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Rent Oblivion on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV, or buy it on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV.

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Visually striking but thinly scripted, Oblivion benefits greatly from its strong production values and an excellent performance from Tom Cruise.

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Joseph Kosinski

Jack Harper

Morgan Freeman

Olga Kurylenko

Julia Rusakova

Andrea Riseborough

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau

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If nothing else, "Oblivion" will go down in film history as the movie where Tom Cruise pilots a white, sperm-shaped craft into a giant space uterus. The scene is more interesting to describe than it is to watch. Cruise's sperm-ship enters through an airlock that resembles a geometrized vulva. He arrives inside a massive chamber lined with egg-like glass bubbles. At the center of the chamber is a pulsating, sentient triangle that is also supposed to be some kind of mother figure. Cruise must destroy the mother triangle and her space uterus in order to save the Earth.

Like director Joseph Kosinski's debut, " Tron: Legacy " (2010), "Oblivion" is a special effects extravaganza with a lot of blatant symbolism and very little meaning. It starts slow, turns dull and then becomes tedious — which makes it a marginal improvement over the earlier film. It features shiny surfaces, clicky machinery and no recognizable human behavior. It's equally ambitious and gormless.

"Oblivion" is set in the year 2077, 60 years after an alien invasion rendered the Earth largely uninhabitable. Cruise stars as Jack Harper, one of a handful of people left on the planet. The other survivors have long since relocated to Titan. Harper and colleagues remain as technicians, servicing robot drones that defend resource-gathering stations from alien stragglers.

Harper lives in a penthouse-like tower with his communications officer, Vica ( Andrea Riseborough ). Vica's eyes are permanently dilated. Like Olivia Wilde 's Quorra in " Tron: Legacy ," she often resembles a marionette.

Harper and Vica spend their days fixing drones, eating candelit dinners, and swimming in a glass-bottomed pool. Their boss, the creepily cheerful Sally ( Melissa Leo ), supervises them from an orbiting control center. In order to maintain the integrity of the mission, Harper and Vica's memories have been wiped; nonetheless, Harper is haunted by extremely cheesy black-and-white dreams of a beautiful woman meeting him in pre-invasion New York.

One day, Harper spots an antique spacecraft crashing into the countryside. He manages to rescue one survivor, a Russian astronaut ( Olga Kurylenko ) who looks exactly like the woman in his dreams. Harper brings her back to his tower. This incites jealousy and suspicion from Vica, who is both Harper's partner and his lover.

The astronaut has been in cryogenic sleep for the past six decades but refuses to disclose the nature of her mission to Harper and Vica until they recover her flight recorder. It goes without saying that the flight recorder unearths all kinds of secrets about Harper, Vica, and the alien invasion. It also creates one of the movie's more glaring logical errors, but that's a different story altogether.

The film's opening stretch is its one strong point —  a gradual, immersive build-up of details. It's a smart technique for science-fiction storytelling; it eases the viewer into the world of the film. The problem is that the world "Oblivion" introduces — an abandoned, depopulated Earth — is more interesting than the story it tells. Or, more accurately, the stories it tells, because "Oblivion," derivative to a fault, tries to be several science-fiction movies at once. It tries and it fails.

"Oblivion" is a political allegory about a lowly "technician" sending unmanned drones to hunt and kill a demonized, alien Other — until it forgets that it ever was. It's a wannabe mindbender that raises questions about its lead character's identity — except that the lead character is too sketchy to make these questions compelling. It's a story about humans struggling for survival in an environment controlled by technology — except it appears to be much more interested in the technology than in the humans. It's a rah-rah action flick — except its action scenes aren't very good.

The only thread "Oblivion" follows to the end is its "creation myth." Harper is an idealized man; he's good with a gun, good with his hands, good in bed, loves football and rides a motorcycle. Though most of the movie's characters are women, not one of them is able to do anything without Harper's help — not even the mother triangle that lives in the space uterus. Only his rugged-but-sensitive masculinity holds the key to humanity's survival. The movie reaches for profundity, but all it grasps is misogyny.

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Film credits.

Oblivion (2013)

Rated PG-13 for sci-fi action violence, brief strong language, and some sensuality/nudity

126 minutes

Tom Cruise as Jack

Morgan Freeman as Beech

Olga Kurylenko as Julia

Andrea Riseborough as Victoria

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Sykes

Melissa Leo as Sally

• Joseph Kosinski
• Karl Gajdusek
• Michael Arndt

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Oblivion: film review.

Universal's sci-fi thriller, from "Tron: Legacy" director Joseph Kosinski, opens April 19.

By Todd McCarthy

Todd McCarthy

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Oblivion Trailer Screengrab - H 2013

A sort of The Eternal Return played out in the ruins of a post-apocalyptic planet Earth, Joseph Kosinski ‘s  Oblivion is an absolutely gorgeous film dramatically caught between its aspirations for poetic romanticism and the demands of heavy sci-fi action. After a captivating beginning brimming with mystery and evident ambition, the air gradually seeps out of the balloon that keeps this thinly populated tale aloft, leaving the ultimate impression of a nice try that falls somewhat short of the mark. There’s enough futuristic eye candy and battle scenes to lure the genre boys, while the presence of three important female characters, as well as Tom Cruise in good form, could attract more women than usual for this sort of fare, resulting in mostly robust, but not great, returns worldwide. The Universal release opens this week in most international territories, while the domestic bow comes April 19.

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To those who might wish to avoid a film by the maker of Tron: Legacy , it should be stressed that Oblivion is a more interesting work by a good distance, an imaginative speculative piece set some six decades hence that always engages serious attention, even if it doesn’t convincingly jell. In mood, a certain delicacy and the sense of isolation both on a depopulated Earth and somewhere above it, the recent film that this most strongly recalls is WALL-E , except with violence and without the humor and charm of the Pixar classic.

The Bottom Line A terrific-looking sci-fier that loses steam in the second half.

PHOTOS: The Costumes of ‘Tron’

There have been many films set on an Earth depleted of humans, but few as visually enthralling as this one. Shot by Claudio Miranda of Life of Pi , Oblivion shares that film’s lovely light, nuanced coloration and virtually seamless meshing of live photography and effects. In neither film is it always possible to be entirely sure of what is real and what’s computer generated, but the result is beautiful however it breaks down.

After what appear to be memory flashes of a previous life back in an early 21st century New York City on the part of Cruise’s Jack Harper, he and his partner Vika ( Andrea Riseborough ) wake up in what can only take the prize as the ultimate loft space, circa 2077, a perch that’s the last word in minimalist chic. It also affords unobstructed views of what’s been left behind after the catastrophe that saw the moon blown into pieces, which in turn resulted in earthly ruin and a subsequent evacuation of survivors to Saturn’s planet Titan.

