Oblivion – Tom Cruise Joins Forces With Tron: Legacy Director [Review]

First of all let me say that I’d been looking forward to seeing Oblivion ever since I first saw a teaser trailer some time back and being a fan of the Sci-Fi genre, it was a film that I just couldn’t wait to see, plus I am a bit of a Tom Cruise fan.

The thing with Sci-Fi is it can be a tricky genre to get right and a lot of film fans out in the world are usually the first to jump in and condemn a film even before it goes out in the world.

Oblivion – Tom Cruise Joins Forces With Tron: Legacy Director

Oblivion Poster (Tom Cruise)

It’s hard to think that Tom Cruise is 50 and it doesn’t show in another performance where he is running, jumping and fighting like a young man of 20-30, which is what he needs to be if he is going to save the world from invading aliens that want to destroy the planet.

The year is 2077 and as Tom says in his 5 minute voice over introduction the Earth has been left in a state from an alien invasion, with countries buried, cities destroyed, the moon blown up and everything has really gone to hell, after the world was almost destroyed by ourselves in trying to save it.

Only Jack Harper (Tom Cruise) and his controller Victoria (Andrea Riseborough) are around to service drones that look after generators that are sucking up the oceans in attempt to make energy. In the meantime Jack has to deal with “scavengers” that are taking parts from crashed drones for their own purposes.

Oblivion Drone Repair (Tom Cruise)

The first quarter of Oblivion has an eerie feeling with Jack and Victoria on the lonely planet with its decimated landscapes, giving you a real feel of a foreboding emptiness of a once civilised and overpopulated world.

But then the introduction of Beech (Morgan Freeman) and Sykes (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) does bring more character to Oblivion, but sadly not enough to really grab your attention.

For me Oblivion seem to be a collection of other movies all rolled in to one, with hints of the likes of Alien and Total Recall, to name but two, by doing this Oblivion does have that feeling of seeing something before a kind of deja vu, not necessarily a bad thing, but it does give you overtones of a little lack of originality.

Oblivion Trailer Screenshot

Oblivion does have some great special effects and the earth of 2077 is a sight, but these aren’t overly placed and the story of the Earth and it’s predicament is brought to you at a rather slow pace, amidst some nice set action pieces, which in turn do bring you some twists to Oblivion, though some may be obvious at first.

Oblivion director Joseph Kosinski (Tron: Legacy) has done a great job with bringing  is Graphic Novel to the big screen and I can only imagine how Oblivion looks on an IMAX screen, but nevertheless, it still looked good on a standard cinema screen.

Oblivion Official Trailer

Overall Thoughts For Oblivion

Now I really enjoyed Oblivion, though it’s hard to rate the film with my reviewers head on as there will be people who either love it or hate it, so it’s hard to please everyone. While Oblivion does lack certain emotions for the viewer, it does have a quaint feel to it and is interesting to a point.

It’s not going to be for everyone and as I mentioned earlier it does have the feel of many other Sci-Fi movies, maybe as an homage or maybe just because there are similarities  but I did enjoy the film, the effects, the directing, the soundtrack was great and Tom Cruise isn’t as bad as some critics would have you think.

But as you know these are all my views in this review, so if you fancy seeing Oblivion, go see it.

Rating For Oblivion: [starreview tpl=16]

 

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