Oblivion

Take every generic moment you can think of from a Science Fiction film trailer, and put them together. That is the trailer for Oblivion. Every single moment from the trailers looked generic. It made the movie look like every other science fiction movie out there. In fact, Oblivion is the first of at least 3 movies coming out this year, where Earth is not the prime place for humanity to reside. I imagine that of those 3 films, Oblivion will be the middle one. After Earth will probably be terrible and Elysium will be awesome. Oblivion falls somewhere between terrible and awesome. Oblivion is a better movie than the trailers suggest, but it suffers mightily under its own crushing weight.

After a war with aliens left Earth depleted, humans left Earth and are living in a spaceship (I think, this was kind of vague). Jack (Tom Cruise) and Victoria (Andrea Risborough) have two weeks left on their mission on Earth before they can go back to their new home. What is their mission to make sure the drones are operational and that the scavs (Their name for the aliens) are not coming back to deplete the resources even more. The humans created this machine that turns the remaining water on Earth into energy in hopes of one day finding a planet on which to live (Again, kind of vague). Jack is bored and he misses Earth. He is having memories, which is impossible because five years ago all of humanity's memories were wiped in case they were caught by the Scavs. Jack and Victoria are co-workers and lovers, but Jack is dreaming of another woman. jack flies around in this ship and repairs drones while Victoria communicates with Sally (Melissa Leo) who is in charge of things wherever the humans are now. Jack questions everything and wants to read books and live in a cabin away from everything. He occasionally disobeys orders and can be reckless. One night there is a crash and when Jack goes to investigate, he stumbles upon a ship of humans in sleeping pods and finds the drones firing on these humans, killing them. He saves one human and is suddenly questioning why the drones, who are supposed to protect humans, are actually killing them. Jack is then kidnapped by a group he believes are Scavs, but they turn out to be human and that possibly everything Jack believes is a lie.

The film opens with voice over narration by Jack explaining everything that happened. It is a tidy bit of exposition, if a bit long winded, vague and convoluted. However, later in the movie when we meet Julia, who has been asleep for 75 years, Jack has to explain everything to her. Therefore we get the exact same piece of exposition twice within 45 minutes. This is the one of the biggest flaws in this film. If you are going to have to give a character the entire exposition speech then why give it to us at the start of the movie? Let us be in the dark a bit, and then fill us in when you fill in the character. As an audience we do not need exposition twice in a movie, especially when the exposition is so vague. It adds unnecessary time to the film and I think, if I had been in the dark during the first half, I would have found it more interesting. Being told everything up front meant I basically did not need to pay much attention to the first 35 minutes of the movie. I already knew everything that was going to happen until the action got moving. Not only did I get 2 sets of exposition, I got 20 minutes at the beginning that filled in the world that was already explained to me! This is simply poor script work by everyone involved.

Once the movie gets going, it gets better. There are two killer action sequences and the twist is kind of neat and I did not really see it going to the place they took it. I really enjoyed that aspect of it. I love the imagination of Jack's flying vehicle, and I loved the design of the home of Jack and Victoria. There are some neat little touches that made me think there could have been a much better movie here. The idea for the film started as a graphic novel, but the graphic novel was never produced and they turned it into this movie instead. Perhaps a graphic novel would have been a better way to go, allowing them to focus on the smaller details more because this film is just so broad. The strokes of this film are too wide. Everything stays so general. Not even Morgan Freeman's presence really saves the film from crushing under bad pacing, poor writing and sloppy editing.

Cruise is good, but I would expect nothing less. He handles the lack of material well. He has always been a believable hero and here he is a believable as a man who wants more, and is frustrated that he has no real memory. Once the twist comes, he handles it very well. There are bound to be some snickers once the reveal comes and the epilogue is kind of weird. It feels a bit creepy, even though I know it is not and it fits with the story. There are elements to many different Science Fiction films to be found here, most specifically Independence Day. The climax feels lifted from Independence Day and while Oblivion's chase scene is dazzling, it does feel like we have seen it before. I definitely preferred this director's vision from Tron: Legacy much more than I enjoyed this knock off.

Oh, one last thing, the sound is incredible in this film. I rarely say that, and I will say that again later this week in another review, but the sound mix was perfection.

Final Grade: D