Oblivion Movie Review

Oblivion

                                         

Oblivion is a science fiction action thriller movie released in 2013. The release date of this movie is near to Will Smith's sci-fi movie After Earth. This movie is based on Joseph Kosinski's unpublished graphic novel of the same name. Oblivion is written by Joseph Kosinski, Michael Arndt and Karl Gajdusek and directed by Joseph Kosinski. This movie has a very small set of characters, which is played by Tom Cruise, Morgan Freeman, Olga Kurylenko, Andrea Riseborough, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Melissa Leo.

Oblivion tells the story of future, where a drone technician finds a lady whom he has dreamt several times, in a crashed spaceship. Then the whole world, as he knows it, starts to change.

Tom Cruise and Olga Kurylenko in Oblivion

Plot:

This is a story of the year 2077. Around 60 years ago, some aliens (called Scavengers, or scavs) has attacked earth. They have started the attack by destroying the moon, creating environmental imbalance in planet earth. Then they invaded earth. To stop them, the world leaders have used nuclear bombs, which made the earth uninhabitable even for human. Mankind has moved to Titan, one of Saturn’s moons.

Now human have put several machines which generate power from the seawater. Scavs are still there in the earth, so human are using drones to protect the machines. There is also a space station named Tet near the earth, which is used as the control station of the whole program.

Jack is one of the very few people living in the earth. He is a drone technician. His job is to take care of the drones and repair them when needed. He lives in a secure high tech beautiful home with his partner and lover Victoria, who coordinates and navigates Jack’s mission according to the orders from the Tet. It’s been 5 years since Jack had a mandatory memory swipe, but regularly he dreams of another lady with him in a busy city.

Jack’s days pass by doing his job, while frequently he has to fight with scavs. In one situation, when he was face to face with a group of scavs, he finds that the scavs are no trying to kill him, but trying to catch him. He has a secret place, where there is still some trees left and there he has a cabin by a lake, where he goes secretly to relax.

One day, Jack and Victoria find a strange signal coming from a tower. Jack there place and before disabling it, he finds that, the signal is broadcasting coordinates of a location. Later on that day, Jack finds a crashed spaceship there with the crews in capsules. To Jack’s amazement, a drone comes there and starts killing them, instead of saving them. In one capsule, Jack finds the girl from his dream and saves her from the drones by risking his life. He brings her to his home.

As soon as she wakes up, she seems to recognize Jack. She tells her name is Julia and her spaceship was a mission by NASA. She then wants to recover the flight recorder from her ship, so Jack takes her to the crash site. There they are attacked by the scavs and the scavs take them to their hiding place.

After going there, Jack finds that the scavs are nothing but human. They ask Jack’s help to plant a bomb in the Tet. Jack refuses and then the scav leader lets him go free and suggests him to visit the restricted ‘radiation zone’ where, according to Jack’s instructions, he will burn if he enters.

Jack takes Julia to some place and asks her identity. Then Julia reveals that she is Jack’s wife. Jack then remembers some of his memories with Julia. Victoria sees the scene with her camera, and when Jack and Julia returns home, Victoria refuses to open the door. She also reports to the Tet that they are no more an effective team.

Suddenly, a drone gets activated and kills Victoria. It then tries to kill Jack, but Julia saves him. Then Jack and Julia get chased by some more drones and finally crash in the radiation zone. At the radiation zone, Jack finds a clone of himself and both of the clones start to fight. In their fight, Julia gets injured. So find treatment for her, Jack finds a home identical to his home in another zone, with the clone of Victoria as well.

To find answers, Jack and Julia go to the scav leader again. Here Jack tries to find the facts about the Tet, the scavs, his own past, Julia’s true identity and the mystery of the clones.

My reviews about the movie Oblivion:

I liked Oblivion very much, not for the plot, but for the beautiful cinematography and special effects.

The plot of Oblivion is very simple and predictable. There is no doubt that the plot is good, but we have seen a lot of movies with kind of similar plots, like I’Robot or the Eagle Eye. In a movie with Tom Cruise in it, we obviously expect something remarkable. There were a lot of hints throughout the movie Oblivion, so it became predictable that who the main villain was.

What made the Oblivion special was the beautiful screenplay, cinematography and the special effects. The use of special effects was extra-ordinary, even comparing with other high rated science fiction movies. The set design, lighting and camera works were perfect matches with the context of this movie.

Oblivion has a remarkably small set of characters but each of them has performed perfectly. I don’t need to write anything about Tom Cruise or Morgan Freeman, but everyone else did very well. The make ups and the dialogues were also extremely good. But this movie has very small amount of action sequences. More action sequences could make Oblivion more enjoyable.

Another downside of Oblivion is, a lot of screen time was given only to show Tom Cruise alone, specially on the first half. It was bearable only because it was extremely handsome Tom Cruise. With any other actor, it would look boring.

Although there is a small nudity at the beginning, but I still think it safe to watch Oblivion with kids.

So, finally, Oblivion is good movie, where everything, except the plot, were extra-ordinary. My time was well spent watching this movie and I’ll definitely recommend Oblivion to all movie lovers.

Did you like Oblivion? What do you think about its plot? Share with others in the comments.

To know more about it:

IMDB link: Oblivion on IMDB

Wikipedia link: Oblivion on Wiki 

To watch this movie on Amazon, you can find the best deal on it here: Oblivion Movie