Going average into the Oblivion

Rating: 5/10 (1 August 2018)

I watched the Film half a decade after its release, mostly for the reason of it's Score Composers and of it's Sci-Fi origins (rare breed these days).
My expectations where non existant for the simple reason for me not caring about this flick when it originally released to theaters.
First up the positive: you are mostly in for a visual treat, you have beautiful landscapes, sets and designs, this is especially fascinating because of its nature. Most SciFi films about a planet where War nearly eradicated most of its inhabitants tend to look destroyed and rather ugly (not in a cinematographic sense). The Orchestral Score is outstanding, especially it's Leitmotiv, french Electronic band (here Kosinski the director goes again, choosing a french elctro band as he did with Daft Punk on Tron) M83.
Also some cool ideas, i won't spoil, youll get near the end of the story concerning the whole premise (which also is its weakest link at the same time).
Next up the Negative: You have not enough information about what is going on which results in you as a viewer just blindly follow the protagonists, which perse is not a bad thing if done right (Great examples 2001, Moon,.....). The saying "less is more" seem'ed to be the Mantra of Kosinski, because you get barely any information in the begining of what was going on before the Earth went exterminated and right after that you follow Cruise and his companion along the ride where you'll get tidbits of some random scenes which get explained in the end but in reality dont make any sense, because the character of Cruise doesnt remember them, so it just is for us the viewer which doesnt make sense because why show us something the main protagonist doesnt remember if we as a viewer dont know anything about what is shown to us if it only gets revealed in the end ?. If you set up scenes in the editing you have to take care that in the context they make some kind of sense for the character or the viewer, even both if the story demands for it, you cant just pull in some random scenes and in the end say "well that was the whole reason". As i said in the positive aspects of this film, the sparse story elements, which go down a pretty fascinating idea in the end, it also is its weakest link. The most interesting idea of this SciFi story gets revealed in the End and than it stops, Cruise saved the day and "kumbaya me Lord". If youd describe the film in short sentences it'll be "Cruise is rediscovering stuff on earth and gets objectives to hunt for some stuff, there is some stuff he isnt to touch or bring back and then he finds out the truth ...the end".
Another big problem is the Action, while it has some cool action setups they also are pretty boring mostly, infact the whole film felt like a Video Game, but the bad kind of Game in which the variety of enemys is reduced to 1, it goes even further the Film reminded me a lot of a Game called "Destiny" (not my taste btw), the story has some similar elements and even pretty simmilar visual styles.
The whole experiene felt flat with some ups but mostly downs, it felt like a franchise starter but the worst kind. What happened to the good old days where even if a film gets a sequel you still focus on making a great film and not holding of stuff for the Sequels (We'll guess we are in the Age of TV where even Movies are becoming big budgeted TV Mini Shows).