Movie Review: Oblivion

Here’s the thing – if a film tries to be everything at once, in most of the cases, it turns out to be nothing. Oblivion desperately tries to be a mystical, moral sci-fi with elements of 1970’s sci-fi thrown into the mix.

The central premise of the film is that Earth needs to be evacuated as the Scavengers, a group of savage aliens, would inhabit our planet as we take refuge on one of Saturn’s moons – Titan.

Tom Cruise playing a former Marine commander called Jack Harper, is one of the last humans on Earth, who is part of an operation to extract the last resources from the earth and clean up the remaining forces of the invasion.

With his memory erased so that he doesn’t become a liability in case he is captured, Jack Harper, slowly finds out new meaning in the post-apocalyptic world and ends up saving our planet with a few others.

The reason behind this change of plans comprises most of the plot and this is where I feel like quoting Pink Floyd’s Learning to Fly – “Tongue-tied and twisted; just an earth-bound misfit, I.”

The film has some stunning CGI, which will draw you into a world, which even though has been frequently thrust at us by different films, makes you think about the future of the human race.

Some eye-popping cinematography by Life of Pi's Oscar-winning Claudio Miranda highlights the wondrous landscapes in which this film is set, although most of the times it is a delicate balance between blurry and a shallow depth of field.

Oblivion is a good fantasy; not a great sci-fi or a brilliant film. Just like the last vestiges of earth, shown in the film, it just about works…