If I could resurrect two directors to remake Oblivion, I would choose Andrei Tarkovsky and Stanley Kubrick. If I had to choose a living director, I would choose Duncan Jones, who always knows how to strike the balance between the sci-fi and soulful elements of the story. Instead we get Joseph Kosinski who favors CGI over soul, action over meaning and surface over substance. May be the first time that the original creator should have been kept away from translating the original creation to film. It is a beautiful film, but it could have been transcendent and Oblivion is disappointing. Whoever created the previews for Oblivion should be fired because that person revealed too many pivotal plot points.
SPOILERS
The sci-fi story had real potential for excellence, but by showing in the previews that the shadows hide humans, not aliens, as a viewer, I knew that Cruise was being gaslit from the beginning and watching something unfold as opposed to being surprised and shocked is somewhat sleep-inducing. The story is excellent: you’re a human who thinks that you’re fighting aliens only to discover that you are a human clone, a tool of aliens killing humans. It is the flip, sinister side of Solaris-what if you were the copy? What if you became the opposite of who you are and wanted to be? How does the copy react when confronted with the remnants of the original’s life and the true nature of his existence? If that story was told well, then the existential spiritual conflict could have been explored instead of referenced. Oblivion knows it has something more to tell, but never does so and limits it to simple platitudes about love being stronger than science, origins and referencing battle scenes from Star Wars. Also if you want a movie that deals with great philosophical questions, maybe use an actor with more range than Tom Cruise. He isn’t awful, but he is limited and only at his best when being bad. Will Olga Kurylenko ever escape the dust from Quantum of Solace? She isn’t really given much to do here. I would keep Andrea Riseborough who seems to be the only one who grasped Oblivion’s potential. Oblivion could have taken the Solaris mantle and taken it to the next level while interweaving references to a spin on the Adam and Eve story clearly referenced throughout the movie, but it is just another post-apocalyptic summer action film that needs a reboot. I am amused that the only reason that the alien invasion failed is because they didn’t get human relationships or were stuck in the 50s-men and women can’t be friends or colleagues-that Jack and Vika were colleagues, not husband and wife.