Review - Oblivion (2013)

       Hey guys, Chuck here. And, as much as we all loved 2022's Top Gun: Maverick, it might surprise many to know that that film was actually the second collaboration between director Joseph Kosinski and actor Tom Cruise. Their first collaboration came in the form of the 2013 Joseph Kosinski directed sci-fi film Oblivion, released by Universal Pictures, produced by Chernin Entertainment, and based on Kosinski's own unpublished graphic novel of the same name. The movie stars Tom Cruise, Andrea Riseborough, Olga Kurylenko, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Zoë Bell, Melissa Leo, and Morgan Freeman. 

      The movie establishes that, some time in the near future, the Earth was attacked by an alien force known as Scavengers, or Scavs for short. The Scavs destroyed the Moon, causing natural disasters worldwide, and forced humanity to utilize its nuclear arsenal to end the threat. So, although humanity won the war, they lost the Earth with most of the planet being inhospitable due to high levels of radiation. So, most of humanity is relocated to a colony on Titan, and the last remaining human colony in Earth's orbit is the Tet. 

      All that remains on Earth itself are drones, which are programmed to hunt any remaining Scavs and protect a series hydro rigs converting seawater into fusion energy, and two human operatives overseeing the protection of the hydro rigs and the maintenance of the drones. The two humans are Jack Harper, whose job is to oversee drone maintenance, and Victoria "Vika" Olsen, who is in charge of communication with their mission commander Sally. Vika clearly is focused on the mission and rejoining humanity on Titan, while Jack is more inclined to stay on Earth, and has set up a hidden rural cabin with relics of Earth's past. But, despite their clear differences in ideology, Jack and Vika, who happen to also be romantic partners living together on Tower-49, are "an effective team." 

      One day, while on a routine search for downed drones, Jack is almost nabbed by the Scavs, and realms that they sent a transmission into space. This transmission leads a NASA shuttle, the Odyssey, to land back in Earth. Among the five astronauts in stasis pods is a woman Jack has been having dreams of. A drone attacks four of the pods, but Jack saves the fifth, and returns it to Tower-49. The woman in the pod, it turns out, is named Julia Rusakova, and is familiar with both Jack and Vika, the latter of whom has no clue who she is. This is due to the fact that both Jack and Vika have had their memories wiped for security reasons. Julia also requests to be taken to the crash site to recover the flight recorder for the Odyssey.

     So, the next day, Jack and Julia go and collect the flight recorder, only to find themselves taken by Scavs to their base in the Raven Rock Mountain Complex. The leader of the Scavs reveals that they are, in fact, human, and the drones are programmed to hunt humans. So, to protect themselves, they utilize helmets made of old stealth fighter tech and mask their voices with voice scramblers. The leader then asks Jack.to help collect a series of drone cores to be assembled into a bomb. Jack refuses, and he and Julia are released, with the leader suggesting Jack investigate the radiation zone. 

      Upon their release, Jack and Julia make their way to the remains of the Empire State Building, where Jack sends a signal to Vika and Julia reveals that the Odyssey's mission was, initially, to explore Titan, but was diverted prior to launch to invest an alien object: the Tet itself. Julia also brings up an event that Jack has been dreaming of: the two of them atop the Empire State Building years before the war, and how he held a ring up in front of the viewfinder she was looking through. And, when Jack finally asks Julia who she really is, she reveals that she's his wife. Unfortunately, it's at this moment that the bubble ship, being piloted remotely by Vika, shows up, and Vika sees the two of them in the live feed. 

      Unfortunately, Vika is completely overcome with bitterness and jealousy towards Jack and his connection with Julia. And, when Jack reveals to her that Julia is his wife, Vika refuses to let either of them inside, and immediately calls Sally, informing her that Jack is "unfit for service" and that the two of them "aren't an effective team." This activates a drone under repair inside of Tower-49, which kills Vika, but Jack is saved by Julia. Jack then heads into Vika's office, and Sally greets him and requests for him to come up to the Tet with Julia. 

     Instead, Jack and Julia fly off, evading drone attacks, but wind up being knocked into a radiation zone and crashing their bubble ship. They do land safely, and Jack goes to investigate the crashed drone. However, a second bubble ship, marked "52," lands near the crashed drone, and Jack is shocked to see that the pilot is a duplicate of himself, designated Tech-52. Jack fights the duplicate and knocks him unconscious, but Julia catches a stray bullet. Jack carefully carries Julia tona sheltered spot,.and takes the bubble ship of Tech-52 back to Tower-52 to collect medical supplies. And, Jack is surprised to see that Tower-52 has an identical layout to Tower-49, but with yellow colors instead of blue. And, of course, Tower-52 has a duplicate of Vika there as well. 

