This is all in good fun, but I'm gonna deconstruct the first act of the film way more than anyone should, and give you my take on Tom Cruise's character. Obviously, later on in the movie, the character becomes a protagonist, but in the first act he's portrayed as a cowardly deserter.Okay but... he kind of had a point. He's a 45-year old non-combat Army officer, he's in charge of PR. Sending him to the front on the day of the invasion makes no sense. It's like pulling a 45-year old Army lawyer out of a courtroom in DC and sending him with the first wave on Omaha beach. And on a 1-hour notice with no training no less. Even in an all-hands-on-deck situation this makes no sense, he would be more useful elsewhere. Of course the idea was to have him shoot a film. He's not a military journalist or a cameraman, he's a marketing strategist. You can train a young infantry team to film the invasion, or contract CNN, or use a drone with all of that crazy technology around.So he was right to protest. Of course he wasn't right to threaten the general, and he should have been court-martialed for that. However, he wasn't court-martialed, they just completely stripped him of his rank (illegal without due process), labeled him a deserter (incorrect and illegal), somehow got actual Army papers to corroborate that. That's essentially identity fraud against him and those papers must have been illegally obtained.And then they just dump him on the tarmac at Heathrow, not as a film crewmember anymore, but as enlisted infantry as stated in his forged papers. And with absolutely no training, no idea how to use the sophisticated equipment, and at his age. Essentially a death sentence or at the very least complete disregard for any military protocol. When he said "I could really hurt someone", he really had a point. You really want him experimenting with his suit on D-Day, he could take out 20 soldiers just trying to figure out how his suit worked. Did his crime really warrant all of that? In reality, his family would have a very strong case against the military and that general would be investigated and probably imprisoned for abuse of power. Not that it matters, because the aliens win without the time travel mechanic, but... still.I know I'm taking it way too seriously and it was just a plot device -- again this is just for fun. But I felt for his character in the beginning, I didn't see him as particularly cowardly or a bad guy. via /r/movies https://ift.tt/34SXpQu
