and that refusing will land you in a heap of trouble. ROTC is often treated as a joke by enlisted members of the military, and often screams "pogue" if it's mentioned. This is subverted when Cage points out that he is an officer in the US Army, so Brigham, being a British general, is not actually his superior. When Brigham reveals that Cage's CO had approved his transfer beforehand, he resorts to blackmail.
** J Squad is composed of a number of characters who really should not be in the army. It is a penal unit that gets the dregs of an army that is too desperate for warm bodies to turn down anyone who enlists. Not to mention Kimmell, who if the UDF wasn't so desperate for men would undoubtedly be arrested for going into battle naked.
** There is actually some Fridge Brilliance here in how mildly military the film is. This war has gone on a while and the best soldiers are probably lying dead in Europe. The whole point of the combat armor was to make it so any chump off the street could be battle ready.
* MindScrew: The GroundhogDayLoop is initially disorienting to Cage and the audience.
* MinovskyPhysics: The time loop is only triggered by the death of a Mimic Alpha, a human spattered with Alpha blood, [[spoiler:or a Mimic Omega]], so there has to be human infantry fighting or the plot doesn't happen, but killing an Alpha will reset the time loop, so Alphas are untouchable. Somehow, humans spattered with Alpha blood tap into the Mimic consciousness [[spoiler:but the Mimics can send fake visions, but a handheld human device can force truthful visions]]. Basically, the time loop is only and exactly what is required to have a handful of infantry win the war in a very dramatic way.
* MistakenForInsane: The CassandraTruth version. After Cage is killed by a Mimic and gets the ability to time loop by being covered in its blood, he tries to warn Farell of the invasion, who puts a duct tape on his mouth. Carter mentions ending up in the psych ward when she tried to warn her superiors while Carter was ReassignedToAntarctica due to psychiatric problems.
* MonumentalDamage: The Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, and other Paris landmarks have been seriously damaged by the aliens. Perhaps that should have been a clue that [[spoiler:the dam in Germany was a trap, what with it being completely undamaged.]] The J Squad's plane also smashes through the triumphal arch of the Carrousel and the Louvre Pyramid.
* MoreDakka: The "Jackets" are armed with a ''lot'' of firepower. They have a cut-down 5.56mm carbine with an underbarrel GrenadeLauncher on one arm, and three cannons/grenade launchers on the other. The shoulders pack a Metal Storm variant that appears to fire something akin to 25mm rockets and detaches each barrel-cluster once that section of the ammo is depleted. The other shoulder-mount appears to have a high-caliber rifle or light auto-cannon attached. The heavier version of the suit that some characters wear , such as Kimmel and Skinner, seems to carry even more.
* MultinationalTeam:
** Alien invasion unites mankind's armed forces into forming the United Defence Force.
** J Squad is a smaller version of this, consisting of American, Australian, British, and Swedish soldiers.
* MyFriendsAndZoidberg: "You're an American." -- "No, sir. I'm from Kentucky."
* MythologyGag: Lots.
** The name "Cage" is what English speakers sometimes call Keiji in ''Literature/AllYouNeedIsKill'' if they cannot correctly pronounce "Keiji." The name "Cage", when written in Japanese, is spelled "Keiji" (ケイジ) due to the fact that foreign words and names are written phonetically.
** Cage suggests [[spoiler:Rita wait in the cellar of a farmhouse while he fights the Mimic ambush. In the novel, she did this as a 14-year-old girl during a Mimic attack.]]
** Cage grabs an axe, which is his preferred weapon in the novel. Also in the novel, Mimics were originally handled easily by small groups with axes. [[spoiler:He grabs it during the farmhouse scene. In the novel, Rita's father fought the Mimic scout group with nothing but an axe.]]
** "Hendricks" is mentioned as someone from Rita's past, who used to be close to her.
** "Is there something on my face, soldier?" would be the first thing Rita would say to Keiji every loop.
** Rita grabbing something from a dying Cage, much to his annoyance.
** During his original drop, Cage accidentally sets the language on his "Jacket" to Japanese. Cage's character was originally Japanese.
** Rita's unofficial nickname is the "full metal bitch", the same as in the novel. Every time someone tries to says it in the film, they are cut off--usually by Rita.
** One of the early news reports mentions the origin of the Mimic name, which is the same reasoning mentioned in the book.
