Title: Oblivion
Directed by: Joseph Kosinski
Distributed by: Univeral Pictures
Release Date: April 19, 2013
Rated: PG-13
Synopsis: A veteran assigned to extract Earth’s remaining resources begins to question what he knows about his mission and himself. (Via IMDB)
Brian: Every four to six months, I find myself watching a movie that just doesn’t work for me. At all. Where I try to get involved for a little while, then just eventually give up. It happened six months ago at Killing Them Softly, and it happened at Oblivion. I think many people will go to Oblivion and have a decent time. The production design, cinematography, and special effects are top-notch. It’s got two pretty solid action scenes. Tom Cruise gives his all in the lead performance. But I found Oblivion to be mostly dead on the screen. The greatest joy I had in watching it was a few shots toward the end of Cruise floating through his spaceship, because it made me remember Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity is only six more months away!
Shaunta: I watched this movie sitting between Brian and my husband, Kevin. I knew, almost from the opening, that Brian was going to hate this one, and my husband was going to love it. I was mostly right. Kevin loved the action, but the story got so convoluted at the end that he stopped caring I think. Me? I was entertained. The movie was pretty to look at, the action scenes were exciting, Tom Cruise (who I don’t always like) did a good job. I think, in the end, it tried to hard. And you know how it always feels kind of awkward when it’s obvious that someone is trying way too hard to impress? That’s the feeling I got from this movie.
Brian: Oblivion didn’t engage my imagination, it didn’t compel me to get invested in the story. I found it boring, and that’s death to a movie for me. The flying pods that are shot at for two hours are uninteresting. The two leading ladies are practically interchangeable; each barely changes facial expressions. I thought it was sad that Oscar winning actress Melissa Leo was confined to a little black-and-white screen the whole time. Morgan Freeman’s role is so small, it’s like he came to the set one day, and the director said, “You mind putting on a cape and doing a couple scenes for us?” And the film keeps piling on the surprises to the point of exhaustion. This film just didn’t do it for me. I would have rather stayed home and watched Inception again.
Shaunta: This movie’s biggest sin is that it took WAY too long to get to the good part and then once it got there it twisted itself into pretzels trying to be surprising. Way, way too much set up. And there were some weird issues that took my attention away too much. Like the costumes. Why the Tron get up for Tom Cruise and the Mad Men outfit for the red-headed woman? And Morgan Freeman was smoking a cigar through many of his scenes–where on this Earth that had been pretty much annihilated did he find tobacco? Was he smoking decades old cigars? That isn’t where my attention should have been, and it was. The last third of the movie is one twist after the other, and it was hard to keep up with. Like I said–I was entertained enough to not feel like I’d wasted my money, but I can see why Brian didn’t enjoy it. If this movie had focused on Morgan Freeman and his Mad Max band of humans, this would have been a much better movie.
