Oblivion

Space machine guns are always shiny.

"Earth is a memory worth fighting for."

Hi everyone, welcome to Thursday's Tagline! As planned on Tuesday I went to see Oblivion, the new Sci-fi Tom Cruise flick, directed by Joseph Kosinski, who also directed Tron: Legacy. Oblivion takes place in 2077, 60 years after the Earth was attacked by a mysterious race of aliens known as Scavengers, who had come to harvest the Earth's resources. They began their attack by mostly destroying the Earth's moon, throwing the planet into ecological upheaval, and then proceeded to assault the ground in earnest. After a brutal battle that involved the desperate use of nuclear stockpiles, mankind was victorious, but at a grievous cost to the planet. With no other real alternatives, the population migrated to a colony on Titan, leaving behind only a skeleton crew to mop up and protect large hydroplants harvesting the Earth's oceans for use powering the Titan colony later. one such technician is Jack Harper (Cruise) a man haunted by fragments of memories of his life before his mission (as part of some security protocol he has no memories from before the start of his mission). His only human interaction comes in the form of his mission support officer, Victoria (Andrea Riseborough, who has been in exactly nothing I've seen ever... except the pilot of Being Human apparently) who is both his mission control and girlfriend, which I guess would happen if you had contact with only one other person in the world, and they were an attractive British woman. I can't go in to details about the movie without revealing some crucial plot, so serious spoilers beneath the cut.

You just know this is the bad guys. It's all too clean and
well equipped to not be.

So even saying it up there, the whole proposed rationale for what happened to the Earth sounds bogus. The world certainly doesn't SEEM radioactive all over, and what possible reason could everyone have for brainwashing technicians repairing drones? Furthermore, why are there two people and ONLY two people left to cover a whole area? No contact with another person except for one sexy lady who seems determined to distract you with her sexiness so you don't ask questions about why you're draining all the water from the Earth for power even though it's supposed to be irradiated. Also those remaining Scav aliens don't seem too intent on killing Jack, instead they just watch him and OBVIOUSLY THEY ARE HUMAN. So that made me assume that the aliens were obviously manipulating Jack and Victoria in some way. I was... close... sort of.

Thank god Morgan Freeman and Jaime Lannister will
survive to clean up the post-apocalyptic mess.

So the 'aliens' are indeed humans. The movie does a really shit job hiding that plot 'twist' you see it coming like five minutes into the movie. So what's up in the space station? Well not aliens precisely. Basically the whole plan has been set in motion by an amorphous roboshape that is a cross between GLaDOS and Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the Morgan Freeman led resistance is trying to blow her up in her floating space tetrahedron of doom in space. That I admit I did NOT see coming, so bravo Oblivion.

Are you okay? No!

The movie is absolutely gorgeous, and I really enjoyed the style of all the space age tech on display and I will be worried about those super fast drones blowing me up for the rest of forever (malicious little monsters). The score is similarly grand and suits the scope of the movie (lots of long range sweeping shots of the ruined world and also the recovering wilderness it's all pretty great). So A+ scenery, B+ soundtrack, and plot? Well like I said, it isn't exactly hard to predict, but that doesn't mean it's bad! I certainly enjoyed the movie, and I thought as usual that Tom Cruise put in a really excellent performance (which is fortunate given that you spend a lot of the movie with just him).

Take in the wasted scenery! Isn't that purdy!

My one remaining question is what is UP with Jack's wife? I guess any old copy of her husband will do AM I RIGHT? (watch the movie you'll get it). For anyone who likes to keep score, Oblivion is currently sporting a solid 154 million over its massive 120 million budget, but it's still at the top of the box office, so I anticipate it'll finish out its run from a strong position. No Kosinski can go back to preparing for his next Tron movie I guess!

That's all for today! I'll see you later guys!