Oblivion - Movie Review by Joe Calleri

What – Oblivion (Movie)

Reviewer - Joe Calleri.
Stars – 2 and a half.

Full Disclosure - I attended a Universal Pictures media screening of this movie.

SPOILER ALERT!!! Here’s what to expect, including spoilers, so read on only if you dare!

 

At one point during Oblivion, Morgan Freeman’s character, Malcolm Beech, describes Tom Cruise’s character, Jack Harper, as lacking soul and humanity.

What an apt summary of this visually resplendent, but strange, frustrating, incongruity-riddled, and ultimately unsuccessful, $100-million-plus, high concept, sci-fi film, based on Joseph Kosinsk’s graphic novel of the same name, which he co-wrote with Arvid Nelson. The busy Kosinski acts as co-writer (along with William Monahan, Karl Gajdusek, and Michael Arndt), producer, and director.

The overly-convoluted story-line – just one of the many millstones around the metaphorical neck of this film - goes something like this: at the opening of the movie, Tom Cruise’s character, Jack Harper, aka Tech 49, narrates that, it’s the year 2077, and after a brutal war with the Scavengers (or “Scavs” as Cruise describes them) Earth is ravaged, and no longer has a Moon after the Scavs knocked it out of its orbit. While humans won the war, they lost the Earth, whose survivors now live on Titan, Saturn’s largest Moon.

Harper has been assigned to a temporary tech mission on Earth, along with his designated female partner, the calm, measured, Victoria (Andrea Riseborough). Victoria is fond of informing Mission (presumably Mission Control) leader, the constantly upbeat Sally (Melissa Leo in full good ol’ gal southern twang form), that she and Harper are “an effective team”.

In a stark contrast to the ravaged, nuclear-blast crater pocked surface of the Earth - ok, of the United States, at least - Victoria and Harper live and love on an idyllic, sleek, elegant and elevated technical base station, complete with large-screen touch panel computers, and an in-built, clear, spa resort-style, swimming pool.

While Victoria gently strokes her computer monitors like the good lady of the house she is, spouting lots of comic book-style, techno-babble, manly Harper spends his days flying his nifty, high speed flying craft, accompanied by a bobble head called “Bob”.

Harper’s role is to repair the deadly drones; multi-machine gun toting, flying killing machines designed to protect giant water-extraction units and to exterminate any remaining Scavs. It is here we first note one of Kosinski’s many references to earlier sci-fi films.

In fact, while Kosinski may have openly admitted to his film paying homage to science-fiction films of the 1970’s, I would argue that, he has mercilessly ripped off some of sci-fi’s greatest.

The drones bear more than a striking resemblance in form and function to the lethal, but, dysfunctional, ED-109 and ED-209 units from the RoboCop film franchise. And, yes, the drones in this film are dysfunctional.

Then, in one of the film’s first frustrating implausible inconsistencies, we see Jack flying over pristine, Ansel Adams-inspired, pristine, green, mountainous landscape, complete with flowing waterfalls and streams. On a nuclear-ravaged planet? I don’t think so. And it only gets worse for discerning viewers when Jack arrives at his personal oasis – a well-maintained log cabin, in the middle of a forest clearing, complete with low-tech turntable and 1970’s Led Zeppelin LP’s, which he uses as background music to his game of one-man basketball.

Once back on his tower base, Jack continues to be troubled by a black and white hued memory of an encounter at the Empire State Building with a beautiful woman (Olga Kurylenko, who merely serves as eye-candy in this film). Mind you, Jack should not have any memories as his and Victoria’s memories were, for reasons undisclosed, wiped long ago. The scenes filmed on and around the Empire State Building may remind some viewers of the romantic comedy, “Sleepless in Seattle”, and the weepy classic, “An Affair to Remember.”

Almost right on cue, a spacecraft, The Odyssey, carrying four survivors crash-lands on the planet. Jack reaches the scene of the crash-landing, but too late to save three of the craft’s passengers, annihilated by a drone. But, aren’t drones programmed not to kill humans?