Jack (Cruise’s second use of the name in a row, after Jack Reacher ) takes daily spins down to Earth in a bladeless, mosquito-like helicopter, while the British Vika tracks his movements and coordinates with headquarters, personified on a screen by the friendly, Southern-accented Sally ( Melissa Leo ). The self-described “mop-up crew,” Jack and Sally, who get on well, have only two weeks to go before they finish up and head for Titan.

On the ground, Jack looks for any signs of Scavengers, or Scavs, who, apparently, were defeated in the great war but still provoke worries with their desperate ambushes. He also must avoid the radioactive zones, which remain hot. Everywhere he goes, however, Jack is protected by drones, fast-flying globe-like hi-tech wonders that are armed to the teeth and can reliably detect friend or foe.

Jack seems to relish being haunted by the past. He wears a Yankees cap, nostalgically wallows in lore surrounding the final Super Bowl, played in 2017, while surrounded by the ruins of the stadium where it took place and uses the upper part of the Empire State Building, which sticks out of the ground that has swallowed the rest of the structure, as a sort of home base and control tower.

Jack also is inordinately fond of a collection of highfalutin Victorian-era verse by Thomas Macaulay  titled The Lays of Ancient Rome , especially the line that reads, “And how can man die better than facing fearful odds.” Given that Jack seems to be the last man responsible for tidying up affairs on Earth, he’d better not die prematurely, though there is someone or something down there that seems bent on catching him.

STORY: Tom Cruise Plans Imax Q&A to Promote Universal Pictures’ ‘Oblivion’

The film’s delightful sense of apartness in the early going and the industrious way that Vika, especially, approaches her task of administering to the final business of Earth are things that can’t last, especially not after Jack brings home the one survivor of a mysterious crash of a spaceship carrying several hibernating humans. Once she wakes up and recovers, Julia ( Olga Kurylenko ) throws a monkey wrench into life in the loft, not only because she is so beautiful (Riseborough’s alarmed reactions to her are indelibly registered) but because she is an arrival from the past, when she was Jack’s wife.

Revelations of what follows are best not detailed, except to say that Morgan Freeman and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, respectively, play the intelligent and impulsive members of a rebel band that soon captures Jack and Julia. As much as Jack aspires to recapture the past, however, and regardless of Julia’s evident purity of intent, the renewed relationship doesn’t click as intended, mostly because it’s tough to buy the conceit of the couple reunited after so long.

Further twists and betrayals lie in store, but they feel more like obligatory plot complications than organic to the overall story. As a result, viewer engagement gradually lessens, leading to a climax that makes for thematic sense but dramatic head-scratching.

There’s a bit too much manly stunt stuff, the better likes of which we’ve seen in the Mission: Impossible extravaganzas and elsewhere, but generally Cruise plays it naturalistic and low-key here, likable and to solid effect. Riseborough, who was the one person worth watching in Madonna ‘s wretched W.E. , is an inspired bit of casting as she brings prim, snappy delivery to many routine lines and irrepressible emotion to her later behavior. Kurylenko is more than plausible as a woman who would inspire recurring dreams in Jack, while Leo has so much personality that she can burst right through the limitations of her video screen-only appearances and still register strongly.

Technically, the film is a dream; if Tron: Legacy showed that Kosinski was right at home in an imaginary, effects-created world, then Oblivion reveals him as well along the road toward applying effects to even grander ends, in this case to a story he originally conceived years ago as a graphic novel that was adapted as a script by Karl Gajdusek and Michael DeBruyn .

The unconventional electronic score by M83 is terrifically effective for the first hour and maybe more until it starts becoming a bit repetitive.

Opens: April 10-12 (international), April 19 (U.S.) (Universal)

Production: Chernin Entertainment, Monolith Pictures, Radical Studios

Cast: Tom Cruise, Morgan Freeman, Olga Kurylenko, Andrea Riseborough, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Melissa Leo, Zoe Bell

Director: Joseph Kosinski

Screenwriters: Karl Gajdusek, Michael DeBruyn , based on the graphic novel original story by Joseph Kosinski

Producers: Joseph Kosinski, Peter Chernin, Dylan Clark, Barry Levine, Duncan Henderson

Executive producers: Dave Morrison, Jesse Berger, Justin Springer

Director of photography: Claudio Miranda

Production designer: Darren Gilford

Costume designer: Marlene Stewart

Editor: Richard Francis-Bruce

Visual effects supervisors: Eric Barba, Bjorn Mayer

PG-13 rating, 124 minutes

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• Universal Pictures

Summary Jack Harper is one of the last drone repairmen stationed on Earth. Part of a massive operation to extract vital resources after decades of war with a terrifying threat known as the Scavs, Jack’s mission is nearly complete. But when he rescues a beautiful stranger from a downed spacecraft, he begins to question everything he knows. [Uni ... Read More

Directed By : Joseph Kosinski

Written By : Karl Gajdusek, Michael Arndt, Joseph Kosinski

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Andrea Riseborough

Olga Kurylenko

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau

Melissa Leo

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Julia's child, isabelle lowe, david yusel madison, grow hall survivor, john l. armijo, nasa ground control, fileena bahris, joanne bahris, andrew breland, suri cruise, jack's daughter, z. dieterich, paul gunawan, julie hardin, sebastian james, nick kellington, grant halliburton - tech, survivor, critic reviews.

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Oblivion Ending, Explained

‘ Oblivion ’ continues to divide critics and audiences even today; nothing too polar since the film’s popularity has somewhat been masked by other stellar Tom Cruise outings, but enough to warrant a discussion even now. The audience verdict was much more favourable than what critics had to say about the film. However, the one thing that united the two factions with respect to the film seemed to be the visual aspects. Completely true, since even if the film isn’t a masterclass in cinematography as, say, ‘ The Revenant ’, or another sci-fi film, ‘ Interstellar ’ is, ‘Oblivion’ is simply gorgeous to look at, in its virgin landscapes, aerial flights of fancy and the ruins left behind by an all ravaging war.

However, what the two factions also lamented over was the intrepid “lifelessness” of the film, and a clear assertion of style over substance. This may also be stemming from the film actually being based on director Joseph Kosinski’s unpublished graphic novel, and that it clearly has a lot of classics, both literary and cinematic to draw from. However, this is also an unbecoming irony, since the unequivocal best part about a sci-fi film is not the tech part: the machines, the flying cars, the robots, the AI. It’s the humanity.

