This Old Neon Forum

Here's an example of a spoiler tag.

Did Tom Cruise become the mother brain thing he was trying to destroy in the end? Or did you just absorb more alien blood in order to wake up again?" I don't understand why the aliens would be gone but everything else went back to normal, unless because he was the mother brain he was basically time itself so he could re-write time. And if you was the main host then the aliens couldn't exist, something like that. The main thing that bothered me was that he woke up in the helicopter rather than where he usually woke up. Not sure if it was a little detail but it seems weird that this would be the one time it changed. Perhaps new alien blood means new awakening spot. Maybe my main issue with the movie was I didn't think about it enough :p

I really hated how Emily Blunt seemed to be a different character in the last scenes then she was at the start. She starts as a cold, detached "bitch" and stays this way throughout every reset. She also ignores all of Cruise's advances several times such as when they were in at the farm house, but then in the end she's making out with him. As a horribly cynical viewer, I just see this as the studio forcing in a romance so they can just check off another box on their demographic appeal list. In that same vein, I thought the alien blood going into Cruise at the end and resetting the day again was there just to leave room for a potential sequel.

Having the scene in the farm house be the tenth or so time Cruise experienced it, but the first time we got to see it, was another great choice.

Every time an Alpha dies, time resets. That's why, before they launched the big final mission, Cruise tells everyone to make sure not to kill an Alpha. If they do, time would reset and the Omega would know they were coming.

When Cruise kills the Alpha at the beginning of the movie and absorbs its blood, the Omega resets time, but since Cruise has absorbed its power, he's the one who reboots, not the Alpha (the Alpha he killed would have stayed dead, and wouldn't have been where he found it on the first day).

The "visions" Cruise (and Blunt, in the previous war) experienced were fake. The Omega knew someone outside of its army had somehow gotten hold of an Alpha's powers, it took some time to figure out who it was (which is why Cruise got several free resets before the visions started happening), and then when it knew who Cruise was, it set up a trap for him.

In the end, when the Omega dies, it tries a last-ditch reboot, but it's already too late: Cruise has absorbed its blood and its power. That means Cruise reboots 24-30 hours earlier, as do all the other surviving Alphas! But the Omega doesn't make the trip: Cruise goes instead. Cruise hasn't become the Omega, though: he doesn't have the hivemind, know their language, etc., he just has the blood that lets him reboot when the Omega resets. So without the hivemind of the Omega to keep the aliens going, they're toast. I actually like that they didn't show this, because it keeps the drama of the film focused to the main characters' perspective.

I didn't really see her "making out" with Cruise's character, but something is definitely different during the night raid sequence at the end of the film.

1. Remember the guy Cruise brings up, which touches a nerve? She had the same experience Cruise is having now, where she bonded with someone from spending so many days (maybe even years!) with a person while he died over and over again. So even though she doesn't let it show, and she keeps her distance, she knows without being able to consciously know or remember it that she and Cruise have a bond and a deeper relationship. In fact, I think this is one of the key reasons she keeps her distance so strictly. It's only when she knows she's going to die that she opens up a little bit (telling him her middle name at the farmhouse).

2. Her demeanour doesn't really change until the night raid sequence at the end of the film. The key difference during this part of the movie is that Cruise has lost his power. Earlier, she was cavalier about killing him and training him because she knew first-hand how the power worked. But now he's just a soft killable human, just like her—and even more like her in that he's someone who used to have the aliens' power but lost it! She can't have the same callous attitude towards his death anymore, and she sympathizes with him more because they're in the same position.