While the summer movie season doesn’t officially kick off for a few more weeks, if you’re looking for a popcorn spectacular to tide you over until Tony Stark and Captain Kirk return, try Oblivion.
Tom Cruise takes on the mantle of a character named Jack for the second time this year. But instead of being a former Army officer for hire, this time Cruise’s character is part of a team left behind of Earth to maintain and protected huge devices that are converting our seas to hydrogen.
In the wake of an alien attack sixty years in earlier in which aliens destroyed the moon and humanity had to drive them off with nuclear weapons, humanity took refuge on Saturn’s moon Titan. Jack and his partner Victoria are left protecting the converters and maintaining giant drones that seek and destroy the aliens who want to destroy the huge converters.
As the movie opens, Jack reveals that he and Victoria (who live above the surface in a home that is something out of the Jetsons) had their memories wiped five years ago and that their time on the job is nearly done. Just another few weeks and they can wrap things up and head out to Titan.
However, despite the memory wipe, Jack still has memories of life before the invasion and a mysterious other woman. He’s also got a rebellious streak to him — collecting tidbits from the fallen Earth and stores them at a rural cabin he’s built on the surface, which he visits from time to time. He also begins to have a sneaking suspicion that there’s more going on than meets the eye.
Events start to unfold that make Jack’s doubts seem more and more valid as the movie unfolds. To say more would be to give away too many of the twists and turns from the film. And while there are twists and turns to the film, audiences familiar with the sci-fi genre will probably see many of them coming long before the story gets to them.
At its core, Oblivion is a fun, popcorn movie. Visually stunning and stylish, Oblivion features solid performances from Cruise, Morgan Freeman, former Bond girl Olga Kurylenko and Andrea Riseborough. And just like the previous work (Tron: Legacy) from director Joe Kosinski, the biggest thing audiences will take away from the film is the memorable soundtrack. This time it’s from M83 and, yes, it’s already available for purchase on iTunes and at other digital music outlets.
Oblivion is pretty to look at it, has a great soundtrack and some solid performances. It’s not ground-breaking science-fiction but it’s still a solid enough story to keep you entertaining for its just over two hour running time.