Movie Review Oblivion (2013)

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The obliteration of your memories may lead to the obliteration of your species. Know who you are and not just what you are meant to do.

I’ve told a few people about the difference between Tom Cruise being in a movie and a ‘Tom Cruise Movie’. There is a weird thing that happens when an actor takes over a movie, like he’s the only point for watching. When an actor stars in a movie, you forget who’s in it and just watch what happens. Although Tom Cruise and Morgan Freeman BOTH have this quality, Oblivion was able to stand on its own and would have been a good movie no matter who was in it.

The trailer teases us about a conquered earth and the journey of one man to discover the truth. We are shown cool vehicles whizzing across the screen and firefights. I didn’t have high hopes for Oblivion because I’ve seen this teaser before. You see something cool for a few seconds and you don’t know how much of the film follows that look or if that sequence has true meaning by being written into an engaging story. Cloud Atlas [Reviewed Here] showed us the hoverbike and Total Recall [2012] showed us the hovercar. Both movies had their sci-fi hardware on point, but neither vehicle is truly memorable beyond that action sequence. The ‘copter’ in Oblivion is different. As a matter of fact, Oblivion is different overall. Yes, it has a lot of sci-fi tropes and clichés and yes, it has actors building on their previous work, but Oblivion works because it tells us a complete story. It’s one that works because it made sense to tell it in the exact way it was told. When I saw the trailer I felt like I knew the whole story and really didn’t need to rush out and see it. Thankfully, there are enough turns and twists and ‘things that should happen’ to make this movie a must see for sci-fi buffs.

Plot Device and devices

 

Here is a brief idea of what unfolds as the initial plot. Jack [Tom Cruise] is a maintenance shepherd who works at repairing the numerous unmanned defense drones in his sector. Earth has been left devastated by aliens and is in the final stages of humanity’s plan to migrate to the stars. A few aliens still reside underground on earth and it’s up to Jack and his drones to keep them in check until his duty cycle ends and he is free to leave the earth. This is a movie worth seeing, renting and owning. I’m not a movie critic; I am simply critiquing a movie. [Movie Review Ends]

SPOILER ALERT FOR THOSE THAT HAVE SEEN THE MOVIE AND ARE CONFUSED BY THE STORY.

Do not read further because it will spoil many of the surprises in the film.

 

The end of it all starts with the beginning of remembering

YOU WERE WARNED!

Okay so, one of the things that I loved about Oblivion is that they we got the whole story by the end and they didn’t roll those credits as early as they could have and leave us to assume what happened (before) and what happens (next).

Last Spoiler Alert!

Jack’s original mission was to make first contact with the Tet or alien spaceship. The alien was hostile and captured his shuttle. The alien intelligence used our own images and data to create the army it would use to fight the war and destroy the earth (we actually lost). The alien recorded the life essence and knowledge of Jack and Victoria and used them to make clones. An army of Jacks, which is what Morgan Freeman as Beech meant when he said ‘thousands of you’ stepping off the alien ship. That is why the alien uses the captain Jack and co-pilot Victoria as an effective team– seeing that is how they were working together during first contact.

During his first contact capture, Jack ejects the crew quarter’s part of the shuttle and it returns to orbit around earth. That is where his wife remained in suspended animation for the ~60 years. Jack’s memory was wiped, but remnants of his previous self came back to him in visions and dreams. The image of his ‘boss’ or central communications is the alien interpretation of his NASA feed from earth. The alien is approximating/recreating the unclear transmission to create a ‘human’ face for Jack and Victoria to relate to.

At the very end, 3 years later, it is a clone of Jack that arrives at his habitat to be with his wife Julia. That clone is the same ‘Jack’ that the awakened Jack subdued and tied up during the clone encounter at outpost 52. Obviously that Jack had an adventure and awakening after fighting himself and it took that long to find the habitat he imagined in his own visions and dreams. Oh and I left one or two more twists out just in case.

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Oblivion movie review, tom cruise, Morgan freeman, science fiction movie,