” I’m kind of a contrarian filmmaker” – Doug Liman Director of Edge Of Tomorrow

What was the draw for you with this project, and what were your initial thoughts about how to bring it to life?

DOUG LIMAN: Well, first of all, this is not a film with two concepts, where there’s an alien invasion and there’s Tom Cruise, who keeps repeating the same day every time he dies. It’s a film of one concept, which is that the aliens are beating us, and the reason they’re beating us is because they can repeat the day and they keep redoing a battle until they win. There’s no way humanity can beat an adversary like that, until Tom Cruise gets infected with their power and suddenly we have a chance.

I had no interest whatsoever in making an alien invasion film, but what really drew me to it was the journey that Tom Cruise’s character, Bill Cage, would go on. I’m a storyteller—I like being at dinner parties and telling stories that entertain people; I’m not ashamed of that [Laughs]. I’m committed to making movies that are massively entertaining, but I’m also committed to making movies that are smart and thought-provoking.

The concept of a character who keeps getting plunged into the same battle day after day, where everybody else is doing the same thing and the only thing different is what he does—for me, it’s sort of a metaphor for life. The reality is that you can’t change the world and you can’t change other people, but you can change yourself. That’s the only thing Cage can do during the course of the movie is to change what he does. Everybody else is going to do the same thing. The only thing that he has control over are his own actions.

And, now, suddenly, I’m not talking about an alien invasion and time travel; I’m talking about the human condition. The reality is that if you can change yourself, you can change the world. And that’s what drew me.

When I find a project that has a deeper meaning, and, at the same time, is an unbelievable rollercoaster ride that will have action sequences you’ve never seen before, character-driven comedy, and an amazing love story, of course I’d want to do that movie, immediately.

Can you talk about your approach to collaboration and how you worked with Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt and your cast to bring these characters and the story to life?

DOUG LIMAN: Well, I think part of what really did set this film apart from any other experiences I’ve had personally was the safe, collaborative environment. It’s the kind of environment I had on Swingers when, of course it was a safe collaborative environment. It was just a bunch of people who were out of work trying to make a film, with nobody to impress. There was no studio, no anything.

But I was able to create or have created around me that kind of safe, collaborative environment in the heart of a massive Warner Bros. movie. It was the kind of environment you’d expect to see around the playhouse at a college campus where there’s nothing at stake. Of course you can have this safe, collaborative environment because it’s a college theater. You’re not expecting to make any money.

At the heart of this massive production was this environment where we talked character, we talked story, we talked philosophy. I think one of the things that just set the tone from the beginning was in one of our first meetings, we were having a bigger script conversation and at some point Emily said to me, ‘You know, I’ve never made a movie like this,’ which is true. And I said back to her, ‘Well, I’ve never made a movie like this either,’ which is also true. And Erwin Stoff, our producer, said to me after that meeting, that it was one of the more incredible things he’s ever heard a director tell the movie stars—that he’s human and hasn’t actually done this before. And that’s why you want me to do this. If I’ve done it before, how original am I going to be?

It traces back to, my work on The Bourne Identity, where I’d come off of two small independent film comedies, and then directing an action movie for Universal. And I was very open and up front about the fact that I’d be lying if I told you I knew how to make The Bourne Identity. I’m figuring it out. How could I possibly know how to make this movie? I haven’t done it before. How can you possibly know how to do anything you haven’t done before? All you can do is have an idea of how to try. And anyone who says they actually already know is either making the same movie twice in a row or lying.

And I think that establishing that from the beginning was letting them know that I was inspiring to make a movie that’s bigger than myself. And I believe in an ego-free environment, like the best idea wins. I’m sort of relentless in my pursuit of the greatest movie possible. That never lets up.

We were at a press conference in Tokyo and I was shown a manga of All You Need is Kill [the book on which Edge of Tomorrow is based]. It wasn’t a manga originally; it was a novel, but they turned it into a manga and started working it up. When I started on Edge of Tomorrow, I initially thought, ‘Oh, it’s a Japanese. There’ll be a book filled with pictures.’ And there were no pictures, so I didn’t have anything to go from in terms of designing the world, designing my aliens. So I flipped through this book.

