As mentioned in my review, I was pleasantly surprised by Edge of Tomorrow – I fully expected to go in and spend two hours thinking of sci-fi films I’d rather be watching (or that the director would rather be making). Fortunately, I didn’t have to do that, as the film stands pretty well on its own merits. Still, I was put in mind of several films which would make appropriate companion pieces, so here are a few of them.

Edge of Tomorrow doesn’t wear its influences on its sleeve quite as much as Oblivion (last year’s Tom Cruise sci-fi boomappaloosa), which is also reminiscent of a number of mainstream and cult genre favourites – if you get bored during one of Oblivion’s quieter moments, you can make a little game by listing them. Tom Cruise remains a competent action hero, but most of the emotional heavy lifting comes from his colleague and lover played by Andrea Riseborough. The plot isn’t as neat as Edge of Tomorrow, but there are a few exciting setpieces and a gritty, practical aesthetic which works well. 

A gritty aesthetic seems increasingly common in action films of all stripes these days, and if you like seamless merging of practical effects with CGI, look no further than the films of director Neill Blomkamp. His two feature films, the highly acclaimed District 9 and the less successful Elysium, both have a parallel structure: a scene of unjust inequality is established and the protagonist is subjected to some gruelling body horror before kicking ass with the aid of some futuristic technology. While Elysium didn’t meet the high expectations set by District 9, the action scenes are worth the price of admission alone. With the view over the hero’s shoulder, the combat scenes almost feel like a video game. Normally, this would be a criticism, but here it helps ramp up the intensity of the firefights as our hero (Matt Damon) stomps around in a powered exoskeleton, much like Cruise does in Edge of Tomorrow.  Fortunately for him, Cruise never had to face Sharlto Copley as a psychopathic mercenary with the best mechanical enhancements a dystopian government can provide.  If you enjoyed the high-tech shooting and punching from Edge of Tomorrow, you’ll definitely enjoy District 9 and Elysium.

The fighting from Edge of Tomorrow also bears similarities to 1997’s Starship Troopers, although the latter exceeds the former in gore, black humour, overacting and more gore. The cast is a collection of fresh-faced TV bit-players and B-movie staples hamming it up in the fascistic intergalactic Federation of the future, fighting the insectoid Bugs on blasted desert hellscapes. The doomed invasion in Edge of Tomorrow resembles the carnage wrought on the poor bloody Mobile Infantry in Starship Troopers as their incompetent generals drop them directly into alien worlds to be killed by the thousands. There are only a limited number of alien tropes used across cinema, but the Mimics and the Bugs share quite a few organisational traits (that would spoil the plot of Edge of Tomorrow if I gave them away here). Visually, the award-winning CGI work on the Bugs is more impressive given that it still holds up today, 17 years after Starship Troopers was released. In some ways, Edge of Tomorrow is closer to the Starship Troopers novel, with its soldiers clad in heavily armed powered suits; the film version drops this in favour of having underequipped space troopers scythed down in droves by innumerable gribbly horrors.

But, what about the big ideas and high concepts that make science fiction such a compelling genre? Edge of Tomorrow gets a lot of mileage out of its central time-rewinding premise. This gimmick is strongly reminiscent of 2011’s Source Code, where a soldier (Jake Gyllenhaal) relives an eight-minute period on a train before it is destroyed by a terrorist’s bomb. Source Code feels more like an extended episode of the Twilight Zone than a feature film, but it packs in concepts of time travel, alternate realities and morality very effectively. It focuses more on the incremental learning process and the tragedy of our protagonist’s situation than the action-heavy Edge of Tomorrow, with the stakes raised by the apparent deterioration of our hero’s surroundings outside of his eight-minute window.

Despite everything that has been said in this article, the pinnacle of the action sci-fi is still James Cameron’s Aliens: great action setpieces, one of the strongest female protagonists in the history of cinema and the refinement of the classic H. R. Giger monster design to create one of the most iconic alien races in fiction. The braggart Colonial Marines are compelling and likeable in a way that few (if any) films since have been able to match. Chances are that if you’ve seen Edge of Tomorrow, you’ve already seen Aliens (and most of the other films on this list) – if not, get to it!  And be grateful that you don’t live in the future – it’s hell out there...