Friday, August 15, 2014

Can we settle on the title of this movie already?


If Edge of Tomorrow were a mental patient, it would be suffering from a severe identity crisis right now.

First there was the fact that its name was kept as the name of the graphic novel, All You Need Is Kill, in Asian markets.

Then there was the erroneous rumor that it was being retitled Living on the Edge for the remainder of its theatrical run. Sure, that ended up not being correct, but every rumor has some kernel of truth to it, and this one probably did too.

Now, the cover art for its DVD/BluRay release has been revealed, and a new title of sorts is being emphasized: Live Die Repeat. As seen just north and to the right of these words.

The natural instinct upon seeing this cover might just be to say that the film's tagline is receiving an unprecedented amount of play. The title Edge of Tomorrow does appear at the bottom, jammed next to the last names of the stars and separated by forward slashes, almost like it was the tail end of a URL.

Well, consider this: On iTunes, the movie is actually being listed as Live Die Repeat: Edge of Tomorrow.

Don't believe me? Well, this article goes into it a bit more: http://blogs.indiewire.com/criticwire/did-edge-of-tomorrow-just-get-a-new-title-for-home-video-20140814

If you don't want to follow that link (and I can't blame you for not wanting to leave my blog for even a moment), the Indiewire story supposes that the name given on iTunes might just be an attempt to bring the movie up in searches by people who saw the phrase "Live Die Repeat" so much, they thought it might have been the actual name of the movie.

I only have to hope that all this to-ing and fro-ing on the name will bring more attention to what is still my favorite movie of the year. Although the movie did not end up with the anemic box office that was projected after its underwhelming first weekend, it still qualifies as a failure, and they are still trying to figure out how to recoup some of the production costs. I care about that not because I care in the abstract whether the studio gets its money, but because I want other studios to roll the dice on unknown commodities rather than established brands. Any movement of Edge of Tomorrow toward reclassification as a success would help with that.

If calling it You Really Should See This Movie will help, then I'm in favor of that as well.

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