The Fiery Crucible
This essay contains spoilers, so a viewing is highly recommended if you haven’t had the chance to watch Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt in this absolute baller of a movie.
On resets, cycles of addiction and living today in The Edge of Tomorrow
The Edge of Tomorrow (2014) is the kind of movie that demands a rewatch, immediately if possible. It just makes sense when Tom Cruise breaks into that grin right before the credits roll that you choose to rewind right back to the beginning of it all once you have a good debrief with a like minded friend. And the rewatch isn’t any less rewarding for knowing what you know; if anything it’s a deeper exploration of everything you’ve just experienced with a bit more insight.
The story opens with news coverage of an alien invasion in Europe; these aliens, called Mimics, are an extraterrestrial species that function as a united organism all linked to one Omega Mimic, which has the power to reset time and thus control the outcome of events. We meet Major William Cage (Cruise), a media relations officer in the U.S. army who has never seen combat and doesn’t want to. I won’t give a play-by-play of the plot, but Cage’s interactions and experiences in the first twenty-five minutes of the film are worth taking note of for the greater significance they carry as we gain more context from the developing narrative. Cage meets General Brigham, who tells him he’s been assigned to the frontlines in France, a mission Cage tries to avoid via blackmail. He tells Brigham he’s not really a soldier, but when his blackmail attempt demotes him, he insists that the sergeants who greet him at his new base respect his former rank. They don’t, but he keeps the mentality that he’s their superior. The sergeant who wakes him calls him a maggot, and Sergeant Farell, a Kentucky-born officer, leads him to his new unit while delivering a sermon-esque monologue on his views of war as a redemptive force. Farell calls it “the fiery crucible in which the only true heroes are forged,” speaking of it as an equalizer that tests men regardless of background or rank and will baptize Cage anew in its purifying flames. Farrell talks about war with a fervor, and he’s easy to dismiss as a zealot (maybe a would-be preacher) who’s a little too crazed on the cool aid of his mission, but he’s onto something that Cage and we may not yet understand at this point in the film. I thought the fiery crucible monologue was more entertainment than anything until I saw the whole movie and had a minute to think about it. At any rate, he’s not someone Cage takes seriously. Nor does he think too highly of his new unit: J Squad, a misfit bunch who lack the discipline and suavity to make them appear any level of respectable. They seem like a bottom of the barrel, last pick kind of a crew, and Cage doesn’t want to fit in. They don’t want him in either, and they make little effort to prepare him for the coming invasion. When they drop onto the beach to fight the aliens, Cage still doesn’t know how to properly work the highly technical suit he wears or to release the safety on his weapon. He witnesses a bloodbath as the aliens tear apart the newly landed troops, even watching as the celebrated war hero Rita Vratasky (Emily Blunt) dies on the ground next to him, and though he succeeds in killing a couple aliens, he dies in the process.
Then he wakes up.
So begins the cycle of days that bleed into the same disastrous tomorrow. He lives through the same day starting with the moment he wakes up to an angry sergeant yelling, “On your feet, maggot,” and experiencing the same sequence of events and interactions that lead to his death. Everyone else’s words and actions remain pretty standard, almost identical to the first run through. Only Cage changes to adjust to what he anticipates. But he keeps dying. The hellish cycle in which he finds himself and the alien war in which it’s situated reflect our experience in the cycle of addiction and in the persistent cycles of the addiction mindset that continue to imprison us even in recovery. Things don’t change unless we change, and we don’t change until we realize there’s a way out. Cage finds himself stuck in this shameful and horrifying sequence of events that lead to certain death at the hands (tentacles?) of the alien race. He has no rank, no connection with his peers, no one who understands or values him, and no way out of the battle that he realizes is an unwitting suicide mission. That cycle of living in the same lonely, desperate manner is deeply relatable for anyone who’s extracted themselves from the cycle of addiction only to enter the brutal cycles of shame and fear that inhibit us in recovery. They’re not cycles we want to occupy, and we often don’t realize how ensnared we are until we’re so deep in them that the thing entrapping us seems to be the only accessible form of relief. Unfortunately it also perpetuates the cycle. It’s true of things less physically identifiable than substance addiction; that just happens to be the cycle I’m focusing on here, but just because the cycle in which we’re stuck isn’t as obvious as being in addiction doesn’t make it any less of a trap. Cage’s situation illustrates the predicament well. He’s stuck in a chaotic timeloop, reliving the worst kinds of disrespect, fear and uncertainty, and the only way out leads right back to the start of the whole experience.