** An extremely important character development scene takes place as Cage and Rita are waiting for coffee to brew, albeit [[spoiler:inside the farmhouse]] rather than in the sky lounge.
** In the novel, Keiji attracts Rita's attention in most of the loops by catching her eye during a P.T. session involving an "Iso Pushup". In the film, Cage escapes his unit during a P.T. session by baiting the Sergeant into ordering pushups, then meets Rita in the shooting range while she is doing a yoga pushup pose.
** In the middle of the film, Cage sneaks out of the base to take a drink in a presumably safe place, only to realize that hordes of Mimics are coming through the water. In the novel, Keiji sneaks out of the base as soon as he realizes he is in a timeloop--only to be killed in a seemingly safe place by Mimics hiding underwater. Both instances have an appropriate OhCrap moment.
* NiceJobBreakingItHero:
** [[spoiler:The doctor that gives Cage a blood transfusion unwittingly causes him to [[BroughtDownToNormal lose his time-looping power]], which nearly dooms humanity.]]
** This is subverted with Rita; it is even an important plot point. [[spoiler:The film implies that bleeding out would have the same effect as a blood transfusion. Rita hated how the combat medics inadvertently robbed her of the reset power, but if she had been left to bleed out, she would have lost her ability along with her life--[[KilledOffForReal permanently]]. Being "out" also prevented Rita from falling into the Omega's trap, which likely would have worked because she was unaware of the blood consequences at the time. Both scenarios would have led to humanity's GameOver. Her teaching Cage the "number one rule" saved him when he fell for the trap and stopped the Alpha from taking back the reset.]]
* NiceJobFixingItVillain:
** The Alpha Mimic attacking Cage--and subsequently bleeding on him when Cage pulls a TakingYouWithMe--grants him the GroundhogDayLoop power, which makes victory against the Mimics a possibility. It helps that Cage is positioned near the only other person who had previously possessed that power.
** Gen. Brigham is positioned as an antagonistic character, representing unbridled power with no responsibility. But if he had not abused his power and sent the untrained Cage into battle, mankind would have lost the war. His UriahGambit saved the world.
* NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished: In an early loop, Cage saves Rita's life. She "thanks" him by taking his suit's power pack to replace her damaged one. Cage is rather annoyed despite the fact he has a hole in his chest and is most likely dying. Without a working suit, Cage is killed moments later. See the ShootTheDog entry below.
* NonAnswer: [[spoiler:After a failed attempt to break out of General Brgham's headquarters, Cage wakes up strapped to a gurney, being examined by a nurse who tells Cage that she is under orders not to speak to him. Cage begs her to at least tell him if Rita is still alive. The nurse replies, "Sorry," and leaves. Cage assumes Rita is dead until she turns up moments later, so the nurse actually meant, "Sorry, but I can't tell you."]]
* NoOSHACompliance: Subverted. The "training" room with the [[TrainingFromHell stupidly deadly robot Mimics]] is supposed to be a long distance firing range, complete with very clear DO NOT CROSS step-offs and remote controls. Rita has other ideas. No one objects to this.
* NothingIsScarier:
** The French countryside is nothing but empty highways and abandoned homes with no one in sight. The film offers no clues as to what happened to the people here during the Mimic invasion.
** The individual iterations Cage experiences. Eventually, the movie strips out every other iteration and goes with the latest one. The scary part is the reminder of how many times Cage experiences the same situation. For example, [[spoiler:when he talks to the General in his room, he remembers every single detail, down to even the ''secretary''. When he finally gets to a new point in the conversation, he breaks out into a ''cold sweat''.]]
* NotWithTheSafetyOnYouWont: This is name-checked directly when an untrained Cage tries to get out of combat by saying he might accidentally hurt someone with his "[[PoweredArmor Jacket]]". Cage is initially stuck in a locked armor, with attempts at removing the safety going hilariously wrong. When he gets a second chance, he soon learns the proper method.
* NowOrNeverKiss: Between [[spoiler:Cage and Rita]], during the suicide mission to [[spoiler:kill the Omega under the Louvre]].
* OffhandBackhand: When Cage finally stays alive long enough to get to Rita, he kills several Mimics without even looking at them. This tips her off to the fact that Cage is stuck in a time-loop--just like she used to be.
