Oblivion- PG-13

Running Time: 124 minutes

Director: Joseph Kosinski

Main actors: Tom Cruise, Morgan Freeman, Olga Kurylenko

When I walked into the theater with my dad, I didn’t have extremely high or low hopes for Oblivion. I’m usually a fan of end-of-the-world movies (when done right), but when the majority of the previews leading up to the opening scene are filled with explosions and suspenseful fight scenes, it tends to get a little much. I loved the first few scenes, and the black and white added more emotion to the film. But that seemingly good start was shattered when my dad basically guessed the ending of the movie within the first five minutes of the film. I had been hoping that Oblivion, directed by Joseph Kosinski, would be full of surprises, but it led to everything but.

The film follows the main character, Jack Harper (Tom Cruise), who is one of the last drone repairmen on earth. Sixty years prior to the movie, the earth was attacked by an alien race called the Scavengers or the “Scavs” who destroyed the moon, which caused tsunamis and earthquakes around the world. After the chaos died down, the majority of the population moved to Titan, one of Saturn’s moons. Jack and his partner/love interest, Victoria Olson (Andrea Riseborough), remain on earth to protect the power stations and drones. Jack begins having dreams and sudden flashbacks about how the world used to be before the attack. In each of these visions is a woman, (Olga Kurylenko) who Jack has never met before. Jack later finds many old fashioned escape pods with humans inside, which are being destroyed by the drones. This is what really sets of Jack’s confusion because the drones are supposed to be protecting the human race, not destroying it. Jack is able to save one of the survivors, Julia, who just happens to be the woman he keeps seeing in his visions. Jack and Julia then must figure out what Jack’s visions means and why the drones are suddenly turning against them.

Malcolm Beech (Morgan Freeman) was one of the main reasons I went to see the movie. I had heard that he did a great job portraying his character along with his broken yet revenge seeking persona. If Freeman hadn’t done such a wonderful job, then the movie would have been completely lost on me. Cruise did a decent job playing Jack, but the terribly predictable movie overwhelmed his acting. I do applaud his and Riseboroush’s fight scenes and friction, they both did a wonderful job of bouncing off each other to portray their character’s emotions. Kurylenko’s character, however, didn’t have many opportunities to truly shine, but she worked with what she had. I have never seen her in another movie, so I can’t compare her to anything, but her lines were so cliché I found myself focusing on those rather than her acting abilities.

Although the overall plot of the movie sounds interesting enough, it’s overused and predictable. It starts out just like every other post-apocalyptic movie, the setting consisting of well known landmarks that have been destroyed and there are off-limit sections of the earth called “Radiation Zones” that the main character promises not to enter, yet goes into them anyways to further the plot. The movie was good, but I didn’t get that edge-of-my-seat-I-must-know-what-happens-next feeling. The plot twists weren’t original in any way, and I was able to predict what they were before they happened. Overall, the movie wasn’t completely terrible or wonderful by any means. The actors did a wonderful job of pulling the movie out of the grave that the less that adamant plot sent it to.

SPOILERS (do not read beyond this point if you do not want the movie to be spoiled for you)

What was probably considered the biggest ‘plot twist’ of the whole movie has been used in so many sci-fi movies I was so certain that Kosinski wouldn’t use it… but I was wrong. It’s cliché for there to be one clone, but for there to be over a thousand of both Jack and Victoria is pushing it. How they became clones was interesting and original, but I can’t say the same about much else. The ending was predictable since the beginning as well, and has been used in so many science fiction movies I have long since lost count.

One aspect of the movie that I did like was what the Radiation Zones really were. Each zone was where another pair of Jack and Victoria clones lived where they each took care of their own section of the earth without even being aware of the other clones existing. However, the fight scene between two Jack clones was easy to predict and cliché and the fact that they all were having the same memory flashbacks was somewhat annoying.