oblivion movie review metacritic

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70 The Hollywood Reporter Todd McCarthy The Hollywood Reporter Todd McCarthy Oblivion is an absolutely gorgeous film dramatically caught between its aspirations for poetic romanticism and the demands of heavy sci-fi action. After a captivating beginning brimming with mystery and evident ambition, the air gradually seeps out of the balloon that keeps this thinly populated tale aloft, leaving the ultimate impression of a nice try that falls somewhat short of the mark.
67 The Playlist Oliver Lyttelton The Playlist Oliver Lyttelton It is overlong, and familiar, and never quite hits top gear -- it's never especially bad, but neither is it especially excellent, beyond the visual wow factor. But there's still a lot to admire in the film, not least that it's engaging from the first moment to the last.
63 McClatchy-Tribune News Service Roger Moore McClatchy-Tribune News Service Roger Moore That doesn’t make Oblivion a bad movie, just a familiar one — generic.
60 Empire Olly Richards Empire Olly Richards Kosinski has again built a fantasy world that feels real to its core, but once more put most effort into the scenery and too little into the people.
60 Total Film Total Film It isn’t a reboot or reimagining, refreshingly, but Oblivion plays like a stylised remix of superior sci-fi ground-breakers. Cruise and Kosinski: they might be an effective team, but pioneers they’re not.
60 Variety Justin Chang Variety Justin Chang A moderately clever dystopian mindbender with a gratifying human pulse, despite some questionable narrative developments along the way.
60 Village Voice Alan Scherstuhl Village Voice Alan Scherstuhl The good news: Here's a lavish, serious science-fiction picture, one that on occasion transcends big-budget hit-making convention to glance against grandeur...Which brings us to Tom Cruise, the not-necessarily-good news. However engaging its end-times mysteries, Oblivion is still a Tom Cruise movie.
58 Entertainment Weekly Entertainment Weekly Oblivion has enough special-effects artistry to keep you distracted for a while. But all the eye candy in the world can’t mask the sensation that you’ve seen this all before…and done better.
40 Time Out Time Out Kosinski continues to lavish far more thought on how his elaborate fantasy worlds look than how they work, and neither the politics nor the human stakes here coalesce into rational or relatable drama.
40 The Guardian Peter Bradshaw The Guardian Peter Bradshaw Oblivion goes on for a long time, moving slowly and self-consciously, and it looks like a very expensive movie project that has been written and rewritten many times over. It is a shame: Cruise, Riseborough and Kurylenko as the last love triangle left on Planet Earth should have been quite interesting.
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Critics Consensus

Critics consensus: oblivion looks great, but its story meanders, plus, in the house is creepy and witty..

This week at the movies, we’ve got only one wide release: the post-apocalyptic sci-fi adventure Oblivion , starring Tom Cruise and Morgan Freeman . What do the critics have to say?

Can a movie get by on good looks alone? Critics say Oblivion is visually striking but narratively thin, a thoughtful sci-fi head trip that starts strong but gets bogged down by its murky storyline. While working as a repairman on an abandoned, post-Apocalyptic Planet Earth, Jack Harper (Tom Cruise) discovers that he’s not alone — and that everything he knows has been a lie. The pundits say Cruise’s strong performance helps to enliven the proceedings, but Oblivion is largely derivative of other, better sci-fi films. (Check out this week’s 24 Frames and Total Recall features for more on post-apocalyptic movies.)

Also opening this week in limited release:

Ain’t In It For My Health: A Film About Levon Helm , a documentary about the Band’s legendary drummer and vocalist, is at 100 percent.

In the House , starring Kristin Scott Thomas and Emmanuelle Seigner in a thriller about a high school student who insinuates himself into the life of his teacher, is at 88 percent.

Deceptive Practices: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay , a doc about the noted character actor and world-class magician, is at 83 percent.

Herman’s House , a documentary about a collaboration between an artist and prison inmate in solitary confinement, is at 83 percent.

Rob Zombie ‘s The Lords of Salem , a horror film about a radio DJ who is haunted by a coven of witches, is at 44 percent.

Finally, props to Emilio Rodriguez and Kadeem Stewart for coming the closest to guessing Scary Movie 5 ‘s five percent Tomatometer.

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If nothing else, “Oblivion” will go down in film history as the movie where Tom Cruise pilots a white, sperm-shaped craft into a giant space uterus. The scene is more interesting to describe than it is to watch. Cruise’s sperm-ship enters through an airlock that resembles a geometrized vulva. He arrives inside a massive chamber lined with egg-like glass bubbles. At the center of the chamber is a pulsating, sentient triangle that is also supposed to be some kind of mother figure. Cruise must destroy the mother triangle and her space uterus in order to save the Earth.

Like director Joseph Kosinski’s debut, “ Tron: Legacy ” (2010), “Oblivion” is a special effects extravaganza with a lot of blatant symbolism and very little meaning. It starts slow, turns dull and then becomes tedious — which makes it a marginal improvement over the earlier film. It features shiny surfaces, clicky machinery and no recognizable human behavior. It’s equally ambitious and gormless.

“Oblivion” is set in the year 2077, 60 years after an alien invasion rendered the Earth largely uninhabitable. Cruise stars as Jack Harper, one of a handful of people left on the planet. The other survivors have long since relocated to Titan. Harper and colleagues remain as technicians, servicing robot drones that defend resource-gathering stations from alien stragglers.

Harper lives in a penthouse-like tower with his communications officer, Vica ( Andrea Riseborough ). Vica’s eyes are permanently dilated. Like Olivia Wilde ‘s Quorra in “ Tron: Legacy ,” she often resembles a marionette.

Harper and Vica spend their days fixing drones, eating candelit dinners, and swimming in a glass-bottomed pool. Their boss, the creepily cheerful Sally ( Melissa Leo ), supervises them from an orbiting control center. In order to maintain the integrity of the mission, Harper and Vica’s memories have been wiped; nonetheless, Harper is haunted by extremely cheesy black-and-white dreams of a beautiful woman meeting him in pre-invasion New York.

One day, Harper spots an antique spacecraft crashing into the countryside. He manages to rescue one survivor, a Russian astronaut ( Olga Kurylenko ) who looks exactly like the woman in his dreams. Harper brings her back to his tower. This incites jealousy and suspicion from Vica, who is both Harper’s partner and his lover.

The astronaut has been in cryogenic sleep for the past six decades but refuses to disclose the nature of her mission to Harper and Vica until they recover her flight recorder. It goes without saying that the flight recorder unearths all kinds of secrets about Harper, Vica, and the alien invasion. It also creates one of the movie’s more glaring logical errors, but that’s a different story altogether.

The film’s opening stretch is its one strong point — a gradual, immersive build-up of details. It’s a smart technique for science-fiction storytelling; it eases the viewer into the world of the film. The problem is that the world “Oblivion” introduces — an abandoned, depopulated Earth — is more interesting than the story it tells. Or, more accurately, the stories it tells, because “Oblivion,” derivative to a fault, tries to be several science-fiction movies at once. It tries and it fails.

“Oblivion” is a political allegory about a lowly “technician” sending unmanned drones to hunt and kill a demonized, alien Other — until it forgets that it ever was. It’s a wannabe mindbender that raises questions about its lead character’s identity — except that the lead character is too sketchy to make these questions compelling. It’s a story about humans struggling for survival in an environment controlled by technology — except it appears to be much more interested in the technology than in the humans. It’s a rah-rah action flick — except its action scenes aren’t very good.

The only thread “Oblivion” follows to the end is its “creation myth.” Harper is an idealized man; he’s good with a gun, good with his hands, good in bed, loves football and rides a motorcycle. Though most of the movie’s characters are women, not one of them is able to do anything without Harper’s help — not even the mother triangle that lives in the space uterus. Only his rugged-but-sensitive masculinity holds the key to humanity’s survival. The movie reaches for profundity, but all it grasps is misogyny.

Ignatiy Vishnevetsky

Ignatiy Vishnevetsky is a critic for the digital film magazine Notebook, published by Mubi.com . With Christy Lemire, he co-hosted the television program “Ebert Presents: At the Movies.”

Morgan Freeman as Beech
Olga Kurylenko as Julia
Tom Cruise as Jack
Andrea Riseborough as Victoria
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Sykes
Melissa Leo as Sally
Joseph Kosinski
Karl Gajdusek
Michael Arndt

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‘Oblivion’ review: a post-apocalyptic beauty that succeeds even while it stumbles

The director of 'tron: legacy' takes tom cruise on a trip into a grim future.

By Bryan Bishop on April 17, 2013 09:00 am 206 Comments

2013 is shaping up to be the year of the high-end science fiction movie. With the likes of Will Smith and Matt Damon starring in new genre films, and some major blockbusters from J.J. Abrams and Guillermo del Toro just around the corner, there's a lot to choose from. Kicking the summer off is Oblivion . Starring Tom Cruise, it’s the second feature from Joseph Kosinski, the filmmaker behind Tron: Legacy . Part action movie, part puzzle, it’s a film whose beauty and emotional aspirations ultimately overpower the story problems it runs into along the way.

The set-up is standard dystopian fare. It’s 2077. Earth is an irradiated wasteland thanks to an alien invasion 60 years ago, and while the majority of the human race has retired to one of Saturn’s moons, some have stayed behind to tend to the drones that patrol the ravaged landscape.

Cruise is Jack Harper — at 50, the star's finally starting to look 42 — who's partnered with Vika (a vulnerable Andrea Riseborough). Jack is the mechanic of the pair, flying out to repair the drones while Vika acts as his eye-in-the-sky navigator. Working out of a sci-fi dream home on a platform above the clouds, the pair are almost done with their mission. Two more weeks and they'll finally be reunited with the rest of humanity. But while Vika is anxious to leave Earth behind, Jack's not so sure. He's a romantic, pining for the normalcy that was destroyed long ago — not to mention the strange woman he sees in his dreams (Olga Kurylenko).