Fortunately, someone sees what’s happening to Cage, and her recognition of his circumstances helps him become a little less lost in his maze of waking and dying. Cage dies and wakes up twice before interacting with Rita Vratasky, the celebrated war hero reverently called “the Angel of Verdun”; she recognizes his ability and tells him to find her when he wakes up. And after another death in his attempt to do so, he reaches her. He learns that the blood from the alien he killed right before his own death (the Omega) has given him the Omega’s ability to reset the day. Whenever Cage dies, the clock resets to the same time and erases all the events that have unfolded since the last reset. Vratasky explains that the same phenomenon happened to her; she possessed the Omega’s reset power until she received new blood through an IV, and she tells Cage how they can use his ability to destroy the Omega and win the war. They talk about this reset feature as a power, and it is in a sense. It’s a disturbing sort of power when we see them (more often Vratasky) deliberately put it to use. By dying, Cage has the ability to rewind and erase everything that happens while retaining his knowledge of the entire lost experience. The cycle of addiction seems to hold a similar power in our lives. We turn to substance use because we think it will relieve us of something or give us the needed confidence and security we crave. And it seems to, especially in the beginning. We don’t see clearly how it holds us back or keeps us from actualizing another greater power within us to succeed without the deceitful aid of a mind-altering substance.
The time reset ability is both a power and a curse. It’s a power because it gives him the gift of retaining the training and knowledge gained in his previous lives, but it’s a curse in the sense that it traps him in an already lived past for much of his next life. This cursed ability also links him to the aliens who have taken over his world. The aliens, in the sense that they represent something foreign overtaking our lives, reflect the ways in which the substances we turn to in addiction overpower our sense of self under the guise of giving us a kind of power or control. Neither Cage nor Vratasky understand it at the time, but they can’t succeed in their mission to destroy the enemy while they are so dependent on and linked to that same enemy’s power. When Cage inherits the Omega’s ability to reset time, he does so at the cost of his life and also at the cost of living in the present unattached to the past. When he resets, he knows the future only to the extent that it follows a series of previously lived occurrences. He’s still very much at sea in these repeated lives, especially when they extend beyond the timeline he’s previously lived. In this way, his reset reflects the kind of security we get from living in and perpetuating familiar patterns of behavior, both in addiction and in recovery when we continue to slip into patterns of thinking and action that reflect that addiction mindset.
There’s nothing empowering about living in the cycle of addiction, but it functions similarly to how Cage’s resets work. Because he goes back in time, Cage seems to have the power to predict the future, but that’s an illusion. He can only repeat the past, and he learns the patterns of that past more and more with each reset. In the cycle of an addiction mindset, we also begin to know how things will turn out even if just in a vague sense. Like Cage knowing the army will meet certain destruction in France when they land to fight the Mimics, we know certain actions or behaviors will lead to disaster in some form. By turning to drinking, by isolating, by lying or hiding our true feelings, or by any other of the number of things we do to preserve our egos in addiction or after, we protect our egos or avoid fear at the cost of truly living. We may not be able to map out the future exactly, but we have a general sense of how things will go when we act with self reliance. If we can revisit our past in a healthy way, with an honest, learning mindset, we can learn to identify our past patterns and faulty mindsets and take the action necessary to break from that cycle of thinking and action. We have to do this work ourselves, but we benefit from the help of others who understand the same path we’ve been walking and the change we’re willing to make.