Agreeably so, ‘Oblivion’ does seem to struggle between intimacy and spectacle, and while it is most certainly a completely watchable film, there is no denying that the film works more as a popcorn entertainer than a head scratcher, which is again a contradiction, because somewhere beneath all the blitz and fury, there is a good film dealing with complex ideas and I dare say, even philosophical themes. Which is what we are going to discuss in this write up.

The Ending, Explained

In order to get to the ending, we need to understand the many tropes involved in ‘Oblivion’, who director Joseph Kosinski had no inhibitions stating was inspired from 70s and 80s sci-if films, and quite honestly, it shows, especially from the choices of music and score. There clearly is a protagonist here who is a cog in the wheel and is about to discover an important piece of information that is going to change the fate of the world he lives in and is unknowingly oppressed by.

In doing so, the film also borrows from a number of classic dystopian novels and films, including 1984, Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ and of course, the Replicant scenario from ‘ Blade Runner ’. In our attempt of moving towards the ending, let’s first decipher what we are told in the beginning of the film, and what is discovered as the total truth by our protagonist, Jack Harper, tech 49.

The Lie We Are Told

As the film begins, we hear in voiceover from a disillusioned protagonist himself about how the Earth was ravaged in the war between humans and its extraterrestrial invaders , the Scavengers. The film begins roughly 60 years after the invasion took place, and the Scavengers as they are termed by the humans, attacked and destroyed the Earth’s moon, causing the effects of lunar gravity on Earth to go berserk, resulting in a number of natural calamities.

What followed was a full-blown war between the humans and the scavengers on Earth, leading to humans deploying nearly all their nuclear resources and weapons. It is told that the war was won, but the planet was rendered an uninhabitable, barren landmass, with no resources to sustain life, and many places pushed to a perpetual nuclear winter. Looking towards a new future, the humans look to transport the populace to Saturn’s biggest moon, Titan, until which time, they are all aboard a mysterious floating pyramidal ship, in orbit around the Earth, called the Tet, awaiting transportation.

Gigantic machines called Hydro rigs are charged with draining the planet’s significant water bodies and oceans for the purpose of producing a steady flow of renewable energy through fusion to sustain humans on Titan. During this time, a team of surviving humans, Jack Harper and Victoria ‘Vika’ Olsen are charged with guarding the hydro rigs, and servicing and maintaining large combat drones, designed and assigned to fight off any remaining scavengers back on Earth.

Within the duo, Jack takes care of the on-ground work and is the tech partner, while Victoria maintains contact with the mission control in Tet headed by Sally, the mission director. The two undergo a mandatory memory swipe every five years, something which the two seem to know about. The film opens with two weeks remaining for the duo to be called back to Tet for transportation to Titan, when the Hydro-rigs’ work was complete.

The Truth We Discover

Through Jack’s journey and his discovery of the truth, the most significant revelation and the film’s main twist turns out to be how humans never won the war against the alien threat, and that the Tet wasn’t a ship containing the surviving human population to be transported to Titan. The Tet was the alien threat that appeared and destroyed Earth’s moon, setting the events of the film in motion. Presumably so, the threat was never organic, and Tet seems to be some sort of AI threat that had thousands of Jack and Victoria clones do their bidding on Earth.

The scavengers too weren’t some alien threat, but the surviving humans on the ravaged Earth, aware of the truth and attempting to overthrow their alien overlords, even sixty years hence. They are in constant tussle with the killer drones charged with eliminating them, in an attempt to scavenge its parts, especially its nuclear fuel cells in an attempt to craft a nuclear bomb to be carried aboard the Tet, to destroy it. In that, what the Hydro Rigs too are doing is draining the planet of its resources, sucking the planet dry quite literally. The way they plan to get the bomb aboard the Tet is to have one of the drones they captured carry it, to be re-programmed by the technician Jack Harper that they have been monitoring in Sector 49.

A big part of the Scavengers’ plan to overthrow the Tet and the alien invaders involved seeking the help of Jack, the technician they monitored in Sector 49. It is to be presumed that the Scavengers monitored a lot of the technicians (Jacks) in different sectors, before zeroing in on the one in Sector 49.

The reason for the same is the perceivable humanity that the Scavengers find in this one, since it is revealed that this Jack, Tech 49, often switched off his comms and ventured into a secret “earthly” habitat that he had maintained, his own sanctuary where he enjoys living by the lake, indulging in essential literature, including ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ and ‘War and Peace’, and listening to classic rock. Their approximation on this Jack also served to be right, since this Jack, tech 49, was the most human among all of them, as a testament to which he frequently dreams of the black haired woman and the viewfinder atop Empire State Building.

When Jack is captured and the truth about the Scavengers is revealed to him, he is allowed to venture into other zones, designated as irradiated and restricted zones by the invading forces to prevent any of the multiple technicians across multiple sectors from crossing into another and discovering the truth for themselves. Jack does so, along with Julia, and learns the truth about himself and the invasion after crossing paths with Tech 52, a clone of himself, and after travelling to the tower for the same sector and discovering another clone of Victoria ‘Vika’ Olsen for that sector, thereby deciding to side with the Scavengers.

The first part in Jack’s realisation of the truth is his discovery of Julia, the same black-haired woman from his dreams, as one of the survivors of the ship that crash landed, following a transmission sent out by the scavengers using the Empire State Building’s antenna. The woman soon reveals to be his wife, and Jack regains part of his memories of being married to Julia before the invasion. They recover the flight recording that Jack later listens to on his way to the Tet for the final part of his mission, learning the full truth about himself, including what the Odyssey mission was sixty years ago.

Jack Harper was aboard the same ill-fated ship as the captain piloting it along with co-pilot Victoria on a mission to find life on Titan, when they were diverted to the alien object, Tet. The program was headed by NASA in 2017, with Sally as their mission director on Earth and several other astronauts on board in stasis, to be awoken on Titan. However, as they approached the Tet, the pyramid began drawing them in strongly despite reverse thrusters employed, and seeing a certain doomed fate, Jack undocks the ship’s sleep module, also containing Julia, to return in orbit safely around Earth.

Jack and Victoria hold hands as the Tet opens up and sucks them in, with the film not revealing their fate in exaction, but heavily implying that the original Jack and Victoria from 2017 were no longer there, and had been cloned thousands of times to override Earth as tech and support team Jack and Victoria, aboard various towers of various zones/sectors, like our protagonists in 49. The signal then that the Scavengers were sending that brought the Odyssey’s sleep module back to Earth was a homing beacon, to draw the ship in from the orbit where it had been for 60 years, containing several astronauts including Julia in deep hyper sleep.

