Oblivion is a good looking mediocre mash-up of better films
As advertised, Oblivion is essentially Tom Cruise’s take on the Will Smith vehicle from 2007 I Am Legend with more sci-fi mixed in.
What wasn’t advertised is just how much Oblivion would feel like a handful of better written, better conceived science fiction films of the past. That said, it’s a good-looking movie, and if you’re in the mood for a mediocre mind-number that seems to be saying “Remember this device or trick from that other movie you kind of liked? Yeah. We thought it was cool too, so we wrote in something similar” then Oblivion might be right up your alley.
Read a little more about the melting pot of sci-fi concepts that is Oblivion after the jump.
The newest directing effort, and the first writing credit, from Joseph Kosinski (TRON: Legacy), Oblivion proves the man has an eye for beauty and room for improvement in the writing department. As a standalone science fiction outing Oblivion is a decent, if not enjoyable, genre film. If you go in and you haven’t seen any of the movies it’s paying homage to then you’ll probably come away pretty satisfied, but when compared to the many, many movies it blatantly pulls from Oblivion boils down to a mix of overly familiar elements wrapped in pretty packaging.
Set in the aftermath of an alien war against humanity, the film follows Tom Cruise’s protagonist Jack as he patrols his sector and repairs downed drones doing the same. He’s essentially protecting large airborne water converter-type machines against what appear to be remnants of the alien’s attacking force known as Scavs. On a routine sweep 2 weeks before he and his professional counterpart (Andrea Riseborough) are scheduled to join the rest of humanity on a space station called the TET Jack finds a downed ship that changes things a bit. Turns out all may not be as it seems.
Without giving too much away it’s safe to say you’ve seen one or two of the tricks Oblivion has up its well-worn sleeve. Man on a mission realizes his existence isn’t as cookie-cutter as he’s been led to believe. Man has love interest. Man runs into opposition both mentally and physically. Pew pew pew sci-fi ensues. It’s all well and good, if it’s the first time you’re seeing any of this, but when the ideas on screen are similar to concepts we get almost yearly it’s hard to be surprised or get invested.
The major plot points Oblivion hits are all over-cooked, and each comes to the table looking burnt, pre-chewed, a little un-inventive. This is a shame given the immaculately, albeit highly-influenced, world that Kosinski has created for his characters to live in. With a few more novel ideas crafted into both the story and the design the film easily could have been a sci-fi hit akin to last year’s Looper. Unfortunately, or maybe not if you’re a fan of big-budget blockbusters painting old pictures with new colors, most of what we get is some of the same in a sci-fi landscape where ideas seem to be passed around and repackaged from studio to studio. 
Rounding things off, as must always be the case, is a love triangle. As mentioned, Andrea Riseborough is Jack’s control room operator and love interest, and she gives a strong performance on quick turnaround from the this month’s film Disconnect. Olga Kurylenko on the other hand, as mystery woman from space, comes in somewhat flat and fails to engage on an emotional level. When her character needs to be a strong anchor for the film there’s just no spark, and it might have been interesting to see the roles of Kurylenko and Riseborough reversed.
It’d be a shame not to mention Morgan Freeman’s Morpheus-type character and his utterly useless yet awesome sunglasses. He, nor his glasses of indoor awesome, really serve a purpose outside of a few words of wisdom and a reflection or two, and it seems the man is pretty much floating by these days. Two more faces buried in the crowd are Quentin Tarantino go-to Zoe Bell and Jaime Lannister himself Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, but they also do very little and they’re roles could have been filled by anyone.
Overall, Oblivion is a mixed bag of movie influences from earlier days. Films like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Planet of the Apes, I, Robot, Independence Day, The Matrix, and a few that won’t be mentioned for fear of ruining Oblivion’s “secret” are all here in big ways. Whether that’s a good or a bad thing is really up to the viewer and how willing they are to relive familiar elements in a somewhat sub-par summer hit.
Oblivion stars Tom Cruise, Morgan Freeman, Melissa Leo, Olga Kurylenko, Andrea Riseborough, Zoe Bell, and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, and the film is in theaters starting April 19th.