Even to the bitter end, I’m always searching and questioning, ‘Are we doing it the absolute best we can do it? Can we do it better?’ And Tom Cruise lives his life that way. So I think with our shared pursuit of excellence, we fueled each other.

It sounds like everybody thrived with this kind of collaborative philosophy that you set for this film.

DOUG LIMAN: Tom, also, creates an environment because he’s obviously the biggest movie star in the world. He works so hard; he cares so much about the movie and works so hard, that in and of itself is inspiring and infectious to the crew and to everybody. It’s really incredible, given how many movies the guy’s been in that you feel like it’s his first time on the set. He’s a kid in a candy shop.

Obviously, for many reasons, there’s nobody like Tom Cruise. But I would say that the single most defining thing about Tom, for me, was just his enthusiasm and excitement for the movie. It’s hard to imagine, but, on our first day of shooting, we called for him to be on the set at 8:00 a.m. He was there at 7:45. He was there at 7:45 on the second day of shooting. He was there at 7:45 on the last day of shooting. And I think by then he was there at like 7:15 because what would happen is, I realized that whatever time you told him to get there, he’d be early. So knowing that if I told him 8:00 he would show up at 7:45, we would start to be ready at 7:45 and then suddenly he’d realize that and be there at 7:30. Who wouldn’t be excited to go to work every day when you’re surrounded with that kind of energy, when the star of the movie is bringing that kind of energy to the table.

And Emily Blunt is just the most incredible actress. Normally, when I go to work, I’m just filled with stress every morning because I want the film to be the absolute best it can be, and every day going to work is sort of like an athlete going to compete. That’s really how I view it. And, at the end of every day, as I’m riding back home from the set, I take an honest appraisal of how the day went and I’m like, ‘We won today or we lost today?’ And it’s a long season. There were 100 of shooting on this movie. You could win some days and lose some days, the same way your sporting team doesn’t need to have a shutout in order to win the season. But you have to win most of your days.

So normally I’m a little bit stressed going to work every day because I’m thinking, ‘I hope we win today.’ And the reality on this one is that I was so looking forward to working with Tom and Emily every day, that it eclipsed whatever apprehension I had about how we were going to achieve the impossible that day.

Can you talk about collaborating with Tom to build the character of Bill Cage and the qualities Tom brought to him?

DOUG LIMAN: Well, the really fun thing about working with somebody who’s as famous as Tom is that you think that after how many movies he’s made—thirty, forty—that you’re not going to surprise the audience. And Tom was as committed as I was to creating a new character he’s never done before. I workshop my characters. Maybe it’s because I got my start on Swingers, where the casting and the writing went hand-in-hand, and, obviously, I’m thrilled with the results. I created the character Jason Bourne with Matt Damon and created Franka Potente’s character with her, and did the same on Mr. and Mrs. Smith. That’s part of my workshopping and collaborative process is to not just hand down a character from on high.

We start with a version of the scene and when we rehearse it, the writer’s there, which is much more akin to how a play is done. And then we rewrite. That’s what we’re doing in rehearsal; we’re rewriting until the character fits Tom perfectly. We have to find it. Some aspects of his character we found immediately. Some aspects we found on the last day. But we never stop looking. We never stop toning the character. And that was a really exciting process.

Tom was an amazing partner, and just fearless in terms of trying things. You would think the higher you are, the further you fall. He might have been nervous about experimenting with me, but there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t try. And then he was like, ‘We’ll figure it out.’ You’ll decide which thing works or you’ll learn by having him try these things. No matter what I suggested, he’d try it.

The other thing is, he’s such a huge movie star, but people forget that he’s a brilliant actor. Directing him was one of the most extraordinary experiences I’ve had because you could give him any note and he would immediately implement it. He would understand exactly what you were looking for and then he would deliver it. And sometimes I would call, ‘cut,’ and before I could even open my mouth, he would anticipate and go, ‘I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right. I’ll do it now. Let’s go again.’ And that’s literally a direct quote. So, it’s great when you can develop that kind of shorthand.