The House in The Woods

With all aspects and complexities of the plot explained, we come back to the final few minutes of the film, wherein Jack and Malcolm hatch a plan to infiltrate the Tet on a one way mission to detonate the bomb. After the realisation that the drones that attacked them and the one that the scavengers had captured before wouldn’t work in carrying the nuclear fuel cell bomb to the Tet, Jack volunteers to carry it himself, along with Julia, who volunteers too, after Sally commands Tech 49 to retrieve her from Earth and bring her back to the Tet.

As the two approach the Tet, with Jack piloting and Julia in hyper sleep in her pod, they are let aboard after a series of tests that Jack cleverly manoeuvres through, discovering thousands of his and Victoria’s clones suspended in the Tet’s stasis chamber. Upon reaching the core, where they see a giant eye like structure with Sally’s voice, they reveal the pod carrying Malcolm Beech instead of Julia, and the bomb they had made out of the drone’s fuel cells. The duo detonate the bomb, sacrificing themselves and destroying the Tet, immediately disabling all drones and rigs on Earth.

Julia awakens at the same lake house that Tech 49 used as his sanctuary. It is revealed that she was pregnant, since three years later, she and her daughter are shown to be living at the lake house, when the surviving members from the Scavengers and ‘Tech 52’ Jack show up there. While the film closes there, it would be fair to assume that Julia and Jack 52 would have started a life together, since this clone too seems to have had memories of Julia, and to be connected to the unique memories of Tech 49 in some way, as is revealed by his final speech: “For 3 years, I searched for the house he built. I knew it had to be out there, because I know him. I am him. I am Jack Harper, and I am home”.

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Rotten Tomatoes® Score

There’s no denying that Oblivion is derivative.... But director Joseph Kosinski, adapting his own graphic novel, sure knows how to make it look beautiful and evocative.

Oblivion’s characters do little more than service the puzzle-based plot, leaving the sometimes predictable dialogue to the actors to enhance.

The eye-popping visuals help create a futuristic wonder, and the Iceland locations give a perfect sense of desolation.

A grab bag of ancient (in movie terms) sci-fi ideas, Oblivion is a sharp-looking film that will, through its own paucity of invention, be quickly consigned to history.

Filled with amazing post-apocalyptic spectacle, dazzling action sequences, and a heady story of twists and turns, the challenge of "Oblivion" is whether or not you, as the audience, can allow the strong visuals to make up for the weak narrative.

A competently made sci-fi action movie - something that can't be said about the majority of the genre.

Visually arresting and in moments exquisite.

On a pure surface level, the film is well made ... but this seems like it was aimed at an audience that has never seen a science fiction film before.

Because Oblivion borrows heavily from other sci-fi films, it lacks distinction in making the film truly it's own.

Oblivion may be a masterwork on the visual side, but it is a complete void in every other arena.

Additional Info

• Genre : Sci-Fi, Action
• Release Date : April 19, 2013
• Languages : English
• Captions : English
• Audio Format : 5.1

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By Manohla Dargis

• April 18, 2013

If only it were less easy to laugh at “Oblivion,” a lackluster science-fiction adventure with Tom Cruise that, even before its opening, was groaning under the weight of its hard-working, slowly fading star and a title that invites mockery of him and it both. The agony of being a longtime Tom Cruise fan has always been a burden, but now it’s just, well, dispiriting. You not only have to ignore the din of the tabloids and swat away the buzzing generated by his multiple headline-ready dramas, you also have to come to grips with the harsh truth that it no longer actually matters why and how Tom Terrific became less so. No one else much cares.

Mr. Cruise hasn’t made it easy. His screen presence has continued to grow ever-more self-serious, despite occasional attempts to lighten up, as in the recent would-be satire “Rock of Ages.” Midway through “Oblivion” I wondered when I had last believed there was something true in his laugh, something that felt either genuinely expansive or intimate, as in “Jerry Maguire,” or chilled with a hint of madness, as in “Magnolia.” Mind you, he doesn’t have many occasions to laugh in “Oblivion,” a gray post-apocalyptic tale with rainbow accents, yet when he does, it feels uncomfortably forced. In those moments, was he worrying that the movie wasn’t going to return him to the box office summit? He’s 50 years old and too young to be prepping for a slow fade, yet what are his choices?

Working with better directors — with filmmakers who know how to charm or force performances out of stars or perhaps say no to them — seems like a good place to start. “Oblivion” is only the second feature directed by Joseph Kosinski, after the 2010 release “Tron: Legacy.” That special effects-laden fantasy, a musty hero’s journey largely distinguished by the yawning divide between its poor quality and its $170 million price tag, was a flat line of a dud in almost every respect. It nonetheless made enough money to shore up an exploitable franchise property and spawn a sequel, and while this may not sound like much of an achievement, box office success or the perception of it can beget more opportunities in the movie business, which may help explain “Oblivion.”

Its story primarily unfolds in 2077, long after a cataclysmic war between earthlings and extraterrestrials. Nuked to all but radioactive ash, the Earth has been rendered nearly uninhabitable, and its remaining people have fled to a galactic shelter. The only ones left on the planet appear to be Jack Harper (Mr. Cruise) and his companion, Victoria (Andrea Riseborough), who live in a cantilevered aerie above the clouds that brings to mind a “Jetsons” sky pad. His job is to repair drones that patrol the facilities that extract resources for the surviving populace and that are under attack from the aliens, or Scavs, as in scavengers. She monitors him back at their place, waving her hands over a tabletop computer, while in full makeup and rocking some fabulous end-of-days-to-night dresses and heels.

The heels seem a strange choice given, you know, the whole doomsday thing, not to mention the glossiness of the couple’s floors. Then again, from the way she strips for some late-night nuzzling, her get-up does appear to have instrumental value, even if one misstep and she or at least an ankle would be a goner. A similar kind of tricky balancing act is inherent in science fiction, a genre that often employs recognizable details to tether readers and viewers in fantastical realms. It’s a form, as is often noted, that makes the strange familiar and the familiar strange, a narrative principle that Mr. Kosinski embraces again and again with niceties like Jack’s Yankee baseball cap and Jack and Victoria’s candlelight dinners.

The candles add atmosphere, as does that baseball cap. But because Mr. Kosinski hasn’t come up with a resonant idea to accompany them — a new or different way of looking at the world that exists and the world that might one day come into being — his retro flourishes prove as empty as the lunarlike landscapes. There’s an arresting moment, for instance, when Jack drives through a blasted-out terrain littered with ships partly submerged in earth, a vista that demonstrates Mr. Kosinski’s fondness for playing with negative space. The vision of a man existentially alone conjures up countless cowboys traveling through innumerable westerns and summons up the shock of the half-buried Statue of Liberty in “Planet of the Apes.” Yet again, Mr. Kosinski fails to build on his materials and the allusions soon fade.