When Cage finds Vratasky, he meets someone who understands the cycle he is stuck in; and even if she comes with her own set of problems, she’s in a position of greater experience and knowledge that makes her a fitting mentor to him. She recognizes herself in Cage, introducing him to Dr. Carter (the one person who believes her) as “me at Verdun”. For the first time in the film, Cage meets people who understand him and see him for something other than his rank or past actions - he is important for what he can be and the purpose he can serve to a larger whole. The recognition is enough for him to subject himself to Vratasky’s training and proposed mission to destroy the Omega and win the war.
His alliance with Vratasky is key to the film. Their shared experience of having the reset ability unites them in understanding the nature of the war they’re in, and that common understanding is enough to give them some hope in achieving their goal. In recovery, we need community for this same purpose. People who know the struggle of being in addiction and living with that in our past can offer guidance and support, but most importantly they understand so much of who we are without having to know our entire story. When we know we’re together in the same effort, it becomes so much less lonely and directionless than it feels when we feel we have to shoulder it alone.
Cage is lost until he finds Vratasky, but once she tells him to find her, that becomes his first goal upon each new reset because he needs someone to show him a way out. Vratasky’s presence in his life shifts his focus outside of himself; he feels that he’s needed somewhere and he responds to that by doing everything in his power to get there. Though he still views himself as incapable and pretty useless as a soldier, figuring he just needs to get her to where she wants to go with his newfound ability, Vratasky sets out to train him in the art of alien warfare just as she trained.
The training sequence is brilliant. Though it may just seem like a lot of simulated fights between Cage and practice robots, a lot of injury, a lot of dying (Vratasky shoots him to reset whenever he sustains a serious injury), and a lot of returning to the same circumstances, these scenes reflect the kind of grueling work Cage has to go through to become the kind of soldier who is capable of succeeding in his mission with Vratasky. And it mirrors the difficult internal work and growth of working a program of recovery, especially when we’re in the early times.
These simulated fights against robots that usually end in Vratasky ending him with a gunshot are intercut with Cage waking up to the repeated demand, “On your feet, maggot.” We hear him called “maggot” again and again to signal the end of his last life and the beginning of a new reset, and I find this repeatedly rude awakening to be central to Cage’s growth and ultimate success. And it’s helped me in my own less harrowing daily struggles. Though he gradually progresses in his capacity as a soldier and in his confidence in their mission, he always goes back to that same start where he’s identified as something less than human and reminded again of his lowly ranking in the army infrastructure. It’s a reminder of the humility we need to make any progress in our recovery as well as of the constant work it takes to keep our ego in check. Cage originally couldn’t accept the insult of being addressed in such a demeaning manner, but we see him begin to accept it as part of the routine he must get through in order to make progress in his mission. He accepts that this sergeant views him as inferior, but he doesn’t allow the insult to infiltrate his growing sense of purpose or understanding of his role in the mission. I’ve called that scene to mind when I start to feel like the circumstances I’m dealt don’t match what I want or think I deserve. I’m not going around calling myself a maggot, but the phrase is a reminder that I’m not owed anything and am given everything. It’s a reminder that there will be some pretty ugly feelings in my day that I don’t need to dwell on or let distract me from my goal to live a good life and be a good person. I’ve definitely experienced my share of shame and disappointment in myself, even in pretty recent times, but I’m learning to see that I’m not defined by material standards of success or how I think others view me. Cage isn’t defined by the name someone calls him; he learns to let that go and move on in his training to become the kind of soldier who can better help Vratasky in their mission.
The first couple times he wakes up though, “maggot” is a fitting name to reflect how Cage feels about his worth. He simultaneously undervalues his ability as a soldier but considers himself superior to soldiers he views as more capable than him in combat. Allowing our ego to rule our thinking doesn’t always mean we think the world of ourselves, but it can mean we view ourselves as the most important one in the world, even if we’re at maggot-level self esteem. I hated myself most of the time when I was in active addiction, but I still thought that everything was about me. My ego told me that everything moved with me at the center, that the actions and moods of others moved in direct correlation with how they felt about me. I was simultaneously the worst yet most important part of the world in which I lived. Like Cage, I considered myself pretty useless and incapable of the role and purpose I was meant for: being a competent human in a world of humans; but I somehow valued my judgment as more informed or knowledgeable than that of my peers. I thought I knew best and deserved respect despite thinking I was a fraud a lot of the time.
