The Reel Critic: Cruise Flick Fades Into ‘Oblivion’

“Oblivion” is the result of some macabre thought-experiment, wherein every device necessary to tell an effective story is eliminated in favor of Tom Cruise’s face and the basic tropes of pop science fiction. It’s a structure that broaches questions about why we care about science fiction in the first place. The presumption is that an audience will overlook plot in science fiction if the world is sexy and seductive enough. And if Oblivion is considered solely on the basis of its world, it is more mediocre than it is offensively awful. If “Oblivion” is considered on the whole, it is awful.

Our introduction to the world of “Oblivion” is a flagrantly long voice-over: the entire context for the conflict is given in this opening speech. It is an inexcusable opening that sours the first act of the movie and it’s a tactic that “Oblivion” gratuitously repeats. But Cruise’s opening gives us the basics: the year is 2077, mankind has been nearly wiped-out by a series of wars with a sect of aliens and humanity is preparing a pushback against the invaders.
Tom Cruise plays a guy named Jack Reacher (wait, no — Jack Harper, that is) who, with his love interest Victoria, remains on earth to gather resources in hopes of sending them to the human colony on Titan. Summarizing any further runs the risk of revealing spoilers — there is a big plot twist in the film which is indeed highly derivative and partially predictable. Melissa Leo gives a nice performance as Jack and Victoria’s lone connection to the outside world, but that she is so cheery from the start of the movie is an alarm; something has to be up.

The central theme is memory: we’re told from the beginning that Jack has lost his memory. The drama then becomes that Jack has dreams and memories of a woman, which is troubling in his state of amnesia.

What a boring plot device. Make no bones about it: “Oblivion” only exists because of its visual appeal.  Director Joseph Kosinski takes a unique satisfaction in letting the world exist without constant action — especially in the first half-hour of the movie the pace is contemplative and this is when “Oblivion” is at its best. The color palette relies on melancholic blues and pine trees. It feels like an ominous, mechanized version of Alaska. The problem is that we have no vested interest in not only the characters in “Oblivion,” but also its world, and despite its aesthetic allure, it quickly feels vapid and hollow. As soon as Kosinski begins to forgo contemplative scenery for exposition, the movie comes undone.
Tom Cruise only exacerbates the problem, playing an unmistakable everyman, who wears the archetypical baseball cap, chews gum, fights for earth. What I don’t understand is why Cruise is ever cast as an everyman to begin with — there is something inherently unrelatable about his action-hero passion. This is not to say that he is a poor actor, or even that he gives a poor performance in “Oblivion” – only that he is miscast. His performance, like most of Oblivion, is meant to be homage to the sci-fi flicks of the 1970s: the entire structure of the movie is laced with references. But there is a fine line between “paying homage” and “ripping off.”

“Oblivion” is instantly reminiscent of literally every piece of pop-science fiction, and peculiarly reminiscent of 2001, “Battlestar Galactica,” “Gattica,” the new “Star Trek,” “Mass Effect” even “Halo.” Those latter four are themselves highly derivative — it is the nature of science-fiction to borrow ideas. Here, I feel like there are copyrights being infringed. This is not necessarily to say that ‘Oblivion’ doesn’t perform a function as a competent piece of disposable entertainment: it can accomplish that end, in a pinch. But if the basic utility of sci-fi is its ability to take us to new, exciting realities, the world must offer at least some fresh iteration on borrowed ideas, or something otherwise interesting — something, anything. “Oblivion” gives us nothing.