All genre fictions build, self-consciously or not, on their progenitors. The problem with “Oblivion,” which is based on an unpublished graphic novel Mr. Kosinski wrote and used to pitch the studio, is that it’s been stitched together from bits and pieces that evoke numerous other, far better far-out tales and ideas, conceits and characters from the likes of Philip K. Dick, the Wachowskis, J. G. Ballard and Duncan Jones, specifically his elegant, elegiac movie, “Moon.” No matter how hard Mr. Cruise squares his jaw or flings his body over and against the scenery, and despite the presence of Morgan Freeman, Olga Kurylenko and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who trickle into the story to aid in Jack’s journey, “Oblivion” never transcends its inspirations to become anything other than a thin copy.

“Oblivion” is rated PG-13. (Parents strongly cautioned.) Zap-gun violence and skinny-dipping.

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Jack Harper is one of the last few drone repairmen stationed on Earth. Part of a massive operation to extract vital resources after decades of war with a terrifying threat known as the Scavs, Jack’s mission is nearly complete. His existence is brought crashing down when he rescues a beautiful stranger from a downed spacecraft. Her arrival triggers a chain of events that forces him to question everything he knows and puts the fate of humanity in his hands.

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Tom Cruise’s Last Foray Into Sci-Fi Might Also Be His Best

Cruise and genre films are a tricky fit, but he just managed to walk the tightrope here.

Tom Cruise has been eligible for AARP membership for a decade, but that isn’t stopping him from ramping a motorcycle off a cliff in this summer’s Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One , presumably as part of a broader mission to go make something or someone explode. He is a man with the monomaniacal mission of keeping the moviegoing experience thrilling ... even if the process kills him.

Still, Cruise has settled into his equivalent of a comfortable middle-aged routine. Of the eight movies he’s made since 2015, four are Mission: Impossible installments, and the other four are M:I adjacent. The excellent Top Gun: Maverick, underappreciated American Made, bland Jack Reacher: Never Go Back , and horrid The Mummy are action thrillers that indulged Cruise’s love of driving motorcycles, flying planes, and starring in movies with colons in their titles.

There are certainly worse niches to fill than being a 60-year-old action star who still looks capable of serving genuine military service, but we’re a long way from the days of dramas like Rain Man and A Few Good Men. But before the Impossiblessance, Cruise briefly branched out with two sci-fi films that saw him shoot futuristic guns, operate futuristic vehicles, and put his grimacing face under straightforward titles Cormac McCarthy would be proud of. Edge of Tomorrow was profitable and lauded for its clever, pacy take on the time-loop thriller … and then there was Oblivion.

Oblivion turned a profit too — it’s difficult for a Cruise movie to not bring audiences in — but reviewers were split down the middle, and it’s rare to see it looked back on with the same fondness as Edge of Tomorrow . Even the generic title, an obscure reference to the movie’s exploration of memory, is appropriately forgettable, and its relatively slow burn isn’t friendly to fans looking to watch Cruise gun down aliens with a smirk on his face. But there’s a lot to like here, even if you can feel the genre trappings warring with the Cruiseisms.

It’s 2077, and Jack (Cruise) and Victoria (Andrea Riseborough) are the only humans left on Earth. Decades ago, humanity fought off an alien invasion that destroyed the Moon and left Earth uninhabitable, and it’s Jack’s job to oversee a fleet of drones that mop up enemy survivors and convert the planet’s oceans into hydrothermal energy. He reports to a woman named Sally aboard the orbiting “Tet” space station, and with the job almost complete, the trio is due to join a colony of survivors on Titan in a couple of weeks.

Brace yourself, but not all goes as planned. Jack can’t shake memories of a prewar existence he shouldn’t have, and a UFO falls out of the sky to reveal Julia (Olga Kurylenko), who claims to be a NASA astronaut who’s been in stasis since the war began in the futuristic year of 2017. Then the Tom Cruise clones start showing up, and things get weirder from there.

Oblivion feels like both a mishmash and a throwback, a bevy of sci-fi tropes thrown in a blender and poured through a “unravel the conspiracy” style ‘70s thriller that could only dream of Oblivion’s modern budget and effects. Those visuals are one of its highlights, as director Joseph Kosinski dazzles with sweeping Icelandic landscapes and post-apocalyptic technology that feels like Apple products given an ominous sheen. M83’s soundtrack also goes for unironic grandeur, and together they invoke an old-fashioned “Can you believe how weird the future might be?” vibe. So much of modern sci-fi is reduced to shooting invading aliens, but Oblivion embraces the sheer strangeness of what an alien invasion could look like.

Oblivion’s early scenes work because supervising our species’ final moments on Earth is just another gig.

Still, this is a Cruise movie, and the man doesn’t get out of bed if he can’t motorcycle across an esplanade or salt flat. We receive a steady drip of intriguing revelations, but ultimately they’re in the service of blowing crap up. That action is competent, but we’re supposed to be getting to the bottom of Jack’s mysterious existence because of his rebelliousness and curiosity, and instead it just feels like we’re getting to it because he is Tom Cruise and that is what Tom Cruise is destined to do. What begins as an exploration of the sinister edge to Jack’s futuristic workday existence ends with moments that feel like they could be from any Cruise movie of the last 15 years.

That derivativeness was the largest complaint among contemporary reviews, but a decade later it’s a sin that’s easier to forgive. Oblivion doesn’t trust you to put together the puzzle pieces and stay engaged without a few firefights, and its exploration of loss and loneliness falls by the wayside. But it still works, partially because it looks phenomenal and partially because we now know that Cruise and Kosinski went on to make Top Gun: Maverick, which is the theatrical equivalent of getting punched in the teeth while snorting cocaine.

Before Oblivion, Kosinski was panned for making the garish Tron: Legacy, and Cruise, fresh off Rock of Ages and Knight and Day, teetered on the brink of being a has-been. Oblivion was a step towards reinvention for both, and its occasional shakiness now looks like growing pains rather than missteps. Oblivion may very well be Cruise’s last sci-fi movie and, if so, it’s a fitting one. He never quite escapes his own shadow, and you can see the obligatory moments meant to highlight his own legend. But it’s still a great ride with more on its mind than it gets credit for.

• Science Fiction

The Ending Of Oblivion Explained

Before Tom Cruise and director Joseph Kosinski combined their efforts to soar on screen and at the box office with "Top Gun: Maverick," the two collaborated on "Oblivion." The 2013 sci-fi film tells the story of Earth in the wake of an alien invasion, when the planet stands largely uninhabitable because of the nuclear arms humanity used to defeat the extraterrestrial invaders. Or at least, that's what we're told at the start.

