Since this is no longer a secret I will just come out and say it, I saw Oblivion and it was awkward to say the least. For a film being raved as this year's best picture (which always annoys me when that's said, um hello it's only April?!) this one hit pretty far off the mark, in fact so far off the mark that it left me rather flabbergasted as to the point of it being made.Oblivion, stars Tom Cruise (Jack Harper), a future human who is only on this earth to repair drones and clean up after some war. This "war" was never really described or explained thoroughly enough; to put it into comparitive terms Tom Cruise's character is WALL-E, he even finds a plant and has a random collection of earth artifacts. Planet Earth is destroyed beyond inhabitable conditions, so humans must venture elsewhere to live, in the case of Oblivion they moved to two locations: Titan, which is one of Saturn's moons, and the Tet, which is some weird looking triangular space station. The clean-up team is composed of Jack Harper and Victoria (Harper's mission director, played by Andrea Riseborough). The reason Earth is still necessary is because the Tet needs the Hydrogen generated from the ocean's of Earth, and these generators are protected by drones which are thusly repaired by Cruise...you following?
Even though earth is "uninhabitable", there are creatures known only as Scavs and they are
I will not get too deep into the story because I hate spoilers and I would dislike writing them, if you want to know what transpires throughout this film, email me, or tweet me POPCORN or SNORE as for the rest of you, maybe you should go forth and see this, in RedBox or on cable. Don't
My issue with this film is straightforward. For those of you dedicated readers you will know that the most important aspect to making a great film is a solid script, in the case of Oblivion, the script was about as solid as an uncooked egg, and there was no reason for this weakness. Oblivion had so much potential coming out of the gates. It had blockbuster written all over it! With a solid team of writers...oh wait, nevermind. This script was "penned" by a three man team: Joseph Kosinki (who doubled as the Director), Karl Gajdusek and Michael Arndt. I want to share something with you I found to be alarming. Of the three men I listed just prior to this sentence, only Michael Arndt has real writing credits to his name. In fact he was the writer for: Toy Story 3, Brave, Little Miss Sunshine, as well as some films not yet released: The Hunger Games:Catching Fire and Star Wars: Episode VII. Unfortunately, what this tells me is that you had one guy with experience and two guys with the desire. The problem is that what they presented to the world in the form of Oblivion was abysmal.
Oblivion hurts further than all of this in that it had so much potential for being awesome. Even though there was a high presence of CGI in the film it didn't have that horribly fake look, it actually looked really good. During the films struggle to keep anyone's attention there were multiple plot twists, and I mean serious plot twists. Things that even the most avid film goer may not predict. Normally, this is what helps make a film, in the case of Oblivion it made the film sink faster than the Titanic...too soon? Every plot twist and turn fell as flat as the rest of the film. Instead of taking these little plot point spikes, in the otherwise flat lined story, and grow with the incline towards the spectacular, they were let go and left to fizzle out. The viewer was given tidbits of information which move along the story and should help elevate our interests, but they were never utilized the way they should have been. At any of these points in the story, the film could have sat up and exploded towards an exciting resolution...not the case. Ughhhh and to think I saw this in IMax.
In the end I realized that Oblivion was none other than a fan boys interpretation of what Sci-Fi should be/already is. There were far too many coincidental characters, story lines, and ideas to be anything other than that. The Scavs in this film resembled Darth Vader and the Sand People from Star Wars;
Even a space craft from one of Cruise's flashbacks was named the Odyssey. I know it's been said that there are no original scripts out there, no original stories left, every rock has been overturned, every nook and cranny exploited, but come on here guys! You couldn't have made this any less similar to the other movies out there? You even had Tom Cruise dog fighting in his "plane" against the evil drones... Top Gun anybody? Look at the movie poster for crying out loud, what's that about?
By the way, Morgan Freeman was also in this film, woopty-do!!! He wasn't in the film long enough for the viewer to understand and connect with his character, which is another reason as to why this film was a flop.
The weak story as I have mentioned is the ultimate bad guy in this film. It's rough because I felt as though the acting was rather good. Sure some of the dialogue was odd and out of place, but as I've been saying people, when your script blows like the Santa Ana's then you are bound to have fall-out elsewhere. I'm not going to lie about this one here readers. I am on the fence about the score. There were moments when I was more entertained and less bored, as well as those plot twist moments when my brain wanted to say, "Boyhowdy let's do this!" but sadly I must stick to my guns, and shoot this film right between its eyes. Please see below for the final words.
| Final Words: zzz. The look of the film and the direction in which it was heading were neat, even the acting was fine, but the lack of story drive and pulse kept this film grounded. If you decide you must see this film skip the theaters, or at least find the cheapest tickets. Until next time, happy viewing! Review Rating : Based on popcorn sizes; small, medium, large, extra-large When films get a snore zzz... worth skipping | ||
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