History Headscratchers / EdgeOfTomorrow

[[folder: What is reset and what isn't]]

[[folder: Grandfather Paradox]]

[[folder: What was Dr. Carter's device designed to do?]]

[[folder: Mimic Blood Behavior]]

[[folder: Carter's transponder]]

[[folder: Death and the Dam *spoilers*]]

[[folder: Headcount in the Final Act *spoilers*]]

[[folder: Does Cage ever sleep?]]

[[folder: Mimic Military Progress]]

** They waited for humans to mobilize. They lost on purpose at Verdun. They wanted all the armed forces in one place to destroy them in one stroke and leave the rest of the planet wide open

*** 5) Fitting. These suits are being worn by men and women, tall people and short people, fat ones and skinny ones. They also appear to be mass-produced, not customized to individuals. Armor plating could limit how easily the exosuits can adjust their various sections' configuration to fit the person they're encasing.

*** That theory raises the question of why would a hive mind care if it lost a bunch of troops, as they seem to have an unlimited reserve?
*** the mimics are part of the whole, so it's like cutting off arms of a person, eventually an alpha will get killed when enough limbs are lost and it can reset so it doesn't lose those arms.
*** Unless the mimics are violating conservation of energy/matter, they don't have an unlimited number of reserves.
*** It also raises the question, why send the Alpha to the frontline at all, expecting the enemy to kill it, instead of keeping it tucked safely by your side and killing it personally whenever you feel like resetting time. ESPECIALLY since, as you already know, its vital powers can be transferred to your enemies.
*** the proposed that humanity's only saving grace is that it CAN absorb the powers of the alpha, and because of the next line below this one, holding them back was not possible.
*** Rita explains that the Alphas are the smart ones. They're akin to the Synapse Creatures of [[TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}} the Tyranids]]. They need to be on the front lines to coordinate troops and collect combat data.

*** Right. Or like telling your immune system NOT to fight a virus on a certain occasion to lure it into a trap. Which the Omega does. Meaning "single organism" IS a simplification, and Omega has direct control over the others or at least can give them orders.
*** It clearly understands the concept as it is shown to try to prevent Cage from killing himself.
*** It's not one big organism, calling it that is just a way of simplifying things. And even then, even animals know that they should chew off their limbs to get out of a trap. Killing the Alpha should not be more difficult than that. And they even reset time, so there's really no reason not to do so.
*** No, they specifically said in the movie that the entire Mimic race is essentially one big organism.
*** Said by whom? Some guy guessing based on what limited information he has. They are at best educated guess, not to be taken for facts.

*** But aren't there like hundreds or Thousands of Alphas on the planet? Why not have one of them kill itself or have Drones kill it. Can't the Omega reset the day based on the death of any Alpha?
*** They should have gotten the warning a lot earlier, like when a dropship comes crashing down and the ensuing 20 minutes of (offscreen) fighting. And no Mimic soldiers rushed to the Louvre to guard the Omega (only a single Alpha guards it), instead they waste their time finding and killing the protagonists. Looks like the Omega grabs a VillainBall and held on to it tightly from then to the movie's end.
*** The aliens are probably all concentrating at the beach and surrounding areas at this point for their final attack. The force J squad encountered during the crash is probably the few defenders that are left.
*** One of the biggest themes is that the Alien's near-omnipotent knowledge is because they use SaveScumming. The entire group was told that if it came down to between killing an Alpha or dying, they should "take one for the team". It's used to showcase that the Omega is actually quite stupid tactically without the knowledge of the future, making amateur mistakes when it can't take advantage of a reset.

*** That doesn't make sense. If the Omega can't remember the loops, then it wouldn't have started searching for him to give him misleading visions of where it was because it wouldn't be aware that anything was different. Additionally, Rita and Dr. Carter say later in the movie that "it knows who you are" - now while I'm willing to concede that pretty much 99% of what the two of them say is blind guesswork, it's the best we have to go on. Additionally, when Cage is at the dam in Germany - remember, a place he could only have gone ''because he was getting fake visions from the Omega, something it wouldn't have any need to send if it didn't at least suspect that its powers were being hijacked by a human'' - the Alpha stops him from blowing his brains out instead of immediately trying to kill him like every other Mimic we've seen in the story thus far.

