The year is 2077. Apparently an alien invasion 60 years prior has rendered earth uninhabitable. Though declared victorious, the few human remaining on earth are counting their days to be transported to moons of Titan, where the majority of the humans now live. Tom Cruise plays Jack Harper, along with his female companion, Vica, work as an “effective team” to service drones patrolling earth from aliens still roaming around and depleting what’s left of its resources.
There are large filtration stations hovering in the sky pulling earth’s ocean water in order to propel Titan’s maintenance. Jack also guards against any alien attacks of these filtration stations. All day long, Jack rides an advance hovercraft and combs through what was once New York City and Empire State Building, as well as the site of the very last Super Bowl ever played.
Jack is tormented by images of a woman he cannot remember. She is not Vica, which obviously prohibits him from talking to Vica about her. These images grow more prominent, as Jack draws more and more closer to his last days on earth, clinging to all that’s good about a planet that is no longer inhabitable.
While Jack is out in the field, Vica sits behind a monitoring control desk following directions from “Sally”, customer service for the technicians if you will. Sally appears cold, motionless, almost like a “Max Headroom” from the 80’s. You’re not quite sure what’s wrong with her, but something is definitely wrong with her.
Jack has a secret cabin in front of a lake. He flies his hovercraft away from the supervision of Vica claiming out of range in order to spend time there alone. He doesn’t feel he should go to Titan. He clings on to every little memory of earth as much as possible. He wears his Yankees baseball cap whenever he is on the ground. He collects literature when he finds them in the desert. But the images of this woman whenever he shuts his eyes is foreshadowing something bigger than everything he’s known.
The drones he maintain on a daily basis are supposed to be keeping humans safe. So when a falling object that Jack is taking a closer look turns out to be a fuselage from a rocket carrying humans, Jack is in shock to see the drones destroying one carrying human crew. Jack manages to jump in front of a drone looking to blast away the one remaining cabinet, which inside was the woman from his dreams. The woman has been in this sleeping chamber for 60 years. But the only way to find out what happened to her ship was to uncover the flight recorder. Jack flies out with the woman to locate the flight recorder from the crash site, but stops in front of the now completely buried Empire State Building. The woman tells Jack that her name is Julia, and she was his wife.
Upon returning with this news with Julia, Vica now refuses to cooperate with Jack and informs Sally that they no longer are an effective team. Thinking that he is now in grave danger, Jack hurries to take Julia away from their residence in the sky, a drone flies by and blasts Vica away. Jack and Julia escape and go through a dog fight to survive the grips of three chasing drones.
Confused and seeking help, Jack is approached by another technician, whom apparently have been deployed by Sally since now he is no longer effective. To Jack’s dismay, this technician looks exactly like Jack himself.
Jack subdues this “technician”, takes his ship back to his residence. Guess who’s there to greet him? Yes, Vica AND Jack are both clones, and not human.
The remaining humans on earth are supposed to be protected by Jack and the drones. In reality, these drones are programmed to destroy all remaining humans. A small human clan who lives underground knows the truth. Its leader, Beech, played by Morgan Freeman, thought the only way to win his planet back, is to somehow convey to the now very human-like alien, Jack, that earth belongs to humans.
Beech explained what has happened. The aliens need our resources for its own dying planet, thus the stations draining the sea water, thus killing our planet. There is no Titan as all human beings are near extinction. The few remaining humans will need Jack’s help to save mankind.
Jack, the clone, was from a high ranking military personnel, and married to Julia. Upon the end of the war, perceivably to humans, was asked to board the alien ship for their resolution. Jack was co-piloting the space craft along with British representative, Vica, to enter the alien ship, when malfunction required everyone to deploy on to the sleeping chamber. Jack volunteered to stay and pilot his aircraft up to the alien mother ship, and Julia stayed. They were captured and cloned, as thousands of them came back down to earth to annihilate the surviving humans.
Jack and Beech came up with a plan. The only way to destroy the aliens and leave their planet alone, is to destroy the mother ship. Since Jack is a clone, he was able to slip pass the detection of the drones, and enters the mother ship, where he sets off an explosion to blow away the mother ship, thus ending the depletion of earth.
Julia bears a new child from Jack. The remaining humans were able to locate Jack’s cabin, where Julia and her child escaped to. A final scene of the humans reaching this lake and cabins shows Jack, human or clone, finding his home at last.
This is a very ambitious plot, and it looks like it spent the money to try to back that up. I admired its progressive soundtrack, but this has been done in 1982 with Blade Runner already, so it really isn’t breaking any new grounds. I do think Tom Cruise was compelling enough to carry this role, but I just don’t have enough support for why earth needs to be preserved.
The only references to the preservation of earth is football, literature, a plant and nature. The story had such a muffled VO during its opening, we do not immediately connect with the urgency of Jack’s mission. After all, earth is dying, areas are radioactive and inaccessible, there is a great place in Titan, why should we stay?
Vica, played by Andrea Riseborough, who sounded more Australian to me than British, was spot-on with her bulging eyes and ice-cold gestures. Her true identity was long realized before the audience was provided with the facts. I haven’t seen her in other films, but will certainly keep an eye out for her work as she shows great promise for character acting.
Olga Kurylenko played Julia. I was not a big fan of hers from Quantum of Solace because she is quite stale. She is not striking so her acting needed to be above average to stand out. She wasn’t here. Her facial expressions are one of the same throughout so her emotions are difficult to detect. I wish the role would have been given to someone who was more lively, thus the contrast with the aliens / clones she interacts with.
Morgan Freeman needs to just go away for awhile. I don’t and can’t see him other than Red in Shawshank Redemption, so being in this sci-fi extravaganza makes him the weakest part of the casting. Unlike Laurence Fishburne who was brilliant in The Matrix, we needed this character to know it all, does it all, and sounded like he IS the savior. Beech was shot and wounded without really a fight and his weakness presented quite little for the audience to truly believe that his plan would save earth.
Every story will connect with the audience one way or another, if given long enough screen time, especially one with Tom Cruise. I give him credit when he takes part in any project since I believe he’s earned that respect. He is the best part about Oblivion, but unfortunately the project as a whole does not resonate.
I don’t know the purpose of the film; was this about how great earth is, so we should cherish it? Was this about how wonderful clones could be, so we should look forward to it? I don’t understand why this film was made. There were no real precedence set here. Everything felt like it appeared somewhere else before. Even the special F/X dogfight scene felt like it was stolen between Return of the Jedi and The Phantom Menace. Why are chase scenes flying through tight canyons still being touted as exciting? We’ve seen this many times before somewhere else. Couldn’t flying objects be able to go through all forms, air, solid, water this time around? Anything, anything else would be much more exciting.
There were missed opportunities with a statement that clones / robots do dream. But instead of exploring that notion creatively, it reverted with actions that a human would do. I was generally disappointed with Oblivion, but I would not stop you from seeing it yourself. Just be warned that the first 15 minutes are quite trite. Jack’s VO is so uninspiring that I still can’t recall how I cleared that hurdle.
David W. Chien Movie Reviews 