If there's one thing the Kosinski established with Tron: Legacy , it was that he knows how to craft astounding visuals, so let's cut to the chase: Oblivion is one of the most beautiful films I've seen this year. It's so achingly gorgeous, I wouldn't be surprised if I hold the same opinion come December. Every single moment and shot is meticulously crafted and composed: the desolate ruins on Earth, the architectural touches of Jack and Vika's home (imagine if Jony Ive designed Cloud City with a swimming pool). The large canvas gives Kosinski room to stretch out, and the work by production designer Darren Gilford and Oscar-winning cinematographer Claudio Miranda is breathtaking. The film was shot in 4K with Sony's F65 and the RED Epic — and shows once again that while digital photography may not precisely replicate film, it has matured into a format with equal artistic potential.

Having worked with Daft Punk on the Tron soundtrack, Kosinski turns to another electronic artist here — and the results from M83 are just as impressive. Percolating synthesizers and tribal drums dominate during action sequences, but yield to yearning orchestral strings in quieter moments. It's not just bombast and accompaniment; it's score in the true sense of the word.

For all the aural and visual splendor, however, there is a sense of familiarity throughout the film. The concept smacks of Pixar's Wall-E ; sound effects echo Inception ; and the costume of one of the "scavs" that roam Earth's surface bears a jarring resemblance to Ralph McQuarrie's original concept art for Darth Vader . Familiar genre tropes show up, and fans of science fiction will likely spot many of the movie's twists and turns coming from far away. That said, it doesn't play as repetition. Instead, it's more like a comfortable pair of pajamas; Oblivion mashes up what we've seen before into a Nolan-lite pastiche that feels just right.

The largest stumbles come down to performance and story, issues that also plagued Tron . Morgan Freeman shows up in a extremely clunky secondary plotline to act as an exposition engine — slowing the movie down in the process — and Kurylenko's Julia is given very little to do, despite how important those mysterious dreams are to Jack. Even worse, after a satisfying slow burn the film's climax falls flat. (There's nothing worse than when you know the intention is for the audience to fist pump and shout "Hell, yeah!" — yet you're doing neither.)

Many of those weaknesses fall away when viewing the movie as a whole, however — and it all comes down to Oblivion 's longing heart. It's a dichotomy echoed by M83's score, actually; despite the spectacle, this isn't a movie about genre, robots, or even the difficulties of post-apocalyptic survival. It's a story about wanting a normal, average life in the face of impossible circumstances. Cruise is an odd casting choice in this regard. Nobody's been more consistent in playing cinematic supermen, but the actor ends up pulling off what is ultimately a very human story, and the film stayed on my mind long after I walked out of the theater.

Oblivion aspires to what sci-fi does best: provide a convenient genre platform to explore the human condition.

Even more exciting, it represents a real step forward for Kosinski, who displayed visual prowess in Tron: Legacy but had a hard time making the audience care about, you know, the actual humans . If he continues on this trajectory, he may eventually build up story and character chops that match his visual acumen — and that's when things will get really exciting.

Oblivion is currently playing internationally. It opens in the US on April 19th. If you have the opportunity to see it in IMAX, do it.

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Film Review: ‘Oblivion’

A moderately clever dystopian mindbender with a gratifying human pulse, despite some questionable narrative developments along the way

By Justin Chang

Justin Chang

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'Oblivion' Review: Tom Cruise Stars in Moderately Clever Sci-Fi Pic

Although Universal’s publicity department has asked that journalists refrain from spilling the secrets of “ Oblivion ,” the major revelations, once they arrive, will hardly surprise anyone familiar with “Total Recall,” “The Matrix” and the countless other sci-fi touchstones hovering over this striking, visually resplendent adventure. Pitting the latest action-hero incarnation of Tom Cruise against an army of alien marauders, director Joseph Kosinski ‘s follow-up to “ Tron: Legacy ” is a moderately clever dystopian mindbender with a gratifying human pulse, despite some questionable narrative developments along the way. The less-than-airtight construction and conventional resolution may rankle genre devotees, though hardly to the detriment of robust overall B.O.

Getting the blockbuster season off to an early start on April 19, when it opens Stateside in wide release and in Imax theaters, “Oblivion” reps the latest test of Cruise’s bankability, coming mere months after he tried on a new ass-kicking persona with “ Jack Reacher .” This time he’s Jack Harper, and without giving too much away, there’s an amusing, perhaps unintended existential subtext here about the somewhat interchangeable men of action Cruise has played over the course of his career. Still, the actor’s first foray into science fiction in eight years (if you don’t count “Rock of Ages”) comes with a more intriguing backstory than most.

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It’s the year 2077, six decades after the people of Earth fought and vanquished an evil race of space invaders called Scavengers. But victory has come at a great cost. The planet is now an uninhabitable post-nuclear wasteland, and Jack (Cruise) is one of the last men still stationed on Earth, a fighter pilot/technician assigned to fend off stray Scavengers and repair the powerful drones overseeing a massive hydroelectric energy project necessary for the survival of the human species. It all looks and sounds a bit like a live-action remake of “ Wall-E ,” right down to the way the protagonist, spurred by natural curiosity and an unexpected love interest, finds himself on a dangerous unauthorized mission.

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Until now, Jack has worked effectively enough with Vika ( Andrea Riseborough ), who guides his repair jobs with cool, formidable efficiency from the glassy confines of their high-tech home base (referred to as the Skytower, though it might as well be called the iPad). But unlike his partner, Jack is a dreamer and a bit of a poet, someone who can’t help reminiscing about the past or questioning everyone’s future. Haunted by pre-apocalyptic visions of a beautiful mystery woman ( Olga Kurylenko ), he can’t quite grasp why humanity, having won the war, has decided to permanently abandon its native planet for an uncertain future in space.

As he steers his sleek, pod-like aircraft over a landscape of eerie, desolate beauty, dotted with craters and radiation zones as well as lush, unspoiled lakes and valleys, Jack can’t quite shake the feeling that all is not as it appears to be, despite the chipper directives coming from the mothership (represented by a crackling TV image of Melissa Leo, boasting a deceptively sweet Southern drawl). Indeed, the audience will likely have a clear sense of what’s going on long before scribes Karl Gajdusek and Michael DeBruyn (working from a 2005 short story that Kosinski later developed into a graphic novel) get around to spelling things out; suffice to say the title refers to more than just the physical aftermath of Earth’s cataclysmic destruction.

Apart from an initial burst of neo-noir narration and a few moderately pulse-quickening action sequences, one of them set in the impressively imagined ruins of the New York Public Library, the first half of “Oblivion” adopts a spare, unhurried approach that conveys a powerfully enveloping sense of Jack’s isolation. Kosinski wastes no opportunity to linger — and you can’t blame him — on his alternately seductive and staggering visuals, richly conceived by production designer Darren Gilford and filmed with marvelous fluidity on the new Sony F65 digital camera by Claudio Miranda (following his Oscar-winning work on “Life of Pi” with another accomplished integration of cinematography and visual effects).

This patient narrative strategy works well enough until Jack’s big questions finally start to yield answers – many of them delivered, as answers so often are, by the sage presence of Morgan Freeman – and the story’s underlying thinness and predictability gradually become apparent. The superficial cleverness of the plotting, with its elements of amnesia, self-delusion and impossible yearning, at times gestures in the direction of a Christopher Nolan brainteaser (as does the surging score by French band M83, which sounds like electronified Hans Zimmer). But the lack of comparable rigor, ingenuity and procedural detail is naggingly evident, as is the almost feel-good manner in which the story explains away some of its morally troubling implications.

If “Tron: Legacy” offered up an eye-popping playground with more videogame potential than human interest, “Oblivion,” despite similarly immersive environs, provides greater moment-to-moment dramatic involvement. Cruise combines his usual physical agility and daredevil stuntwork with one of his more affable characters in a while, a high-flying dreamer trying to figure out mankind’s place in this brave new world . Although much of the picture is essentially a one-man show, Riseborough locates the blood and passion beneath Vika’s icy surface, while Kurylenko brings flickers of feeling to an underwritten role.

Kosinski’s architectural background is apparent in the picture’s suave, rounded design concepts and clean, coherent compositions, the effect of which is gloriously enveloping in Imax. Insofar as “Oblivion” is first and foremost a visual experience, a movie to be seen rather than a puzzle to be deciphered, its chief pleasures are essentially spoiler-proof.

Reviewed at AMC Century City 15, Los Angeles, April 8, 2013. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 125 MIN.

A Universal release presented in association with Relativity Media of a Chernin Entertainment/Monolith Pictures/ Radical Studios production. Produced by Joseph Kosinski, Peter Chernin, Dylan Clark, Barry Levine , Duncan Henderson. Executive producers, Dave Morrison, Jesse Berger, Justin Springer. Co-producers, Steve Gaub, R.J. Mino, Bruce Franklin, Mike Larocca .

Directed by Joseph Kosinski. Screenplay, Karl Gajdusek, Michael DeBruyn, based on the graphic novel original story by Kosinski. Camera (Deluxe color, 4k, Imax), Claudio Miranda; editor, Richard Franchis-Bruce; music, M83; production designer, Darren Gilford; supervising art director, Kevin Ishioka; art director, Mark W. Mansbridge; set decorator, Ronald R. Reiss; costume designer, Marlene Stewart; sound (Datasat/SDDS/Dolby Digital), Paul Ledford; supervising sound designer, Ren Kylce; supervising sound editors, Gwendolyn Yates Whittle, Al Nelson; re-recording mixers, Gary A. Rizzo, Juan Peralta; special effects coordinator, Mike Meinardus; visual effects supervisors, Eric Barbra, Bjorn Mayer; visual effects, Digital Domain, Pixomondo; stunt coordinator, Robert Alonzo; associate producer, Emily Cheung; assistant director, Bruce Franklin; second unit director, Alonzo; second unit camera, Gary Waller; casting, Marcia Ross.

