It's All In The Title UPDATE!

A while back I wrote about Edge Of Tomorrow, Tom Cruise's recent scifi action opus and its horrible, horrible title. 

In brief, I thought the title was bland and told you absolutely nothing about the story and predicted it would hurt the film's box office. It ended up making $370 million worldwide, which sounds like a lot to you and me, but isn't all that much in the movie biz. Just think how much more it could have made if people knew what it was about.

The film was based on a popular manga called All You Need Is Kill. So why didn't they use that odd, but much better title? Supposedly they were going to, but Warner Bros. president Sue Kroll gets icky bad feelings when she sees or hears the word "kill," hence the change to incredibly bland and vanilla Edge Of Tomorrow moniker. Sadly, I'm not kidding.

It's beginning to look like I'm not the only one who hated the title. This week Warner Bros. revealed the DVD/Blu Ray art for the movie, and it looks for all the world like they've changed the title again.

It appears to have retroactively been renamed Live, Die, Repeat. This was formerly the film's tagline, but it now seems to have been promoted to the full title. It's still not a particularly good name, but at least it gives you a vague idea of what the movie's about, and it's a thousand times better than the previous one.

Note that Edge Of Tomorrow is still on the cover, but it's been relegated to the very bottom, after the stars' names. Confusing!

The spine would seem to indicate that the official title is now Live, Die, Repeat / Edge Of Tomorrow. I guess Live, Die, Repeat / Edge Of Tomorrow / Being A Fictional Moving Photoplay In Which Tom Cruise, Favorite Actor Of The Masses And The Ostensible Star Of The Opus, Battles Strange Beings Of An Unsavory Sort From Another World And Is Tragically Killed Over And Over, Only To Find Himself Resurrected The Next Day, Much Like Our Lord And Savior, And Uses His Knowledge Of Coming Events To Defeat The Godless Hordes And Drive Them From Our Fair Republic was too much.

I can think of only one other time that a movie title has been changed after the fact– when George Lucas, the king of retroactive tampering, changed Raiders Of The Lost Ark to Indiana Jones And The Raiders Of The Lost Ark (so all the films would have Indiana Jones in the title).

Anyway, make sure you pre-order the film today, before Warner changes the title yet again!

It's All In The Title

I've been seeing the trailer for Tom Cruise's latest scifi opus for what seems like a year now. It looks OK I suppose, and it's got an interesting, if derivative, premise. But that title…

Edge Of Tomorrow. Egad. That's the title? That's what Warner Bros. has decided to call their $110 million science fiction extravaganza? Jesus, I could come up with a better title by throwing those magnetic word tiles at my refrigerator door and writing down what sticks.

The movie's based on an acclaimed manga (or comic book, as they're known in America) called All You Need Is Kill. Warner Bros. inexplicably decided to ditch that title and substitute the blandest one humanly possible.

I'm not sure what was wrong with All You Need Is Kill as a title. Sure it's semi-nonsensical and probably not grammatically correct, but you've got to admit it's memorable. Plus it sounds like some kind of lost, twisted Beatles song or a James Bond film.

Edge Of Tomorrow is the dullest title they could have possibly come up with. It sounds like a 1970s soap opera. In fact back in the day my mom used to watch a soap called The Edge Of Night. Every time I see the trailer for the Cruise film that's all I can think about.

In addition to being incredibly bland, it tells you absolutely nothing about the film. Which do you think of when you hear Edge Of Tomorrow? A tear jerker in which one or both characters is dying? Or a futuristic action movie about a time-travelling soldier? I know which one I'd pick.

This is reminding me of the whole John Carter debacle from a few years ago. I'm still convinced that the massive box office failure of that film was due to its uninspired and lackluster title. I have a feeling we may see a repeat of that here.

Maybe they could have called it Groundhog Day In Space? Run, Cruise, Run? How about Lather, Rinse, Repeat?