"Oblivion" PG 13
Joseph Kasinski (Tron 2) directs Tom Cruise flying about in the upper atmosphere of a devasted Earth under a decimated moon with holes in it, in this entertaining send up to video games, science fiction, and the classic 'odd man out' idea. You're allegedly the last man on Earth. You have to survive. You learn that you were wrong. Yeah, we've all seen them before, but this time they took a slightly different take. In order to not be compared to Moon, an underground sleeper hit, and Solaris, a dreary American remake of a Russian film, which would make it dreary too, they destroy the moon in the opening credits.
Jack is a technician who repairs floating gun pods using a big like flying machine and a super bike right out of Robotech A New Generation, but curiously not Tron. He works with his supposed wife, Victoria. They report a crashed ship and things change when another woman is rescued from the crash. The Jack discovers New York under several billion tons of dirt.
The dirt could only have accumulated in 60 years if it wasn't 60 years but a thousand, or if somehow half the moon's surface came back and landed on New York. Nothing would be left of the Empire State Building, a key place in the movie. But if it was a thousand years later, there is no way the narrative would have worked.
Jack has impossible powers. Front the beginning he and his partner appear to live in the cloud deck above Earth, where there would be little to no oxygen.If hey had become used to this, they could never land on the planet because then they'd have too much oxygen. So from the opening glorious flight scene I assumed they might be robots. They weren't.
But still we can forgive them that. Jack soon discovers that the Scavs, short for scavengers, are not really aliens. (This is evident from the trailers). They are revealed also to not be the enemy and Jack is not who he thinks he is either.
Many of the critics liken this to a game called Portal also.
Actually the floating Tet thing with the female red eye computer once does resemble a game cube in a way. Lol. But no, they were thinking 2001 and Eve, and Megazone 23, and Macross Plus, all of which had a floating computer mind (and in Macross Plus it had a red eye and was a monolithic box), but suppose that technically there is nothing new in scifi. Nothing. It's iconic to have a Hal thwere somewhere. It was kind of expected. (I won't tell you just when this thing appears).
I will also say there are clones in the movie, however I will got give away who is a clone.
The movie stands as a solid homage to Solaris and Moon, even if it's on a planet, and witrh nods to anime and games, and also to many stories about clones and identity, memory erasing and the like, staples of science fiction since the golden age of over 60 years ago. Even having it being 60 years after the space war is a nod to that. The whole decimated Earth and man riding on his space bike looking to hook up with a rebellion to free Earth is right out of Mesopeada Space Climber, known in the US as Robotech The New Generation. What's funny here is the Japanese kind of modeled their hero Scott Bernard after Cruise.
Cruise just turned 50, but thanks to his goofy Scientology engrams is in good shape and looks like a man of 37. And I bet he marries one of the co stars. He seems to do that with these movies.
God see it in theaters because on the small screen it's going to look weak. See it in 3D if you want the nausea.
Review by Adam Browne
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