Cast: Tom Cruise , Morgan Freeman, Olga Kurylenko, Andrea Riseborough, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Melissa Leo.

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Oblivion: film review.

Universal's sci-fi thriller, from "Tron: Legacy" director Joseph Kosinski, opens April 19.

By Todd McCarthy

Todd McCarthy

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Tom Cruise, Morgan Freeman: 'Oblivion' Film Review

Oblivion Trailer Screengrab - H 2013

A sort of The Eternal Return played out in the ruins of a post-apocalyptic planet Earth, Joseph Kosinski ‘s Oblivion is an absolutely gorgeous film dramatically caught between its aspirations for poetic romanticism and the demands of heavy sci-fi action. After a captivating beginning brimming with mystery and evident ambition, the air gradually seeps out of the balloon that keeps this thinly populated tale aloft, leaving the ultimate impression of a nice try that falls somewhat short of the mark. There’s enough futuristic eye candy and battle scenes to lure the genre boys, while the presence of three important female characters, as well as Tom Cruise in good form, could attract more women than usual for this sort of fare, resulting in mostly robust, but not great, returns worldwide. The Universal release opens this week in most international territories, while the domestic bow comes April 19.

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Movie Reviews

Effects-heavy 'oblivion' pines for an analog past.

Scott Tobias

The sterile, futuristic gloss of the post-apocalyptic living spaces in Oblivion are a perfect setting for Andrea Riseborough's icy Victoria — whose humanity, showing occasionally through the odd crack in her reserve, informs some of the film's strongest moments. Universal Pictures hide caption

Director: Joseph Kosinski
Genre: Action-adventure
Running Time: 126 minutes

Rated PG-13; sci-fi action violence, brief strong language, and some sensuality/nudity

With: Tom Cruise, Morgan Freeman, Melissa Leo

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The score for Oblivion was composed by M83, a superb French electronic outfit that derives its name from one of the spectral pinwheels known as spiral galaxies. I point this out because it's the best element of the movie — a cascade of dreamy synthesizers that registers as appropriately futuristic (at least the future as suggested by '80s pop) while allowing an undercurrent of romantic yearning.

More than that, though, it underlines director Joseph Kosinski's pursuit of digital beauty — some combination of "ones and zeros" that can approach those pinwheels' heavenly perfection.

It's not the first time: Kosinski's last film converted the arcade-game kicks of Disney's 1982 relic Tron into the $200 million screensaver Tron: Legacy . With Oblivion , the content comes a lot closer to matching the pristine form. Though it's derivative in the extreme, the film keeps the dialogue to a minimum — and what dialogue it has is often deliberately formalized and robotic — while creating a future of insidious elegance, one in which the remnants of humanity and nature represent a threat to the artificial order of things. And so Kosinski's personal commitment to gorgeous artifice above all other considerations only harms the film so much.

Based on the director's own unpublished graphic novel, Oblivion gets all its exposition out of the way in one graceless chunk of opening narration. It's 2077, exactly 60 years after alien invaders called Scavengers (or "Scavs") appeared from another dimension and wiped out the moon before setting their sights on the Earth's resources.

Though mankind "won" the war against the Scavs, the nuclear weapons required to do so — combined with the devastating natural disasters brought on by the moon's destruction — killed off much of the population and rendered the planet uninhabitable. Those humans who did survive were whisked onto a space station until they can colonize elsewhere.

Enter Jack (Tom Cruise) and his partner Victoria (Andrea Riseborough, whose Disconnect is also out this week ), a couple living in a home in the clouds, above both the lingering radiation and the remaining Scavs stalking the territory below. Their official duty is to protect the machines drawing precious water from the seas, mainly by ensuring that the unmanned drones intended to suppress the Scavs remain online. Though his memory of the war has been wiped, Jack dreams of a woman (Olga Kurylenko) from a distant past who reappears when a NASA capsule crashes and forces him to rethink his mission.

The enigmatic Julia (Olga Kurylenko) surfaces from the mysterious past of Victoria's husband, Jack (Tom Cruise), a repairman tending drones on a largely abandoned Earth. Universal Pictures hide caption

The enigmatic Julia (Olga Kurylenko) surfaces from the mysterious past of Victoria's husband, Jack (Tom Cruise), a repairman tending drones on a largely abandoned Earth.

Oblivion occupies an awkward no-man's-land between escapist space adventure and heady science fiction, but it's neither thrilling enough nor intellectually stimulating enough to satisfy devotees of either. The strongest scenes tend to be the least eventful: long, moody stretches in which Jack and Victoria go about their rounds, then retire to a domestic life with too practiced a rhythm. Jack registers his lost-world longings by slipping off to a secret hideaway of lush greenery and the analog pleasures of books and LPs, but it's Riseborough's Victoria who's the most affecting, because her humanity registers in cracks that never fully disrupt her commitment to the mission.

Kosinski handles the obligatory action beats capably, with Jack zipping through the skies on a helicopter-spaceship hybrid that resembles a cross between tech from the Star Wars prequels and Cruise's own Top Gun . (Kosinski throws in a stylish pair of aviator glasses as an homage to the latter.) The eventual gunplay distracts from the cool ambience of those early quiet scenes, but as the film goes on and Kosinski's meditations on individual will grow gloppy and predictable, such distractions become more welcome.

There's a faintly political message here about drone warfare, but for all its hard sci-fi portentousness, Oblivion advocates mainly for an earthy lifestyle of organic vegetables, classic vinyl and more time in the great outdoors. In a film created entirely in front of green screens and behind computer terminals, selling a message like that takes a certain nerve.

Review: Tom Cruise’s ‘Oblivion’ a sci-fi adventure to remember

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“Oblivion” will make you remember, not forget.

This Tom Cruise vehicle is a throwback to the days when on-screen science fiction was about speculative ideas rather than selling toys to tots — think of it as the most expensive episode of “The Twilight Zone” ever made.

“Oblivion” is not perfect. Its dystopian story makes no apologies for its familiarity, echoing such films as “The Planet of the Apes,” “The Matrix,” “2001” and even “Wall-E.” And expecting the wheels not to eventually begin to fall off its pleasantly complicated, head-spinning plot (based on the director Joseph Kosinski’s graphic novel) is asking a little too much.

But even given all this implausibility, “Oblivion” has the ability to haunt you visually and, with an unanticipated love story, even emotionally. Written by Karl Gajdusek and Michael DeBruyn, this is a piece of futuristic fiction intended for adults, not their children, a film in which firefights and futuristic weapons feel more like afterthoughts than reasons for being.

VIDEO: Tom Cruise, Joseph Kosinski talk ‘Oblivion’

Given that the film is set on an Earth 60-plus years in the future, a time after an invasion by rapacious aliens (are there any other kind?) has completely devastated the planet, we’re expecting to see ruins aplenty, and “Oblivion” does not disappoint.

Overseen by production designer Darren Gilford and shot by Claudio Miranda, whose “Life of Pi” experience blending physical components and computer-generated effects stood him in good stead, “Oblivion’s” snapshots of CGI devastation are enhanced by being shown against real Icelandic landscapes.

Whether it be beached warships, the Washington Monument looking like that tower in Pisa or an elaborate re-creation of the wrecked main reading room in the New York Public Library’s Fifth Avenue branch, these images linger in the memory after they’ve faded from the screen.

Director Kosinski (“Tron: Legacy”) has an architecture background and it shows in the sleekly futuristic look the film gives to both the highly mobile Bubble ship, a combination jet plane and helicopter that looks like a flying can opener, and the Skytower, a coolly minimalistic residential structure set 3,000 feet above the surface of the earth.

As important as “Oblivion’s” look is its good fortune in having Cruise in the starring role of Jack Harper. The actor is essential in bringing conviction and credibility to this made-up world, and he also expertly handles the huge chunk of voice-over exposition that gets us up to speed in a complicated story.

“Oblivion” starts not with the future but with a black and white dream of Harper’s “Earth before the war, New York before I was born.” It’s a dream of a woman Harper feels he has some connection with, but given that the year is 2077, five years since Harper underwent a “mandatory memory wipe” for security purposes, he’s not surprised that he can’t quite figure it out.

FULL COVERAGE: Film reviews

The film’s back story is this: that an invading alien force lost the war but so destroyed Earth in the process that all of the planet’s survivors have moved to Titan, one of Jupiter’s moons. There life is supported by huge fusion reactors on Earth that create energy by relentlessly sucking up seawater.

But because remnants of the alien force, known as scavengers or scavs, remain active on the deserted earth, mechanized drones are needed to protect those vital reactors. And because anything mechanized tends to break down, human repairmen are essential, which is where Jack Harper comes in.

Known officially as Technician 49, Harper lives in that Skytower with his navigator, Victoria “Vika” Olsen (the gifted Andrea Riseborough), who stays in touch via video link with their commanding officer, down-home Sally (Melissa Leo, always effective). In just two weeks the pair are scheduled to be rotated off Earth, and though Vika for one can’t wait to leave, Harper is not so sure.

“Oblivion” is in no hurry to have its tricky plot unfold, and that enables the film to take full advantage of its lonely, “there’s nobody out there but us” scenario. We get to spend a lot of time with this one-man-band as he flies around servicing downed drones far and near on Earth’s vastness (chewing gum comes in surprisingly handy) and displaying a fondness for the flotsam and jetsam of the planet.

Because the spaces are so vast and the people so few, “Oblivion” unexpectedly plays at times like a chamber drama, so the high caliber of the two leads, joined later by Morgan Freeman, Olga Kurylenko and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, is a key factor in how evocative the story becomes.

For in typical Rod Serling fashion, what starts out simple and straightforward gets increasingly less so as reality-bending plot zigs and zags become the order of the day. More adventurous than your typical Hollywood tent pole, “Oblivion” makes you remember why science fiction movies pulled you in way back when and didn’t let you go.

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MPAA rating: PG-13 for sci-fi action violence, brief strong language, and some sensuality/nudity

Running time: 2 hours, 5 minutes

Playing: In general release

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Stylized sci-fi entertains; expect deaths, sexy stuff.

