Oblivion (2013) Directed by Joseph Kosinski. Starring: Tom Cruise, Olga Kurylenko, Andrea Riseborough, & Morgan Freeman. IMDB says: “A veteran assigned to extract Earth’s remaining resources begins to question what he knows about his mission and himself.”
Jack Harper is one of the last people on Earth. 60 years after the planet has been decimated by nuclear warfare after an alien invasion, most of the remaining population is in a hovering space station, the Tet, waiting to relocate to one of Saturn’s moons. Jack and his team member and lover Victoria stay behind to make sure huge containers sucking up all the planet’s water for resources and energy are safe from damage by the Scavs (what they call the few alien creatures still on Earth). As the tech for the drones that scan the Earth’s surface, Jack is the last person to touch down on the ground, as Victoria stays up in their sweet futuristic pad way up in the sky in communication with their officer from the Tet.
Victoria and Jack have both had their memories wiped from their normal lives but he still can’t shake a few flashes of his past life. Jack probably isn’t the wisest choice to be in this position actually. He’s a bit too nostalgic for things he can’t quite recall, gathering odds and ends from wherever he touches down on his repair assignments. He should be detached and ready to move on but he actually doesn’t ever want to leave Earth. It only intensifies when a space ship crashes to the planet and a woman from his snippets of memories is one of the passengers. From there, this story takes off in your usual ‘things aren’t as they seem’ fashion.
And ‘the usual’ is really the downside of Oblivion, narratively speaking. While the premise is fairly promising, it borrows from other sci fi films and doesn’t develop enough on its own to really make this film compelling. As new twists came into play my curiosity grew, but the payoff never pushed far enough to make you enthusiastic about the way things were playing out. Despite having a fleshed out, interesting character that I felt very drawn to, Jack’s story ended up being fairly generic.
However, do not write this movie off. For everything it lacks in substance it makes up in superb style. Oblivion easily had the best visuals I’ve seen in any recent sci fi movie (more memorable to me than Prometheus actually). The look of the destroyed Earth was startling but actually kind of beautiful. The general wasteland gave away to peeks at damaged recognizable locations and also parts of the natural world that hadn’t been devastated just yet. The combination of filming in Iceland and the parts that were digitally created was pretty seamless and certainly looked realistic. The futuristic gadgets, deathly droids, neat spacecrafts and sky high apartment were pretty awesome as well, contrasting with the gray planet.
I wouldn’t fend anyone away from this movie if you’re looking for a decent popcorn flick. There’s at least somewhat original flickers in the thin story, a boyishly charming performance from Tom Cruise, and above all astounding visuals. Don’t expect the next mind blowing science fiction story and I think you’ll be able to go along with the plot while enjoying the mesmerizing landscape eye candy (and the two ladies are good looking too).
