There hasn’t been much word on Edge of Tomorrow – Doug Liman’s upcoming science fiction film – since leading man Tom Cruise did the rounds at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con (alongside Liman, costar Bill Paxton and screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie). But not to worry – Village Roadshow and Warner Bros. aren’t about to let audiences forget about their movie, and to that end, they’ve just recently kicked off a brand new viral campaign to promote the premiere of Edge of Tomorrow‘s first trailer.
And not a moment too soon, either. According to the picture’s official Twitter feed, war with the alien race known as Mimics has already erupted in France -so there’s no time to waste in alerting audiences of the impending conflict. The conceit here is rather clever – presenting the perspective of a journalist assigned to a military unit of United Defence Force deployed in Verdun, a small city in the North-East of the country, the Twitter account has been providing what little detail it can of the alien onslaught throughout the morning; it appears that humanity has been caught off-guard and is drastically out numbered to boot.
A grim scene, for sure, one that @EmbeddedUDF has been repeatedly painting since going live late last night. Radio silence on Edge of Tomorrow (which underwent a recent name change from its source material, Japanese author Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s light novel All You Need is Kill) since doing the rounds at SDCC may have caused it to drop off the radars of some; this little bit of marketing ought to ensure that the film hops right back into everybody’s peripheries, and not simply due to the promise of teaser footage mid-week.
The Twitter feed makes this fictitious war sound immediate and real; while most of what is being output through the feed tends to repeat itself, each Tweet nonetheless gives a good introduction to the scope of Edge of Tomorrow‘s central fracas. The synopsis had already clued us in on the hopelessness of the scene – Earth’s armies are outnumbered and outgunned, and mankind’s only chance at victory rests on the shoulders of one soldier (Cruise) who, caught in a time loop, continuously dies in battle and resurrects, becoming a deadlier, more skilled warrior with each rebirth.
But it’s hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel when taking the Twitter feed’s urgency into consideration – not to mention the images of destruction it keeps sharing, all of which can be seen in the gallery below:
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Cruise can be clearly seen in several of these snapshots, and it’s impossible to miss Blunt in the full swing of combat. Just based on the tone of the Twitter feed, it’s safe to guess that most (if not all) of these clips are occurring early into Edge of Tomorrow, before Cruise is able to hone his lethality after being brought back to life a countless number of times. This looks like nothing short of chaos, as well it should – we’re supposed to be losing, after all – and slightly invokes memories of 2011’s frantic Battle: Los Angeles.
That may or may not be a good sign, depending on who you ask, but the efforts being made to make Edge of Tomorrow feel like it’s actually happening right now deserve a serious hat tip. The better indicator of quality, of course, will be the trailer, which drops Wednesday. For now, though, this is a cool starting point.
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Edge of Tomorrow arrives in US theaters on June 6th, 2014.