Parents Need to Know

Why Age 14+?

For most of the movie, language isn't very frequent (though what is heard in

Jack is "assigned" to Victoria both romantically and professionally. T

The drones kill -- instantly incinerating anyone or anything they're program

Jack and Victoria drink with dinner. A character smokes a cigar.

Despite the future setting, there are references to the New York Yankees and ban

Any Positive Content?

Jack is curious and questions the motives of mission control. He's willing t

Somewhat grim circumstances, but the movie highlights the way that humans manage

For most of the movie, language isn't very frequent (though what is heard includes "s--t," "damn," "hell," "goddamn," "oh my God," and "bitch"), but at the very end, there's one memorable use of "f--k."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Jack is "assigned" to Victoria both romantically and professionally. They shower together, sleep together, kiss several times, and, in one scene, Victoria seduces Jack by undressing (she's shown nude from the back), jumping into a pool and suggestively inviting him to join her. They're shown kissing passionately (he with his shirt off, she naked, with back and legs visible) underwater. Later, another couple kisses; it's implied that they make love, but nothing is shown.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Violence & Scariness

The drones kill -- instantly incinerating anyone or anything they're programmed to terminate. Several characters die or are injured (including some major characters), but it's not a bloodbath like War of the Worlds . Explosions, hand-to-hand fights, and lots of danger/peril.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Despite the future setting, there are references to the New York Yankees and bands/songs such as Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, and Procol Harum's "Whiter Shade of Pale."

Positive Role Models

Jack is curious and questions the motives of mission control. He's willing to think beyond authoritative directives and do what's best for humanity, even though it's against his orders. He's willing to save someone even after he discovers that she's not who he thought she was. Victoria is dedicated to her work, but she's unwilling to second guess any of her instructions, and she allows jealousy to cloud her instincts. Julia is patient and courageous. Beech is self sacrificing.

Positive Messages

Somewhat grim circumstances, but the movie highlights the way that humans manage to survive under the most difficult circumstances. Challenges people to listen to their instincts, to question following instructions and commands blindly, and to pay attention to their dreams. Also promotes the idea of taking care of the resources that we have -- and to not take them for granted.

Parents need to know that Oblivion is a post-apocalyptic sci-fi thriller that deals with the survival of humanity and a mysterious, violent alien threat. There are drones that kill instantly and turn their victims into ashes; several people die, including a few major characters. The language is pretty tame except for an occasional "s--t" and "damn" -- and one particularly memorable "f--k you." Sexuality includes a few passionate kisses and one seduction scene in which a woman is shown naked from the back. Oblivion is likely to appeal most to families with older teens who are either Tom Cruise fans or partial to futuristic action flicks. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Parent and Kid Reviews

Parents say (13)
Kids say (48)

Based on 13 parent reviews

A woman is 'assigned' to a man- of course she is shown naked.

What's the story.

In the year 2077, humans no longer live on Earth but instead reside on Titan, Saturn's largest moon. Left behind are Jack ( Tom Cruise ) and Victoria ( Andrea Riseborough ), a clean-up crew of sorts who are tasked with repairing drones before they, too, can join the rest of the surviving population on Titan. But Jack's mission changes when he rescues NASA astronaut Julia ( Olga Kurylenko ) from her ship's crash. It's clear that Jack may not have the complete truth -- and that the alien "Scavengers" roaming the Earth may not be the threat that Jack and Victoria have been warned about. After meeting the head of the Scavs, Jack must decide whether he's going to follow the mission's assignment or to believe strangers he feels inexplicably compelled to trust.

Is It Any Good?

Director Joseph Kosinski does a better job with OBLIVION than he did with his debut film, Tron: Legacy , but it's clear he's a filmmaker whose strength is stylized, visually arresting storytelling. The cinematography is terrific, with sweeping landscapes of post-apocalyptic New York, and the action sequences are pulse-pounding thanks to Cruise's mastery of the genre. Cruise manages to have decent chemistry with not one but two women -- the prim rules-follower played by Riseborough and the enigmatic woman of Jack's dreams, Kurylenko. It takes an extraordinary leading man to pull that kind of emotional connection off, and Cruise is up to the task.

One of the best moments in Oblivion is when viewers first hear co-star Morgan Freeman 's powerful voice before the lights turn on and his face is revealed. Few actors can exude Freeman's gravitas with such few words. Game of Thrones fans will also be pleased to see Nikolaj Coster-Waldau make an appearance. But in the end, this is a Cruise film all the way. How entertaining you consider the movie depends greatly on how good of an action star you consider him, because the third act does border on the overlong and unsatisfying. Still, despite its subpar story resolution, Oblivion is good enough to remember.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the popularity of post-apocalyptic stories. How does Oblivion compare to other alien movies like The Host or Prometheus ?

How does the violence in the movie compare to other sci-fi/action movies you've seen? Does the fact that some of the combatants are aliens give it any more/less impact?

Movie Details

In theaters : April 19, 2013
On DVD or streaming : August 6, 2013
Cast : Morgan Freeman , Olga Kurylenko , Tom Cruise
Director : Joseph Kosinski
Inclusion Information : Black actors, Female actors
Studio : Universal Studios
Genre : Science Fiction
Topics : Adventures , Space and Aliens
Run time : 126 minutes
MPAA rating : PG-13
MPAA explanation : sci-fi action violence, brief strong language, and some sensuality/nudity
Last updated : August 21, 2024

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Movie Review: Oblivion (2013)

Dan Gunderman
Movie Reviews
18 responses
--> April 20, 2013

Oblivion (2013) by The Critical Movie Critics

In pursuit or being pursued?

In choppy, frizzed, black and white video, Sally, a boisterous leader with a southern drawl asks, “Are you still an effective team?” Agreeably, the woman on the other end of the line, Victoria, responds with a nod and Sally labors forward with technical orders. But I too, can respond to this inquiry in agreement. Director Joseph Kosinski (“ TRON: Legacy ”), with Oblivion , has put together a clamorous, stimulating science fiction piece that keeps the viewer on seat edge for most of its 126 minute running time.

From the opening credits on, the production values of Oblivion leap out at you like a scouring deer in the headlights. Fortunately, like with the deer, disaster is averted and the film becomes the hippest blockbuster of the year thus far, maybe even since we saw Ridley Scott bring his A-game in “ Prometheus .” It also allows one to reclaim the admiration for Tom Cruise earned through roles in “ Top Gun ,” “ Rain Man ” and “ Eyes Wide Shut .”

2077: The contingent system is operating smoothly, and the Earth, ravaged by invasion and natural disaster, continues to be patrolled by Jack Harper (Cruise). He’s “Tech 49” whose duty is to patrol the last habitable grids of earth which have been left behind by a human race fleeing to a space station and Saturn’s largest moon. As his days wind down, and he completes maintenance on drones (which are the human race’s last “garrisons” and only protection against left-over alien invaders called “Scavs”) he heads home, thousands of feet in the air, where his partner and lover, Victoria (Andrea Riseborough, “ Welcome to the Punch ”) awaits his arrival.

Repeatedly, this cycle becomes Jack’s familiar routine; that is until a capsule comes crash-landing onto Earth, apparently drawn in from a Scav homing beacon. Investigating the scene, Jack finds that the ship contains human survivors. But as a drone approaches, he is befuddled as it soullessly executes the sleeping survivors. He manages to save one female in “delta sleep,” and coincidentally, she’s the same one Jack has seen over and over again in a distant, grey memory. He cannot pinpoint this flashback though, because six years earlier, the memories of Victoria and Jack had been wiped out, for security purposes. As he looks aghast at the strapping young woman, Julia (Olga Kurylenko, “ Seven Psychopaths ”), their time to become acquainted is cut short when the Scavs capture both her and Jack.

Tied up and bound to the middle of an underground facility, Jack soon finds out that what he’s come to know is not all that facile and legitimate. An underfoot leader, Malcolm Beech (Morgan Freeman, “ Olympus has Fallen ”) pleads for Jack to venture towards the forbidden “radiation zone” to discover the truth. Is Jack’s disenchanted life more fallacy than fact? Is this Julia character really someone from his distant past? What will become of the pillaged planet?

Many of those answers are a bit abstract and actually challenging to answer, becoming a substantial distraction for the film’s overall intentions. However, both the CGI and Tom Cruise carry the weight of Oblivion on their backs, with both being quite effective. And although you’re left second-guessing yourself time and again as events unfold, it’s hard to condemn this film — it’s so damn visually appealing that it is very easy to overlook the farcical plot and its obvious lapses.

Searching for “scavs.”

In a loud, flashy display cinematographer, Claudio Miranda, and editor, Richard Francis-Bruce, really transport viewers to 2077, where they gauge the deforested, barren landscape and fly along with Cruise in his thruster-propelled ship. Even the moon cast in the distance, ravaged by alien destruction, is realistic looking, enthralling moviegoers and earning Miranda and Francis-Bruce a meritorious pat on the back, well done.

And while many Sci-Fi films tend to bring down your guard during belief suspension (this film being no different), the themes of Oblivion can be salvaged — even from depths of the soil-ridden remnants of New York City skyscrapers. The power of certain scientific capabilities and the millenniums-long idea of a god-complex is deliberated here. Do our seemingly-diminutive actions have serious repercussions for the Earth? Does playing the almighty gradually destruct an entire species? Kosinski’s screenplay at least tries to fly at drone-speed towards these answers.

So the only question remaining is: Do you hold high narrative standards for your films? Or are you fine with being a little confused as a story unfolds and admire a couple hours of visually-appealing, cutting-edge effects? If it’s the latter, grab your keys and go to the theater right now. Oblivion is, as Cruise says intermittently throughout the film, “Another day in Paradise.”