* OhNoNotAgain: When he goes to see General Brigham, this is the first time [[GroundhogDayLoop for the viewers]], but Cage knows way too much, and tells Rita not to shoot him [[NoodleIncident again]].
* OlderAndWiser: The old regulars at the British pub seem to make rather perceptive guesses as to what the Mimics might want, at least compared to the United Defense Force. Somewhat justified, given that they have lived through UsefulNotes/WorldWarII and relay stories of their war veteran fathers and uncles.
* OnePhoneCall: Cage demands one from Sergeant Farell at the airbase. Too bad the sergeant thinks Cage is an impostor trying to sabotage the operation.
* OnlyAFleshWound: Any injury so severe that a person needs a blood transfusion to recover (as Cage did in the auto accident), is not one you can leap up from and run out on a combat mission afterwards.
* TheOnlyOne: Cage and Rita are the only people with extensive knowledge of how the Mimics work--and the only people who have ever been equipped with the ResetButton needed to combat them. As such, they are the only people that can effectively fight the aliens. [[spoiler:Subverted after Cage loses the power in the same way Rita did and he is unable to achieve victory on his own: He enlists the help of J Squad to end the Mimic scourge once and for all. Of course, it helps that he has become a legitimate badass by that point.]]
* OutOfContinues: Rita lost her looping power, but Cage gains it. [[spoiler:Cage loses it in the final loop as well, but manages to kill the Omega, which results in the ''Mimics'' running OutOfContinues after he absorbs the Omega's looping power to the point where the Omega is ''already dead'' when things loop back one final time.]]
* PedestrianCrushesCar: When Cage and Rita steal a car from General Brigham's headquarters, they run into a redcap guard in PoweredArmor who stops their vehicle with one smash of his exoskeleton's fists.
* PhysicalFitnessPunishment: J Squad has to do extra push-ups for Cage's misconduct. This is a relatively common military occurrence in RealLife.
* PineappleSurprise: During the climax, the shot of Cage dropping the pins of the grenades he just unleashed on the Omega.
* PlotCoupon: In order to proceed with his quest and find the Omega, Cage has to fetch the Omega detector from General Brigham's safe at Whitehall.
* POVBoyPosterGirl: Literally. Cage is the protagonist, but Rita is featured in some promotional materials without him.
* PoweredArmor: The foremost selling point of the film was the "Jacket" military armor worn by the characters, an armored exoskeleton armed with a gamut of weapons ranging from wrist machine guns to a ShoulderCannon, as well as giving them added durability and super strength. The beginning of the film has an advertisement that the Jackets are designed to turn any individual soldier into a OneManArmy with a minimal amount of training. Notably this is a close approximation of [[ShownTheirWork real life powered armors]] in development (one struggle being limited battery life and most require a direct power tether, the movie makes a point that the Jacket batteries have a limited operational period).
* ThePowerOfBlood: [[spoiler:Rita and Cage gain the GroundhogDayLoop power after being infected with an Alpha Mimic's blood. When they are gravely injured and administered a blood transfusion, they lose it. It is also implied that slowly bleeding to death would cause them to lose the power. The Mimics try that on Cage; he kills himself before it can play out.]]
* PragmaticAdaptation: The filmmakers made several alterations to the original story ''Literature/AllYouNeedIsKill'' so a Japanese light novel could become into a Hollywood action blockbuster:
** Because film is a visual medium, the appearance of the Mimics was changed to look more intimidating than the long-tailed frog-like creatures described in the original story.
** The "Jackets" are open exoskeletons that show the actors; they replace the full-body suits described in the novel. In the novel, the Mimics have lethal nanobot "blood"--hence the need for full-body suits. This was written out thanks to the change to the "Jackets".
** To cut down on exposition so the story could fit in a two-hour timeframe, the movie streamlined the biology and social structure of the Mimics. For the same reason, the film adds a third character who knows about the timeloop and provides quick exposition about the Mimics. In the novel, only the protagonists know what is happening to them, so they must figure out how to break the cycle all by themselves.
** The film also changed a number of cultural touchstones to make the story and characters more identifiable to Western audiences:
*** The protagonists became British and American rather than Japanese.
*** The historical allusions were changed mostly from the downfall of Imperial Japan to the D-Day landings (with a couple of World War One references for spice).