I approach my film and build the characters out so that you see the movie from their perspective. A little more is expected from Tom because he’s the star of the movie. We built a character who does PR and specifically convinces other people to go fight a war that he himself has been avoiding. And he gets sent to the front lines and dropped into the middle of a battle that is going to be a massive defeat for humans.

So it’s seeing that character, who’s been convincing other people to go fight, get sent to the front lines himself is a great fun. That’s a great fun journey for a character to go on—for this character, who has been avoiding fighting all his life, to get plunged into the same battle over and over again. What’s so charming about the story is that as much as he doesn’t want to fight, he picks himself up every day and goes right back into it. Even though this character, Cage, is cowardly or selfish, he’s adorable and lovable. You really root for him. That’s an amazing character to go on an incredible journey.

I’m interested in big, iconic ideas—like Edge of Tomorrow, like Mr. and Mrs. Smith, like Bourne—because I’m interested in what they reveal about character, and I’m interested in how real people would deal with the extraordinary. And this is by far the most powerful device I’ve had to work with, and a brilliant partner in Tom Cruise.

What was it like working with Emily on the character of Rita Vrataski and what did she bring to the role?

DOUG LIMAN: What’s really extraordinary about Edge of Tomorrow is that anybody who has seen my movies knows that I’m committed to strong female characters, because in real life I’m surrounded by strong female characters. In Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Smith is stronger than Mr. Smith. It’s the world they come from. That’s not the psychology behind it, but it’s the end result. I’m not a filmmaker who casts a movie star and then just picks the hot girl to be in the movie with him. I start over on the script and work on it from her point of view. So, in Bourne Identity I actually started working on the script from the point of view of what it would be like to date Jason Bourne, whereas another filmmaker might have started with what would it be like to be Jason Bourne.

And in the case of Edge of Tomorrow, if you look at the movie from Emily Blunt’s character’s point of view, she used to have the super power that Tom’s character has, which meant that she became this extraordinary warrior because she had this super power. People expected her to change the outcome of the war, which she probably could have done, but she lost the power. So, the world is expecting her to accomplish something; only she knows she can’t do. And then she meets Cage, who has the power that she lost, and she recognizes in him that if she mentors him, he can accomplish what she no longer can.

You could just tell the story from her point of view. You could have just cast Emily Blunt and an unknown male actor to play the male part, and it would have been an amazing story. It would have been Rita’s story, and it’s a powerful story.

What I love about Edge of Tomorrow is that I got to tell that story, and I got to tell his story. They meld together perfectly, and you get an amazing love story as an extra bonus. That’s how you get strong characters, not because they’re physically strong; they need to have strong stories.

Emily went through quite a physical transformation for this role. Was that strength always there or is it something that you saw emerge as you were making this movie?

DOUG LIMAN: Emily comes to the table with incredible character strength that you can’t get in the gym. She needed help on the muscles, which, luckily, you can get in the gym. And, again, it comes back to Tom. Tom works so hard in preparation for these roles that Emily was in the gym training for this movie six or seven months out because Tom was. He takes it so seriously. It’s a dream come true for a director.

In terms of the humor in the film, is that something that you discovered as you went along, such as during Tom and Bill Paxton’s scenes together as Cage and Master Sergeant Farrell?

DOUG LIMAN: Character and cast can go hand-in-hand, so in my first conversation with Bill Paxton for this movie, I said, ‘I’m going to send you the script, but I want to create a character with you. So you can look at what’s in the script for what the character needs to accomplish, but let’s talk about creating a character.’

And on our first conversation, we came up with this idea of a sergeant who’s going to lead Cage’s platoon; a sergeant for whom going into battle is almost a religious experience; to whom dying a hero’s death in battle is nirvana. It’s as good as winning, which not only makes for a great, colorful character, but if you’re Cage, that’s your worst nightmare. You want the drill sergeant who isn’t afraid for everybody to run if it means they live. You do not a drill sergeant who’s preaching a hero’s death in battle. So, that’s a prime example of how casting and creation of character go hand-in-hand. I’m incredibly proud of the character we created. Only Bill Paxton could play that character—we created it together for him. It’s like custom made clothing.

