REVIEW: Oblivion

I don't think anyone else can really put it in a better way.

I could leave this entire thing right there, because it felt like everybody was asleep when they were making this movie. But, since you asked nicely, I suppose...

Nobody cared, that's my best explanation for this movie. Oblivion is an overly long, boring two hours that doesn't even want to try to be anything. It doesn't take a full on dive into the completely stupid and dumb territory or even try to do anything interesting with its already dull premise. It's just there for people to take a pay check.

So, it's half past the apocalypse after an incredibly violent war with aliens that involved nuclear weapons, leaving the moon destroyed as well. Jack Reacher and his partner, Victoria, work together to scavenge remaining resources for whoever they are working for. But. the further they go into to this work, the more Jack Reacher realizes something isn't right and...he meets up with guys...stuff happens...plot twist...the end.

I appreciate that they are actually trying to go for more of a slow paced, methodical, science fiction film rather than an action packed, fantasy adventure in space, but the whole problem is that nothing interesting happens in the movie, even with all of the plot twists in this movie that you are already able to figure out from the trailer. Sure, fine, the movie does go into a couple of unexpected directions, but none of them really save this movie. The plot twists are mainly there just to be there to make this movie look smarter than it actually is.

While the surprises in Oblivion don't really work on any kind of level, it would have been saved if anything interesting was happening in this movie. But, as we've established, nobody is actually even trying, so, everything is made up of Tom Cruise playing a boring character with Andrea Riseborough playing another boring character where they all do boring things as the characters are only there to drive the plot along. But, don't worry, they also start meeting more characters who face the exact same problem of being walking card-board cut outs.

To top it all off, the movie is visually boring as well. Sure, there are a couple of scenes showing off the vast landscape of a destroyed Earth that looks sort of nice, but all of the visual aesthetics are just bland and uninteresting. The robot drones, the weapons, the workers' outfits, and the space ships, seemed like they all came from a design person who just wanted to come up with something that vaguely looked futuristic looking so he can call it a day slightly quicker.The costumes that other characters use are probably the only things that are actually interesting looking, but it's only because they took all of the cool bits from the Predator costume.

Could this movie have been any better? Thinking on what I just saw, I find it hard to really salvage anything to make this into a good movie. You could probably actually create decent characters, a visually interesting movie, but as nonsensical as this movie already is, you'll probably just end up making Prometheus...again. But, even then, Prometheus was way more worth watching than this movie if only because that movie takes a full on dive into something that you're not sure what you're watching, but at least it's interesting. And that's the whole problem with Oblivion; it doesn't even try to do anything with itself. The entire movie feels coldly calculated, being made in such a way where nobody really has to do anything to get this movie to go anywhere. It just stays in its safe little bubble never really going in the good direction or the bad direction. But, that in itself is what actually makes this movie bad and not really all that worth watching.