After Oblivion opened last year and was greeted with a general shrug, people started asking all sorts of questions.  Had Tom Cruise’s box office clout finally faded, leaving him nothing more than an aging star doomed to appear in endless Mission Impossible sequels instead of more interesting fare?  Did Oblivion‘s failure combined with that of After Earth signal the end of the days when a big name actor like Cruise or Will Smith could draw audiences to the theater by the strength of their name alone?  Are original science fiction films dead altogether, leaving us nothing but sequels, remakes and reboots?  Edge of Tomorrow (and its box office performance) doesn’t exactly answer any of those questions, despite being a fun and entertaining movie, but it perhaps postpones the day when both science fiction films and the concept of the box office star are declared dead.

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