*** The Alpha only appeared the first time after a series of events that are never repeated in subsequent timelines. Specifically Cage's squad being wiped out and him lying shocked and seemingly dead. When it does show up, the fighting has ended in the area, and it's moving warily and surrounded by guards. There's no other loop we see where Cage basically plays dead in the crater where his squad died, and the Alpha seems to be avoiding direct combat, so he never runs into it again.
*** The Omega got to reset the first time when Cage killed the Alpha, but after that Cage was always resetting first. Thus The Mimics changed behaviour between after the first loop, but never could again.
*** At the end of the film Cage took the Omegas blood and reset time, but the omega stayed dead after the reset. Going by the same logic, this alpha may have stayed dead as well

*** Remember that Cage doesn't ''like'' being killed. He has repeatedly tried to weasel out of it, even knowing he's better off dead - like when he was ''left paralysed'' for example.

** What we don't know is how many iterations happend between from first time they gained the device and the iteration we see as next with car chase. For all we know this could be their hundredth attempt or ''second'' one. And we will never learn that. In case of this being their second or any of early attemps, this could be simply a random mess-up during their trail.

** On the other hand, their plan is flawed with different fallacy. From what we know, in every single iteration Rita is only carrying her standard-issue pistol to shoot Cage. It never occured to them to subdue the general or kill him in silent way after checking who and when will came into the office, use the device and then kill Cage. Instead their plan is about getting the device and getting out of the area.

*** Cage is fairly prominent. He's not a Colonel or anything, but in the beginning it's seen that a large part of his job is appearing in front of cameras and on major network talk shows.
*** However, it's entirely probable that Cage is just one of many army PR flacks employed to boost recruitment and the public is probably used to ignoring them.

*** The ability to reset expires after one day.
*** Or in any case it only appears to allow resets into the immediate past. The result is that he would end up reliving the final days of his life endlessly.
*** It doesn't matter if Cage has re-acquired the reset power. If he doesn't want it, he can simply get himself a blood transfusion and it's gone.

*** There's apparently a sequel in the works, so the Omega may well turn out to not be dead. It's possible that it reset time as it died and willingly retreated from battle - knowing it couldn't win. If the enemy inevitably finds where it's hiding in Paris, it probably needs to regroup before it can try again.

*** The training room is in fact a shooting gallery. The entry ports to it are stands for gunners, so they can practice their aim on spasmatically moving targets which are used to emulate Mimics. You should rather ask what Rita, without any protective gear, is doing inside every time Cage arrives there.

*** They might be able to use them, but moving around with jackets is going to take some time adjusting to, and minimal jacket training might not cover that. Plus, Mimic movements are shown to be quick and unpredictable; Rita and Cage are able to engage them at close combat because they've gone through loop-induced training and know how they behave.

*** Dr. carter actually says in the movie that he couldn't make it work "not here, not with these materials", so parent is correct.
* Why was Dr. Carter's device locked up in the general's safe? If they thought Dr. Carter was crazy, then his prototype should have been either broken down for its parts or collecting dust in the closet in an R&D facility somewhere. The only reason for it to be in the safe was that they took Dr. Carter seriously, in which case he should have still been in R&D, not reassigned as a mechanic.

*** This. The Mimics are very cautious, they save-scum, they do-over, they basically treat the whole war as if they're trying to get a perfect playthrough in a game on its hardest setting. And they can mess with time. Hurrying does not seem to be a priority for them.
* They waited for humans to mobilize. They lost on purpose at Verdun. They wanted all the armed forces in one place to destroy them in one stroke and leave the rest of the planet wide open

** Mimics can be killed literally with FiveRoundsRapid, which takes about a day to train. Trainig melee skills takes few weeks for absolutely basic close quarters combat. And UDF is desperate enough to field penal units into direct combat. So no, going for melee is not an option.

** Cage is enduring lethal training for a reason. Rita wants to pump into him as much experience as possible and since he can affort getting injured, crippled or killed in the process, the whole ordeal [[TrainingFromHell is straight from hell]]. Even if first few hundreds or even thousands of training sessions are about him being lame fighter and lousy shot, they have all the time they need for that. Remember that Cage can't train in normal manner - his body won't retain any muscles or build strength in next loop. Nor that he needs any. It's about training his skills and reflexes and polishing them.

*** They might be able to use them, but moving around with jackets is going to take some time adjusting to, and minimal jacket training might not cover that. Plus, Mimic movements are shown to be quick and unpredictable; Rita and Cage are able to engage them at close combat because they've gone through several loop-induced training and know how they behave.

** More to the point, if they were operating her, they would for sure have done blood transfusions, to keep her alive while studying what was happening.

