Oblivion review

With its I Am Legend reminiscent poster, the lone actor standing against a seemingly apocalyptic wasteland, Oblivion gave off the appearance of something interesting, albeit something maybe seen before! It’s a pity it didn’t really manage to keep this intrigue up however.

It is the year 2077, and an alien force has destroyed the moon. In the invasion, humans were forced to use nuclear weapons. They may have won the war, but they lost their planet in the fight. Now, in a desolated Earth, isolated pair Jack (Tom Cruise) and Victoria (Andrea Riseborough) live repetitive days fixing machinery and protective drones under the orders of Sally (Melissa Leo), a seemingly more powerful being than themselves. Sally keeps reminding them that in just a few weeks, they will be allowed to travel to the safety of a place called Titan, where other supposed survivors are stationed.

But Jack is clearly a curious man, and his desire to leave Earth is not quite as urgent as Victoria’s. Haunted by constant dreams of a woman he has never met, Jack can’t help but cling on to the hope that is something more to the life him and Victoria are living. When he stumbles across a fallen spaceship with a particularly important survivor, soon Jack realises his work on Earth has not quite finished yet.

From an aesthetic point of view, Oblivion is nothing but perfect, similar to the high quality visuals seen in Prometheus even. The style that exudes from the film is unquestionable, from the set designs to the costuming. Even the unusual mix of Cruise’s white space suit with a stereotypically American chequered shirt and Yankees cap works very well with the movie’s themes of clinging on to the memory of the real world. The recognisable, coloured items constantly stand out against the minimal white/grey futuristic world and do project the sense of nostalgia and humanness.

When watching Oblivion, it is almost impossible not to draw resemblances to The Island, with the singular pair of protagonists fighting in hope that one day they will end up in a better place than they are now. Another way in which the movie could bare resemblance to The Island is it’s confusing story. It seems like the screenplay was written either by a team of people who had no idea what the other writers were imagining or a sci-fi nerd who wanted to cram so much in, they lost focus on where their original story was actually going. People would argue there were twists and turns throughout but they were either so sudden that they didn’t even make sense or they were so predictable, they could barely be called twists in the first place. The story just never seemed to get the balance right!

Andrea Riseborough as Victoria

 Despite the film being highly sold as a sci-fi piece, the visual effects and action does appear secondary throughout the whole story, but this is actually something that saves Oblivion from being a complete disaster, rather than be a problem. Riseborough, relatively new to the blockbuster leading lady game, is brilliant as the collected but under the surface, terrified Victoria, and Morgan Freeman’s incredibly small part is expectedly well-played. Cruise is known for being a bit of an up and down actor, in some things he shines, in others he fails, but Jack Harper does seem to fit him well. His ability to swing between ripped action-hero and troubled, broken man is effortless and is really the only saving grace for the sci-fi confusion that is, Oblivion.