*** The protagonist went from a standard young-adult audience-insert--an OrdinaryHighSchoolStudent who does a lot of growing up in a brief amount of time--to a sleazy middle-aged media-man who undergoes a redemption arc. This approach allowed the filmmakers to secure both a large budget and Cruise's star power; some sly jokes at the expense of his somewhat chequered reputation were a bonus. It also let them sell the surreal premise of the story to the studio by showing parallels with the beloved time-travel comedy ''Film/GroundhogDay''.
* PreemptiveDeclaration: Cage can predict events because he lived through them numerous times. E.g., he tells General Brigham in advance that his phone will ring and who is on the other end. And that the secretary will enter the room to hand him documents for review.
* PreviewsPulse: Sound effect right after Rita's [[EstablishingCharacterMoment establishing]] LockAndLoadMontage when she walks out onto the airbase escorted by her skullhead squad.
* RaceLift: Several.
** The protagonist was changed from Japanese to American: Keiji Kiriya to William Cage.
** [=MSg=] Farell went from Brazilian-Japanese to being from Kentucky.
** Rita went from being American (and a redhead) to being British.
** Rita's assistant goes from a Native American to a British man, as well.
* RageHelm: Rita's squad decorate their helmets with skulls, to contrast them with Rita who always goes helmetless.
* RagtagBunchOfMisfits: J Squad, of course.
* {{Railroading}}: {{Lampshaded}}. Cage remarks he's being "railroaded" as all his attempts at avoiding being shipped to the frontline are thwarted.
* RealMenWearPink: Soldier Griff sports a pink bathrobe when off-duty.
* RedHerring: [[spoiler:The vision of the Omega hiding inside a dam in Germany turns out to be a ruse.]]
* RefusalOfTheCall: Cage initially tries this after he finds out about his time-looping powers. He then [[ResignedToTheCall resigns himself to the call]] once Rita starts training him. He finally accepts the call at the peak of his character development.
* RelationshipResetButton: In the second-to-last loop, Cage and Rita share a [[NowOrNeverKiss single kiss right before they die]]. Then the loop resets, the aliens are defeated, and Cage is [[RippleEffectProofMemory the only one who remembers what happened]]. The movie ends just as he meets her again.
* ResetButton: Cage essentially does this with the [[TagLine live-die-repeat]] loops. Also, [[spoiler:Rita]] could do this up until [[spoiler:she was injured and had some of her blood replaced, which removed the power]]. Additionally, [[spoiler:the Omega automatically does this when an Alpha dies so it can adapt to whatever the humans do.]] The original light novel was inspired by one of the author's friends describing this very trope to him, and it shows.
* ResetButtonSuicideMission: The film plays with this extensively. It's made clear early on that only Cage remembers each cycle, and he MUST die each day in order to repeat the cycle and eventually destroy the Omega Mimic. As a result every mission he takes is either a training exercise (where he is eventually killed, either by a Mimic in battle or by Rita to instigate the next cycle) or an exploratory mission to get closer to their goal (still dying with each step). [[spoiler: Near the end, he gains the vital information needed to destroy the Omega but ends up losing the ability to reset. He then leads a team to finish the Omega once and for all, with them dying to the last man. But by killing and absorbing the blood of the Omega, Cage loops back ''two'' days, with the Omega retroactively dead as a result. This was unexpected, but leads to a HappyEnding]].
* ResurrectionDeathLoop: What Cage finds himself trapped in, resulting in a fair bit of trauma over time.
* RetGone: [[spoiler:Because Cage absorbs the Omega's power as it dies, [[TemporalParadox he never has to kill it in the first place]]. When time restarts to the day before the loop originally did, the Omega is already dead. In the final version of events Sgt. Ferrell and J Squad never even meet Cage.]]
* RippleEffectProofMemory: The ability to remember what happened during the previous loop gave the Mimics an edge over their human foes. Cage accidentally acquires that power and [[HoistByHisOwnPetard turns it against the aliens]].
* RousingSpeech: Sgt. Farell has a recurring one before Operation Downfall thanks to Cage's time looping.
* RuleOfSymbolism: Cage waking up in cuffs in the airbase [[spoiler:every time he dies, which signifies being tied to fate]]. There's an especially prominent shot of his wrists after Cage [[spoiler:witnesses Rita's death one too many times]].
