It’s always nice to see a film with an original story in the current time of remakes, reboots, and films that are based on licensed properties. ‘Oblivion’ is one of those films. Well, actually, from a technical standpoint, it’s not entirely original because it’s based off of a graphic novel of the same name but from a story standpoint, it is an original story. The graphic novel in question was written by Joseph Kosinski and Arvid Nelson. Kosinski made his directorial debut three years ago with ‘Tron: Legacy’ and now he finally brings his graphic novel to the big screen. For the most part, his sophomore directorial effort is an improvement over ‘Legacy’ in areas such as visuals and even story/characters, even though the script does becomes problematic at a key point in the film.
In the year 2077, Earth has been decimated by a war sixty years earlier with alien scavengers, despite the fact that Earth ultimately ended up winning the war. While most of humanity has relocated to the Saturn moon Titan, some humans are still stationed on Earth with the mission of extracting the planet’s last resources. Jack Harper (Tom Cruise) and his communications officer Victoria (Andrea Riseborough) are two of the humans stationed on Earth with Jack’s main job being the mechanic for the drones that patrol the planet and eliminate any remaining alien resistance. Sometime near the end of his mission, Jack investigates a spacecraft landing where he finds a woman named Julia (Olga Kurylenko) who had been a recurring element in his dreams of a time before the war. This leads Jack on a new path where he learns the truth about who the real enemy is.
For most of the film, the writing is actually really good in terms of both story and characters. The story is solid and keeps your interest throughout. It is a good idea to go into this film without knowing too much about it because it does pull some surprises. The characters are also engaging enough to follow and the relationships between some of the characters, like Jack and Victoria, are well-written. But while the writing doesn’t hit any roadblocks for the majority of the film, it does falls apart at the end of the film. You could say it’s either that the film throws too much at you but leaves some things unresolved or that it just gets a bit too confusing. There is good build-up here but the writing gets a bit too jumbled at the end which leaves you with some disappointing payoff.
But while the writing falls apart at the end of the film, the rest of the film is very solid. The visuals are breath-taking, drawing you into this futuristic world. The acting is solid all-around. Tom Cruise and Morgan Freeman, who plays the leader of a human resistance, both give solid performances as usual. However, Freeman’s character doesn’t play as big of a role in the film as much as the trailers want you to think. Olga Kurylenko does a good job too, but she’s really overshadowed by Andrea Riseborough, who just does a fantastic job here. The scenes between her and Cruise are some of the highlights of the film and she’s better at getting across the emotions of her character better than Kurylenko, even when considering the major connection that the latter’s character has to Cruise’s. Finally, for the second film in a row, Kosinski goes with a unique composer for the film’s score. In ‘Tron Legacy’ it was Daft Punk and here, it’s M83 who delivers a score that’s both epic and beautiful.
I was literally this close to giving ‘Oblivion’ a 5/5 rating because of the breathtaking visuals, interesting characters, and a solidly constructed story. However, the writing does fall apart at the end of the film. It throws a lot of ideas at you, but gets a bit too jumbled and a little confusing when it tries to put it all together. But the rest of the movie is good enough that it at least makes up for its shortcomings at the tail end of the film. With two films under his belt, Kosinski is a director on the rise in Hollywood. He really knows how to draw you in to the universes that he creates. He just needs to work a bit more on the writing but aside from that, I’m sure we’ll hear more from him in the future.
Rating: 4/5
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