One of the Better Movies of 2013

Rating: 8/10 (27 January 2016)

Oblivion was a well directed, well acted, and well written movie. I enjoyed watching it, for the most part, mostly due to the acting skills of Tom Cruise and Morgan Freeman combined with the incredible visual effects.
Now, to start off, I've never been a fan of Tom Cruise. Prior to watching Oblivion, I had liked only a few of his movies (War of the Worlds, Edge of Tomorrow, Mission Impossible Anthology, etc.). However, this movie has heightened my respect for the man, and his acting. I definitely think he's a good actor, but he just doesn't have diversity. What do I mean by that? He can only play action. Even though he executes his roles nicely, he doesn't do different ones very often.
To give an example, Tom Hanks. Tom Hanks can play any part. He has acted as a mentally retarded man (Forest Gump), a homosexual man with HIV (Philadelphia), a war hero (Saving Private Ryan), and even a lonely crazy dude (Cast Away). Of all the roles listed, he has yet to do bad in any of them. Another good example would be Robin Williams. However, due to his MANY diverse roles, I'm not going to list them all.
Next topic: Morgan Freeman. To be honest, I never thought Morgan Freeman could do a Sci-Fi film like this. However, I think he did really good in this movie. The part where the room is dark and he's speaking, and then the lights turn on, and he's sitting back in his chair, smoking a cigar, I was bought. He's really good. I frequently compare him to greats like Harrison Ford or Mel Gibson.
Now, Oblivion had a good story line, but it was confusing as heck. This movie honestly confused me more than Inception, and that movie is KNOWN for being confusing. Despite it being confusing, it was still great. I loved that fact that movie had at least five "ah ha" moments. Most movies only manage one, but Oblivion really pulled it off. Additional to that, the fact that Jack Harper, Tom Cruise's character, was lied to about so many things, and neither he nor the audience figured it out until we were supposed to, was mind blowing.
The last good thing I'd like to mention about this movie was the visual effects. Wow. The visual effects in this movie were some of the best I've seen in a while. There were no moments where you said, "Wow, that looks fake." None, at all. And that's really impressive, considering almost every setting was full of visuals. Now, this is due to the movie's huge budget, but it was still amazing.
Now, we get into the negatives. The first thing I didn't like about this movie was the scene in the very end when the audience thinks Jack is dead (which, technically, he is), and he turns out to still be alive. The scene is set where Julia, Jack's wife, is playing with her child (presumably Jack's even though no sex is implied between them whatsoever) and she looks over and sees the remaining Scavengers across a small pond. Now, we saw that Jack had died about three years prior to this, in a nuclear explosion. However, we also know that there are plenty of Jacks left on Earth. We actually got to meet one earlier in the movie, who was Jack from Tower 52. This Jack ends up traveling with the Scavengers and finally finding his wife, Julia and their son.
Now that I've explained the scene, let me tell you my problems with it. First off, like I said above, it was never implied that Jack and Julia had sex. At all. No morning after scene, no actual sex scene, nothing. But apparently, they had a kid together. That makes no sense whatsoever. People can't have a kid if they haven't done the dirty. That's a fact of life.
Second, if Julia woke up at the cabin, which we know she did, how the heck did she get there? My guess was that the Scavengers took her, but if they took her, then why did it take them three years to get to her again? Another problem with them taking her, only Jack knew how to get there, so how would they take her. Pretty big plot hole there. If the Scavengers didn't take her, then who did? Also, if she was there, alone, for so long, how did she have a baby? I've seen a couple baby births in my lifetime, and there are always two or three people nearby the mother to help her. But apparently, Julia can go through labor without any help. Because she's cool like that. And I'm not even going to mention the fact that the kid was at least four or five years old, even though she had only been there for three years.
Lastly, the last time we saw Jack 52, he wouldn't listen to anything Jack 49 or Julia had to say. But I guess he was really open minded to the Scavengers, the people he was trained to kill.
Overall, the ending scene really confused me. I really wish they could've left it at the destruction of the Tet, and not have the whole "in the time since" scene.
Well, Oblivion was, overall, really good. I obviously had a few problems with it, but not too many. I liked the plot, and loved the acting. The visual effects were also a big yes for me. It was definitely one of the better movies of 2013. After watching this movie a few times, and thinking about it a lot, I'm going to have to give it a B+, or an 8 out of 10.