Tom Cruise gets caught in a repeating loop of living and dying in next week’s sci-fi adventure “Edge of Tomorrow.”
Let’s look back at some other films (not counting time-machine movies) in which the heroes relive a time-loop situation again and again.
‘Groundhog Day’ (1993)
Bill Murray. Andie MacDowell. Sonny & Cher. You’ve seen it.
But did you know screenwriter Danny Rubin was inspired by William Dean Howells’ 1892 short story, “Christmas Every Day?”
The success of Murray’s movie in turn inspired knockoffs that reached back to Howells’ source material. In 1996, ABC made the TV movie “Christmas Every Day,” and 10 years later ABC Family presented the remake “Christmas Do-Over.”
’50 First Dates’ (2004)
Drew Barrymore is an amnesiac with no short-term memory, so her family arranges a fake time loop to make it look like every day is the same, so she won’t have to re-learn the memory of a traumatic car accident that traumatized her frontal lobe.
Speaking of brain damage, here comes Adam Sandler as a skirt-chasing veterinarian to make it all better by repeatedly asking her out on what she thinks is their first date.
‘Triangle’ (2009)
Never released theatrically in the US (but available on DVD), this cult British film stars Melissa George as a Florida waitress who gets rescued from a capsized yacht only to board a mysteriously vacant ocean liner — where she gets an eerie feeling of déjà vu.
‘Source Code’ (2011)
Jake Gyllenhaal plays a military pilot who wakes up in the body of another man aboard a Chicago commuter train that is about to nuke Chicago.
Luckily, at the moment of the explosion he keeps getting sent back in time to assemble more clues about who the terrorist is.
‘Run Lola Run’ (1998)
Tom Tykwer’s acclaimed German film stars Franka Potente as the girlfriend of a lowlife who gets a call from him saying he needs 100,000 German marks in 20 minutes or he will be killed by gangsters.
She gets three chances, each of which features Potente sprinting, to rescue her man.