Movie Review: Oblivion (2013)

[NOTE: Review contains NO spoilers for Oblivion other than those already shown in trailers]

With the release of the sci-fi actioner Oblivion, director Joseph Kosinski has a lot to prove. A sequel may be in the works to his directorial debut Tron:Legacy, however Disney weren’t exactly falling over themselves to greenlight a sequel  after that film’s opening weekend. With Oblivion, he needs to show that he can bring in the money, along with the visual flair he displayed in Tron, and provide a more satisfying story.

I should say that I love Tron:Legacy, but both the plot and pacing can be a little baggy at times. Having TWO flashbacks, told one after the other on the “Solar Sailer”, pretty much kills the momentum of the picture.

In Oblivion, Tech 49: Jack Reach- I mean Jack Harper (Tom Cruise) lives on an Earth devastated by a war with aliens 60 years prior. The “Scavs“, as Jack calls them, attacked the moon first, destroying it and destabilising the planet to achieve desolation on a geological scale, as shown in the films promos.

The survivors banded together and fought back with nukes, ruining the Earth even more. Now the last remnants of humanity live in “The Tet”, a vast space station, preparing for the eventual relocation to Titan once the last remaining resources from earth are harvested. Jack and his partner Victoria, or “Vica” played by Andrea Riseborough, are part of the mop-up crew, babysitting the automated hydro-harvesters that collect Earth’s water for the trip and performing maintenance on their automated drone watchdogs. While we won the war, there are still Scavs left on the surface and Jack needs to repair the drones when they get damaged in fight.

Jack on the job

As we are introduced to this world, we are also introduced to Jack’s longing for something lost. Both he and Vica have undergone a memory wipe prior to their tour of duty for “security reasons”. Jack dreams of a world before the war and collect trinkets and scraps from the “Earth that was”.

As they near the end of their tour of duty, the pair faces increasing Scav attacks, tension in their relationship, and then the crash-landing of a supposedly human spacecraft which offers up a single survivor. Needless to say the entry of an outsider into their world shakes Jack and Vica to the core and forces Jack to re-evaluate all he’s been told, to find out what’s really going on.

To say more about the plot would destroy the enjoyment of the film, but it’s fair to say that there are more than a few surprises in store.

Ruined New York

Kosinski and his returning Tron: Legacy cinematographer, Claudio Miranda, and production designer, Darren Gilford, frame the tale expertly using the desolate landscape of Iceland and ruined landmarks provided by special effects to compliment the futuristic designs of the drones, Jack’s Bubble ship and The Tet far above. The special effects are great and any shot that shows what’s left of the moon looks fantastic. I would highly recommend catching the film in IMAX, as the large image beautifully highlights the scales involved.  The biggest mystery regarding the visuals however is how in IMAX, where everything is bigger, Cruise manages to look younger than he has in other films. He seems to have stopped aging!

Kosinski also hasn’t lost his touch on the music front either, with M83 providing a soundtrack that will be joining Daft Punk’s Tron: Legacy soundtrack and the soundtracks to the Dark Knight Trilogy by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard, in heavy rotation on my music player. The music matches the film well, it’s electronic nature complimenting the films aesthetic rather than clashing , however, at times some parts refrain sound a little too similar to sections from both those other soundtracks, but overall it’ll make a great album to listen to. You can stream the whole soundtrack album right now by clicking here.

As for the plot and storytelling, it soon becomes clear that the filmmakers have not set out to start a sci-fi revolution or reinterpret old tropes in new exiting ways. If you’ve any familiarity with science fiction, the film soon becomes a guessing game as to which well worn sci-fi tropes will be thrown into the mix. That’s not to say that it gets dull. Far from it. You do get a few different concepts thrown around; some you will see coming a mile off, while others genuinely do come across as surprises.  The film does manage to get you involved with the characters a little more than Tron: Legacy did, with Cruise and the rest of the small cast doing sterling work with what they’ve got.

The film also builds to a satisfying climax that is then marred by an ending which, while not entirely happy, does slightly lessen the impact of the actions of some characters earlier. The filmmakers should be congratulated for managing to make this ending not feel tacked on, and it fully makes sense in the context of the story, but it might have been more satisfying if it had been left out. (You’ll know what I mean when you see the film.)

Part of this ending also requires one character to completely remove the agency of another in the climax, an act that comes across as being amazingly infuriating for that character and made me feel that it damaged the relationship between the two, for the sake of setting up the happier ending.

Kosinski and Cruise hanging on set.

Maybe this (mild) disappointment is not the problem with the film, but the genre itself. Special effects can match the impressive vista’s that reside in filmmakers imaginations but the stories aren’t quite catching up.  The cost of realising these visions of the future/other worlds/outer space/inner space is so expensive that studios tend to take less and less risks when it comes to plotlines, for the fear of losing an audience and getting bad press. James Cameron went all out on the visuals for Avatar, but kept the story to a pretty classical frontier tale. John Carter tried to do the same, with a little invention thrown in, but failed due to impressively bad marketing (although the blame has been put on the story, the actors, the directors, anywhere except on the marketing team whose trailers made it look like The Phantom Menace: part II).

2001 was a striking vision for its time, a more serious reaction to the fun of Star Wars (but hopefully not a criticism?) which is still analysed and discussed today.

Where are our 2001’s in 2013? I think Inception comes close, but I don’t think Oblivion will be mentioned in the same sentence as Nolan’s film in years to come. It’s a solid, well-designed action film but not quite a sci-fi classic it sets out to be.

[Finally, for anyone who has also seen the movie can you contact me on Twitter (@mcnastyprime) and explain where exactly  “the kid” came from at the end? I might have missed something due to the Malaysian censor, but I didn’t notice any scene that could explain their presence at the end. Usually, when there are cuts in Malaysia, you can spot them a mile off, by the music skipping and there definitely were cuts in the “swimming pool” scene, but I didn’t notice any that could explain this. Thanks in advance.]

Check out the other reviews for Oblivion:

Dave Howlett’s Review

Jen Sylvia’s Review

Michelle Ealey’s Review