Review: Oblivion

Review: Oblivion

In 2009, Joseph Kosinski made his directorial debut with the divisive Tron: Legacy, a movie which stunned audiences worldwide with its special effects but unfortunately missed its mark regarding the characterization and plotting.

With the Tom Cruise-led Oblivion, Kosinski has improved greatly on the first point and only slightly on the second. It looks superb, with shots such as a dirt-covered Empire State Building really driving home the apocalyptic feel of a dystopian Earth. Yet for all its flashy visuals, Oblivion's narrative lacks any spark: the twists are not as twisty as they should be, and the pacing is really off - the story takes ages to finally get going, and the seemingly constant exposition scenes quickly become tiresome.

Still, it has a good premise based on a graphic novel Kosinski wrote himself. Thanks to what is possibly the most dialogue-heavy prologue known to cinema, we soon learn that Earth has been attacked by an alien race. With the Moon destroyed, tsunamis, earthquakes and meteor showers have all but destroyed every country in the world - yet humanity, having been forced to use their nuclear weapons won the war and drove the aliens back. All that remains on the surface are "scavengers", feral aliens who hunt on the planet's surface.

 

Enter Tom Cruise, continuing his streak of playing characters called Jack. Jack, the last man on Earth, works as a drone repairman, maintaining the robotic spheres which keep the predatory aliens at bay. In two weeks, Jack and his wife will be joining the rest of the humans in space once their mission is complete. However, haunted by dreams of a past that he can't even remember, Jack begins to question the authenticity of his mission - a mission made even more complicated by the arrival of a mystery woman. 

To disclose anything else would probably be treading into spoiler territory, but to be honest the first hour or so of Oblivion plays out like a live action version of Disney/Pixar's Wall-E with Jack scouring the planet on his own looking for resources which can be used for the big move into space. There's even a rare piece of plant life he looks after!

That sort of sums up Oblivion's problem - it is so reminiscent of more original, better sci-fi exploits that have come before now that it fails to find its own identity. By the time the credits roll, we've basically been fed an enormous fictional platter with ingredients such as Independence Day, I Am Legend, Solaris, Moon, Planet Of The Apes and countless others. It's like a not-so greatest hits collection of hits we've all heard before. Perhaps it would have played better as a shooter video game with various missions and chapters rather than the badly paced, clunky movie that it actually is.

Where Oblivion makes its mark is its visuals, however. The film was shot almost entirely on location rather than constant green screen, so places like Jack's solitary countryside cabin feel truly authentic, while the Sky Tower that Jack calls home is brilliantly presented as a glossy, shiny contrast to the desolate land below. Cruise is on fine form as the leading man, while Andrea Riseborough steals every one of her scenes as the determined yet wavering operator of Jack's mission. Morgan Freeman also pops up to add some gravitas to the picture, but ultimately every character other than Jack and his wife are one dimensional, stereotypical and frustratingly dull.

That dullness is alleviated by one or two brilliant action scenes though - the few minutes of adrenaline in which Jack, piloting his groovy flying machine, evades his enemies in a narrow canyon are brilliantly choreographed and animated. Saying that, in any other movie that would be deemed an acceptable chase scene, whereas in Oblivion the lack of action makes any scene involving a fight seem more exciting than usual. All of this is short lived though and it feels as though the script has been turned on its head - where most futuristic sci-fi films effectively have exposition scenes leading up to lengthy action scenes, Oblivion does the opposite: tens of minutes of plotting give way to very short bursts of excitement, which is unusually flat for a movie of this genre.

Summary

Oblivion is an interestingly conceived sci-fi which punches very high above its weight and misses its mark with regards to its pacing, plotting and characterization. Director Joseph Kosinski repeats the mistakes he made with Tron: Legacy, although at least this time he improves greatly on the visuals, making Oblivion's post -apocalyptic wasteland look truly authentic. Sadly a decent setting does not a good movie make, and Oblivion's characters and slow-burning storyline actually would have worked beautifully as a narrative-based science fiction game. Still, in this day and age we can be thankful that studios are taking big genre risks like this, and here's hoping that the box office success of Oblivion could pave the way for bigger, bolder (and hopefully better) projects.

4/10 - Disappointing

See it if you liked: War of the Worlds (2005), I Am Legend (2007), Prometheus (2012)