Oblivion

Rating: 6/10 (20 May 2013)

I saw plenty of interviews, clips and a trailer or two for this futuristic film, so I reckoned it had to be worth seeing if the hyping for it was worth it, from director Joseph Kosinski (Tron: Legacy). Basically it is the year 2077, planet Earth was nearly destroyed following an invasion of aliens known as Scavengers, or "Scavs", they destroyed the Moon causing worldwide tsunamis, earthquakes and various other natural disasters causing devastation. A war broke out between the aliens and remaining humanity, and nuclear weapons were used, meaning more destruction, but surviving humans were migrated to a colony called Titan, a large space station powered by sea water, and they currently remain there until Earth is habitable. The only ones who remain are above Earth in the clouds in Tower 49, there clone technicians Commander Jack Harper (Tom Cruise) and Victoria 'Vic' Olsen (Brighton Rock's Andrea Riseborough) are working together, romantically as well, to secure and repair drones on the ground below that defend the power stations that generate fusion power from the seawater. As a clone Jack has flashes of a former memory, that was supposed to be erased for security reasons, where he met a woman on the Empire State Building in New York, and one day an unknown craft crashes to the ground, and investigating he and Vic find various pods with people in hyper-sleep pods, and one contains the woman from his memory flashes. Saving her from being killed by a drone misidentifying the pods as enemies this woman is awoken, she identifies herself as Julia Rusakova (Quantum of Solace's Olga Kurylenko) from the Odyssey, a NASA ship, but she refuses to reveal her mission, and then they end up captured by the Scavs, who are in fact humans living on Earth underground. Leader Malcolm Beech (Morgan Freeman) explains that the war between aliens and humanity is in fact a lie by the Tet, the space station that orbits Earth and where mission controller Sally (Melissa Leo) gives the technicians their orders, he says that the Tet must be destroyed if the human race is stand a chance to survive and perhaps return to Earth. Jack initially refuses to believe this story and help the Scavs with this plan, but when he returns to Tower 49 he realises Vic has discovered his memories of being in love with Julia have returned, and announcing that she and him are no longer an "effective team", and this causes the drones are programmed to kill him and Julia. Jack accepts now the story about the war being a lie, and he is prepared to go ahead with the plan to enter the restricted area supposedly vaporised by radiation from the nuclear weapons, but it is in fact where the original version of Jack Harper remains and does exactly the same job as his clone self. Replacing himself as the Jack Harper in this world clone Jack is able to put together his plan to go against the Tet, and along the way he finds out he was also a pilot along with Julia on the Odyssey, and he travels to space claiming to be bringing mission control the prisoner they wanted. In space we see the thousands of humans floated in suspended animation, and back on Earth we see pilot Julia is in fact back on the planet, and the one in the pod Jack is taking is injured Beech with the nuclear device to destroy the Tet, but in the end three years pass and Julia with her child has an encounter with the memory of Jack which he reawakened, or something like that. Also starring Nikolaj Coaster-Waldau as Sykes and Zoë Bell as Kara. Cruise is a good choice as the security repairman haunted by memories of his real self, Kurylenko and Freeman do their parts well also, the story is a little complicated but clever mixing past, present and future, the special effects are fantastic, and the sequences of chases and technological destruction is fun to watch, it is a watchable post-apocalyptic science-fiction action adventure. Good!