From the opening scenes through this training sequence, Cage’s ego slips away as his assuredness in his mission strengthens. The Cage we first meet clings to the title that his rank offers him but denies being a soldier in any real sense of the word. His urge to remind others of his superior rank despite a fearful unwillingness to enter combat to truly earn that rank shows his ego at work in his concept of himself and his world. Cage’s insistence on his lack of ability and identity as a soldier shows in his training even as his skill improves; he appears scared and out of place, a reluctant but willing participant in Vratasky’s methods. In the early resets and training sessions, he’s still very much a victim to the cycle. When he takes the same actions or lets cowardice and ego guide his thinking, either in real or simulated combat, he dies and finds himself back at the start, having to work back through the same sequence of events to get to where he was and progress in his mission. He learns a bit from his mistakes, but he needs the guidance of someone who’s been through what he’s experiencing to make further progress in each reset.
Like Cage, we might feel that we’ve made no progress in life despite the number of consecutive sober days we’ve put together, or we might feel hopeless and lost in our recovery due to a physical or spiritual relapse. Cage faces actual death as the consequence for his mistakes or oversights, and that’s no light matter regardless of how many times he goes through it. He could despair or decide it’s too hard to go through again, but he doesn’t give himself that option. He finds his way back to Vratasky every time. And whether or not Ricky Bobby is onto something with regard to Tom Cruise’s witchcraft abilities, this is still a very human and doable feat. Not the coming back from the dead part, but the willingness to get on his feet and start again. Cage’s willingness to get back up every time to this terribly rude awakening is exactly the kind of action we have to take in our own lives when we feel a setback or defeat in our personal progress. I think a lot of Cage’s initial mistrust in his ability to be a soldier stems from his need to be in control of a situation he can’t control. His ego prevents him from letting go of that self-reliance and doing the work he gradually learns to embrace under the guidance of Vratasky. As the voice of his ego quiets, he focuses more intently on the mission and becomes the kind of soldier who can do the work his former self tried to avoid at all costs.
Cage’s circumstances remain pretty much the same as they were the first time around, but he’s never the same man when he wakes up. The sergeant calls him a maggot, Farrell lectures him, and J Squad openly dislikes him. But he begins to focus less on these trials as indicators of his worth as he progresses in his training and accepts the actions and opinions of his peers as factors beyond his control. He bears the insults, the disrespect and dislike, and the discomforts as necessary but insignificant scenery on a path with a much more important focus. His perspective mirrors the kind of acceptance necessary to progress on our own missions in life. We will inevitably encounter situations beyond our control to change, and we don’t need to be happy about it or even find good in everything. It’s taken me a while to realize this part. Acceptance doesn’t mean we say it’s OK and are able to find a positive. There’s nothing kind about the sergeant calling him a maggot, and there’s no bright side to being openly hated by his new unit upon introduction, but Cage accepts that treatment as something that isn’t important enough to distract him from his mission. In life, we’ll have scenarios ranging from shitty weather and inconvenient train delays to a broken leg or being hurt by someone in our life. They don’t need to be OK, but they also don’t need to derail our progress in becoming a stronger version of ourselves. We can choose to listen to our ego, which will demand that we take each of these insults personally and throw us into internal chaos, or we can accept them and move along with renewed focus on our mission.
In nearly every one of his resets, Cage goes to find Vratasky and align his mission with hers, and they proceed in this endeavor from where they last left off. Except for one time. After numerous days ending in similar variations of the same disastrous failure, Cage wakes up with a shifted perspective after watching Vratasky die yet again. He has grown to love her and wants her with him, but he has also seen the inevitable tragedy that results from her stubborn insistence on doing things the way she deems best. When she asks him why it matters what happens to her, he responds, “I wish I didn’t know you.” This is the risk we take when we let people into our lives and come to know them and let them know us. We risk loss, but it’s a risk we have to take to cultivate the kind of connection that makes us really human. Vratasky still struggles with the ability to trust and be vulnerable with her love, but Cage has been through enough resets to recognize the value in establishing connection even in a war that makes loss an inevitability. It weighs on him to see her fail and die again and again. Vratasky’s ego and fear prevent her from stepping back and letting Cage lead; they prevent her from listening and even from heeding the need for caution. Because she has experienced the unique pain of letting herself love and losing that love in the past, she has blocked herself from trusting anyone new, and since she’s not the one repeating these events with each reset, she doesn’t learn from her mistakes in the way that Cage does.