And then the humor. I come from a family where humor comes out in the most dire situations. I got lost in the mountains in Patagonia. It really was a bad situation, and my cousin, Gary, in the most tense moment, said something that made us all burst out laughing. So I come from a family environment where the most tense environments, the darkest moments, are brightened with humor. And that’s human nature.

So I wanted to create a world that had real stakes and real tension, and then cut through it with comedy—character-driven comedy—because that’s a world that feels real. The people I love most in life and my family are the ones who address adversity with a little bit of humor. We wanted to create a world that was scary, with real stakes and have the characters confront it with a good sense of humor, and for the film to have a good sense of humor.

I think part of what made going to the set every day so enjoyable is that Tom is surprisingly funny as a human being. Emily Blunt’s done comedy. People think of comedy when they think of her. But Tom was so funny, separate from what we were filming, just in on-set conversation. We were always laughing and making each other laugh. He’s really a great comedian. And the more we did that, the more I found ways to put it on screen.

Even though this film has fantastical elements that will be created digitally, you’ve done certain effects in-camera, such as the Exo-suits. What your vision was in terms of juxtaposing real life with the alien presence in the film?

DOUG LIMAN: Well, like I said from the beginning, I was interested in the humans, not the aliens, when I set out to make this film. For me, the most interesting thing about the alien invasion is what it does to the humans. So I wanted as little between me and the actors as possible. And though the Exo-suits were incredibly heavy and cumbersome and painful, at points, to wear, having the actors in those suits of armor gave us the ability to get shots that would otherwise have been visual effects. It allowed them to be real—with wires and cables, but real. And then you can get real performance.

With the aliens themselves, what look and feel did you want to bring to them from a design and visual perspective?

DOUG LIMAN: One of my interests in doing a film about an alien invasion was the chance to return to kind of a simpler morality, a simpler time, in the same way that Mr. and Mrs. Smith was informed by films like Philadelphia Story.

When I was doing Edge of Tomorrow I wasn’t looking at films with aliens, I was looking at movies set during World War II, and movies in which characters go behind enemy lines. The thing about World War II is that the battle lines were really clear. Everybody wore a uniform. You knew who was on which side. And there were some very romantic stories told in that environment.

So I was drawn to the idea of an alien invasion because you have an enemy that’s wearing a different uniform than you are. And the battle lines are very clear—the aliens or us. There’s no ambiguity about it. So when I set out to design the aliens, I was really interested in the word ‘alien’ and how we use that word.

In everyday use, ‘alien’ just means unknown to us or strange to us. We don’t usually use that word. In regular life, we don’t usually use that word to mean creatures coming from outer space. We use it to talk about things that we don’t understand. So I was interested in that aspect of the word ‘alien’ and to bring a creature here that we don’t understand. We don’t understand its motives; we don’t understand what its ultimate goal is; we only know that it’s killing us. We can’t communicate with it. That can be basically any two cultures that don’t understand each other and just go to war.

But it was really important to me that we not understand the aliens; that they actually be alien, ‘alien’ in the colloquial use of the word. And the factors, as seen in the film, were what the characters talk about: ‘What do you think they want?’ And nobody knows. We don’t understand them; we’re just trying to kill them. And you know what? They don’t understand us and they’re trying to kill us. It’s as simple as that. Each of us is alien to the other one.

So the design stemmed from that concept. Every aspect of them, from the way they move to the way they kill, needed to be alien to what we would expect; alien to what would be on earth. And every aspect of them is surprisingly different from what you would expect it to be if you were a creature whose origin was on earth.

It was a pretty simple mantra of: ‘Is it alien or is it ordinary? Does it sound like an animal I’ve heard on Earth or does it sound alien? Does it sound unlike something I’ve heard on Earth?’ And obviously I’d pursue the latter.

