‘Oblivion’ Review Roundup
Oblivion will be released in theaters on April 19. Here’s what the critics are saying.
Earth has been invaded by aliens, and Jack Harper (Tom Cruise) and his wife Victoria (Andrea Riseborough) have decided to stay behind and protect the machines that help sustain life on Saturn’s moon. However, the mission seems to go awry when Jack suspects something’s wrong.
Oblivion stars Tom Cruise (Mission: Impossible), Andrea Riseborough, Olga Kurlyenko (Quantum of Solace), Melissa Leo and Morgan Freeman (Shawshank Redemption), and is directed by Joseph Kosinski (TRON: Legacy).
Oblivion is about what you would expect from Tom Cruise in a science fiction environment (outside the Church of Scientology, anyway). Anyone who’s seen Minority Report is familiar with his brand of science fiction film; mostly story-driven, futuristic to a point of being almost ridiculously impossible, and of course, Tom Cruise is trying to control everything.
Keep in mind that Tom Cruise is at the top of his game in Oblivion, and it’s the movie that might be a little weak in the second half. It infuses a sense of isolation akin to Wall-E, but without the charm or the humor of the Pixar classic. This is one of the few “desolate Earth” films that actually looks great.
Oblivion is based on a comic book that Joseph Kosinski wrote in 2005 and never published, so you can sense his love for the attention to detail that he also poured into TRON: Legacy. This is his material all the way. The alien invasion has left Earth in shambles and the moon in rubble, and of course humanity itself nuked the planet and then left for a new home in Titan. So long and thanks for all the fish.
His first science fiction film since War of the Worlds, Tom Cruise is back and showing his best from start to finish. However, there is only so much acting you can do to keep a film about a desolate planet from feeling a bit boring, and even Tom Cruise can’t pull it off. The film doesn’t invent enough new ideas to make itself stand out.
Oblivion isn’t bad, but it seems to try too hard to be everything else. Oh well, at least Tom Cruise is in it.
What do you think of Oblivion?