He goes through the same disaster so many times, growing closer to her in each reset and hurting more with each repeated loss. But he continues to bring her on the mission because he thinks that he needs her to be successful and doesn’t think he has the option to leave her out of her own plan. But after this last reset when he finds her and she addresses him in the same brusque manner, it finally clicks that she can’t and won’t change because her actions are beyond his ability to control. He finally sees that bringing Vratasky with him will only hurt both of them. So rather than confiding his identity and plan to her like he wants to, he shoulders the burden alone and walks away.
Tom Cruise walking away is one of the pivotal points in his growth, and it reflects one of the hardest things we may have to do in our own lives. Our people play a huge role in how we live our lives. They are our greatest sources of guidance, support, love and connection, and our relationships with them can facilitate even deeper growth of our connection with ourselves and our higher power. It’s a hard thing to recognize that these people whom we love might be a source of blockage or might be hindering our ability to progress. The influence of others on our personal growth isn’t entirely on them. Others can’t make us feel or think anything we don’t choose for ourselves, but often the fears or resentments that hold us back can stem from the expectations we place on them and on our need for others to do something for us that we haven’t found a way to do for ourselves.
Vratasky has played a huge role in Cage’s growth, but he finally recognizes that she blocks his progress at this particular stage in the mission. She doesn’t mean to harm the mission, but because she hasn’t worked through certain issues of her own, she can’t be the kind of partner that Cage needs to succeed. He brings her with him so many times because he expects her to learn from the past, forgetting that (through no fault of hers) he always meets her in the same place as he last did. When he finally recognizes that reality, he sees that he needs to go through at least this part of his journey alone.
He walks away from Vratasky not because he doesn’t care about her, but because he finally sees that she can’t be what he needs her to be in order to move forward, at least not in these circumstances. He sees that bringing her along with him, though it gives him the security and joy of her company, always ends in death and the failure of their mission. Cage does what many of us struggle to do in our own lives. He is honest with himself about someone he loves, recognizing that her presence blocks him from moving forward and achieving a major step in the mission. We see how hard that is - to break from the pattern he’s grown to trust as the only one and to make the decision to leave her out of a mission she also cares about. But his experience has shown him the harsh reality that she can only help his purpose so much before harming it.
We may have people or communities that hold us back for whatever reason, often through no fault of their own. They may let us relive the past, let us believe we’re wanted, do the hard work for us or at least seem to, or just give us something familiar and known that feels safer than the unknown of forward growth. When we see that a relationship in our life is keeping us from doing the work, it’s on us to amend that relationship so that its place in our life is no longer an obstacle to our growth. That may involve walking away for a time. We have to trust that God puts the people in our lives that we’re meant to help and to be helped by. And if we’re on the right path moving forward, the right people will be on that path in one way or another, at some time or another.
When Cage leaves Vratasky behind, he doesn’t do so with any idea if he’ll see her again or with any guarantee of his success but because he sees that going alone will be best for both of them. Cage finally believes what Vratasky tells him at the end of their training - that he can do it; and with this belief comes the willingness to do the work alone. That’s the other significant aspect of his walking away. His action shows willingness to work for their wanted outcome on his own. In recovery, we do need people. We may have sponsors, family and friends, and our communities to support our efforts, but the real work is internal. It’s on us to do that work and to reach out for help when we struggle. We don’t get anywhere if we rely on others to make us feel better or safer. We need to want the success of our own mission for ourselves, understanding that we’re working for something both personal and universally beneficial. And if we’re working toward it with that mindset, the right people will come into our lives for a time, a reason, a lesson, or to stay.