      Jack returns to Julia, saves her life, and flies her to the cabin, where the two rest up, relax, and have sex. Jack and Julia return to Raven Rock, where the leader properly introduced himself as Malcolm Beech, and reveals to Jack the truth. Humanity lost.the war, as the Tet started its attack by destroying the moon, triggering the wave of global natural disasters. Next, came troop ships. And, who came out of those troop ships? American astronaut Commander Jack Harper-- THOUSANDS of him, memories wiped, and programmed to kill humans. After that, there came the drones and the drone technicians, also duplicates of Jack. But, what have Malcolm hope for Jack to help was two incidents: looking at a book while investigating a drone signal, and stepping between Julia's pod and a drone. 

       Jack is able to reprogram the captured drone to fly up to the Tet with its payload, but the Tet sends three drones to attack Raven Rock, ruining the drone meant to take the bomb to the Tet. This means that there's only one way to get the.bomb inside the Tet: Jack has to fly it up there directly with the bubble ship. The bait? Julia, who the Tet wanted brought to the Tet. 

     So, Jack has Julia placed in her pod, and flies the bubble ship up to the Tet, where he confirms he's brought Julia in, as he and Julia are "a more effective team." While flying inside of the Tet, Jack listens to the flight recorder of the Odyssey. Apparently, Commander Jack Harper and his co-pilot, Vika Olsen, were awakened from their stasis pods, and instructed by their mission controller, Sally, to investigate the Tet, which arrived in Earth's solar system mysteriously. And, when Jack couldn't break away from the Tet, Jack detached the stasis pods from the command module to protect the rest of the crew, including Julia. 

      Upon landing, and coming face-to-face with the Tet, it's revealed that Julia was never in the pod,.as she was placed in a separate pod and taken to the cabin. The pod Jack brought to the Tet was carrying Malcolm, and Jack looks right at the Tet and remarks "Fuck you, Sally" as he and Malcolm detonate the bomb, destroying the Tet and saving humanity. Three years later, and Julia is still living at the cabin, along with her and Jack's daughter, and the two are joined by the Raven Rock survivors, as well as Tech-52, whose old memories of Julia were starting to return. 

      When it comes to original sci-fi movies, Oblivion is genuinely a unique one. The visual look of the movie is what director Joseph Kosinski calls "a beautiful desolation." To get the desired look of contrasting blue skies and black sand, Kosinski filmed many of the scenes in Iceland in June 2012, taking advantage of the 24 hour daylight, especially in the time between 6 pm and 1 am, when the natural lighting gave Kosinski the desired effect he was after. And, as opposed to using a blue screen, Kosinski had a massive 270-degree wraparound of white muslin set up around the physically built sky tower set, and had a set of projectors placed around the tower set to project imagery filmed at the peak of Haleakalā in Hawaii. So, in a way, Oblivion filmed the sky tower scenes on what could be seen as a predecessor to the Volume. A big part of why Kosinski wanted mostly daylight in this movie was because of a desire to see a sci-fi movie set in daylight, as opposed to other sci-fi movies like Ridley Scott's Alien, which spent a lot of time in dark hulls or on dark, benign planets. And, as with all of Joseph Kosinski's films, credit for the absolutely incredible cinematography goes to Claudio Miranda. 

      Casting this movie was genuinely something else. Tom Cruise, quite honestly, gave one of his finest and most underrated performances as Jack, and seeing him going on this journey and discovering everything he believed was a lie is truly fascinating. Olga Kurylenko was absolutely fantastic as Julia, and her scenes with Tom Cruise as Jack were phenomenal. By the way, I find it hilarious how this marks the second Tom Cruise character to have a romantic interest named Julia. In contrast to both Tom Cruise and Olga Kurylenko is Andrea Riseborough as Vika, who shows a wide array of emotions throughout the movie, ranging from affection and occasional frustration with Jack, and a combination of distrust and jealousy towards Julia, and I think that Andrea Riseborough had just as much chemistry with Tom Cruise as he had with Olga Kurylenko, just in a different manner. 

      The Raven Rock survivors were all fantastic in their own right, with easily the most memorable of them being Morgan Freeman as Malcolm. Morgan Freeman gives a very balanced and intriguing performance of a man who, at first, it's unclear if what he's saying is the truth or not. Both Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and  Zoë Bell as Sikes and Kara were really good as soldiers whose goal is protecting what's left of humanity. I also like how Sikes doesn't trust Jack at first, and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau plays that distrust very well. Lastly, there's Melissa Leo as Sally/the Tet. The idea that an alien entity would take on the guise of the Odyssey's mission controller as a means of keeping Jack and Vika on task is genuinely terrifying, and Melissa Leo plays into that exceptionally well. 

