These days, I write whenever I want to – or when I’m not busy exploring the world with my wife or kids or grandkids. I write and read constantly. Then I discovered that I was writing longer and longer pieces. My new focus is to write shorter; and to write HUMOR. On purpose. Maybe I can still irritate people while being funny. It works pretty well for John Scalzi! We’ll see what happens.
The movie, Edge of Tomorrow, with Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt came out a decade ago. My wife and I watched it a few nights ago and I came away AMAZED. (I also found out tonight from Dale, that I’ve seen the movie, albeit several years ago.)
By the way – this is NOT a movie review! If you’ve never heard of the movie, I suggest you watch it. I was able to check out the DVD from my friendly neighborhood library. I could probably ((WILL, probably), pick it up for a couple bucks somewhere eventually.
A couple of things impressed me.
First of all, it was startling to see Mary Poppins as an enhanced mechanized soldier who easily blew alien monsters away! It reminded me of a scene from GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY 2, where “Yondu [is] yelling ‘I'm Mary Poppins, y'all’ while using his arrow to float back to the ground. It turns out that wasn't originally in the script. When [the writer] was visualizing the scene, it didn't look quite as heroic as [he] intended it to be. So then [he] put the Poppins line in Peter Quill's mouth. And Yondu, of course, not knowing the name Mary or Poppins might think he's sort of a Lee Marvin type and he owns it.”
Of course, I mean actor Emily Blunt. My wife and I discovered we’re a pair of Emily Blunt fans! Besides playing Mary Poppins, a fashion magazine secretary (alongside Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, and Stanley Tucci); she has played memorable characters as diverse as Young Queen Victoria, Miss Piggy’s Receptionist, the mother of a psychic child marked for execution by a time-traveling agent, a Baker’s Wife, an Amazon River adventurer, a nuclear physicist’s wife, and a pharmaceutical executive-then-whistleblower…
And, of course Sergeant Rita Vrataski, (also known as the Full Metal Bitch) a mech-suited Army soldier. Amazingly, the movie is considered a horror “comedy”, mostly for the repartee between the Sergeant and Major/Private William Cage. While the die repeatedly in variously gruesome ways ranging from Vrataski shooting Cage to start the loop cycle again, to both of them being violently torn to shreds by the…sort-of-micro-tornado of tentacles of some sort, to crashes, crushing, and literally dozens of creative ways someone can die on a battlefield.
How she comes across as HUMOROUS in this splatter-gore movie escapes me – though I personally believe that while the humor is sometimes slapstick, it leans more heavily on sarcasm between Vrataski and Cage. That’s my FAVORITE form of humor.
At any rate, Blunt’s performance and her and Cruise’s increasing skill at blowing the Mimics away leads me to contemplate the aliens themselves.
It’s bluntly (no pun intended) stated pretty much from the beginning that they want Earth. But WHY? They LOOK absolutely alien – but to me, they make no sense whatsoever. Created for their “creep factor”, they’re typically nothing more that flailing tentacles that kill Humans.
Why? Why do they even CARE about Earth or Humans? Their blood is obviously not iron-based so they’re not going to use Earth as a cattle ranch (so to speak) – how do they breathe on Earth? They don’t have suits – at least not suits a Human would recognize. They don’t even really have weapons, except slashers and hard skin: they can only be destroyed by intense, high-speed machinegun fire. Also, there’s no way they can really SEE, as there are no obvious eyes. I believe at one point, the movie alludes to them having psychic powers. But that’s even MORE ridiculous! In order to telepathically link with a life form, your electrical/psychic system would have to be able to synchronize – and based on what we see, Human-Mimic psychic link would be impossible: they aren’t even the same SPECIES – and the Mimics don’t appear to have any kind of central nervous system.
The following discussion online offers some interesting insight into the Mimics: https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/24557/what-is-the-origin-of-mimics-in-edge-of-tomorrow
So, let me take a stab at it – as the Mimics obviously come from an entirely alien environment and we know their either evolved there or were created there – then they must have some kind of environment that they were designed for. Their ability to “spin through soil” might point to their origins or life as a…sort of mole-like creature. As they originally attacked from the oceans, like us, they might have a saline internal fluid like blood. You get a better sense of the tentacles if you scroll through this link: https://aliens.fandom.com/wiki/Mimic_(Edge_of_Tomorrow).
Despite their wild appearance, their movement would suggest that they not only originated on a high-gravity world, but they were, at one time, “prime prey”. To survive, they would have had to develop defenses against their main predator. Humans became SMARTER than just about everything that hunted them. Did the Mimics do the same – or are they simply “animals”? Maybe the drone Mimics are, but the Alphas and Omegas are NOT – they’re a hive organism, somewhat like a beehive, though NOT precisely…
Anyway, this is getting long. I think I’m going to stop here and continue later. Have a good day!
Inspiration: “Live. Die. Repeat.” or EDGE OF TOMORROW
Links: https://bleedingcool.com/movies/james-gunn-reveals-im-mary-poppins-yall-wasnt-script/#google_vignette ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Blunt
Image: [Webb image of the Horsehead Nebula…looks like dragons to me!]
https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/stsci-01gfnn3pwjmy4rqxkz585bc4qh.png
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