Cage’s mission does pay off. He gains more ground than he and Vratasky have made in any previous reset, learning valuable information that leads to the ultimate final mission, but he doesn’t succeed in completing the mission on his own. There are multiple mission attempts near the end that, like this one, seem upon first film viewing that they will be the one that finally succeeds in destroying the Omega. But when we finally see that real final attempt, it’s so clear that victory at any earlier stage would not have been right.
The main reason that success at any other time would not have been right is the reset. Cage has been going on each of these mission attempts with the power of the reset still in his blood. He cannot destroy his enemy while still linked by blood to it. The reset has been an integral part of Vrartasky and his plan, functioning as their solution for every failed attempt. If a solution is an escape hatch, a back to start button that lets them erase their attempt and try again, it’s not a real solution. So long as he has the capacity to reset his time, Cage is writing his mission out in pencil, trying to solve the problem but going through the motions with an eraser in hand. He definitely learns from each attempt, experiences real fear, and to an extent encounters unknown factors beyond his control. But he relies on the fact that he can reset through all of it, and so he is not truly living.
The escape function of the reset mirrors what we do in addiction and in recovery when we turn to a substance, to self reliance and the voice of our ego, to distractions and temporary solutions to take away the reality we can’t accept. These substances or habits give us an escape hatch that leads right back into the same cycle we’ve been perpetuating when we entertain the thoughts and actions that keep us from truly living. When Cage loses the ability to reset, he tells Vratasky, “I lost the power.” He doesn’t realize that he’s gained something so much more powerful. In losing the crutch that cuts off his trajectory in the present, he gains the freedom to live without the option to reverse his progress.
Though the reset power is lost, Cage and Vratasky forge ahead with their mission, and the nature of this last attempt reflects how we can live when we stop holding ourselves back. The Cage we see in this final effort reflects the total change of character he has experienced since we first encountered him in that first twenty-five minutes of the film. Cage’s ego and self-reliant arrogance is gone, replaced by a respect for and willingness to work with his fellow soldiers. Vratasky and Cage recognize that they need a team, so they recruit J Squad, the unit from which Cage continuously has earned only disrespect and disdain. Though Cage originally judged them as lacking potential and status, he sees their likeness to him now. They are soldiers who may not impress on a surface level, but who can work as a team and are willing to sacrifice for something greater than honor and respect. When they question his reliability as a leader, he tells them, “I don’t expect you to follow me…I expect you to follow her,” indicating Vratasky. Cage too puts his ego and need for validation aside. He steps aside and lets his actions demonstrate his worth to them. He shuts up and does the work, no longer making excuses or demanding recognition for a title. He simply shares with them the same purpose that was given to him. They accept the mission as the cost of freedom even without knowing what that freedom will look like for them or for the world. Rather than sit back and let someone else do the work, they take the chance because they see the opportunity to make a change, and they have the courage to make that change. They recognize that to do nothing will only destroy them in the end with a far greater cost.
United in this purpose, J Squad, Vratasky and Cage commit to an effort to destroy the Omega, knowing the high possibility that they won’t all survive the mission. Their choice to go forward reflects the kind of trust and courage it takes to let go of our self reliance and accept life on its terms, not letting fear or ego hold us back. This is living. Committing to a mission without the option to abort or start again, without the element of knowledge and control in how things turn out. Cage and his team trust in something greater than themselves and in their ability to do the right thing.
The members of the team sacrifice their lives in the effort. J Squad members choose to stay behind to buy time and to let others get closer to the Omega when they come under attack. Vratasky comes close to destroying it after Cage is seriously injured, but she too dies in her attempt. Wounded and the sole survivor of the attempt, Cage destroys the Omega at the certain cost of his own life, and in doing so achieves a final reset when the Omega’s blood mixes with his own as they both die. Only when he sacrifices himself in a way he couldn’t before, without the security of knowing he’ll just wake up and without the backup of a more capable soldier, does he succeed in destroying the Omega, and (without expecting it) achieves another chance to live in the present. Their deaths and rebirths in the subsequent reset demonstrate the kind of figurative dying to self necessary for our growth in recovery, in life.
