Guilty Pleasures #17 - Cruise Month - Oblivion

Time for another entry in Cruise Month

So, what have we got this time. Another adaptation of a book, what a shock! This book however was incomplete and never made publication, so the movie’s all we’ve got this time. I am of course talking about Oblivion

A Universal Studios project (Cruise and Paramount separated in 2006 owing to comments Cruise made in the media and/or financial concerns about their arrangement) Cruise once again serves as an actor but not as a producer (his production company did Jack Reacher in 2012 and its next project was Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, that’s a significant gap for the company)

Anyway, the movie opened pretty well, earning $37.1 in its opening weekend in the states, however time was not kind to it and it only made $89m in the States in total. International takings bring the box office figures to $281m on a $120m budget. When you take into account marketing costs, that’s likely to be a disappointment.

Reviews were mixed holding a 53% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and 54/100 on Metacritic. So, is this movie worth the price of admission, let’s take a look.

We start with an exposition dump in wax poetic, my favourite type. It’s 2077, 5 years after our lead Jack Harper (Tom Cruise) had a mandatory memory wipe. A race called the scavengers blew up our moon, causing massive damage to the planet via earthquakes and tidle waves before launching their invasion. The Earth used their nukes to defend and ultimately defeated the aliens but in the process their planet became largely uninhabitable and they’re planning to move to Titan, the moon of Saturn and are using a space station known as the Tet (that’s a stupid name) as a temporary base in the meantime.

Jack and his partner Victoria (Andrea Riseborough) are assigned to keep guard over hydro-rigs draining the planet’s water to make Titan habitable which come frequently under attack by scavengers to disrupt the mission. Drones are assigned for 24-hour protection of the rigs, with Jack being responsible for keeping them up and running. Victoria is in charge of communications with the Tet (it’s still a stupid name) they’re repeatedly called an “effective team”

It's not a futuristic helicopter thing without a cockpit that rotates 360 degrees

In story, Jack stocks up with weapons and heads out on his helicopter thingy. Roll Credits! Victoria reports that 2 drones have gone down and Jack heads down to fix them, a freak lightning blast strikes the ship, sending it down, almost crashing. (That was close) and miraculously that storm seems to have disappeared. He sees the downed drones and makes his landing nearby, it’s an American football stadium. Jack reports a story he’d heard about the game. He repairs the drone with some chewing gum (because it’s a thing in dumb movies) it scans the area before flying away.

Jack makes his way to the second drone, he finds it inside a sinkhole. He primes his blaster and prepares his descent as a mysterious someone watches him from rim. He descends into what looks like a public library (see next image, it is a library) and finds the drone but loses communication with Victoria. He discovers that the source of the tracking beacon was forged and he’s been set up for an ambush.

Jack prepares to make his escape but the rope propelling him to the surface snaps and his primary weapon was destroyed. The drone he’d repaired earlier arrives to help and helps to take out his attackers, but almost draws its guns on Jack himself. He finds a book before climbing back to the surface using a rope that appeared out of nowhere, only to discover the bike he’d used to get in closer had been stolen.

He returns back to his sky base and takes a shower, still seeing flashes of a woman we saw at the beginning of the movie. Jack reads the book briefly before being called up by Victoria. He gives her a flower he’d found but she chucks it out of the window, there’s no idea what could be in it. After some more wax poetic, Jack theorises that the scavengers were trying to capture, rather than kill him today.

Earth is beautiful at night

Victoria decides to undress and go swimming butt naked because… Reasons I guess. Anyway, sexy time... Jack wakes up, having seen one of the hydro-rigs destroyed overnight. One of the fuel cells from a missing drone had been used to destroy it. Victoria confirms that they had 10 missing fuel cells. Jack pursues a rogue signal, coming from the buried remains of the empire state building. As he explores he sees more memory flashes. He and another woman at this same building. He finds the source of the signal, amplified by the tower itself. The signal is decrypted to be a set of co-ordinates in an area called grid-17, an abandoned section supposedly.