** [[spoiler:After the victory over the mimics, Cage wakes up with no cuffs on his wrists and a full officer's uniform, complete with badges and headgear, a sign that now he truly deserves his rank of Major; to drive it home, the soldiers that had once stared at or mocked him derisively now salute him on-sight.]]
* RunningGag:
** The constant CurseCutShort whenever anyone tries to say Rita's...less flattering nickname.
** [[BlackComedy Rita shooting Cage in the head.]]
** Kimmel being squashed by a falling plane.
** Cage's weird yelping death scream. It becomes a very BlackComedy BrickJoke when [[spoiler:it shows up again as he makes his HeroicSacrifice.]]
** A very subtle one, from the beginning of the movie up until the end. Cage is listed as a deserter when he enters the ranks of J Squad. [[spoiler:Throughout the movie, his actions always involve some level of desertion, such as when the team is trying to reach the dam in Germany. Even the final act that ends the war involves Cage and Rita convincing J Squad to commit desertion by leaving their posts and heading to the Louvre.]]
* SecretStabWound: Rita reveals a severe bullet wound as they stand by the helicopter. Cue the AfterActionPatchup scene at the farmhouse.
* SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong: Generally the premise of the film, but done in a different approach. Early on Cage dedicates himself primarily to protect his squad from their brutally swift fates early in the big battle, but one person cannot change that outcome. Losing the ability to reset would only allow the Mimics to have control over it again, and so even if they somehow win that battle the next encounter the Mimics will have the reset power again and roll over them. So their goal is targeting the HiveMind itself in the short timespan they have.
* ASharedSuffering: Cage has FireForgedFriends to draw him closer to Rita, but since she only knows Cage for two days at most, this trope is likely what draws her to Cage, despite her struggling against it. Only one other person in the world even believes her, and he has no idea what it is like to die--and see your friends die--over and over.
* ShellShockSilence: Cage has at least two of these moments--first, when his drop ship is hit; and later, when he is overwhelmed by the terror on the battlefield and all sounds go mute for a while.
* ShootTheDog: During the loop where Cage is shot in the chest, [[NinjaLooting Rita takes his battery pack]], because it is apparent that his wound is fatal, and [[CombatPragmatist she will get more use out of it than he will]]. By that point, however, she is [[BrokenAce pretty numb to losing comrades anyway.]] The film later implies that she was intentionally trying to kill an Alpha, then absorb the alien's blood so she could regain her time-looping power and locate the Omega with Carter's help, thus ensuring her own survival no matter the cost. This was the only available option for her until she found out about Cage.
* ShotgunsAreJustBetter: Cage pulls out an awesome (and loud) shotgun during the climactic battle. [[NegatedMomentOfAwesome He fires it twice.]]
* ShoutOut:
** When the dropship is piloted toward the front of the Louvre, two Mimics jump on top and start tearing it apart. This is exactly like when the Hunter-Killers attack the Nebuchadnezzar at the end of ''Film/TheMatrixReloaded''.
** ''Film/SavingPrivateRyan'' is all over the Normandy invasion.
** Rita's EmbarrassingNickname is an obvious reference to ''Film/FullMetalJacket'' -- and possibly ''Literature/FullMetalPanic'' or ''Manga/FullmetalAlchemist'' as well.
** One of the soldiers in J Squad is named after B.F. Skinner of pigeon superstition and operant conditioning chamber fame.
** MildlyMilitary soldiers fighting ''Film/{{Aliens}}'', especially given the presence of Bill Paxton.
** During the opening news montage, one of the locations Cage speaks from is the NORAD War Room from ''Film/WarGames''.
** Tom Cruise fights an alien with an axe and killing another one using hand grenades can bring one to mind of his role in ''Film/WarOfTheWorlds2005''.
** In keeping with the GroundhogDayLoop effect of the movie, Rita shares her name with the LoveInterest of another guy [[Film/GroundhogDay who found himself repeating the day over and over]].
** One extremely oblique reference can be [[https://img9.doubanio.com/view/photo/raw/public/p2200805408.jpg glimpsed]] in the segment where Cage reassembles J Squad: one of the walls of the UDF base is graffitied with mirrored Japanese characters saying ''gendai mahou'' (現代魔法), or "Modern-Day Magic", which is taken from the title of ''Literature/ModernMagicMadeSimple'', Hiroshi Sakurazaka's debut work.