Dying to self is an idea I’ve struggled to adequately conceptualize; it’s one thing to say it, but it’s been difficult for me to visualize what it looks like. I’ve been thinking recently that this kind of self death is a lot like heartbreak. Both sound tragic and terrible, and both involve saying goodbye to something that we thought was for us and was a deep part of us. But dying to self doesn’t mean letting something kill us, and heartbreak doesn’t have to mean that some outside force has come in and destroyed our hearts. I think they’re both necessitated by accepting that something or someone isn’t working for us anymore. It’s a painful kind of acceptance, but aceptance nonetheless. The practices, thoughts or attachments may have served us or occupied us in some way, but once we recognize the blocking nature of their place in our life or accept that they’re not meant to be in our lives in the way we wanted them, we can break free from them. This kind of dying or heartbreak can be tragic and sad; the recognition that something isn’t for us and the transition out can be messy and painful. But once we experience the freedom they bring and we’re able to accept outside circumstances as they are and without the incessant need to change them to our liking, these can be experiences of breaking free from the things that block us, from the parts of ourselves that hold us back. We have to go through them with the trust that letting go of familiarity and what we think is best for us will open a path toward something greater than we could have planned for ourselves. When Cage wakes up from this final, unexpected reset, he has just experienced incredible loss and pain. He’s looked death in the face for the upteenth time, and the guy who wakes from this kind of darkness is an entirely new person.
His whole world has changed, and he brings into it a new version of himself. Though he has just saved humanity with his heroics, he doesn’t mind that he’s not receiving credit for the feat. His ego has diminished, and this internal change lets him experience a deeper connection with people who don’t even realize their worth to him or how they have contributed to his transformation. He finds Vratasky one last time, and though she doesn’t know him, there is finally a change in how she greets him. Perhaps it’s the fact that they’re no longer in an active war zone, that Cage now looks the part of a major who deserves her respect, or that she senses the internal change in him and his approach. He’s no longer an intruder in her space but someone who knows he belongs in it. When she asks what he wants and he grins, we can predict how their conversation will go. This time he recognizes himself in her and gives some direction and meaning to the experience she’s believed she couldn’t share with anyone until he finds her.
Cage has fulfilled the theory we first heard in Sergeant Farell’s monologue from that first twenty-five minutes. Yes, we have to return to Sergeant Kentucky and his zealot war sermon. The fiery crucible theory has played out in Cage’s experiences of alien warfare, resetting and dying again and again to the same war with himself and his circumstances. His endurance through persistent hardship of every kind and his acceptance of and adaptation to the circumstances beyond his control have forged him into someone he never could identify as before: a soldier willing to fight on the front lines and risk his life for others. He has finally recognized that this opportunity and life is something given to him to do with what he can, and he finally believes that he can do something great even if it’s not by the same standards he valued before. He has learned to endure with humility and courage, not to leave the hard work for someone else and to trust in others even in the face of uncertainty. He may have gone through the crucible of these experiences leaning on the crutch of his reset power, but they forge him into the man who succeeds at long last. Every effort until the last exhibits courage and growth in its own right, but the kind of courage it takes to meet his enemy without any guarantee of his life is truly heroic. We see him forge on into unknown and horror-filled territory with an intuitive understanding of how to handle each new obstacle. The Cage who ultimately destroys the Omega never could have done so without each death and reset of his previous efforts.
We may not have the same reset capacity as Cage. We can’t erase past mistakes or revisit events in any effective way, though we may relive them in our minds and try to erase them through other forms of self sabotage. But we can take something from this crucible concept if we can look at our own cycles of behavior, past failures and current blockages with the same kind of discernment he develops. We can reset when we die to the things holding us back, when we let ourselves break out of inhibiting mindsets and patterns of action. And we can let ourselves try again in the present even with the weight of the past still a very real threat to our progress. We can choose not to give it power over our present state or let it take away from our freedom to live.