Of course, surely their first thought would be to investigate that area thoroughly, but nope. Jack is performing a “check around the perimeter” (beyond which is supposedly lethal radiation) before heading home. Of course, he soon goes off com so he can head to his secret place instead. It’s a cabin in the woods, he has some fun in the sun admitting he’ll miss this place when he moves to Titan. He has another vision and wakes up.

It's the most beautiful post-apocalyptic wasteland I've ever seen

He spots something being shot down and despite orders to stand down insists on investigating it, he sees 5 human survivors, and then a 6^th, the woman from his visions. The drones arrive and begin terminating the other survivors, only leaving the woman alone because Jack fends them off. He returns to the base with a survivor. She’s alive but after being let out of the stasis pod falls quickly unconscious.

Victoria sees to her care, but delivers to her the news that no other members of the crew survived. Jack reveals the truth about what had happened in the 60 years she was away. She wants to retrieve the flight recorder from her ship but it’s too dangerous for her to do so. In the morning, Jack agrees to take her despite the obvious danger of scavs being in the way.

And with that grin permanently fixed upon her brow, the Joker makes his appearance

They return to the crash site and Julia (the woman, played by Olga Kurylenko) search for the flight recorder. Victoria picks up some scavengers from those cameras that are doubtless pulled out of their asses. Julia picks up the flight recorder but they’re ambushed by scavs and Jack sends his ship away. Jack and Julia are dragged into an underground cavern of some sort as the ship lands, devoid of any passengers. Victoria covers from Jack’s doings whilst requesting a drone to search for him.

Jack wakes up, chained to the floor by both his hands and wrists, and it’s finally time to see the other person whose name is on the DVD, it’s Morgan Freeman

He quotes part of the book Jack had taken from the library and reveals what might possibly be the most obvious plot twist in history. The scavengers are actually human, wearing stealth fighter tech to mask their voices and avoid detection from the scanner. We’re introduced to sergeant Sykes (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) who thinks that Malcom (Freeman’s character) was foolish for getting Jack involved. Malcolm hopes that he’s proven wrong.  They have the stockpiled fuel cells and a drone to carry them but they can’t access it. Only Jack can.

Yes, it's dark and I'm wearing sunglasses... I'm that awesome

Another drone begins tracking Jack by his bio-feed. Malcolm wants Jack to reprogram the drone to head back to the Tet but when Jack shows concern for the “people” aboard, Sergeant Sykes shoots him. They bring forward Rachel and threaten to kill her, but the alarm goes off signifying the drone closing in. They manage to bring down the drone but Victoria manages to send in 2 additional drones. Malcolm decides to release Jack, returning to him a weapon and his bike and telling him he’ll find answers inside the “radiation zones”

They return to the empire state building where he hot-wires a message to Victoria so she can call off the drones and send the ship to pick them up. Jack interrogates Julia who reveals that they were part of a mission to Titan sent to investigate the Tet (it’s still a stupid name. What? I don’t have that many jokes for this one so I’ll have to keep using them?) and that Jack was her husband. The visions Jack was seeing was basically his marriage proposal to Julia.

Doesn't New York look pretty in Black and White

We see the vision in full now, because they needed to pad out this two hour movie and the two embrace in the present as the ship arrives. Victoria sees and a tear slips down her eye. She decides the best response to that is to kill him, because she’s a strong independent woman who don’t need no man, or is a complete idiot. Anyway, the drone they had on repair attacks, killing her. Jack and Julia escape, mostly because the drone takes ages to fire a second shot.

Mission control tells Jack to return to the Tet with the survivor and get assigned to the new mission. He decides to go awol but several drones set off in pursuit. He heads through the storm, cooking the drones with lightning but that only slows them down. And it’s time for a generic canyon chase. After some fancy flying brings two of them down, they’re shot down inside the supposed radiation zone

Jack heads out to where the beacon of the downed drone is sounding and finds another identical ship heading toward it. Inside the ship he sees another version of himself going out to repair it. He charges in stands off against him. He drops his weapon to try and prove his trust, trying to convince him to shut down the drone. Julia arrives, providing a momentary distraction as we get a cruise on cruise fight scene. I love this fight scene so much, I really can’t tell which one I’m supposed to be rooting for. Go Jack?

EGADS THEY'RE MULTIPLYING!!!

