Edge of Tomorrow Trivia Quiz

Answer: Via meteorite impact near Hamburg, Germany

The movie begins with a rapid succession of short television news clips, setting the stage with impressive efficiency. An apparent meteorite impact near Hamburg is followed by devastating attacks by its alien passengers, who seem able to anticipate human actions in battle. Soon known as "Mimics," the implacable aliens sweep through Europe.

As the real narrative starts, humanity has won only a single battle, at Verdun. Can humanity at last have hope?

Answer: He is a coward.

Major Cage (Tom Cruise) is in public relations, specifically public relations for the new, powered battle armor. The general in command of the invasion, played by Brendan Gleeson, wants Cage to shoot video on the beach, but the notion clearly terrifies the Major. In Cage's increasing desperation to stay far away from the fighting, he ends up trying extortion, implying that his PR skills can either help or hurt the general's future career.

The general is not amused.

Answer: He keeps trying, desperately, to talk his way out of it.

Having been knocked out while trying to escape arrest, Cage wakes up already handcuffed, lying on a pile of rucksacks at Forward Operating Base Heathrow. Master Sergeant Farell (Bill Paxton) arrives to take charge of him, and is unimpressed by Cage's efforts to explain the situation; after all, somebody already warned Farell that Cage would do anything to get out of his enlistment, including impersonating an officer.

Soon, Cage is a part of J squad, and trains with them for the next day's invasion. They'll be wearing the very same battle armor that Cage has spent the last few months marketing, but that doesn't make him any better at using it.

Answer: Poorly. Cage somehow kills a Mimic, but is killed himself immediately thereafter.

The audience, shadowing Cage, sees immediately that the invasion is a disaster. It's clear even before J squad's arrival: they have to bail out of their airborne troop carrier early, as enemy fire breaks up the craft. In battle, on the ground, all is chaos, and one catastrophe after another befalls J squad. Cornered by an unusually large Mimic, Cage finally figures out how to disable the safety on his battle armor and manages to kill his opponent.

That isn't good enough, though. The alien's corrosive blood splatters onto Cage's face, and our antihero is dead himself just moments later. It's a gruesome end to an ignominious tale, or so it seems.

Answer: She is the force's most famous soldier, the "Angel of Verdun."

Vrataski (Emily Blunt) was the hero of a previous battle against the Mimics, at Verdun. As recounted by Cage the PR officer, it was her battle armor that allowed her to kill over a hundred Mimics on that battlefield, despite minimal training. Now she's something of a celebrity, and Cage is driven to seek her out on the beach as he experiences the invasion again and again. Most often he dies on his own; on one memorable occasion, he dies because Vrataski has stolen the power pack for his armor.

Finally, he meets up with Vrataski in time to save her from deadly shrapnel and warn her that a building is about to explode. She realizes that he knows more about the battle than he ought to, but instead of following his lead, she stays next to the doomed structure. "Come find me when you wake up," she shouts before she dies.

Answer: He has accidentally taken over the time loop that the alien Mimics use to ensure victory.

There are several kinds of Mimic. On his first time through the invasion, Cage killed a large and rare variant, dubbed an Alpha. The hypothesis -- developed by Vrataski and a mechanic friend of hers with a background in theoretical physics -- is that the death of an Alpha triggers the Mimic time loop. The Alpha's consciousness is sent back to the previous day, allowing it to brief the other Mimics and gain a tactical advantage. No wonder the Mimics seem able to anticipate human actions!

The first time Cage died, it was with a dying Alpha's blood mixed with his own. In effect, his death hijacked the Mimic time loop, so now HE has a tactical advantage -- although the human leaders would never believe him. Vrataski believes they can win the war by finding and destroying the Omega, the Mimic that anchors the time loop, and the goal is set for the next third of the movie.

Cage is very lucky here, by the way: Vrataski has already figured this out and can explain it all to him. Back at Verdun, when she controlled the time loop, she had a much harder and lonelier time; her dialogue even references a vivisection in one loop, when she tried to explain her situation to the brass.

Answer: Every time Cage is injured during training, Vrataski kills him.

It's a very cold and brutal kind of logic, but it is logical. When Cage dies, time resets to the beginning of the loop: his awakening on top of the baggage at Heathrow. If he hurts himself badly enough to impair his combat ability -- even if it's just a sprained ankle! -- death is the quickest way for him to get healthy again. The best thing to do when he makes almost any mistake is to die, and reset, so that he can avoid that mistake next time.

The only unrecoverable mistake, Vrataski tells him, is to survive an injury long enough to be seen by the medics. Control of the time loop is in his blood, and a blood transfusion will take his power away. That's how she lost control, at Verdun, and she fears that humanity will not get a third chance to take over the loop.

Answer: It will appear to Cage in visions.

The little team expects Cage to get visions of the Omega's location because that's what happened to Vrataski when she controlled the time loop at Verdun. The battles are a tactical distraction, she says: there can be no victory for the human race while the Omega survives. Luckily, Cage's connection to the time loop should give him information about where the Omega is hidden. That makes the team's task relatively simple: as soon as Cage starts seeing visions, they need to interpret those images and figure out a way for Cage and Vrataski to reach their ultimate enemy.

Answer: Persuading the General to let them use an experimental signal tracker on Cage

Although Vrataski received visions as she looped through the Battle of Verdun, she had never found the Omega; she eventually concluded that the Mimics had moved it by the time she deciphered the mysterious images. With Vrataski's help, Cage is able to decipher his visions much faster, and he makes his way to a dam in Germany. There is no Omega there, however, and it's clear that there never was. The whole setup is a trap -- the Mimics' attempt to regain control of the time loop.

There's a back-up plan, though. At Verdun, Vrataski's mechanic friend devised a signal tracker to trace the connection between an Alpha and an Omega, and discern its true location. Now it's Cage who's connected to an Omega, so perhaps they can use it on him! The signal tracker is locked in a safe in the General's office, though, and the General doesn't believe a word of their story. The pair end up having to steal the tracker; Cage uses it on himself while Vrataski drives their getaway vehicle.

Answer: The Louvre in Paris, France

The raid on the General's office may have gone terribly wrong, but the signal tracker has done its job: Cage immediately recognized I. M. Pei's distinctive pyramid above the entrance to the Louvre, despite the flooding of the courtyard. He's exited the time loop, though, so our little team has only one shot at a raid. Can they pull it off? For the sake of humanity, let's hope so ...