There’s a lot to love about the new Tom Cruise movie “Edge of Tomorrow,” but one thing that plays out sillier than you might expect? How easily the movie’s central alien invasion is thwarted.
No spoilers here, but suffice to say that like a lot of “unstoppable” extraterrestrial armies in movies, the Mimics in “Edge of Tomorrow” have one, simple, easily exploitable weakness. Here’s the absolute best ones from movie history:
(And massive spoilers for the rest of these movies past this point.)
“Marvel’s The Avengers”
Disney/Marvel
Weakness: Mothership Controls Everyone
Don’t get us wrong, we love “Avengers,” and are even totally fine with the ending. But After Iron Man blows up the Chitauri mothership, the entire alien army shuts down. Like, completely shuts down. Which is weird, because up until this point we didn’t think they were robots, or controlled by a central processor; but it works, and none of the aliens are left alive.
“Independence Day”
Weakness: Runs On Mac OS
A variation on the “destroy the mothership” trope, in “Independence Day” the fatal weakness is that they could not have expected that Earth also ran on Apple computers. Jeff Goldblum somehow interfaces his laptop with the alien mothership, shutting down the up-to-this-point impenetrable force fields of every single ship in the fleet.
“War Of The Worlds”
Weakness: The Common Cold!!!
To be fair to “War of The Worlds,” H.G. Wells original 1898 book felled the alien invasion with the sniffles because, irony. But it lay the groundwork for nearly every entertainment based invasion from then on: there always needed to be one fatal flaw.
“Starship Troopers”
Weakness: Central Alien
Okay, it’s not a species wide weakness, but our “heroes” discover the existence of a Brain Bug, a giant, gross fleshy mass that controls and leads the other “villainous” bugs. The humans shut down the brain bug, and the rest of the bugs are left directionless.
“Ender’s Game”
Weakness: Central Alien
Again a bug-based race of aliens with a central, controlling alien, this time a queen. When Mazer Rackham (Ben Kingsley) destroys the one ship in the fleet holding a queen, the rest of the ships shut down. For extra points, Ender (Asa Butterfield) destroys an entire planet with nearly every alien queen in existence, essentially obliterating the entire species in one fell swoop.
“Battle: Los Angeles”
Weakness: Central Command Center
Like the central mothership in other movies, “B:LA” has a central command ship with controls every deadly drones in the alien army. Once it’s destroyed, the rest of the aliens are left without protection and quickly retreat.
“Signs”
Weakness: Water
It’s been said a million times since the movie came out, but if you were an alien race who can be stopped by a glass of water, why would you come to a planet that’s covered with 71% water? Seriously.
“Edge of Tomorrow” is in theaters now.
Alex Zalben
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