1. Tenet
While it’s not aliens that are being battled in 2020’s Tenet, the concept of time and time travel is a major element of the Christopher Nolan thriller. Starring John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Dimple Kapadia, Michael Caine, and Kenneth Branagh, Tenet follows a former CIA agent recruited into a secret organization where he’s tasked with preventing the onset of World War III, travelling through time and bending the laws of nature in order to do so.
2. The Tomorrow War
Probably one of if not the closest to Edge of Tomorrow of all of the movies on this list, The Tomorrow War is a 2021 movie starring Chris Pratt, Yvonne Strahovski, and J.K. Simmons. The movie follows a family man (Pratt) drafted to go fight against invading aliens except there’s a twist: the war he’s being drafted to fight in takes place decades in the future. The aliens and time aspects of it alone give The Tomorrow War a similar vibe, but there are also human aspects of the movie that make it a great watch following Edge of Tomorrow. Also? A sequel to The Tomorrow War is reportedly in development at Amazon.
3. Looper
In 2012’s Looper, Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) works as a contract killer — called a “looper” — who is sent back through time by a criminal syndicate from the future who uses time travel to dispose of their targets. While there are no aliens, the film features the interesting twist that one of the people he’s dealing with is Old Joe — his older self played by Bruce Willis. Another fun bonus as to why this film is great to watch after Edge of Tomorrow? It also stars Emily Blunt.
4. Source Code
The concept of a time loop is a big reason 2011’s Source Code is a great film to follow up Edge of Tomorrow. The film stars Jake Gyllenhaal as U.S. Army Captain Colter Stevens who is tasked with entering an eight-minute virtual reality recreation of a terrorist attack on a train in order to figure out who the terrorist is. Over the course of the film, Stevens has to figure out how this particular form of “time travel” works and ultimately comes to a surprising discovery.
5. Oblivion
This list really wouldn’t be complete without another Tom Cruise-starring film and that’s a big reason we’ve chosen 2013’s Oblivion. In addition to Cruise, the film stars Morgan Freeman, Olga Kurylenko, Andrea Riseborough, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, and Melissa Leo. Set in 2077, the film takes place on Earth as ravaged by an alien war and sees a maintenance tech about to complete his. mission when he finds a woman who survived a space ship crash. It’s a discovery that leads the tech to discover that everything he knows may in fact be a lie.
6. Predestination
Based on Robert A. Heinlein’s short story “All You Zombies”, 2014’s Predestination makes our list because of its time travel elements. Starring Ethan Hawke, Sarah Snook, and Noah Taylor, the film follows a temporal agent on his final time-travel assignment to stop a criminal from launching an attack that will kill thousands. The film is twisty and complex — there’s a strange but interesting storyline about identity — but it makes for a good watch.
7. Happy Death Day
We bet you weren’t expecting a slasher film to end up on this list, were you? 2017’s Happy Death Day may not be sci-fi and it may not have aliens, but it does have a time loop and it’s darkly funny and it makes for a great addition to any watch after End of Tomorrow. Starring Jessica Rothe and Israel Broussard, the film follows college student Tree Gelbman who is murdered the night of her birthday but ends up in a really messed up Groundhog’s Day-esque time loop where she relives the day over and over, prompting her to find her killer and stop her own death.