* SleepingWithTheBoss: Cage implies that not only is Iris in a relationship with Brigham, but that they also have a son who Brigham sent as far away from the fighting as possible.
* SlideAttack: Cage can be seen doing this on a couple of occasions on the beach.
* SoldiersAtTheRear: Cage desperately wanted to stay one. He shouldn't have tried to [[BlackmailIsSuchAnUglyWord blackmail]] General Brigham.
* SoundOff: Part of J Squad's drill at the base is doing chanting cadence while exercising.
* SpannerInTheWorks: The Mimic invasion would have gone off without a hitch if not for a PR hack getting splattered on with Alpha blood on the battlefield.
* SparedByTheAdaptation: [[spoiler:Rita]] does not survive to the end in the original light novel because the time-loop and the Mimics work differently; this leads to a plot twist that the film does not have. Ironically, [[spoiler:she only dies once in the light novel, whereas she dies multiple times in the film.]]
* SpectacularSpinning: Several examples:
** The mimics themselves move in a manner that involves whirling their body in a corkscrew-like motion while whipping limbs in every direction, seemingly at random, but in reality setting up numerous handholds and preparing several simultaneous attacks, so that they may move and strike in any direction they see fit.
** The Omega's core consists of a spinning sphere, probably representing the HiveMind's brain.
** Mimic projectiles (called "Javelins") also spin through the air as they fly. Though in this case everything is ''worse'' with spinning.
* SpinAttack: Rita's wind-up spin when she's attacking Mimics or training drones with her sword also involves some gratuitous level of spinning. Although it kind of makes sense, aside from RuleOfCool, in that she wants to get as much momentum behind her sword before it connects. And when she's leaping midair, the fastest way to do that is through spinning.
* SpreadingDisasterMapGraphic: The map in the opening montage shows how the alien invasion spread across Europe.
* StaticStunGun: Early on, Cage gets tasered by a soldier when he tries to leave and dodge his assignment.
* StiffUpperLip: From what viewers see of London, the Brits seem rather nonchalant about having a horde of aliens right across the Channel.
* StockFootage: Attentive viewers might recognize some of the meteor footage as a dashcam recording of the 2013 [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor Chelyabinsk meteor]].
* StormingTheBeaches: The movie features an amphibious assault on the alien-controlled Normandy beaches. The humans invade with helicopter dropships, hovercraft, and even landing boats.
* SuggestiveCollision: Cage and Rita roll off a CarCushion to escape falling debris, Rita ending on top of Cage. As per this trope, they have their [[FirstKiss first]] and [[LastKiss last kiss]] shortly after.
* SuperhumanTransfusion: Cage gains the ability to reset time when blood from an Alpha Mimic enters his system. The power cannot be transferred, however, and it is lost if someone has to undergo a blood transfusion.
* SurprisinglyHappyEnding: [[spoiler:Cage, leading a SuicideMission in which EveryoneDies, kills the Omega in a TakingYouWithMe moment. He also absorbs some of the Omega's blood, which means he wakes up the day before the mission, when he was riding on a helicopter to Whitehall--just before Brigham sent him to the front lines. Not only does Cage avoid his demotion to private, he now lives in a timeline where the entire Mimic force has been disabled because of the death of the Omega that happened before Operation Downfall. One of the writers stated the trope was enforced because when they chose to focus on the comedy, "it needed to end in a way that wasn't harsh".]]
* SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome:
** Cage refusing to comply with a direct order from a four-star general was not going to end well. The fact that he then tries to blackmail the general only makes the situation worse. Cage's punishment ''is'' an overkill, sure, but he was asking for it.
** What does Cage get for trying to convince his squad that he knows the future? Some funny looks at their obviously insane squadmate. They duct tape his mouth when he won't shut up about it.
** Rita might be a massive badass, but even her combat skills are not enough to save her during the battle on the beach. In the first few run-throughs, she dies long before NewMeat Cage.
** Trying to roll under a moving truck is going to end with LudicrousGibs unless you can time it extremely precisely.
** Ford asks what they should do if an Alpha is about to kill them, since killing an Alpha would reset the day in the Mimics' favor. Cage grimly says that if that happens he will have to take one for the team.