      The technology designs of the weapons Jack uses, the motorbike, the bubble ship, the drones, and the sky towers were really neat, as it does come off as showing how much human technology has advanced in this future, but the big twist of the movie makes the designs all the more fascinating, as now it's revealed that the technology was created by an alien entity and designed for human use. And, what's most important is, as mentioned before, everything was built practically for in-camera filmmaking. The sky tower was a real working set, the weapons were real, the bubble ship was real, the drones were mostly real. The only use of CGI in the movie was for things like the hydro rigs and when the drones and bubble ship needed to fly. And, obviously, the Tet itself was CGI. Now, something neat that I didn't notice when I first saw the movie was how Universal designed their logo to match the post-apocalyptic world this movie was set in, complete with having the Tet in orbit around the Earth. Cool.

      The music in this movie, which was done by M83, was absolutely fantastic, and it harkens back to the kind of sound we got from the brilliant Blade Runner score by Vangelis. And, yes, M83 was a deliberate choice by Joseph Kosinski, who had utilized M83's music when working on the initial treatment for Oblivion in 2005. And, Kosinski mentioned that he wanted a similar experience to the one he had working with Daft Punk on the score for Tron: Legacy, but felt that the music style of Daft Punk didn't quite fit the story themes and visual look of Oblivion, which is why he went with M83. And, I do see where he was coming from, as M83's music definitely compliments the ravaged look of Earth in this movie. 

       But, there is a fascinating theme in this movie that I'm not sure many were able to spot. Heck, it kinda went over my head as well. And, that's the theme of perception vs. truth. Jack has questions about what he and Vika know, but Vika doesn't. Vika has romantic feelings for Jack, but his heart clearly doesn't belong to her. Which is why when Jack rescues Julia, Vika sees her as a threat. A disruption to the status quo. And, when Jack finally comes to learn the truth, Vika is terrified of the truth and refuses to hear it. Vika has committed herself to the false narrative she was programmed with by the Tet, and she won't believe anything else. 

       There have been quite a few speculations about certain details left unanswered with this movie. For instance, if Jack remembers his life before the memory wipe, does Vika? It's certainly plausible, which goes on to explain why she's so committed to the false narrative the Tet created, and why she sees Julia as a threat to the status quo. Many have speculated that, before they were captured, the original Vika Olsen was in love with the original Jack Harper, but it was an unrequited love. And, because of the awkward selfie she took, the Tet assumed they were lovers, and programmed their lives as such. Which, in a way, explains Vika's devotion to the Tet's lie, as it makes it so that she is the ONLY woman in Jack's life, and the work she and Jack are doing IS for humanity. As for why the Tet continues to ask if Jack and Vika are an "effective team," it's because the maintenance crew, unlike the mindless Jack army, were given the capacity of human emotions, but the Tet couldn't predict how said emotions would affect either Jack or Vika. 

        Another speculation is in regards how how many Jack's and Vika's are still out there around the world. We know that there were thousands of clones of both inside of the Tet, and we know that the Tet sent thousands of mindless Jack clones to attack Earth in the past. So, aside from the Jack and Vika at Tower-49 and Tower-52, how many more are out there? Do the other Jack's also dream about Julia, or were the Tech-52 and Tech-49 versions of Jack just special? Do the other Vika's have the same devotion to the Tet's lie as Vika at Tower-49 did? And, what became of every other Jack and Vika after the Tet was destroyed? Did the Vika at Tower-52 leave the tower, or is she stuck there? All valid questions that fans continue to speculate about. And, at the end of the day, the best sci-fi stories keep us asking questions, which keeps us returning to them. 

       Overall, Oblivion is an absolutely gorgeous looking and gripping sci-fi movie that harkens back to the classics like The Omega Man and Silent Running. Now, what's really fascinating about this movie is that initially, it was Disney that has acquired the production and distribution of the film, but they opted out when it turned out that the finished film wasn't going to be a family-friendly PG rated sci-fi movie. So, Joseph Kosinski took the film, Universal picked it up, brought on writers like Karl Gajdusek and Michael Arndt (credited as Michael deBruyn), and thus the film we got. And, it all worked out, and was genuinely enjoyable. For what was his second feature film as director, and for it to be something new and original, Joseph Kosinski's Oblivion is definitely an underrated sci-fi gem that is absolutely worth checking out. 

       Alright guys, this is Chuck signing off, and I'll see you in the next review.