About 60 years later, most of Earth's survivors live on a massive satellite in space called the Tet. The few remaining people on Earth, like Jack (Cruise) and Victoria (Andrea Riseborough), aid the effort to move humanity to a new home on the largest of Saturn's moons, Titan. To do so, they repair the drones that scour the planet's surface and keep an eye out for Scavs — the last remaining aliens on the surface — in order to protect the hydro rigs that are taking Earth's last remaining resources for humanity's journey.

Things, however, are not what they seem. Jack struggles with vivid dreams that feel like memories and a sense of burnout he can't seem to overcome. He frequently steals away to a lakeside cabin in a part of his sector somehow utterly devoid of the war's destruction. When a craft falls from the sky containing several people, including the literal woman of his dreams, it becomes obvious that what Jack "knows" about his life isn't anywhere near the whole truth. Here's everything you need to know about the ending of "Oblivion."

The Scavs' true identity

The Scavs dominate a large amount of Jack and Victoria's attention in "Oblivion." Early on, we learn these black hooded figures are the last remnants of the invading alien force. While humanity has triumphed over them, these wicked interlopers fight on. Every one of their actions seems directed at disrupting the plan to save Earth's resources and depart for Titan. Unfortunately, the viewers — along with Victoria and Jack — have been lied to.

The Scavs are survivors. That much is true. However, they're not alien survivors. They're human beings. Led by Beech ( Morgan Freeman ), this group is indeed attempting to derail the mission that Jack, Victoria, and the drones have been seeking to protect and maintain. Needless to say, though, these "Scavs" aren't doing it to harm humanity. Rather, they're trying to save it.

Despite the official line that Jack and Victoria have been fed since the film's beginning, and evidently for years before, humanity did not triumph over the extraterrestrial invaders. There aren't any alien stragglers on Earth. There are just desperate people struggling to survive. And for years, Jack and Victoria have been contributing to the ever-more-likely extinction of their own species, all while the real enemy was hiding in plain sight.

The Tet isn't what it seems

Once again, what appears to be true at the start of "Oblivion" proves to be an outright lie when it comes to the Tet. At the beginning of the film, the audience is told that the Tet is a giant space station in orbit above the planet. After the ravages of war, it's where humanity gathered to escape the dying Earth and prepare for the trip to Titan. It's why Jack and Victoria have stayed behind — to ensure that Earth is properly mined and that the people on the satellite can continue their lives in relative safety until it's time to leave.

The idea that the Tet is a satellite filled with people is accurate, but it isn't what you'd think. In reality, the Tet itself is the invading force that destroyed the moon and waged war on the Earth. The aliens, as it turns out, are not humanoids. They're not even organisms as we understand them. Rather, the only real alien enemy is a vast alien artificial intelligence housed within the Tet. It intends to use the hydro rigs to strip Earth bare of resources to power itself for years to come, but the AI isn't the only being on the satellite.

There are people in the Tet, but they're not humanity's last members. As already noted, human survivors exist on Earth, struggling to endure the harsh conditions and the targeting by the Tet via Jack and Victoria. The people on the satellite are just more Jacks and Victorias — a host of clones that the extraterrestrial AI has on hand to dispatch to Earth to continue the work of strip-mining the planet.

The Jack and Vika the audience meets are but one pair of many on Earth. The Tet has divided the Earth into sectors, each patrolled by a Jack and Victoria clone pair. The supposedly radioactive parts of the planet are lies as well — a way to keep one Jack from encountering another while on patrol. By labeling areas as dangerous and forbidden, the Tet manages to curtail Jack's activities despite his curiosity. At least, for a while.

The Jacks and Victorias on the satellite are backups. Should a human survivor get lucky and kill a Jack, another will replace it the next day. Likewise, should an accident happen and a collapsing tower kills a Victoria, a new Vika will be installed in a rebuilt tower as soon as possible.

Saving Earth

While the Earth in "Oblivion" was indeed ravaged by war and its environment was permanently altered by the destruction of the Moon, it turns out that what Jack and Victoria initially believed about the planet's devastated state was a lie told to them repeatedly by the extraterrestrial AI.

In reality, the Tet's victory over humanity was so swift and so total that the world's governments were never able to turn their nuclear arsenal on the invaders. As noted before, the supposed irradiated zones were just a means of artificially dividing up the planet between Jack and Vika pairs. Between the environmental devastation caused by the destruction of the moon and an army of drones and Jack and Vika clones, Earth never stood much of a chance.

The future of the human race does not, in fact, lie orbiting Saturn. There is no colony waiting on Titan. While the invasion did alter Earth and rendered the planet considerably less hospitable than before, it remains capable of supporting life. That is, if The Tet is stopped from draining the planet dry of resources.

The NASA Crew

In 2017, a NASA crew departed Earth on an exploratory mission to Saturn's biggest moon, Titan. The ship was the Odyssey, and the team was set to go as far into space as any human-crewed mission ever had. Included on the squad were mission commander Jack, his co-pilot Victoria, and crew member Julia (Olga Kurylenko), who also happened to be Jack's wife. Unfortunately, things didn't go as planned.

Somewhere on the way to Titan, the team of the Odyssey encountered the Tet. Properly reading it as hostile, Jack and Victoria jettisoned the rest of the crew — still in hibernation — in escape pods, sending them back toward Earth. Meanwhile, Jack and Victoria had no choice but to stay at the controls of the command unit as the Tet drew them into itself. It's not known how long the original Jack and Vika lived after capture, but they provided enough genetic material to create a deadly clone army.

Building a lie

While the Odyssey's escape craft made its journey to Earth, the Tet cloned a literal army of Jacks. With help from some super advanced drones, this endless wave of brainwashed soldiers overran the planet in record time. For all of Earth's considerable manpower and technology, it was no match for the Tet, and humanity fell in record time.

After that, the Jacks became repurposed as guards. The AI lied to them about who they were and what happened on Earth. They were told their memories had to be occasionally wiped to explain their lack of history and the strange dreams they often shared. Next, Victoria clones joined the Jacks to create teams. The Jacks and Vikas became co-workers, friends, and lovers all at once — humanity's last hope of protecting their future, or so they're told. Finally, drones were dispatched to help each pair take out "Scavs" so the clones would never discover they were actually hunting humans. All that remained was for the Tet to wait until all of Earth's resources were sucked dry.

The woman of Jack's dreams

Both Jack and Victoria are told that they receive periodic memory wipes for their own good. However, Jack has vivid dreams that don't seem to come from a previous tour of duty. Instead, he sees a pre-invasion Earth, a New York City teeming with life, and a woman he's never met. That is, until she falls out of the sky.