Jack, however, saves the fourth passenger, the gorgeous Ms Kurylenko, who is in a perfect state of Delta sleep. Of course, Jack and Kurylenko’s character, Julia Rusakova, immediately recognise each other. What’s more, Julia, who was on a classified mission, has been asleep for 60 years, and is actually Jack’s wife.

Returning to the planet’s surface, and while searching for the voice recorder from Julia’s crashed craft, Jack is knocked unconscious and captured by The Scavs, whose face masks and guttural sound effects reminded me of the sand people from the first Star Wars film.

Jack awakes, chained, and face to face with Freeman’s, cigar-chomping, Beech, who for a survivor of nuclear holocaust and other presumed horrors, looks remarkably relaxed, well-fed and fresh-faced. Not a nuclear burn scar to be seen. And, Beech is not alone. There are literally hundreds of survivors. Men, women, children. All living underground. Think Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. Think The Omega Man. How these hundreds of people have survived so well and for so long without any apparent access to clean water and food is never explained by the film-makers. Cannibalism, perhaps?

You’ve been lied to, Jack, pronounces Beech. Scavs did not destroy our planet. So, if the Scavs are not the enemy - just hapless victims themselves - who is?

In a scene directly ripped off from 1968’s classic Planet of the Apes, Beech warns Jack to not go into the forbidden, radiation zone, for Jack will not like what he finds there.

Of course, Jack and Julia fly into the forbidden zone where they find … another Jack Harper. This Jack, however, wears the number, 52. That’s Tech 52 to the other Jack Harper’s Tech 49 designation. A Jack 49 vs Jack 52 fight ensues. Jack 49 subdues Jack 52 and hog-ties him, but not before Julia is shot by Jack 52.

Cue a meaningless and extended chase sequence where Jack and the injured Julia flying in their machine, are pursued through narrow canyons by a squadron of killer drones. Another direct rip-off. This time, that extended hovercar chase sequence through the canyons, in the dreadful Star Wars Episode I, The Phantom Menace.

Jack and Julia prevail against their killer drone rivals. They then discover cloud base 52, and … another Victoria. It’s now obvious that Victoria, and Jack are clones. But, who has cloned them? And why?

It transpires, according to Beech that, a legion of soulless Jacks were sent to Earth on a seek and destroy humanity mission. But, we still have no idea who the enemy is. And what their intent is. The answer must be on the voice recorder from the Odyssey spacecraft. And, it is.

Julia, Jack and Victoria were members of a crew on the spacecraft Odyssey, sent 60 years earlier to explore an unidentified alien, pyramidal structure in space. That structure is The Tet. While Jack and Victoria were captured by The Tet structure, Julia and the other members of the Odyssey were left to drift in space, a la Ripley at the opening of the film Aliens.

It’s “clear” now who the enemy is, who has been cloning Jack, and Victoria, who has been exterminating the humans, ravaging the Earth, and stealing the Earth’s precious resources. It’s The Tet.

Time for Jack to concoct a plan to board The Tet pyramid and destroy it. Jack informs Sally that, he is bringing a prisoner, Julia, on board.

In a scene directly ripped off from Star Trek: The Motion Picture, when The Enterprise enters the enormous cloud structure that houses the VGER craft, and complete with the same sound effects from that film, Jack’s tiny craft enters the giant Tet. What he finds are millions of … Jack and Victoria clones. All beautifully housed under perspex domes. Cue visual references to The Matrix.

There is no Sally. Only Sally’s “voice”. And a giant, throbbing red orb. This is the alien menace? The formless “force” that has destroyed our precious Earth?    

Did the creators of this film not learn anything from the abject failures of the films Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer and Green Lantern? Film-going audiences demand credible villains to be pitted against their heroes. Not amorphous clouds. And certainly not giant pyramidal structures with red orbs, from parts unknown, whose intentions are undeclared.

When we last saw Cruise in sci-fi mode he starred in the vastly superior, 2005 Spielberg version of War of the Worlds, based on HG Wells’s classic novel. That movie had a visible, three-limbed alien enemy, some heart, and to quote Morgan Freeman – who narrates the opening lines for War of the Worlds – some humanity.

Oblivion is deeply flawed, lacking focus, any clearly discernible message, and dramatic intent. I doubt that even Cruise’s mega-wattage star power will save this film at the box office.