Predictable and Drawn Out, but a Visual Feast

Rating: 7/10 (25 October 2013)

As far as I can tell, OBLIVION is MOON (the awesome Duncan Jones science fiction film from 2009) for people who need their sci-fi with more firefights and explosions. For anyone who hasn't seen MOON and doesn't know what I'm talking about, stop wasting time here and go watch it. It's awesome. OBLIVION is science fiction with a classic vibe and a more mainstream mentality. The premise is a combination of a handful of popular sci-fi tropes mashed together with Tom Cruise in the lead, Morgan Freeman as a mysterious figure, and a couple beautiful women for Cruise to cavort with while saving the world. It's a film loaded with beautiful imagery but a tendency to try to force a sense of grandiose complexity that it never really achieves. The movie is set in a distant future where the world has been ravaged from war against an alien species that ended with the destruction of the moon. Most of humanity has evacuated the planet for the moon of Titan in orbit of Saturn. Tom Cruise is Jack, an engineer left behind to repair aerial drones that protect salt-water harvesters from a scattering of remaining aliens intent on sabotaging the operation. Jack operates from a home perched on a Sky Tower miles above the ground with his partner/wife Vika (Andrea Riseborough) while they await the end of their contract and their chance to join the rest of the human race on Titan. As the time approaches, complications arise when an escape pod crash-lands on Earth carrying a woman (Olga Kurylenko) and a powerful secret to reveal about Jack's existence.
Probably the first thing anyone will notice about OBLIVION is that it looks amazing. No matter what negative opinions people might offer about the movie, no one can complain that it looks shoddy. Everything here looks fantastic. The landscape is far-reaching and barren with occasional artifacts rising up from the desert to signify the society that once thrived there, whether it be a grounded ocean freighter or a surviving piece of New York's iconic skyline. The home sitting at the top of the Sky Tower is a pseudo-futuristic style where everything is spotless and streamlined. There are windows on every side of the home to provide an awesome 360-degree view. I love the design of the drones and I especially love the fact that they were shot practically when the filmmakers were able to give them a sense of realism. There is a fantastic shot about halfway through the movie or so with a drone slowly hovering through a shattered window, pushing through flaming curtains for a sinister reveal. Fantastic stuff. And then there's the bubble ship. The bubble ship is an atmospheric flyer and primary form of transport for Jack, with a gyroscopic bubble cockpit allowing for some pretty wicked flight shots. Visually, this movie is a perfect 10 but there's still the little matter of the plot and such. Not that there's anything wrong with it, but it just doesn't live up to the quality of the film's style.
Anyone who's seen their share of science fiction will see right through this film from the start. There's a major reveal a little more than halfway through the film that I won't reveal here for anyone who hasn't watched it yet, but I'm going to admit that I saw most of it coming within the first ten minutes of the film. Jack and Vika report each day to their mission control, based out of an orbital station known as the Tet. The Tet issues their daily assignments and provides support for their mission (the water harvesters). From the first video conversation between Vika and Sally (Melissa Leo, their contact aboard the Tet), I had this movie pegged and knew what to expect. This isn't to say the plot is weak or the twist is stupid. Actually, I think it's pretty entertaining. I've just seen enough movies of this nature to know where they were going with it. There were a few surprises in there that I wasn't able to see coming. The movie is well done. It's just very familiar. The cast is mostly superb. I'm probably one of Tom Cruise's few real film fans left, it seems. I'll agree that he has a tendency to do a lot of the same in each of his movies and he doesn't always disappear into his character, but he does well and he's a fine action star for his age. I thought he was great in OBLIVION. Andrea Riseborough and Morgan Freeman do a great job as well (though you don't really expect any less from Freemanthe dude's awesome). Olga Kurylenko is fine, though she doesn't seem to have a whole lot to work with here. I'm not entirely sure what I feel about Kurylenko as an actress. She's definitely gorgeous but she's never really turned in a performance that stood out to me. Here, she's fine.
For people that need more 'splosions with their sci-fi, OBLIVION delivers. It's a more mainstream science fiction film that incorporates plenty of action to keep audiences riveted between drawn-out, plot-driven scenes. If OBLIVION has one major flaw, it'd be that it drones on a little longer than necessary. It feels as if director Joseph Kosinski is trying to emphasize an epic scale that the movie hasn't earned when he would've been a better off tightening it down a bit. So, OBLIVION in a nutshell: predictable and drawn out, but visually amazing with an effective cast.