** Anyone who becomes dead weight is treated by others, themselves, or both with utilitarianism: Whatever use left in them, if any, is taken advantage of before moving on, while they can at least buy the rest some time.
* SwissCheeseSecurity: The obvious explanation for J squad's unauthorized and yet unchallenged departure from the airbase in a quadcopter at night.
** For that matter, both Cage and Rita are perfectly capable of moving around the base and entering different sections of it, without ever being stopped, [=IDed=] or even given looks. Of course, by this point Cage knows exactly where all of the guards are and possibly even when they will be looking in specific directions.
* TakeAThirdOption: This is a frequent natural consequence of being able to try every possible option. Cage ultimately realizes that the invasion will be a bloodbath, the UK will be overrun, Rita will die no matter what, and taking out the Omega at Curnera will not happen--so he needs to destroy the Omega ''before'' the invasion takes place. [[spoiler:He loses his time travel powers by that point, but he has amassed enough combat experience and expertise to make a run at a ResetButtonSuicideMission.]]
* TakingYouWithMe:
** The first time he goes into battle, Cage notices one of the other soldiers strapping a Claymore mine to himself. Worst case scenario, he pulls it and dies, but as long as the mine is pointed in the right direction, more Mimics will bite the dust than the one soldier lost. Cage resorts to this when the Alpha attacks him, which is how he becomes exposed to the blood that ultimately lets him loop.
** During the climax, two injured and out-of-ammo members of J Squad use the same Claymore while standing in front of a fuel truck to kill several advancing Mimics to give Cage and Rita an opening.
* TemptingFate:
** Kimmel yelling "We made it!" shortly before being killed by a falling transport. This eventually turns into a RunningGag, and Cage tries his hand at preventing the death a few times (with varying degrees of success).
** Rita mentioning that she'd forgotten to unhook the caravan is the prompt for a Mimic to burst right out of it and attack them.
** Upon leaving Whitehall, Cage mentions how easy it was to get the device from General Brigham. The next moment, he and Rita are ambushed in front of the building.
* ThatPoorCar: Car alarms are heard across [[spoiler:Paris after the Omega is destroyed.]]
* ThatWasntARequest: General Brigham makes it clear that Cage's assignment to join the first wave was not an offer.
* TheyKilledKennyAgain: Cage dies so many times that it is impossible to keep track, which is by design. Several of his deaths--including his being hit by a car a few times and various times when he is given a BoomHeadshot by Rita--are PlayedForLaughs.
* TheyWouldCutYouUp: Cage asks Rita why they avoid telling General Brigham what is happening. Rita says she already tried it countless times; she was usually thrown in the psych ward, except for the one time they believed her--and vivisected her. Cage almost falls into this himself when he and Rita are forced to go Brigham directly to retrieve a PlotCoupon, finally managing to convince him and walk out the door before being surrounded by dozens of [=MPs=].
* ThousandYardStare: Cage sports one for the entire loop after [[spoiler:he fails to save Rita one time too many]]. The sight of it is enough to cut Farell's speech short and convince Griff to hand over the equipment he asks for. He gets better after [[spoiler:learning the dam is a trap, since it means they don't have to follow the scenario in which she keeps dying.]]
* ThreePointLanding: Cage when dropped off at the beach on the third iteration, showing how he's starting to get the hang of things.
* TrailersAlwaysSpoil: One of the movie's posters shows [[spoiler:the Louvre]] [[MonumentalDamage on fire]].
* TrainingFromHell: {{Exaggerated}}. Day after day, Rita gives Cage an unforgiving and literally ''murderous'' training routine, which typically ends with Cage killed either by the training robots or by Rita herself. But also {{justified}}, because she's exploiting his powers to give him months of training in a single day, and the fate of mankind hangs in the balance.
* TrainingMontage: A montage showing Cage getting trained by Rita. Since death is the only way to progress, it doubles as a DeathMontage.
* TrustPassword: Rita had prepared herself to find someone who had a similar power. When she and Cage first officially meet and see him fighting by memory, tells him to "Come find me when you wake up" right before they both die again. When he manages to reach her, he says "You said to find you when I woke up" and she immediately knows what is happening to him. In later loops she seemingly withheld some information for the sole purpose of sharing it with Cage so he can convince herself in the next loop to be more trusting, specifically revealing her middle name is Rose.
