There are a ton of big budget sci fi and fantasy movies coming out this year. Oblivion is the first big one expected to be at least somewhat good (No, Jack the Giant Slayer was not good). Being a big fan of scifi films, and scifi in general, and a fan of the nostalgia of seeing Tom Cruise brings about (Mission: Impossible was so good, I had high hopes for Oblivion.
Plot.
Telling you the best parts of the plot would be a big spoiler, so I'll just tell you how the movie begins. Basically, it is the year 2077, and Earth is basically destroyed after a huge war with an alien race. The war made most of Earth unlivable, and the moon destroyed.
Most of what is left of humanity has been moved to Titan, one of Saturn's moons. Some remain on the "tet," a huge, triangular space ship orbiting Earth, waiting to be shipped of to Titan.
A very small group remain on Earth, acting as mechanics for the drones protecting the huge machines sucking up the Earth's remaining water to get energy for the trip to Titan from the aliens, which still reisde on Earth after being mostly destroyed.
One of these mechanics is named Jack. He works with Victoria, who helps plan his routes, and is his eye int he sky (literally and figuratively, their house is on a 3,000 foot pole.) He and Victoria only have two more weeks of work left before they ill be allowed to travel with the rest of humanity to Titan.
Slowly, Jack starts to discover that everything he has been told might be a lie, or maybe a half truth, or maybe a lie based on a truth.
Who knows? I do. I saw the movie.
Review.
Oblivion is a movie made up of several incredible scenes, and several okay scenes with some big flaws. Ultimately, however, the great scenes far outshine the problems throughout.
After the awkwardly long intro monologue, the movie starts out great. The pacing and general feel of this movie in the beginning is really good. In the very beginning, everything seems to be going well for Jack, and he seems to have everything figured out. But even before we know it for sure, there is a feeling that something is a little off. As the movie goes on this becomes more and more clear.
The first half of the movie has incredible pacing , information is slowly revealed, and we learn more and more about the world surrounding Jack. (Speaking of the world, it looks awesome.)
The film begins to have problems about halfway through (Minor SPOILERS within parentheses: pretty much once Morgan Freeman's character is introduced. END SPOILERS). Suddenly, things happen way too quickly, and a lot more characters are introduced, all of which completely suck. That's really the only major problem with this movie is that all character except for Jack are really, really flat.
The movie seems to struggle between being a phycological thriller and an action, adventure movie. The first half is a great mixture of the two, and one of the best examples of the mixture I've seen in a long time, but the second half really struggles trying to fit it all into an hour.
The reason most people don't like scifi movies is the way you have to focus and try to understand what is going on, everything isn't just told to you. Oblivion solves this problem by telling you everything. Well, not everything, but the opening monologue tells you a lot of info it would have been nicer to find out for ourselves. We know that Victoria wants to leave Earth not through subtle eye movements and facial expressions, but because Tom Cruise's voice tells us. This isn't a huge problem, but it is a little annoying, especially to die hard scifi fans.
The reason most people don't like scifi movies is the way you have to focus and try to understand what is going on, everything isn't just told to you. Oblivion solves this problem by telling you everything. Well, not everything, but the opening monologue tells you a lot of info it would have been nicer to find out for ourselves. We know that Victoria wants to leave Earth not through subtle eye movements and facial expressions, but because Tom Cruise's voice tells us. This isn't a huge problem, but it is a little annoying, especially to die hard scifi fans.
The ending of this movie, while really the only thing that could happen, is a bit of a let down There isn't a moment of "yeah, we did it!" or even a bitter sweet feeling really. It's just a emotionless "yay."
Random Thoughts
- One problem I have with a lot of scifi movies is that everything in the future is always polished and perfect. All the technology us always white and glossy and everything seems to have the same design and just be perfect. In the 1960s, people thought the year 2013 would be like that. In the 1900s, people thought the 60s would be like that. Neither did. By the end of the movie I guess an argument can be made for why everything is all perfect and glossy, and I can't really dock the movie any points for doing this, it's just something that's always annoyed me.
- That being said, the tech in this movie, especially their sky house thing, is awesome looking, and the landscape is really well done too.
- Tom Cruise does a surprisingly good job int his movie. It's hard to picture him doing anything but Mission: Impossible-eque things, but he pulls this one off rather well.
- You'll probably get that "let's quote things" reference after you see the movie.
Bottomline
Oblivion is by no means a perfect movie. It struggles to find the line between mystery, physiological thriller versus pure action film. in places, it does this really well, mixing chase scenes and shoot outs with great plot twists and surprises, but the movie really stumbles in some places. The pacing and mystery are amazing in some places, and not very good in others.
Ultimately, the positives outweigh the negatives, and the movie comes off as not life changing, but still very, very good.
If you're at all a scifi fan, or even just appreciate scifi, Oblivion is worth seeing in theaters. Even if you're not crazy about scifi, the movie doesn't isn't very heavy scifi, so it could be worth buying or renting once it's out on DVD.
My Score: 8.1/10
The IMDB score takes into account over 400 reviews form critics and regular people.
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