Predictable Sci-Fi

Rating: 7/10 (17 April 2013)

My expectations for this movie were not very high but it was a solid piece of entertainment. Tom Cruise obviously loves sci-fi and he apparently found himself in this movie genre. He had strong Co-Star in this movie – Morgan Freeman – who would compel the audience even if he only read stock market bulletin. The photography in the movie is beautiful, the Earth never looked better in ruins, and female co-stars are also nice. And the audience have one or two surprises for them. But the weak point of the movie is it's predictability. Not only for the hard-core sci-fi fans. The plot is as follows: There was an extraterrestrial invasion. Enemy first destroyed the Moon and as a consequence there were massive natural disasters on Earth. Earth did fight back, launched it's nuclear weapons and defeated the enemy. The planet itself was ravaged and the remaining aliens fled into hiding on Earth. The remnant human population built an enormous base/spaceship – the Tet and they want to collect all the water from Earth and travel to Saturns moon Titan. Tom Cruise is Jack, the last mechanic on the planet and his job is to repair the combat drones which protect gigantic water collectors for the trip to Titan. He has a partner/lover – Victoria. And they live in a sterile flight control tower. And every now and then they have their minds wiped – for security reasons and Jack has strange recurring dreams/memories. Of course, everything looks suspicious from the beginning. The Tet itself looks incredibly non-human-made, especially when we see that the entire civilization lies in ruins. The great plan of the humanity – to move to Titan is beyond comprehension. What in the world could the mankind find there!? If they said Mars, maybe I would believed it. The communication with the Tet is also strange, main controller looks like an automaton. And of course the sterile environment in which Jack and Victoria live is also inhuman. No trace of individuality, but that at least has a logical explanation. We soon see that the war still goes on and that the humanity lives now underground, hiding from killer-drones, which Jack repairs. They have a plan – straight from Independence Day" – to plant a nuclear device inside the Tet. And they succeed, of course. There are some surprising subplots which I will not reveal here. And sadly, in the end, very little is revealed about the alien invader, it's origin or motivation, but never mind. Whatever the explanation might be, we (the audience) have already seen it somewhere.