Tagged: aliens , comic book adaptation , Earth , future

Dan is an author, film critic and media professional. He is a former staff writer for the N.Y. Daily News, where he served as a film/TV reviewer with a "Top Critic" designation on Rotten Tomatoes. His debut historical fiction novel, "Synod," was published by an independent press in Jan. 2018, receiving praise among indie book reviewers. His research interests include English, military and political history.

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'Movie Review: Oblivion (2013)' have 18 comments

April 20, 2013 @ 12:53 pm frommel

All great right up until the end.

April 20, 2013 @ 1:01 pm Silix

I thought it was a decent sci-fi flick, at most. Felt like the boys behind it were relying too heavily on the “surprise” ending to validate it.

April 20, 2013 @ 1:10 pm Bogen

I’ve always though Cruise was a more than capable actor but his effort in Oblivion isn’t anything special nor is it enough for me to put aside his recent bizarre Scientological behaviors.

April 20, 2013 @ 1:38 pm Vincent Frost

For lack of a better adjective, I found it sterile. Unengaging. There is little meat on the bone to go along with the slick visuals. And it doesn’t help that Cruise is on cruise control, Freeman is a nonfactor and Kurylenko is Kurylenko.

April 20, 2013 @ 7:10 pm Poux

Neutered would be the word I use. The highs never get high enough

April 20, 2013 @ 1:47 pm Chris

Warning to action fans: don’t expect big laser battle every 5 minutes. In fact, don’t expect any.

April 20, 2013 @ 2:14 pm Dan Gunderman

Also be on the look out for subtly strategic placements…Horatius, Charles Dickens…

April 20, 2013 @ 2:29 pm _UrbanSprawl_

Minority Report remains TC’s sci-fi triumph.

April 20, 2013 @ 3:08 pm General Disdain

Good review, Dan. You liked the movie more than I did – I was thinking it maybe earned a 3/5. Tom Cruise played the same generic character he’s been playing for the past ten years and for me the final payoff was a big, fat disappointment.

April 20, 2013 @ 4:46 pm AstroCamper

“Moon”-like.

April 20, 2013 @ 8:39 pm Gothica

“Matrix”-like.

April 20, 2013 @ 5:14 pm constitutionist

Am I looking too deeply into this or are the themes in this analogous to the current military use of drones?

April 20, 2013 @ 7:54 pm Nancy

Why is it aliens always have a ridiculously easy weakness to exploit? Just once I’d like to see some ingenuity in the way an overthrow is handled.

April 20, 2013 @ 11:27 pm footlong

The aliens in Signs had a ridiculously easy weakness to exploit. The aliens in this don’t exactly suffer from a weakness, bad judgement perhaps but that comes with delusions of infallibility …

April 21, 2013 @ 11:30 am Preston

Not that I’m a big supporter of it but Oblivion is one movie that may have popped further in the 3rd dimension.

April 23, 2013 @ 3:34 am Dan Gunderman

With the disappointing payoff, I agree, its even hard to grasp the plot for a bit, but I just think I’ve seen a lot worse (& the really neat cinematography adds a star)

April 23, 2013 @ 3:35 am Dan Gunderman

The vulnerable aliens are a bit cliche, but that’s a whole other issue with Hollywood in itself ya know…

April 29, 2013 @ 11:27 am jack riley

People—please stop sugarcoating it TC is a terrible actor who is one dimentional and only keeps working because he produces his own films–

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In Oblivion , Jack Harper (Tom Cruise) is part of a two-person crew tasked with protecting Earth's remaining resources following a cataclysmic alien invasion that left the planet uninhabitable. Along with his partner Victoria (Andrea Riseborough), Jack oversees and maintains a deadly armada of defense drones - charged with shielding massive resource harvesters from the hostile "Skav" attacks.

The pair are supported in their efforts by mission commander Sally (Melisso Leo) who lives aboard the Tet - an orbital space station and the base of harvest operations. In two weeks time, the harvesters will have collected enough raw materials from Earth to ensure humanity's long-term survival - at which point Jack and Victoria are scheduled to join the other survivors on Titan (Saturn's largest moon). However, when a routine Drone repair raises new information about the Skavs, Jack begins to ask dangerous questions about his mission.

Andrea Riseborough as Victoria in 'Oblivion'

Oblivion was directed by sophomore feature-filmmaker Joseph Kosinski - based on a graphic novel treatment that he co-penned with comic book writer Arvid Nelson (Dark Horse Comics' Rex Mundi ). Given his experience with Tron: Legacy (along with memorable commercials for Halo 3 and Gears of War ), Kosinski is no stranger to sprawling CGI worlds and slick futuristic tech - but from the opening scene, Oblivion sets out to tell a more contemplative story - one that can't simply be glossed over with memorable action beats. It's an intimidating and tricky balance to find - especially in a project that is so personal. By the time the credits roll, Kosinski was responsible for Oblivion 's creation, initial story, first screenplay adaptation, and directing.

Fortunately, with the help of screenwriters William Monahan ( The Departed ), Karl Gajdusek ( Dead Like Me ), and Michael Arndt ( Star Wars Episode 7 ), Oblivion also tells a captivating story - with interesting twists and entertaining (albeit brief) moments of humor and levity. Science fiction fans will be able to anticipate some of the plot beats ahead of schedule, but even in the cases where savvy moviegoers guess correctly, it rarely detracts from the intended emotional payoff.

Jack Harper (Tom Cruise) and Drone 166 in 'Oblivion'

In fact, Oblivion prioritizes its central character story over nearly every other element of the production - meaning that some moviegoers who were expecting a high-octane post-apocalyptic war story may be underwhelmed by the limited action set-pieces. The film includes a handful of exciting combat scenes - each with slick visual effects and enjoyable excitement - but relative to the character story and overall world-building, large scale action moments are in short supply. Instead, Oblivion unravels a multifaceted sci-fi mystery story - relying on tense character encounters and reveals to keep audiences engaged (even if plot holes and heavy-handed melodrama sometimes weigh it down).

Considering the relatively small cast, Cruise is responsible for a number of Oblivion 's best moments - gripping anxiety when fiddling with the finicky but lethal aerial drones, or a charming obsession when he encounters long-abandoned relics of humanity. Jack is a likable and contemplative lead character that fits within the usual Cruise wheelhouse, but even though he shares characteristics with Ethan Hunt ( Mission Impossible ) and John Anderton ( Minority Report ), the actor focuses on the right idiosyncrasies to serve Oblivion . Instead of adding another over-the-top action hero to his resume, Cruise is a bit more delicate with Jack - resulting in a more inviting and, at times, stirring performance.

Morgan Freeman and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau in 'Oblivion'

The supporting cast is equally competent with a complicated and rich turn from Andrea Riseborough ( Never Let Me Go ) as Victoria, Jack's communications officer and sole-confidant. Whereas Jack is hesitant to leave humanity's "home" (Earth), Victoria is eager to reunite with the rest of the survivors on Titan - and watching her attempt to placate and manage her increasingly erratic partner provides Riseborough with plenty of material. Similarly, Morgan Freeman, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Melissa Leo, and Olga Kurylenko all offer meaningful additions to the onscreen Oblivion drama - each with their own moments in the spotlight.

Kosinski also owes much of Oblivion 's success to the effects department - since they brought two of the more interesting "characters" to life: the previously mentioned aerial drones, and the drowned and frozen landscape of post-war New York City. The drones (number 166 in particular) walk a fascinating line between comedy relief and thoughtless killing machines - making them one of the most riveting and nerve-wracking aspects of the plot. Similarly, while New York City is effectively "dead," destroyed in the war, remnants of its former glory make for some of the more absorbing scenes in the film - and a constant reminder of the destruction wrought by the alien attack.

The post-apocalyptic skies of 'Oblivion'

Surprisingly, Oblivion was not post-converted into 3D but is getting a limited run in IMAX. In this case, the added IMAX cost is hard to justify - especially for moviegoers who expect significant return on a premium ticket experience. That said, for those who don't mind spending a few extra dollars, the IMAX experience could still be worthwhile. The bigger screen size enhances the scale in Oblivion 's post-apocalyptic settings and, more importantly, cranks up the sound. Honking and clunking mechanisms in the the drones and other high-tech vehicles help sell the authenticity of Kosinski's near-future world and a superior sound system is preferable (though, as stated, not essential).

Oblivion is not the most exciting or the smartest science fiction experience to ever hit theaters; action fans may be underwhelmed by a limited amount of gunplay, and viewers looking for an especially deep sci-fi world might find too many familiar tropes. Melodrama and predictable reveals keep the film from being the mind-bending creation that Kosinski may have envisioned, but the director still presents a captivating future with rich visuals and an intriguing protagonist. Oblivion could have easily been a convoluted and indulgent moviegoing experience; instead, the film keeps a restrained focus on Jack's character journey - which, thankfully, is an " effective team " of drama and post-apocalyptic adventure.

If you’re still on the fence about Oblivion , check out the trailer below:

[poll id="581"]

Oblivion runs 126 minutes and is Rated PG-13 for sci-fi action violence, brief strong language, and some sensuality/nudity. Now playing in regular and IMAX theaters.

Let us know what you thought of the film in the comment section below. If you’ve seen the movie and want to discuss details about the film without worrying about spoiling it for those who haven’t seen it, please head over to our Oblivion Spoilers Discussion .

For an in-depth discussion of the film by the Screen Rant editors check out our Oblivion episode of the SR Underground podcast .

Follow me on Twitter @ benkendrick for future reviews, as well as movie, TV, and gaming news.

Produced and directed by Joseph Kosinski, Oblivion tells the story of Jack Harper (Tom Cruise), a technician living in 2077, 60 years after scavenger aliens destroyed Earth's moon. While remaining on the abandoned Earth to repair drones, Jack encounters a sleep pod containing Julia, who has been in stasis since 2017. Finding her sees Jack embark on a journey to unlock the secrets of the past, all while fighting to save what remains of the Earth.

