I'm still feeling pretty whiny about Star Trek, so I'm going to chat for a bit about a movie I DID like, even though I saw it a few weeks ago (on my birthday, actually!).
I had moderate expectations for Oblivion - I think Tom Cruise is a talented and capable actor, even if he is pretty crazypants in real life, and generally I enjoy movies he's in (Minority Report is one of my favorites, in fact). And the general attitude about Oblivion seemed to be "That was better than I expected!", so it seemed like a safe bet.
Guys, this movie is great. The story is solid (it's an adaptation of a graphic novel written by Joseph Kosinski, who also directed Tron: Legacy. ~The more you know~) and had a few twists I wasn't expecting, and the filmmakers do some really interesting and risky things that COULD have tanked it - but they didn't.
The biggest risk it takes, in my opinion, is in pacing - Oblivion is never in a hurry to impress you. It has a lot of the window dressing of a big summer blockbuster, but the first hour or so is pretty much Tom Cruise wandering around a vacant Planet Earth reminiscing about a life he's never lived (pre-alien war, we're told. Cruise and his partner Vicka, played by Andrea Riseborough, fix the drones that take care of giant water processing machines. They have just two weeks left before they get to abandon ship and join what's left of humanity on colony Titan). It moves incredibly leisurely, treading just this side away from boring. It's captivating, though, because Cruise and the writers hit on just the right combination of nostalgia and weirdness to keep it interesting.
Ultimately, that pace is used to establish the world the movie is in, right before the rug gets yanked out from under you. When the story starts shifting gears, though, the first chunk makes more sense. Plot twists get dropped like breadcrumbs, the action spirals up slowly, and when the big reveals start happening it's almost breathtaking the way the filmmakers have played you.
Nothing comes out of nowhere - that whole opening sequence is seeded with clues that don't become clues until you know what the context is. Going in, I thought I had a pretty good grasp on what the twist would be and what Morgan Freeman's role in all of this was; turns out what I thought I knew was correct, but only partially, and not in the way that really matters.
Oblivion also has an emotional resonance that surprised me, because I'm not used to genre or summer films being this willing to sacrifice explosions for the sake of emotional connection. For all its scale (and there's a lot of scale - sweeping, barren landscapes, shiny futuristic planes and living platforms, lots of white and metals and a pretty cool suspension pool), the story feels small and intimate - it's the story of Morgan Freeman and his rebels, or course, but it's really the story of Cruise's Jack. The big reveal and climax at the end feel earned, because you've spent so much perceived time with Jack, which means that Oblivion retains the emotional core that so much genre film misses (I was reminded of Avatar, actually, in that both are big, shiny science fiction tales, but Oblivion is actually resonant and, you know, good.)
Oblivion looks very much like a giant sci-fi summer blockbuster - with Cruise in the main actor seat and big, impressive visuals, superficially the film looks much bigger than what it ends up being: one man's struggle with identity and purpose.
I had moderate expectations for Oblivion - I think Tom Cruise is a talented and capable actor, even if he is pretty crazypants in real life, and generally I enjoy movies he's in (Minority Report is one of my favorites, in fact). And the general attitude about Oblivion seemed to be "That was better than I expected!", so it seemed like a safe bet.
Guys, this movie is great. The story is solid (it's an adaptation of a graphic novel written by Joseph Kosinski, who also directed Tron: Legacy. ~The more you know~) and had a few twists I wasn't expecting, and the filmmakers do some really interesting and risky things that COULD have tanked it - but they didn't.
The biggest risk it takes, in my opinion, is in pacing - Oblivion is never in a hurry to impress you. It has a lot of the window dressing of a big summer blockbuster, but the first hour or so is pretty much Tom Cruise wandering around a vacant Planet Earth reminiscing about a life he's never lived (pre-alien war, we're told. Cruise and his partner Vicka, played by Andrea Riseborough, fix the drones that take care of giant water processing machines. They have just two weeks left before they get to abandon ship and join what's left of humanity on colony Titan). It moves incredibly leisurely, treading just this side away from boring. It's captivating, though, because Cruise and the writers hit on just the right combination of nostalgia and weirdness to keep it interesting.
Ultimately, that pace is used to establish the world the movie is in, right before the rug gets yanked out from under you. When the story starts shifting gears, though, the first chunk makes more sense. Plot twists get dropped like breadcrumbs, the action spirals up slowly, and when the big reveals start happening it's almost breathtaking the way the filmmakers have played you.
Nothing comes out of nowhere - that whole opening sequence is seeded with clues that don't become clues until you know what the context is. Going in, I thought I had a pretty good grasp on what the twist would be and what Morgan Freeman's role in all of this was; turns out what I thought I knew was correct, but only partially, and not in the way that really matters.
Oblivion also has an emotional resonance that surprised me, because I'm not used to genre or summer films being this willing to sacrifice explosions for the sake of emotional connection. For all its scale (and there's a lot of scale - sweeping, barren landscapes, shiny futuristic planes and living platforms, lots of white and metals and a pretty cool suspension pool), the story feels small and intimate - it's the story of Morgan Freeman and his rebels, or course, but it's really the story of Cruise's Jack. The big reveal and climax at the end feel earned, because you've spent so much perceived time with Jack, which means that Oblivion retains the emotional core that so much genre film misses (I was reminded of Avatar, actually, in that both are big, shiny science fiction tales, but Oblivion is actually resonant and, you know, good.)
Oblivion looks very much like a giant sci-fi summer blockbuster - with Cruise in the main actor seat and big, impressive visuals, superficially the film looks much bigger than what it ends up being: one man's struggle with identity and purpose.
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