Jack defeats the other Jack, and removes the fuel cell from the drone. Julia somehow got shot in that fight and Jack ties Jack up and steal’s Jack’s ship in order to go to their sky tower and collect medical supplies. He manages to retrieve but he’s stopped by Victoria (it makes more sense in visual… actually no it doesn’t) she confronts him, and he’s a bit taken aback seeing her still alive. He offers her a chance to come down and see the surface but this version is just as stubborn as the old one.

Jack returns with the meds and then takes Julia to his little sanctum where they engage in romantic banter.  Guys, could we move this along a bit? This movie’s over 2 hours long, we don’t need filler! The plot can resume any time now. It’s morning and Jack heads out with Julia back to the scavengers. Meanwhile at their tower a recorded message gets played and alerts the drones to return to the scavenger’s location.

Again, a very pretty post apocalyptic wasteland

Malcolm reveals the story. After the destruction of the moon, the aliens sent down dropships, all of which contained memory wiped Jack clones, programmed to kill (clones, no-one’s ever done clones before, right?)

But when Malcolm saw Jack pick up the book and study it earlier in the film, later confirmed when he stood before Julia, he thought there might be a way to bring back the old Jack. Jack successfully reprograms their captured drone to destroy the Tet and they prepare to transport it as the drones are in bound. The humans scatter as a few stay and defend. Explosions and deaths happen and there are seizure inducing light effects. The drones are destroyed but Jack and Julia are still alive. Malcolm is still alive but only just

I have to do something badass, it's in my contract!

The drone was destroyed in the fight but the still have the power cells, Jack offers to take it up to the Tet himself, but Malcolm reminds him that he’ll be swatted away. But if Julia was to go with him, it’ll look like he’s fulfilling a mandate given to him earlier. Julia offers to come along and they prepare to go, sharing one last kiss before they depart. Julia is placed into the preservation chamber and carried to the ship.

Jack sees the flight log and plays it back as he departs for Tet. In 2017 his space crew was supposed to hold 50 clicks from the object in order to study it. But the craft continued to proceed toward the Tet despite being on a course to stay still. Unable to pull away. Jack decides to eject the sleeper module so it would fly back into Earth orbit. They meanwhile are brought aboard the ship.

He has a plastic figurine on his dashboard because of course he does.

Back in the present he boards the ship, 2 drones are assigned to escort him, the ship begins to power down while the ship is scanned. They detect that he’s lying but he uses enough half-truths to escape being shot on sight. He passes through an area where Jack and Victoria clones are being grown. He opens the pod and reveals that it was not Julia he’d brought along, but Malcolm, Julia awakens in the house by the lake. They detonate the explosives destroying the Tet (bye Tet, you’re name’s still stupid!)

Time for the tacked on happy ending I see all too often in Cruise films. Another Jack, the Jack that Jack tied up arrives to greet Julia and her daughter at the lake-house 3 years later.

This movie is baffling to me. Aside it treading a lot of familiar ground, there’s nothing all that specific wrong with the movie. And yet it fails to invest me in either the characters or the story.

Everything seems to come into place a little too easily in the second half, and then we have characters deliberately leaving out details to pad out the movie. Why didn’t Julia just explain what she was doing straight off? Why did Malcolm not explain that the Tet was an alien ship, and there were no humans on it? Sure they might not have been believed at first, but there’s no reason they had to leave it out.

Seriously, who is this kid?!

I think the biggest issue is its predictability. They foreshadowed the big twist a little too much, and we could tell something was awry. The ending did not come off as satisfying as it was too easy. They boarded the ship, they got to the thing and blew the place up with very little resistance or complication.

As for the romance between Julia and Jack, there’s no conflict in their relationship where the should've been because we had the knowledge of there being other Jack clones in the vicinity that ultimately had the same memory flashes (ok, that daughter, was she pregnant when she went up to space, who greenlighted that! Or was it their first time in the woods, really was weird)

That said the look of the movie is fantastic, apart from some of the blinking light cr*p. You can tell a lot of effort went into making the movie look that good.

Rage Rating -38%

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Images used in this review are from Oblivion and belong to their respective owners. All images in this review are subject to fair use.