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Oblivion (2013 film)

Oblivion (2013 film) explained

Oblivion
Director:
Cinematography:
Editing:
Distributor:
Runtime:	124 minutes
Country:	United States
Language:	English
Budget:	$120 million
Gross:	$287.9 million

Oblivion is a 2013 American post-apocalyptic action-adventure film produced and directed by Joseph Kosinski from a screenplay by Karl Gajdusek and Michael deBruyn , starring Tom Cruise in the main role alongside Morgan Freeman, Olga Kurylenko , Andrea Riseborough , Nikolaj Coster-Waldau , and Melissa Leo in supporting roles. Based on Kosinski's unpublished graphic novel of the same name, the film pays homage to 1970s sci-fi, and is a "love story" set in 2077 on an Earth desolated by an alien war; a maintenance technician on the verge of completing his mission finds a woman who survived from a space ship crash, leading him to question his purpose and discover the truth about the war.

Oblivion premiered in Buenos Aires on March 26, 2013, and was released in theaters by Universal Pictures on April 19. [5] The film grossed $286 million worldwide on a production budget of $120 million and received mixed reviews from critics.

In 2077, repair technician Jack and communications officer Victoria appear to be the last people left on Earth. In 2017, scavenger aliens destroyed the Moon and invaded Earth; although humans won the war, the use of nuclear weapons left the Earth uninhabitable. Jack repairs combat drones that hunt the remaining scavengers and guard the hydrothermal platforms that convert seawater into fusion energy . The work is reported to Sally, the commander aboard the "Tet", a space station orbiting Earth. Within two weeks, the group will be departing for Saturn's moon Titan to join colonists there. Though Jack and Victoria's memories have been wiped, Jack dreams of a pre-war life with an unknown woman.

Jack escapes a scavenger trap while searching for a disabled drone inside the New York Public Library's ruins; meanwhile, a hydrothermal platform is destroyed. Jack discovers that the scavengers are radioing coordinates from the Empire State Building's antenna and sending the transmission into space. He occasionally visits a secluded lake filled with vegetation and a lakeside cabin he built filled with mementos of Earth's past.

An object falls from the sky to the coordinates. Jack finds five humans in sleep pods, including the woman from his dreams. A drone destroys four pods, but Jack prevents it from killing the woman and takes her to his and Victoria's aerial base. The woman, Julia, is a NASA astronaut who has been in suspended animation aboard the Odyssey spaceship for the past 60 years.

Jack and Julia retrieve the Odyssey's flight recorder but are captured by scavengers and taken to the Raven Rock Mountain Complex . The leader, Malcolm, reveals that the scavengers are disguised human survivors hiding from the drones. He frees Jack and Julia and insists on visiting the desert area that Jack knows as the deadly Radiation Zone so that they can discover the truth for themselves. Julia helps Jack recall that she is his wife.

Victoria sends a jet to retrieve Jack and Julia. Seeing their closeness, she reports to Sally that she and Jack are no longer "an effective team". Sally dispatches a drone that kills Victoria. Jack and Julia flee in the jet and destroy the drones chasing them, but they crash in the desert, where another clone of Jack arrives to fix disabled drones. Jack incapacitates him, but Julia is shot during their fight. Jack impersonates the clone to return to its base for medical supplies, where he encounters a clone of Victoria. Jack takes Julia to his cabin, where she recovers.

Back at Raven Rock, Malcolm tells them the Tet is an alien machine intelligence ship that is extracting the planet's resources. The moon's destruction caused catastrophic earthquakes and tsunamis on Earth, followed by an invasion from thousands of Jack clones. The escape to Titan and humanity's victory are fictional. The survivors brought down the Odyssey spaceship for its nuclear reactor to craft a bomb. Jack reprograms a captured drone to deliver the bomb to the Tet, but other drones attack the base, destroying the captured drone and gravely injuring Malcolm. Jack and Julia volunteer to deliver the bomb to the Tet manually.

En route to the Tet, Jack learns that he was a clone of the NASA mission commander, Jack Harper, who was on a mission to explore Titan. Victoria was his co-pilot, his wife Julia a crew member, and Sally the Earth mission director. After the mission was interrupted by the Tet's arrival, Jack separated the control capsule to save the crew members in their stasis pods. He and Victoria were captured and cloned.

Jack enters the Tet and offers Julia to the Tet's projection of Sally, but Malcolm instead emerges from the pod; the Tet would only let Jack on board if it sensed another life-form in the pod, and since Malcolm was dying anyway, he volunteered to join Jack to see the Tet first-hand as they set off the bomb. The two detonate it, destroying the Tet. Julia awakens in her pod by the cabin.

Three years later, Julia and her and Jack's daughter are living in the cabin. Survivors arrive with the help of the clone that Jack previously subdued in the desert. The clone has also recovered the original Jack's memories.

Tom Cruise as Jack Harper—Tech 49, a technician who works to repair drones on Earth and questions his mission. Originally, he was the American commander of a mission en route to Titan who was captured by the Tet and cloned to fight humanity. Cruise also plays Jack Harper—Tech 52, a clone who seeks out Julia after the destruction of the Tet.
Morgan Freeman as Malcolm Beech, an American veteran soldier and leader of a large community of scavengers, the human survivors of the alien Tet's attacks.
Olga Kurylenko as Julia Rusakova Harper, Jack's wife and a Russian crew member on the Odyssey , who was sent back towards Earth by her husband to protect her from the initial contact with the Tet.
Andrea Riseborough as Victoria "Vika" Olsen, Jack's communications partner and housemate. Originally, she was the British co-pilot of Jack's mission to Titan who was captured and cloned to assist in the Tet's war on humanity. Riseborough also plays a clone of Vika who Jack misleads to obtain medical supplies.
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Sergeant Sykes, the main military commander of Beech's community of scavengers who is skeptical of Jack at first.
Melissa Leo as the Tet, an alien artificial intelligence seeking to acquire Earth's natural resources and wipe out humanity. Leo also plays Sally, the mission director of Jack and Julia's mission to Titan; her likeness was copied by the Tet to serve as its visual and auditory representation.
Zoë Bell as Kara, a soldier and member of the scavengers.

Development

Joseph Kosinski started the movie process by beginning work on a graphic novel called Oblivion featuring his story. While the completion of this would be teased to the public and the concept was used to pitch the movie, it was never finished and Kosinski claims he never intended to, stating it was "just a stage in the project [of film development]". Arvid Nelson was billed as co-writer and Radical Comics was attached as publisher. The novel was never finished; Kosinski explaining: "the partnership with Radical Comics allowed me to continue working on the story by developing a series of images and continuing to refine the story more over a period of years. Then I basically used all that development as a pitch kit to the studio. So even though we really never released it as an illustrated novel the story is being told as a film, which was always the intention." [6] [7] [8]

Walt Disney Pictures , which produced Kosinski's previous film (2010), acquired the Oblivion film adaptation rights from Radical Comics and Kosinski after a heated auction in August 2010. The film was a directing vehicle for Kosinski, with Barry Levine producing, and Jesse Berger executive producing. Other studios that made bids on the film were Paramount Pictures , 20th Century Fox , and Universal Pictures . [9] Disney subsequently released the rights after realizing the PG-rated film they envisioned, in line with their family-oriented reputation, would require too many story changes. Universal, which had also bid for the original rights, then bought them from Kosinski and Radical and authorized a PG-13 film version. [10]

The film's script was originally written by Kosinski and William Monahan and underwent a first rewrite by Karl Gajdusek . [11] When the film passed into Universal's hands, a final rewrite was done by Michael Arndt , under the pen name "Michael deBruyn". [12] Universal was particularly appreciative of the script, saying, "It's one of the most beautiful scripts we've ever come across." [13]

The Bubble Ship operated by Cruise's main character, Jack 49, was inspired by the Bell 47 helicopter (often colloquially referred to as a "bubble cockpit" helicopter), a utilitarian 1947 vehicle with a transparent round canopy that Kosinski saw in the lobby of the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan, and which he likened to a dragonfly. Daniel Simon , who previously worked with Kosinski as the lead vehicle designer on Tron: Legacy , was tasked with creating the Bubble Ship from this basis, incorporating elements evocative of an advanced fighter jet with the Bell 47 to create a light, functional vehicle that was both practical and aesthetically pleasing, much as he observed with the ships in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

"When Kubrick made 2001 , rather than going to the hotshot concept designers of the day, he hired NASA engineers", said Simon. "I believe in form follows function . I'm not a fan of excessive decoration, of putting fins on something because it looks cool". Rather than employ digital models, Wild Factory, a Camarillo concept car company, built the Bubble Ship as a 25adj=midNaNadj=mid, 4000-, mostly aluminum prop. Elements of the cockpit, such as the placement of the joystick and pedals, were customized for Cruise, who is a qualified pilot, and who had some input into the design. The craft was also made to be easy to disassemble and assemble, to facilitate transport to Iceland shooting locations, where it would be mounted on a gimbal for shots of it flying. The unmanned aerial drones that were featured prominently in the plot were created to appear to be in the same design family as the Bubble Ship. [14]

Tom Cruise had expressed interest in the film for a long time, and officially committed to it on May 20, 2011.

