Oblivion

Director: Joseph Kosinski

Stars: Tom Cruise, Morgan Freeman, Andrea Riseborough

Plot: A future Earth has narrowly survived a nuclear war. With aliens. Given the poor state of earth, most people are living on a giant space station whilst they siphon off the last of Earths resources. Two humans remain on Earth to help facilitate this.

Hugh's View:

Before you read this, watch this clip (its not from the film and not a spoiler, just watch it trust me)

Right, watched it? Are you sure? The following won't make as much sense if you don't.

Ok? Right so that clip is an exact representation of what went right and wrong in Oblivion. Just the other way round. Because in the clip they say awww when they should respond with awe. But in this film its awe instead of awww. You with me?

The thing is, this film is epic. Like massive epic. Well massive in the sense of America is massive. And it has massive monuments. And football stadiums are massive. Especially if you are just a small man standing next to one or inside one. Like Tom Cruise is. It only just struck me now, I wonder if his stature is part of why they cast him....

Regardless, this film shows America (and we are to assume by extension, the rest of the world) as a desolate, apocalyptic wasteland. Apparently it's correct to say apocalyptic as opposed to post apocalyptic because the apocalypse is the end so nothing comes after it. I digress. Tom Cruise is one of the two humans left alone on this planet and alongside the love and to an extent leadership of Andrea Riseborough, doing mankind a favour by performing a spot of diy, reflecting on memories of an earth he never knew and generally being the good guy.

You see mankind has fled the planet as they tend to do, after narrowly winning a nuclear tiff with some aliens that kinda look like Predator by the way of a Mad Max film. What you see of them that is. They are a scuttling type. Inevitably upon his time of parading along the planet he discovers something is amiss and all is not as it seems, they may not be as alone as they think they are blah blah blah, plot, all that was in the trailer anyways. You can't say much more then that without going in to spoiler territory, but you don't really need to. The first act alone symbolises the heart of the problem, or lack there of it. You see the thing is, I just didn't care.

Now don't get me wrong, watching Tom Cruise fly around the earth in his spaceship come helicopter and then riding around on his stormtrooper chic motorbike, whilst so many great monuments rise out of a dusty, baron desert landscape is a spectacle and a winning one at that. I watched this on IMAX screen (blag blag, whatever, get your own IMAX) and that was the way to see it. A film that relies this heavily on its vast vistas needs to be watched on the biggest screen possible. Normally I am quick to deride a movie that sells itself on having the producer of another hit film behind it, as if that will somehow make it a comparably artistic achievement. That said if this is the kind of staggering yet artistic desolation we can expect from a future earth in the hands of the producers from Rise of the Planet of the Apes, we hopefully have a lot to look forward to future entries from that franchise. Because they are the same people who produced this film. I hope I made that clear.

The thing is, it has a beautiful futuristic aesthetic with a very clean and clinical feel, its just a shame that this extends to the characters too. I don't blame Tom Cruise. I am not a hater. You are? Stop reading a film review and go read a gossip rag. Go on. Scram. It doesn't matter if, in the outside world, someone is a wise man who builds his house upon stone, a foolish man who builds his house upon sand or a famous man that builds his house upon a fruit cake, they are an actor, watch them act in a film, let them convince you and judge them on that.

He is the central figure though, no matter how you look at it, this film is about his face and his person. The fact that you recognise him so easily from everyday life doesn't help you become immersed in his character and this is a problem. The problem extends beyond this though. The core of this story is a human one and without one you can really get behind, the whole things feels hollow and hardly engaging. They go through a lot of the beats that might normally connect you emotionally to a character. He dreams of a wife he never knew, he reflects on football games he never saw, he lovingly embraces his sole companion as she lovingly waits for him to get home after his earthly excursions. He even saves a dog for Christ’s sake. He even saves a dog.

These are emotional beats though, nothing more and you can tell. It's like someone typed 'relatable and endearing human traits' in to Google and then displayed the image results. There is a difference between seeing them and feeling them. The irony of course being that the film this resembles most is the Disney-Pixar classic Wall-E about a robot left behind on an abandoned earth to clean up the mess left by humans. It shares a similar vast and isolated scope but the main protagonist in that film is a Robot. An almost mute Robot. He can barely talk. But he emotes more than double what Tom Cruises' character gets across. And he doesn't have a mouth! No mouth. Come on.

Need I say more:

Wall-E doesn't have a mouth just to be clear. Not Tom Cruise. He has a mouth. Of course he does. How can he do his winning smile without it? He doesn't do much of that in this film though. He is mostly dour. That could have been included in his initial character description in the screenplay. Tom Cruise drives, flies and mopes around looking mostly dour. They of course throw twists and turns in to the mix of course. More reasons to care, more reasons to worry, more reasons to question, more reasons to gasp. None of them add up to anything. Some feel like they are from a completely different film. Bits involving Morgan Freeman. Even he can't elevate it. (He is in the trailer and on the poster, that is not a spoiler). The plot keeps you second guessing as much as it can, you might almost say more then it needs to because the big picture when it finally comes together feels significantly less than the sum of its parts, and that's a shame.

It really tries, it does. Even the soundtrack is saying 'go one, give it a go, dive in, love these people, care for their aquatic love dancing'. Not literally. The musical equivalent. Sweeping strings and electronic beats. They really turn it up to 11. But overall it would work much better as a music video. The track on the end credits is great, I would love to watch a video for that featuring epic shots taken from this film. I just want more if I am watching it for around two hours. It's not asking much. Awe can only make you appreciate, you need some 'awww' before you care.

This is the ending track by the way. Give it a listen, it may even be enough to convince you to go. Rendering the rest of the review kinda pointless...

You won't be sad you spent your money to see this on the big screen but you also won't be sad to leave it behind.

Also watch:
Wall-E. What do you mean you haven't seen Wall-E? It is a true achievement. Whilst it shares a similar theme it has less than half the dialogue of Oblivion, more then double the warmth. Its a classic. Trust me.