** The suit allows to carry two light cannons, a grenade launcher and four (or three, if the launcher takes "slot") assault rifles, with ammo to all of them and without any encumbrace coming from that, as the suit "carries itself". It also enchance soldier's strength to the point that pushing a tonne is as hard as pushing few kilos. The powersource is also quite reliable, allowing to go for few hours. Which is all well enought to overcome ''any'' disadvantages coming from such suit and we are talking about it's potential by barely trained NewMeat. When the same suit is worn by well-trained soldiers like Rita and Cage, they effortlessly dominate the battlefield, and it's all about their combat experience, not ability to forseen the location of enemy (just recall how easily Cage was dying before he actually learn to fight, regardless of looping). And remember that modern combat armour and protective gear is restricting by itself - you move very stiffly in it. And while it provides you with protection, it weights quite a lot, not to mention rest of your gear.
** The props weighed about 80 pounds if this troper is not mistaken, and that was just the "light" version for filming. In universe, the amplified strength shown off in the car chase scene where a guard stops it cold pretty much justifies it, given that soldiers who are experienced can also punch Mimics to death. There are also two versions. One that's fairly open that allows for decent range of movement, and then Kimmel's version, which you see in the background at times, which has more armor coverage and presumably firepower.

** Or maybe the visions simply stopped after the transfusion and she figured out what happend.

** I took it that once they were jacked into the Mimic hivemind they would somehow track the signal back to it's origin. Having a guy that could talk instead handily negated that need.[[/folder]]

* Why was Dr. Carter's device locked up in the general's safe? If they thought Dr. Carter was crazy, then his prototype should have been either broken down for its parts or collecting dust in the closet in an R&D facility somewhere. The only reason for it to be in the safe was that they took Dr. Carter seriously, in which case he should have still been in R&D, not reassigned as a mechanic.[[/folder]]

** It's pretty clear that it involves removing or replacing the alien blood from the Alpha in Cage's system, so the plan of the Mimics for the Dam trap must have been something along the lines of "remove all Alpha blood from Cage ''before'' he dies to avoid a reset." Cage drowned himself before he bled out and so still had enough Alpha blood in his system to get the reset. Rita is willing to kill Cage whenever he has an injury that will mean a possible blood transfusion (and losing the reset) ''or'' will prevent him from training anymore on that cycle. A broken leg for Cage means he can't train any more that day, so she resets him.[[/folder]]

** Although who the extra bodies are is not explained, that they were comrades of Ritas is the most likely explanation. Recall, she is part of an elite squad herself, so its not impossible she could have talked a few of them (off-screen) into joining the mission as well. But if thats the case, then it makes one wonder why she didnt talk her own unit into joining her and Cage instead of J-squad. Not that J-squad were totally inept as soldiers as such, but they were still the dregs of the UDF all the same.

*How does one explain the Mimics relatively poor military progress after 5 years? From General Brigham's situation map, its clear that Spain, Most of Italy, all of Scandinavia, and pretty much all of Russia are free of mimics. The film shows the Mimics are extremely formidable individually. One or two wipe out all of J-squad alone, and that is with them all equipped with new-jacket tech. Modern human military mobilizations are notoriously slow, and constructing the elaborate mimic proof fortifications necessary to seal off all of Europe would be slower still. This makes the mimics slow progress all the more puzzling. They do not seem to need food(or at least complex logistics for food), or fuel(unlike human armies do),or sleep even?, nor do they have complicated, top down command structures to muddy things. Their slow progress might have been somewhat justified if they said humans had complete air-superiority and that helped slow the mimic advance, but once again, the mimics are shown to be able to destroy human aircraft with ease-transports or attack craft alike. Nor is water much of a barrier either as the mimics are in London within mere hours of the failure of operation Downfall. Based on loop where Cage deserts his post, all of the British Isles would be overrun literally within a day or two at most. The mimics can easily swim around most defences we could errect, be it in the north, or in the mediterranean. All of this taken together, makes one wonder why they haven't overrun the entire globe by now.

*** Dr. carter actually says in the movie that he couldn't make it work "not here, not with these materials", so parent is correct.[[/folder]]

** That's why "Impersonating an Officer" is on his list of charges. He's charged with impersonating ''himself''. The fact that he looks like that high-ranking officer on television plays right into the narrative of the frame-up.

** From what he says it sounds like he had to make do with replacement materials, which ended up being inferior. Given that the control console wasn't even attached (he apparently only made a mockup of the plug) it's likely not even complete. The mockup he had might have had a mechanical failing that the working prototype didn't.[[/folder]]