More than 60 years after entering hibernation and being fired back to Earth, the Odyssey's escape pod finally lands. Despite attempts by the Tet to block the homing beacon — Jack is told early in the film that the beacon trying to summon alien reinforcements — the human "Scav" survivors manage to broadcast the signal long enough to bring the escape pod home.

Our protagonist, a Jack clone referred to as Tech 49, sees the craft crash and pursues it. When he arrives, he finds several coffin-like pods filled with people — asleep, but alive. He frees one, a woman who eerily resembles the woman from his dreams. This is Julia, wife to the original Jack and the person who ultimately wakes up Tech 49 to the reality of what's happening.

Unfortunately, before Jack can wake the rest of the survivors, a drone arrives and opens fire. Despite being the keeper of the drones, Jack is unable to stop them. He saves Julia, but the attack claims the lives of the rest of the NASA astronaut crew.

Beech's plan

For a while, Tech 49 Jack's unusual behavior and voyages to his eclectic cabin don't seem to have registered with the Tet, and if Victoria's concerned, she's not telling. At every check-in, she maintains that she and Jack remain an effective team. Someone who does notice, however, is a man named Beech.

The leader of the human survivors (or "Scavs") in Tech 49's sector observes the clone long enough to realize that something about him is off. Essentially, Beech realizes before 49, or anyone else for that matter, that the clone is somehow more connected to his past self than should be possible. Tech 49's trip to the lake cabin may not have revealed that he was experiencing the memories of the original Jack, but it's unusual enough for Beech to notice.

As a result of these strange trips, Beech hypothesizes that Jack can be "woken up." He can learn the truth about what happened to Earth, who he is, and what he's being asked to do. When Tech 49 does finally awaken, it's Beech who fills in the blanks about how the aliens used Jack to nearly drive people to extinction. It's also Beech who pitches the plan of destroying the Tet for good using a bomb that only Jack can complete.

Victoria's role

While Jack handles much of the hands-on work required by the Tet, Victoria is his eye in the sky, helping direct him to disabled drones. Additionally, she communicates with "Sally" (Melissa Leo), their supposed mission control contact on the Tet. Like Jack, Vika is aware of their mindwipes every half-decade and seems to be fine with the arrangement at the start of the film. She also seems to have an awareness, perhaps even sooner than Jack, that things aren't exactly what they seem to be on Earth. However, unlike Jack, she feels highly motivated to maintain the status quo and their arrangement despite this notion. As a result, while the discovery of Julia creates a desire in Jack to learn more, it sees Victoria doubling down on her commitment to the mission.

While the film never offers us the same insight into Victoria's mind as it does Jack's, the implication seems to be that while the cloning issues make Jack overly curious, they've rendered Victoria overly loyal. As a result, she hides her concerns about Jack from Sally and the Tet until she absolutely must reveal them. Doing so costs her her life but ensures that Tech 49 and Julia can escape the drone attack. Even 60 years in the future and countless clones later, Victoria evidently can't stop being Jack's right-hand woman — his co-pilot into danger until the end.

Julia completes the puzzle

The original Jack's wife, Julia was part of the mission that first encountered the Tet in space. She's jettisoned back toward Earth after being placed into the emergency pod with several of her crewmates and dropped into hibernation. The journey takes 60 years, but she does finally land back on the planet. Her arrival and subsequent revelations about her life with Jack finally connect Tech 49 with the original's memories — the Jack collective unconscious, if you will.

When she and Tech 49 encounter another Jack, Tech 52, the fight between the Jacks results in her getting shot. In order to help her, Tech 49 brings her to his secret cabin to tend to her wounds. While there, the two experience a reigniting of old passions. Their bond fully cemented, Tech 49 starts acting much like the original Jack did 60 years prior. While it defies scientific explanation, her bonding with Tech 49 seems to fully turn him into the original Jack in terms of memories, personality, and commitment to humanity.

The truth about Sally

Jack and Victoria's mission contact on the Tet, Sally, is ultimately revealed to be nothing more than a facet of the AI. She's a false human front — another way to keep the Jacks and Vikas from knowing the truth about the past, their present, and the true purpose of their mission.

The decision by the alien AI to use Sally suggests it has some awareness of the metaphysical issues with the human cloning process . While the Tet may not be aware of the regeneration of memories from the pre-clone Jack that Tech 49 somehow develops, the AI seems to understand that previous bonds evidently carry over to the clones. Therefore, the alien presence selects Sally, the mission control operator on Earth for the Odyssey, as a mask.

As for why Sally only appears as a hologram instead of a clone, there are several reasons. First, Jack and Victoria were on the Odyssey when it was taken by the Tet. Sally was on Earth, so there wasn't a body to clone. Secondly, another clone would increase the risk of exposure, especially a clone that needs to broadcast from space. Why bother with that risk? Finally, there's the matter of efficiency. A hologram allows the Tet to broadcast from the sky, provides the familiar face needed to manipulate the pairs, and creates no risk of discovery.

Defeating the aliens for good

With Tech 49 essentially becoming the true Jack again, he and Julia join with Beech and the other Scavs. Unfortunately, before her death, Victoria reveals Julia's return to the Tet, making her a target. However, this also gives the surviving humans their first true means of getting to the Tet in 60 years. Feigning that he remains a loyal soldier, Tech 49 agrees to transport Julia to the Tet. Anxious to eliminate the threat she represents, the AI readily agrees.

When Jack and Julia's hibernation pod is pulled onto the Tet, the AI finds itself facing a very different situation than expected. First, Julia is nowhere to be found. Instead, Jack has brought Beech aboard. Second, they didn't come empty-handed. Instead, they have a bomb. Before the AI can stop them, Tech 49 and Beech detonate the device, sacrificing themselves. The resulting explosion sets off a chain reaction that utterly destroys the Tet and the numerous Jack and Victoria clones onboard. Finally, 60 years after the war on Earth began, humanity has finally, truly, won.

After being made shockingly aware that he wasn't the only Jack on Earth when fellow clone Tech 49 invaded his sector and put him out cold, Tech 52 seemingly experiences a similar revelation. While viewers don't see Tech 52 from the time his clone bests him until the end of the film, the character's final words make it clear that he too has tapped into the original Jack's memories.

Even more interesting is the suggestion that he also has access to the unique memories of Tech 49. These memories help this version of Jack make his way to the lakeside cabin, a place he'd never been before. As he explains, "I know him. I am him."

It still takes Tech 52 three years to make sense of those new shared memories, but in the end, they guide him right to the cabin's front door and Julia. Given that Tech 52 has both the original Jack's memories and Tech 49's memories, the final scenes suggest that he will become Julia's partner now. He is, essentially, the perfect hybrid of both of her lost loves.