You have assembled an international cast for the film, especially the soldiers in J Squad, the unit Cage is dropped into. Can you talk about your casting process and how you landed on these actors?

DOUG LIMAN: Well, I’m kind of a contrarian filmmaker in that I don’t always choose the easiest route, and oftentimes I intentionally choose the route uncharted. Most Hollywood films dealing with an alien invasion would have an American city invaded. So right off the bat I was saying, ‘Well, why not have it be in Europe? Why not do it different than other people have done? Why not set it in Europe and make it work?’ I’ve made decisions like that throughout my career. I think, ‘Okay, well, why do we have to do it the way it’s normally done? Why can’t we do it some other way?’ The huge reward that we reap by basing the production in London and setting the film in England and France is that I got to have an incredible international cast and gain access to one of the most talented actor pools on the planet.

Every role was cast and crafted with the kinds of details that we brought to the lead of the movie. So when you look at J Squad, the soldiers that Tom Cruise’s character fights with, they’re all movie stars, every one of them. The world doesn’t know it yet, the way the world didn’t know that Vince Vaughn was a movie star when I was making Swingers, but they will know. You got to bring a caliber of talent to every role. Whether it’s Brendan Gleeson or Noah Taylor coming in and delivering an outstanding performances, or Kick Gurry, who came in from Australia and just steals every scene he’s in. Or Jonas Armstrong and Franz Drameh—I want to go make the movie just for those two. It would be any director’s dream come true to have a film with Charlotte Riley, Tony Way, Dragomir Mrsic, and all of them. If you give any director that cast to go make a movie, it’d be a dream come true.

Any regret I have from the movie is that we’re in the process of doing DVD extras and I don’t have any more scenes of those guys to put on the DVD. It’s all in the movie.

I also wanted to ask you about shooting in Trafalgar Square in London. What was that like to shut it down to shoot this big helicopter sequence for the film?

DOUG LIMAN: Shutting Trafalgar Square down and landing a massive Royal Air Force helicopter was one of those moments where you’re like you’re a kid again. From a technical point of view, it was by far the most challenging thing I’ve ever done in my career because we had three hours to do everything, no ability to rehearse it on-site, extraordinarily complicated blocking because it involved a helicopter—not a small helicopter—and once it’s hovering on the ground, it renders any form of communication impossible because it’s so loud, literally.

So we had to try to get ready for this and then had three hours to shoot it, and that’s it. And you would never ever, ever be allowed back. What you get is what you get. If you need one more minute, you’re never getting it. They were like, ‘This is a once in a lifetime thing; make the most of it.’

So, a week before, we did a rehearsal out of Leavesden, where we brought the helicopter in and marked out Trafalgar Square on the grass and pavement, and blocked the scene out with the helicopter, but not on location. That’s when we discovered that the helicopter was so loud that you actually had to have everything figured out in advance because once the three hours started and the helicopter came in, there’d be no ability to talk. Everybody just needed to know what they were going to do. It’s like having like a dance routine all worked out in advance.

We shot the thing on Sunday, and the Saturday before, they let us close Trafalgar Square for an hour to rehearse, and we didn’t have the helicopter, but we had Trafalgar Square and the whole crew. So we rehearsed the scene with just the area where the helicopter would land taped out. And then came Sunday morning, and helicopters have never landed in Trafalgar Square, so there was a question as to whether they actually would or would not be able to land, and we wouldn’t know until they got there. But Tom Cruise was on the helicopter and the helicopter’s going to land and then we go right into the scene. I’ve got eleven cameras rolling.

And with all of that pressure, and the movie riding on this moment, when that helicopter came overhead, I forgot all about that, and I was just like a kid in a candy shop, thinking, ‘This may be the coolest thing I’ve ever witnessed in my entire life.’ It really was a once-in-a lifetime experience.

Like I said, it’s like a sporting event: Did you win or lose? And we hit home runs that day. We didn’t just win. That day we triumphed.

Interview Courtesy- Warner Bros India