For casting the lead role of Julia opposite Cruise, the producers considered five actresses: Jessica Chastain , Olivia Wilde , Brit Marling , Noomi Rapace and Olga Kurylenko , and all five auditioned on August 27, 2011. [15] On September 26, 2011, it was announced that Chastain had been cast. [16] Chastain was subsequently offered the lead role in the Kathryn Bigelow film Zero Dark Thirty (2012) and Cruise let her be released from her contract for Oblivion to make the other film, for which Chastain has publicly thanked Cruise. [17] The role was later recast with Kurylenko. [18]

In preparation for the role, Kurylenko watched astronaut training videos as well as classic science fiction and romance films, such as Solaris (1972), Notorious (1946), and Casablanca (1942). [19] "What's funny is I actually watched Solaris ; Joseph never brought it up", said Kurylenko. "I come from Tarkovsky -land, and at that point I hadn't watched it for many years. I watched the new one as well, with George Clooney and Natascha McElhone . The story – both in Solaris and Oblivion – deals with space and memory." [20]

For the other leading role, Victoria, the producers initially considered Hayley Atwell , Diane Kruger and Kate Beckinsale. The three actresses traveled to Pittsburgh to screen-test with Cruise, who was filming Jack Reacher (2012). [21] The role finally went to Andrea Riseborough . Melissa Leo was cast at a later date as Sally. [22]

Production began on March 12, 2012, and concluded on July 14, 2012. Filming locations included Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Louisiana . [23] [24] [25] Out of approximately three months of shooting, 69 days were shot in Louisiana, from March through May 2012, 11 days were shot in New York in June 2012, a few in Mammoth in California in June 2012, and 10 days were filmed in Iceland in June 2012, [26] when the daylight lasts for nearly 24 hours a day. As well as showcasing Iceland's volcanic landscapes, the film's director Joseph Kosinski sought to take advantage of the round-the-clock light, in particular the 6pm to 1am waning light known as " magic hour ", to "bring sci-fi out into the daylight", in contrast with films such as Alien , which spent their time in dark hulls or benighted planets. [27]

The single most difficult scene to film was when Harper takes a break to admire the view and waters a flower. It was filmed by having Cruise sit next to an 800feet drop at the top of Iceland's Jarlhettur on the root of Langjökull , which is accessible only by helicopter. [28] The scenes set at Harper's idyllic forest retreat were filmed at Black's Pond in June Lake, California . [29]

Oblivion was filmed with Sony 's CineAlta F65 camera, which was shipped in January 2012. [30] A Red Epic was also used for scenes that required going handheld or when body mount rigging was applied. [31] The film was shot in 4K resolution in Sony's proprietary raw image format , but for cost reasons (and over Kosinski's protests), both the digital intermediate and final version were done at 2K resolution . [32]

For the Sky Tower set (built on a soundstage in Baton Rouge), Kosinski and cinematographer Claudio Miranda worked closely with visual special-effects house Pixomondo to establish both environment and lighting by the use of 21 front-screen projectors aimed at a huge wraparound backdrop to form one continuous image, rather than blue screen backdrops. [33] The backdrop consisted of a single seamless piece of painted white muslin , 500by, which was wrapped around the set for 270-degree coverage. This enabled the full environment to be captured in camera, and assisted in lighting up to 90 percent of the set.

Had blue screen been used on the "glass house" Sky Tower, the glass would have disappeared into the blue lighting, and would have had to be reproduced digitally in post-production. The actors enjoyed working in the environment, as they could look outside and actually see the sunrise or sunset imagery. This new technique allowed them to cut down on both the effects shots, which ended up at around 800 in total, and the expenses. Even the "control table" which Victoria operates was filmed then displayed on a large screen. [34]

To obtain the necessary footage to create the illusion that the Sky Tower set was sitting high above the clouds, Pixomondo sent a crew to film the view from the peak of Haleakalā in Hawaii for four days with three Red Epic cameras mounted side by side on a single rig. Pixomondo's Stuttgart office then stitched together the data from the three cameras to form a single gigantic video stream (with each still image consisting of 26 megapixels) and produced a variety of different time-of-day clips to be projected on the set.

See main article: Oblivion (2013 soundtrack) . On June 28, 2012, it was announced that French electronic act M83 , consisting solely of Anthony Gonzalez at the time, would compose the soundtrack for Oblivion . [35] On why he chose M83 to score the film, director Joseph Kosinski said, "I went back and I found my first treatment for Oblivion from 2005 and it had listed in the treatment a soundtrack of M83. Obviously, the Tron: Legacy collaboration with Daft Punk worked out as good as I would have ever hoped, [so] I wanted to do something similar in that I'm pulling an artist from outside the movie business to create an original sound for this film." Kosinski continued, "Daft Punk's music wouldn't make sense for this movie. It had to be an artist whose music fit the themes and story I was trying to tell. And M83's music I felt was fresh and original, and big and epic, but at the same time emotional and this is a very emotional film and it felt like a good fit." [36]

To guide Gonzalez through the scoring process, Kosinski brought in Joseph Trapanese , to co-write the score alongside Gonzalez. Kosinski stated, "Together they have created the score that I have dreamed about since I first put this story down on paper eight years ago." [37] Trapanese first came to Kosinski's attention when he collaborated with Daft Punk on Tron: Legacy as arranger and orchestrator. [38]

In an interview with Rolling Stone , Gonzalez said, "I started to write the soundtrack just reading the script, and then when you get the picture in, it's different, and you kind of switch to another vibe and change stuff and start experimenting a lot with the music." Gonzalez added, "I worked with Joseph a lot, and he's very particular about the music in his movies, so we spent a lot of time talking about music and working the arrangements together." [39]

Back Lot Music released the soundtrack on April 16, 2013. [40] A deluxe edition of the soundtrack was released the same day exclusively through iTunes . It features an additional 13 tracks. [41] The soundtrack featured original music by M83, along with music composed by Gonzalez and Trapanese. The lyrics to " Oblivion " were written by Gonzalez and Susanne Sundfør . Metacritic rated the soundtrack 55/100. [42]

Details about Oblivion were kept secret, though the studio was said to have been "very excited" about the film. Promotions began in April 2012, with a part of the footage being screened at the 2012 CinemaCon even though filming had begun just one month before the event. The footage was described as "a combination of early concept art, rough animation, and unfinished dailies ", showcasing a glimpse of the film's landscapes.

Theatrical release

Oblivion was first presented in Buenos Aires on March 26, 2013, Dublin on April 3, and in Hollywood on April 10 at the Dolby Theatre where Cruise himself announced before the screening that the film was actually the first feature to be mixed completely "from start to finish" in the latest state-of-the-art Dolby Atmos surround sound. [43]

The DVD and Blu-ray for Oblivion became available online for pre-order in North America on April 24, 2013, just five days after its initial release in the region. [44] One month later it was announced that the United Kingdom branch of Universal Studios would be releasing the film on home video in its region on August 6, 2013, with the on-demand version on August 18, 2013. The release was scheduled to be in both a standard and a SteelBook Limited Edition form. [45] In June 2013, it was announced that the film would be released on home video in America also on August 6, 2013. The Blu-ray releases will feature commentary with Tom Cruise and director Joseph Kosinski, deleted scenes, M83's isolated score, and a series of making-of featurettes. [46] The Blu-ray debuted at number 1 in sales for its opening week. [47] On August 9, 2016, a 4K Blu-Ray edition was released. [48]

In North America , the film earned US$37.1 million on its opening weekend, including US$5.5 million from IMAX screenings in 323 theaters, making it Cruise's best North American opening after , Mission: Impossible film series and War of the Worlds . [49]

The film closed on June 27, 2013. Oblivion grossed US$89.1 million in the U.S. and US$198.8 million internationally, bringing the worldwide total to US$287.9 million.

Critical response

On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes , the film has an approval rating of 54% based on 259 reviews and an average score of 5.90/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Visually striking but thinly scripted, Oblivion benefits greatly from its strong production values and an excellent performance from Tom Cruise." [50] Metacritic gives the film a score of 54 out of 100 based on 41 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". [51] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B-" on an A+ to F scale. [52]

Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter stated " Oblivion is an absolutely gorgeous film dramatically caught between its aspirations for poetic romanticism and the demands of heavy sci-fi action". [53] Justin Chang of Variety said "Insofar as Oblivion is first and foremost a visual experience, a movie to be seen rather than a puzzle to be deciphered, its chief pleasures are essentially spoiler-proof." [54] Kevin Harley of Total Film gave the film three stars and said "It isn't a reboot or reimagining, refreshingly, but Oblivion plays like a stylised remix of superior sci-fi ground-breakers". [55] Andrew O'Hehir of Salon praised it as a "sly, surprising and visually magnificent Tom Cruise vehicle that has forced me – and many other people, I suspect – to revise my first opinion of director Joseph Kosinski." [56]

Tasha Robinson from The A.V. Club states that an "unsettling sense of not-quite-right coats all of the film's steely surfaces, and Kosinski and his co-writers give audiences plenty of time to absorb the unease and gear up for the action". [56] Some reviewers noted the filmmakers' ambition. James Berardinelli of ReelViews calls the film "imperfect but some of its imperfections result from being overly ambitious". [56] Bill Goodykoontz from the Arizona Republic states that the film "may not live up fully to its grand ambitions, but it isn't for lack of trying". [56] Jake Coyle of the Associated Press states that "[f]or those who enjoy the simple thrill of handsomely stylized image-making, Oblivion is mostly mesmerizing." [56] Alan Scherstuhl from the Village Voice states that "Kosinski proves himself talented in ways his Tron: Legacy didn't suggest." [56]

Kenneth Turan from the Los Angeles Times called the film "[m]ore adventurous than your typical Hollywood tent pole, Oblivion makes you remember why science fiction movies pulled you in way back when and didn't let you go." [56] Michael O'Sullivan of The Washington Post states that "[i]f you're able to forgive and forget, Oblivion isn't a bad place to start loving Tom Cruise all over again." [56] Steven Rea of The Philadelphia Inquirer states that "[Cruise] oversees some pretty impressive stuff here, from the drones that ping-pong around in the air to the bubbleship that Jack uses to go to and fro to that awesome house with its panoramic views." [56] Peter Howell of the Toronto Star states that the film "gives us stars in the cast, stars in our eyes and it even tweaks a brain cell or three". [56]

Colin Covert from the Minneapolis Star Tribune states that the "film is rife with elements from its finest predecessors – Kubrick, Lucas , the Wachowskis, and Pixar could be listed as creative consultants – but it has the spirit of a love letter to classic sci-fi, not an opportunistic mash-up". [56] Cary Darling of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram states that the film is "stitched together from spare bits of other, often better films, stumbl[ing] awkwardly in story and plot, shuffling toward the predictable explosions and fireballs of the third act. Yet... Oblivion is so beautiful to look at." [56]

