Film: Oblivion

I’ve never really liked Tom Cruise. I can’t quite say what it is, maybe it’s the fact that he plays the same role in every single film. And that role is a piss-poor one. Oblivion sees Tom Cruise in a sci-fi ‘epic’. Earth has been destroyed in a war with aliens, Jack (Cruise) and Victoria (Andrea Riseborough) have been tasked with protecting the planet’s power generators from remaining invaders - like the Tom Cruise version of WALL-E. Jack stumbles onto a conspiracy when he finds a girl, Julia (Olga Kurylenko) who he’s seen in his dreams, frozen in stasis. 

Earth ravaged by a fully destructive war is very effectively realised; the world feeling very genuine. The ships and futuristic locations feel very modern, contrasting well with the barren wasteland that Earth has become. Where it falls apart is it’s story and characters. Tom Cruise and Olga Kurylenko are incredibly flat in their portrayals, making it hard to care about their struggle or love story. Morgan Freeman feels shoved into the film, for the sake of giving it another star, feeling out of place as a soldier. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jamie Lannister from Game of Thrones) is criminally underused. 

The one interesting character in the film is Victoria, who Andrea Riseborough plays with a tragic element. She is trapped in the program of her life with Jack, protocol and procedure ruling her days. When Jack is no longer playing his role effectively she is forced to betray him, dooming herself in the progress.

The film relies heavily on it’s twists, which are a bit too obvious. Maybe I’ve seen a few too many films (OK definitely) but some of them are too evident to be even called twists. When someone has no memories beyond four and a half years ago; we’re not supposed to get they’re a clone?! And a faceless organisation is never evil is it? It honestly feels like an insult to the audience’s intelligence.

It drags quite a bit throughout it 2 hour runtime, the first hour or so being the slowest I’ve ever experienced. Much of the film is focused solely on Tom Cruise and his character isn’t at all compelling; making it impossible for him to carry the film alone. It also makes use of a lot of cheesy and grandiose dialogue - such as “I made you. I am your god!” - that are totally ridiculous. The action finally ramps up in the last half hour, before it hits its only slightly interesting climax. 

Like Joseph Kosinski’s debut film, Tron Legacy, Oblivion is totally about style over subtance, its interesting sets feeling wasted on dull characters and a light, generic plot.