"Oblivion" - 2013 - movie review

First and foremost Joseph Kosinski's "Oblivion" is the best looking movie I've seen since "Prometheus" and together the two films have set a new visual standard for all films, not just sci-fi, to aspire to moving forward. That alone makes it worth the price of admission. But incredible visual style is not the only thing the two films share. Both are also seriously flawed beneath the surface. Ridley Scott's sorta prequel to his 1979 masterpiece "Alien" suffered hugely from head scratching plot turns and characters that seemed like they were plucked out of mid air and dropped into the story.

With Oblivion the problem isn't that you sit there wanting to hold up your hand to block out Fifield or have to stop yourself from laughing when Charlize Theron says "father" the problem is that, beneath the incredible visual eye candy a dozen other (original) films are lurking uncomfortably, including Prometheus (though the only thing besides incredible visuals Oblivion has taken from Scott's film is the aforementioned tendency to leave me scratching my head). The trailers for Oblivion hinted that all might not be well in paradise with this production. Any time a film's visual touchstones are taken from post card racks you know there's an imagination deficit at work, and sure enough, Oblivion falls into what can only be described as narrative oblivion once you get past the setup.

And what is the setup? Well, it's the year 2077. Earth has been abandoned after alien marauders nearly destroyed the moon and our crusty but trusty satellite lost its ability to do its job (controlling tides and the like). As a result earth suffered multiple environmental catastrophes. Unable to withstand the sh*tstorm humanity shipped off to Saturn's moon Titan for some R and R. Cruise's Jack is tasked with making sure any alien stragglers aren't able to sabotage the hydroelectric power generators on earth that supply far away humanity with its electric power. Specifically Jack's job is to repair the drones that do the actual sentinel work of finding and airing out any alien miscreants.

So far so good. I kind of like the premise. It's an interesting twist on the much overused alien invasion premise that utilizes the moon, which certainly doesn't get enough credit in popular culture for the yoeman's job it does holding our planet together. So I'll let it slide that there's no conceivable way - even under ideal circumstances - that human beings would be able to overcome the scientific, technological and logistical hurdles of colonizing one of Saturn's moons by the year 2077. So, okay. Between the gorgeous visuals and an interesting premise the film grabs my attention and for the first act holds it fairly well.

The problems arise shortly after the stunning and mysterious Olga Kurylenko crash lands. In short order this potentially visionary film begins to degenrate into a love triangle between Jack, the mystery woman in the pod and Jack's loft-mate Victoria. Throw in a 'forgotten tribe' of human survivors ala "Beyond Thunderdome" led by Morgan Freeman (who shows up for a cup of coffee) who compete with the menage-a-cast for narrative space and we're now firmly in Promethean head-scratching territory.

The writers, it seems, spent a few evenings watching recent sci-fi classics with notebooks in laps and simply crossed out where their notes said Keanu or Harrison and wrote in Tom. Or crossed out TIE fighter and Death Star and wrote Bubble Ship and Grand Canyon. If all this love and theft had resulted in a coherent experience I'd have no (or at least not much) trouble with it. But it seems to be there just to divert from the story's shortcomings rather than make sense of them. Granted, if you're young enough not to recognize all the narrative, uh, sampling it obviously won't bother you. Who knows, you might even think the story works just fine. Personally I found it little more than distracting and disappointing because I was really hoping for something original with this film.

Ultimately its characters that drive our interest in stories. If the characters are compelling no amount of visual shortcoming is going to keep people away. If on the other hand your movie is all surface and no soul you've got problems. The characters in Oblivion never have a chance to breath before they suffocate under a heavy blanket of lazy narrative decisions and post modern appropriation.

The bottom line is I walked out of Oblivion feeling almost exactly how I felt walking out of Prometheus last year. Blown away by all the visual miracle-working, confused as to why a production with a budget north of $100 million couldn't find a better writer.

Verdict: ★★★☆☆