Richard Corliss of TIME stated that "[i]n space, Jack [Harper] hopes, someone may hear you dream. But in a movie theater, no one will see you yawn." [56] Anthony Lane of The New Yorker states that the film "[f]eels ever more grounded and stuck." [56] Richard Roeper of Richard Roeper.com called it the "sci-fi movie equivalent of a pretty damn good cover band". [56] Tom Charity of CNN.com called it "[g]lossy, derivative, ambitious and fatally underpowered." [56] J. R. Jones of the Chicago Reader states that the "story eventually devolves into a grab bag of sci-fi tropes but, as with so many other Cruise productions, the sheer scale of everything is so mind-numbing that you may not notice". [56] Rick Groen of Canada's The Globe and Mail called it "an okay blockbuster, a multimillion-dollar exercise in competence". [56]

Tom Long of the Detroit News states that "Kosinski offers plenty of action here, and he lets the plot reveals bleed out slowly (explanations keep coming right to the end)." Long states that "a great deal is derivative, but it's fast-moving derivative". [56] Stephen Whitty of the Newark Star-Ledger states that the movie "combines a lot of different films, yet somehow remains less than the sum of its parts". [56] Claudia Puig of USA Today states that "Kosinski focuses on cool visuals but stints on a compelling plot. It's a dazzler, but the story lacks the impact of the futuristic look." [56] Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal states that the "mystery posed by Oblivion as a whole is why its mysteries are posed so clumsily and worked out so murkily". [56]

Manohla Dargis of The New York Times states that the "agony of being a longtime Tom Cruise fan has always been a burden, but now it's just, well, dispiriting". [56] Rafer Guzman of Newsday states that "[p]laying spot-the-influence is the most fun you'll have during this expensive-looking, slow-moving plod through familiar territory." [56] Joe Williams of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch states that "[i]nstead of developing characters, Kosinski pours most of his imagination into the annihilated landscapes and futuristic gadgetry." [56] Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune states that "[w]hen you go to a futuristic, dystopian, post-apocalyptic barn dance starring Tom Cruise and his space guns, you expect a little zap with your thoughtful pauses." [56] Peter Travers of Rolling Stone calls it "arid and antiseptic, untouched by human hands". [56]

Rene Rodriguez of the Miami Herald states that the "filmmakers don't even have the courage to see the story to its proper end, opting for a ridiculous finale that feels vaguely insulting". [56] Soren Anderson from The Seattle Times states that "[y]ou start wondering whether director Joseph Kosinski and screenwriters Karl Gajdusek and Michael DeBruyn have any original ideas of their own. And then you realize they don't." [56] Randy Myers of the San Jose Mercury News states that the "mix of gee-whiz gadgetry and the day-to-day routineness of Jack and Victoria's lives is interesting enough, but the film is too glacially paced for it to work". [56] Chris Nashawaty of Entertainment Weekly states that "[a]ll the eye candy in the world can't mask the sensation that you've seen this all before...and done better. Too bad the movie's script wasn't given the same attention as its sleek, brave-new-world look." [56]

List of dystopian films
List of films featuring drones
List of films featuring space stations
Moon (2009 film)
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https://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=101262 "Listen to a Track From the Oblivion Score "
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External links

Oblivion - Production Information at Celluloid Digital Portraits

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License . It uses material from the Wikipedia article " Oblivion (2013 film) ".

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Oblivion Reviews

The lack of seriousness, the pitiful humor, the bad acting, and the hokey dialogue all contribute to the generally low quality.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/10 | Sep 21, 2020

It's definitely a banner Full Moon genre entry deserving of its cult status...

Full Review | Jan 3, 2014

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 1, 1994

IMAGES

Oblivion
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Oblivion (Movie) Guide
Review: Oblivion
Oblivion movie review & film summary (2013)
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VIDEO

OBLIVION: Official Trailer (με ελληνικούς υπότιτλους)
Oblivion Movie Review
💥Oblivion movie review Tamil🚀 2013 🌪️Sci-fi/Action 🪐Tamil dubbing movie review
Oblivion movie(episode 4)
Oblivion -- Official Trailer 2013 -- Regal Movies [HD]
Oblivion Clip

COMMENTS

Oblivion
Oblivion is an absolutely gorgeous film dramatically caught between its aspirations for poetic romanticism and the demands of heavy sci-fi action. After a captivating beginning brimming with mystery and evident ambition, the air gradually seeps out of the balloon that keeps this thinly populated tale aloft, leaving the ultimate impression of a ...
Oblivion critic reviews
Jun 11, 2013. Oblivion is a special effects extravaganza with a lot of blatant symbolism and very little meaning. It starts slow, turns dull and then becomes tedious — which makes it a marginal improvement over the earlier film. It features shiny surfaces, clicky machinery and no recognizable human behavior.
Oblivion (2013)
41 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com. 70. The Hollywood Reporter Todd McCarthy. Oblivion is an absolutely gorgeous film dramatically caught between its aspirations for poetic romanticism and the demands of heavy sci-fi action. After a captivating beginning brimming with mystery and evident ambition, the air gradually seeps out of the ...
Critics Consensus: Oblivion Looks Great, But Its Story Meanders
Oblivion 54%. Can a movie get by on good looks alone? Critics say Oblivion is visually striking but narratively thin, a thoughtful sci-fi head trip that starts strong but gets bogged down by its murky storyline. While working as a repairman on an abandoned, post-Apocalyptic Planet Earth, Jack Harper (Tom Cruise) discovers that he's not alone — and that everything he knows has been a lie.
Oblivion movie review & film summary (2013)
Oblivion movie review & film summary (2013)
Oblivion
Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jun 9, 2022. Don Shanahan Every Movie Has a Lesson. Filled with amazing post-apocalyptic spectacle, dazzling action sequences, and a heady story of twists and ...
'Oblivion' review: a post-apocalyptic beauty that ...
2013 is shaping up to be the year of the high-end science fiction movie. With the likes of Will Smith and Matt Damon starring in new genre films, and some major blockbusters from J.J. Abrams and G...
Film Review: 'Oblivion'
Film Review: 'Oblivion'. A moderately clever dystopian mindbender with a gratifying human pulse, despite some questionable narrative developments along the way. By Justin Chang. Although ...
Tom Cruise, Morgan Freeman: 'Oblivion' Film Review
Oblivion: Film Review. Universal's sci-fi thriller, from "Tron: Legacy" director Joseph Kosinski, opens April 19. By Todd McCarthy. Plus Icon. Todd McCarthy More Stories by Todd McCarthy.
Oblivion Review
Oblivion Review Sumptuous sci-fi that lacks originality. By Chris Tilly. Posted: Apr 10, 2013 3:28 pm. Oblivion may have one of the most exposition-heavy prologues ever committed to film. In ...
Movie Review
Rated PG-13; sci-fi action violence, brief strong language, and some sensuality/nudity. With: Tom Cruise, Morgan Freeman, Melissa Leo.
Oblivion (2013)
Oblivion (2013)
Review: Tom Cruise's 'Oblivion' a sci-fi adventure to remember
April 18, 2013 12 AM PT. "Oblivion" will make you remember, not forget. This Tom Cruise vehicle is a throwback to the days when on-screen science fiction was about speculative ideas rather ...
'Oblivion' movie review
April 18, 2013 at 5:09 p.m. EDT. "Oblivion" looks marvelous, in the deliciously dystopian way of so many post-apocalyptic films. It's set in 2077, after alien invaders called Scavengers (or "Scavs ...
Oblivion user reviews
Metacritic aggregates music, game, tv, and movie reviews from the leading critics. Only Metacritic.com uses METASCORES, which let you know at a glance how each item was reviewed. ... Oblivion User Reviews. Add My Rating Critic Reviews User Reviews Cast & Crew Details 7.0. User Score Generally Favorable ...
Oblivion Movie Review
Parents need to know that Oblivion is a post-apocalyptic sci-fi thriller that deals with the survival of humanity and a mysterious, violent alien threat. There are drones that kill instantly and turn their victims into ashes; several people die, including a few major characters. The language is pretty tame….
Movie Review: Oblivion (2013)
If it's the latter, grab your keys and go to the theater right now. Oblivion is, as Cruise says intermittently throughout the film, "Another day in Paradise.". Critical Movie Critic Rating: 4. Movie Review: Mud (2012) Movie Review: The Place Beyond the Pines (2012) Tagged: aliens, comic book adaptation, Earth, future.
'Oblivion' Review
Oblivion is not the most exciting or the smartest science fiction experience to ever hit theaters; action fans may be underwhelmed by a limited amount of gunplay, and viewers looking for an especially deep sci-fi world might find too many familiar tropes. Melodrama and predictable reveals keep the film from being the mind-bending creation that ...
Oblivion (2013 film) explained
Oblivion is a 2013 American post-apocalyptic action-adventure film produced and directed by Joseph Kosinski from a screenplay by Karl Gajdusek and Michael deBruyn, starring Tom Cruise in the main role alongside Morgan Freeman, Olga Kurylenko, Andrea Riseborough, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, and Melissa Leo in supporting roles. Based on Kosinski's unpublished graphic novel of the same name, the film ...
Oblivion
The lack of seriousness, the pitiful humor, the bad acting, and the hokey dialogue all contribute to the generally low quality. Full Review | Original Score: 3/10 | Sep 21, 2020. It's definitely a ...
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion critic reviews
Metacritic aggregates music, game, tv, and movie reviews from the leading critics. Only Metacritic.com uses METASCORES, which let you know at a glance how each item was reviewed. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion critic reviews - Metacritic
The Arc of Oblivion
The Arc of Oblivion explores a quirk of humankind: in a universe that erases its tracks, we humans are hellbent on leaving a trace. Set against the backdrop of the filmmaker's quixotic quest to build an ark in a field in Maine, the film heads far afield - to salt mines in the Alps, fjords in the Arctic, and ancient libraries in the Sahara - to illuminate the strange world of archives ...