Oblivion

Oblivion (2013)

Image From IMDB

I feel like it’s almost rare now to have a solid dependable movie in every department, but Oblivion is one of those. The directing is solid, nothing flashy, and doesn’t need to be. The effects are all clean and simple, like Apple designed the future (which is probably a fair assessment at this point) All the performances are exactly what they need to be. No over-acting. No-one trying to steal the movie. No-one is in a different film. The movie rolls along nicely, has meaningful twists when it needs to, and wraps everything up when it should. Maybe it could be argued it’s a little long, but it doesn’t feel it. Oblivion is just a really good well told and performed sci-fi.

I really enjoyed the baron WALL-E style landscapes. Their HQ, and the floating Water Machines looked cool. I loved the ship and drone designs. Like I said, they looked like an Apple Product and it worked well in this clean looking minimalist sci-fi. The whole “are you an effective team” motif was interesting, and gave off a haunting vibe to let you know everything wasn’t quite as it seemed, without giving the game away.

The movie took its time as Jack (Tom Cruise) roamed the landscape as a futuristic drone repair man. We learnt little things about the world, and what had happened, at least, what he was told happened. We watched as his plant grew and was rejected, saw his little hideaway and the restricted zone, and questioned the whole time what exactly was going on? And all of this was presented with beautiful cinematography and clear direction.

It would have been so easy to have replaced some of the more poetic scenes with action flashbacks of the so-called war, but the movie showed great restraint throughout. I won’t go into the twists and revelations, but will say from a writing standpoint I thought they were all extremely well handled. Just showing you enough to be intrigued before it played out. The old ‘set up and reveal later’ is again something lost in a lot of modern cinema, and something Oblivion excelled at.

It really is just a very dependable easy to watch movie. Nothing particularly groundbreaking, but it doesn’t feel like it ever set out to be. Despite not being one, it felt like a really well adapted hard sci-fi novel. It’s maybe not a movie i’d rush out to watch, but one that when it’s on I can easily sit back and enjoy knowing i’m in very capable hands.