Mediocrity is fate worse than failure.

Rating: 5/10 (15 April 2013)

Mediocrity is a fate worse than failure when it comes to entertainment. An audience remembers a truly awful movie as much as they do a great one, if for completely different reasons. But nobody remembers a mediocre movie, it's just.....there. Nothing stands out about it or separates it from the hundreds of others in mediocre hell.Well, make room for one more mediocre, forgettable movie.
Oblivion is the newest sci-fi/action flick starring Tom Cruise & directed by Joseph Kosinski (TRON:Legacy). In the year 2070 Earth has basically been destroyed due to a war with aliens (Scavs), the moon was blown up which caused numerous natural disasters and prompted Earth to go to war with the Scavs. The humans won, but the Earth lost, the entire population of Earth was moved to Saturns' moon, Titan. Earth is patrolled by drones that eliminate any remaining Scavs and those drones are monitored by two people; Jack Harper (Cruise) & his assigned partner Victoria. Jack soon finds out there's more living on Earth than just the Scavs & everything he thought was true is questioned. Oblivion is an original story & a great premise but it just doesn't do anything special. It starts of great & is a ton of fun for the first 30 minutes but quickly comes to a screeching bore. It's fantastic to look at though, Kosinski makes some beautiful movies I'll give him that. Like TRON:Legacy, it's a joy to look at, has some good action but is ultimately boring, overly long & too ambitious for it's own good. It's about 30 minutes too long & suffers through some pacing issues in the second half. This movie took longer to end than Return of the King. I had recently turned the corner with Tom Cruise; loved Jack Reacher & discovered the incredible Collateral. I was really excited for this one due to this; I have to give Cruise a pass for this one. He doesn't get to do "his thing", kinda cocky/totally confident hero that you will always root for. He starts off this way but somewhere in there he loses his charm & the movie suffers for it. I don't blame Cruise for this, you're only as good as the materials you're working with. Morgan Freeman has an extended cameo & he plays Morgan Freeman as usual.
Oblivion is yet another case of the trailers deceiving the audience; instead of a sci-fi flick with a ton of action, great visuals, original story & a fun hero I got an overly long, too ambitious, boring, great looking, original story with a boring hero. Oblivion was one of my anticipated movies for 2013, it will be ultimately forgotten & looked at as a missed opportunity & replacement for Ambien for me.
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