Oblivion Review: Puts the sci-fi genre in a blender, but tastes bland

Dir. Joseph Kosinski
126 Minutes
Rated PG-13

I can't say that Joseph Kosinski's name is something that gives me hope going into a movie.  Having directed the over-hyped TRON: Legacy, I wasn't exactly jumping up and down to see him cover the sci-fi genre again.  However, the name that did jump out at me in the credits list was cinematographer Claudio Miranda, who just recently won the Academy Award for Life of Pi's beautiful camera work (and also came close with Benjamin Button in 2008).  Plus, I still like Tom Cruise, and Ghost Protocol proved that he can still pull off great action.  And there was a cool spaceship that looked like a sperm.  So I still booked it to the theater to catch this one.


Oh, the plot, that's right...it's pretty much about this guy Jack Harper (Tom Cruise) who is part of the "mop up" crew left on an evacuated Earth - after this big war with the "Scavengers" all humans relocated to Saturn's moon, Titan.  Stationed with his work partner/lover Victoria (Andrea Riseborough), together they help with drone repair as these big triangle things suck up the oceans for energy and fuel.  But then, a destroyed ship careens out of the sky carrying Beautiful Woman #2, and everything Tom Cruise thought he knew spirals into...OBLIVION.

This will probably be the most mediocre thing to come out all year.  It's not really a "bad" film, but everything is so middle-of-the-road and recycled from older, much better films.  Oblivion wears its influences right on its sleeve, from 2001 to Blade Runner to WALL-E, with even with a little Halo sprinkled in there.  Sure it looked nice, but there wasn't anything we haven't seen before, or even worse, there wasn't an interesting story.  The main thrust of the plot comes from a supposed love triangle that's caused by Tom and his two lady-friends, but the film plays it is so safe and doesn't take it anywhere we don't expect.  There was nothing original in the whole film, and nothing really stood out either - the whole movie had this dark grey color palette that theoretically works for the theme of the film, but wears on you as you're watching it.  Besides the drones themselves, which featured some cool sound design, and the circular ship Cruise cruises around in, it was the food equivalent of Corn Flakes: bland and boring, yet serviceable gruel.

Rating C-