Oblivion - Real Time Review

Oh boy. 3 minutes in and Tom Cruise had to sum up the entire story with a voice over explanation of the situation. Lazy lazy lazy. And still it wasn't enough information to support the premise.

Yes the machine Cruise flies around in is very cool. It's like a high tech ornithopter from Arrakis. It would make a great toy. I will have to research if they make one.

The visuals and optics are fun and interesting. If they weren't full of Tom Cruise looking the same as he does in every film we might have had something here. Again he just took me out of the story. This is just Tom Cruise after the apocalypse and about as boring as Solaris (the one made by George Clooney).

Why just ONE couple doing a mission on a dead Earth? Why don't they have or even NEED more teams. What can 2 people possible do that can have any effect on humankind? Who we are told have all be shuttled to Titan - those that survived the alien invasion and destruction of the moon. Survived alien attack and the nukes we used to fight the aliens.

Oh look. He wears a NY cap and chews bubble gum when he goes into the wilderness to fix drones that are used to monitor the planet. Stupid again. Why would he need to talk about football. Do humans even know about football anymore?

That is why he chews bubble gum so he can substitute it for necessary tech in his drone repairs.

Again, of of this seems to me like a many man job. Or at least if you are sending the guy in alone, give him a bigger gun than the little girl pistol Cruise is sporting.

Now he's got a fancy modular motorcycle? Why doesn't he wear a helmet? You would think he was valuable or something for being the ONLY GUY LEFT IN THE WORLD working for the corporation in the sky? It seems a reasonable security protocol to protect one's head while riding one's future LEGO motorcycle.

The aliens look like the crew of The Road Warrior. All that leather and bird feathers.

How can Cruise survive out in the radioactive wastelands in what amounts to a futuristic set of pajamas?

Oh look, he found the ONE book that will save the day and answer all his questions I bet.

The way the movie plays with memory and memory wipes and how that changes everything is a storytelling trick we have seen before. I don't really care about these people so the emotional moments fall flat. The solution the corporation has to this little 'lover's tiff' seems extreme to say the least.

You have seen Cruise do this kind of role a thousand times. Even the added addition of a love triangle is flat and joyless and frankly - pointless. What is suppose to be going on here? I saw the ending coming a mile up the street. I hope you roll your eyes like I did.

Not an original idea in the whole script. Even the enemies are unseen and enigmatic. I don't dislike them so there is no reason for Tom to dislike them, let alone (spoiler alert) try to kill them all.

At almost two hours in length, this one drags for forever in many place. To many chase sequences and fight scenes that we have all seen a thousand times before. With no new ideas, this one is for fans of Cruise only though he looks like he's phoning it in. Give this one a pass until the DVD release. But if you do see it, tell me why I am not supposed to hate it as much as I do for most of it...then love the last ten minutes?

 

For all its dystopian sweep and moody posturing, Oblivion is too underpowered and underwritten to linger for long in the memory - Rotten Tomatoes