Oblivion is the place where most of my memories of this film
went quite shortly after walking out of the theater. Like the mild impression
from a pretty, but non-spectacular sunset - hey, would you look at those nice
colors - the thought of the film faded quickly behind the next interesting
thing that came by. Oblivion, the new future-world sci-fier starring Tom Cruise,
is an attractive film; I'll give it that. Maybe if the concepts of the story
and it’s telling were as consistent and cogent as its visual landscape and
architecture it'd have some staying power. Instead, the results offer little
more than formula components in familiar scenes extracted from the post
apocalypse/invasion genre freezer and just re-heated for us on a shiny new plate.
While great care has been given to the film’s settings, the story and script
feel like lazy efforts. I’m sure Joseph Kosinski, who co-wrote, produced, and
directed the film, does not consider himself indolent in his creative endeavors,
but if he thinks his story is deep and profound (and it was clear he was trying
hard to make me believe that) then he’s a little too close to it… cuz he’s
wrong. Oblivion, the saga, may be clever enough for its graphic-novel (comic
book) origins but it’s no heavy hitter beyond that.
The attempted profundity starts with narration from the main
character - Cruise’s Jack Harper, also known as Technician 49. It’s 2077; our
beloved earth has suffered an alien invasion (some 60 years earlier). The evil
intruders first blew up the moon wreaking havoc with the planet’s tides and
tectonics to soften us up, and then they hit the ground. As Harper puts it “we won the war but
lost the earth”. Winning meant unleashing the nukes, we learn, and thus trashing
most of the planet. Surviving humans have, or are, migrating to Titan, a moon
of Saturn. The success of the exodus and the new colony depends on the
operation of fusion energy stations, fueled by earth’s oceans, that power the
whole venture. Technician 49 and his teammate (and assigned wife), Victoria
"Vic" Olsen (Andrea Riseborough), are charged with maintaining the drones
that defend the power stations from the few remaining aliens (known as Scavs)
that, for some reason, are still carrying on the bad fight. The couple receives
their orders from a twangy mission commander headquartered on the
"Tet," a space station orbiting earth and fueling up for a final trek
to Titan.
Kosinski, intentionally or not – it’s hard to tell, makes it
clear early on that there’s something fishy going on here. The first red flag pops
up when Jack Harper reveals that for security reasons the technicians’ memories
have been wiped… always a foreshadow of skullduggery. Its not a very good wipe
either (hey we’ve only had 77 years to develop this technology) as Tech 49 has
remnant memories of a woman – someone he loves but does not know – hanging out
with him on top of the Empire State building… who’s she? 49 also wonders aloud
about those Scavs; didn’t they get the memo that they’d lost the war… hmmm? And
did they say that we’re all going to live on Titan… Titan? I guess the memory wipe
was just good enough to make Harper forget that the average temperature on
Titan is about 200 degrees below zero and that it rains methane. Or maybe he
never earned the astronomy merit badge.
Even though it’s easy to get ahead of Kosinski’s plot, there’s
still some good tension as Harper works to discover what gives on this
burned-out earth. The drones – flying spheres that shoot mean machine guns in
all directions - are particularly menacing and create suspense as they process,
in RoboCop style, whether the thing in their sites is a good guy or a bad guy.
And Cruise is… well… he is plug-and-play Tom. He’s good, as usual, as the
talented and confused hero, but has too little to do in front of Kosinki’s
dense and stunning landscapes to have any memorable impact. The rest of the
film’s characters, especially the women, are flimsy foils or simple stereotypes
from similar-genre films (do all future world rebels wear capes… really?).
Kosinski is a graduate of the Columbia School of
Architecture, and it shows. The drones, Harper’s patrol plane, and particularly
the technicians’ futuristic quarters are marvelous creations. But Kosinski
obviously wants Oblivion to be more than just a visual experience; he wants it
to be an acute and poignant puzzle. But it’s not. What the scriptwriters might
think are killer twists, you’ll see coming like a slow hanging curve ball – you’re
to third base before Cruise’s character gets his bat off his shoulder. You’ve
processed all of the profound revelations long before the score swells to let
you know that something really emotional is happening. And the film’s
is-it-really-that-easy ending is terrifically unsatisfying. I would have been
just fine with Kosinski focusing all of his talents and money on his grand and
cool sediment filled, dystopian vistas… maybe putting some Copland behind it and
calling it a day, instead of trying so unsuccessfully to convince me that I was
experiencing a story that was truly special. 5 out of 10.