* UnfinishedUntestedUsedAnyway: The Omega detector is one of these. Dr. Carter notes that even though it was finished, they never tested it out, which does bother Cage somewhat. Rita "helps" him go through with the testing procedure anyway.
* UnorthodoxReload: The powered exoskeletons allow the user to reload their arm-mounted machine guns by jamming an arm into a mechanism built into the suit where a gun holster would be.
* UriahGambit: The film begins with Cage attempting to refuse a direct order to accompany the assault the next day--then stupidly trying to blackmail General Brigham by pointing out that he is a potential threat to the General's reputation if left alive. Brigham promptly has Cage arrested, and puts him in a front-line combat unit with no training and a fake backstory guaranteed to alienate his squadmates, essentially ensuring that he will be killed the next day.
* WarIsGlorious: This is [[ColonelKilgore Sgt. Farell]]'s humble opinion.
* WarIsHell: The first time Cage leads the charge of Operation Downfall is absolutely horrifying, with men dying by the droves in meaningless deaths. The movie makes note how brutal and bleak war is at several different points.
* WhamLine:
** "Come find me when you wake up."
** "You can do this. You can. You keep coming here every day and I'll train you." -- "You already have."
* WhamShot: When we see Cage regain consciousness after a car crash, [[spoiler:the movie shows a packet of blood from his perspective. That transfusion means he can no longer loop]].
* WhatYearIsThis: When Cage loops back for the first time, he asks the Seargent which day it is. The answer? "For you? Judgement Day."
* WhereItAllBegan: [[spoiler:Following the suicide mission, the movie just goes back to where it started, with Cage on a helicopter on the way to London - only this time the Mimics have already died. Chris [=McQuarrie=] said they went for this because "comedies generally have to go back to the way things were".]]
* WordSaladTitle: ''Edge of Tomorrow'' was often promoted by the much more descriptive tagline ''Live. Die. Repeat.'' after the film hit home video. Ironically, the original LightNovel itself had an odd title: ''Literature/AllYouNeedIsKill''.
* WorkplaceAcquiredAbilities: Cage's background as a PR guy comes in handy towards the end, when he has to convince a squad of almost-strangers (from their perspective) to follow him into battle.
* YetAnotherStupidDeath: A non-video-game example, although it certainly feels like one. A number of times that Cage dies in the first half of the film are due to easily avoidable mistakes and/or not figuring out where the enemy is going to attack next.
* YouCantFightFate: While the entire premise regards ScrewDestiny, the loops mostly show that InSpiteOfANail, some things will repeat every time Cage goes back.
* YouCantThwartStageOne: Humans who reset absolutely cannot affect the initial conditions of recurring events. Not only does any attempt to avert the beach slaughter fail, but any attempt to tell other humans about the ability will be [[ArbitrarySkepticism disbelieved]] [[spoiler:or a big mistake--Rita was able to get the brass to believe her at one point, but it only led them to [[TheyWouldCutYouUp vivisect her]]. She manages to drag a geek into her circle of disbelief, though, and only because he figured the Mimics use time itself--and was demoted for it. This ends up being subverted by the end, as they instead attack the Louvre the night before the doomed invasion attempt, and succeeding in their mission creates a reset two days back, preventing the need for the Normandy invasion altogether]].
* YouHaveToBelieveMe: Cage's efforts to tell his story are quite fruitless at first. In fact, the first person he tries to tell about it (Sergeant Farrel) makes it abundantly clear he's not even going to listen to Cage's story, so Cage doesn't bother trying until the next loop. [[spoiler:Near the end of the movie, he manages to get J Squad's members to believe him.]]
* YourPrincessIsInAnotherCastle: [[spoiler:Cage finally makes it to the dam, ready to destroy the Omega--only to find that it was never actually there.]]
* ZergRush: This is the only tactic used by humans or aliens--although the Mimics have effective anti-aircraft fire on the beach [[spoiler:and around the Louvre]], though no AA units are seen, and they are unable to stop one helicopter flying from Normandy to Germany. [[spoiler:Since the whole dam affair was part of the trap, it is likely to assume that the Omega simply let him get this far]].
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