Rebuilding for the future

Tech 49's decision to sacrifice himself and save Julia doesn't just save her life, but also that of their unborn child — the first human born on an Earth free of the Tet in 60 years. Three years later, Julia has become the head of the growing community of survivors who begin arriving at the lake, one of the places on Earth unaffected by both the war and the environmental changes enacted by the Moon's destruction. While only a fraction of humanity survived the invasion and the 60 years that followed, many of them arrive at Julia's lake seeking to rebuild their community. Given how the Tet divided the world into sectors, it also seems likely that such evolving communities are forming all over the world.

It may be awkward and halting. It may take generations. But the end of "Oblivion" suggests there is hope for humanity and for the Earth as a whole. By the time the credits roll, the future is finally getting brighter.

Sequel hopes?

"Oblivion" sequel talk has been limited, and there are a few reasons why. First, critics greeted the film with limited enthusiasm , and audiences seemed to feel similarly. Further, while the film wasn't an absolute flop at the box office, it didn't perform quite as well as the studio might have hoped given Cruise's star power.

Second and perhaps more importantly, "Oblivion" pretty definitively wraps up its storylines. The Tet is destroyed and humanity begins to rebuild civilization. Perhaps there are more stories to be told about that or Jack and Julia's relationship and child, but to date, no such script has emerged. According to Hindustan Times , director Joseph Kosinski did express interest in a prequel film back in 2013, but there's been no indication that such a project ever moved past the idea stage.

Of course, one should never say never. Cruise's hit-to-miss ratio has risen in the years since "Oblivion," making him a surer thing. "Oblivion" stands well as an isolated story, but with Hollywood more invested than ever in building franchises, there could always be another movie on the horizon. It remains to be seen if "Oblivion" will remain one of the many Tom Cruise movies to never get a sequel .

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How Tom Cruise’s Oblivion Called Back to a Forgotten, Smarter Type of Sci-Fi

Tom Cruise's Oblivion is an overlooked and minor hit in the star's filmography. It's also a tribute to the type of old school sci-fi movies we need to see more of...

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Oblivion was released as a Tom Cruise vehicle in 2013, giving him his second best box office weekend up to that time outside of the Mission: Impossible franchise. However, the sci-fi pseudo-epic also received middling reviews and almost immediately dropped out of the public consciousness altogether. Which makes its reemergence into it via Netflix this month intriguing.

Oblivion admittedly has its flaws, yet it is worth a second look if only because it so clearly has ambitions to be something so much more. In 2013 we had only recently gotten a glimpse at what the future held as the commercial effects of the first Avengers movie began to be felt. It was a year of two Marvel movies (three if you count The Wolverine ), one Superman movie, and a slew of remakes, reboots, sequels and prequels, from The Hobbit , and The Hunger Games , to Star Trek: Into Darkness and G.I. Joe . But it was also a year that saw a real outburst of non-IP, stand-alone science fiction movies. Gravity , The Europa Report , Elysium , and Snowpiercer all came out this year. These are films that often had flaws, but which were also chock full of ideas and ambition.

So Oblivion entered that market as a film that was already a dying breed: a big budget action movie that was selling itself primarily on a big name star, and Tom Cruise was already one of the few actors who could pull that off. But in doing that, Oblivion also called back to a very specific sci-fi subgenre and a very specific time—the kind we honestly wish they would make more of.

The Omega Movie Star

In Oblivion , megastar Tom Cruise plays one of the last people on a ruined Earth after the rest of the population has been evacuated to Titan. He spends his days looking after his gear and patrolling the apocalyptic hellscape he calls home while fighting off an inhuman threat in the form of the remnants of an alien invasion. Sometimes he will indulge in the music and culture left over from the dead civilization whose ruins he lives among. Eventually, while investigating the inhuman threat, he discovers that actually, it is not they, but he who is the monster. Ultimately, he will be asked to sacrifice himself. Generally speaking, it’s a concept we’ve heard before.

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In The Omega Man , mega-star Charlton Heston plays the last person on a ruined Earth after the rest of the population is killed or mutated in biological warfare. He spends his days looking at his gear, patrolling the apocalyptic hellscape he calls home while fighting off an inhuman threat in the form of the mutants created by the biological weapons. Sometimes he will indulge in the music and culture left over from the dead civilization whose ruins he lives among. Eventually, while investigating the inhuman threat, he discovers that actually, it is not they, but he who is the monster. Ultimately, he sacrifices himself.

The parallels are not exact, and nobody is suggesting that Oblivion is or was intended to be a direct remake of the Heston film, which is itself a remake of The Last Man on Earth , an adaptation of the novel I Am Legend , which ultimately inspired the entire zombie apocalypse genre.

But The Omega Man is a perfect example of the sub-genre and movie period that Oblivion seeks to emulate.

The Action Science Hero

Around the same time that Charlton Heston made The Omega Man (1971) he also starred in The Planet of the Apes (1968), and Soylent Green (1973). They are spiritually connected films with very clear, common themes. All three are adaptations of science fiction novels, although none of them attempts to trade off the reputation of those novels, changing the titles and plot details at whim to fit the needs of their stories. All three movies are also strong ideas-based films with big, high-concept premises—the world is overrun by mutants, an alien planet where apes are masters over men, and a future where population growth has run out of control. And all three films also pivot on huge (if now no longer surprising) twist: Soylent Green is people, the Planet of the Apes was Earth all along, and the mutants in The Omega Man view Robert Neville (Heston’s character) as the monster.

But also, all three star a kind of Hemingway-esque renaissance man. Across each movie, Heston’s hero is a man of action yet simultaneously a man of science; someone who can throw a punch but who has no problem keeping up with the ideas of pencil-necked professor types.

A Noble Failure

If Oblivion has been produced in the early ‘70s, it’s not hard to see how it might have appealed to Heston. The plot deals with big ideas around civilization, memory, and identity, starring a technically minded action hero with a nose for the classics, and pivoting on a massive perspective-changing twist. It slots right in.

Oblivion knows it too. Throughout the film, it seems to be pointing back to this era of sci-fi to say “See? This is what we’re doing!”

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As Cruise’s aircraft flies over the ruined Earth, we see endless recognizable half-submerged landmarks that call out to the lopsided Lady Liberty of Planet of the Apes . His sanctuary, full of old books and vinyl records, is definitely reminiscent of Neville’s fortified home in The Omega Man . Then it hits you with twists, one after the other. The aliens aren’t aliens; they’re human survivors; Cruise isn’t a human, he’s a clone and his wife was his jealous co-pilot; and the space station isn’t a space station, but an alien spaceship (an alien spaceship extremely reminiscent of the HAL 9000 computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey , released in 1968, right around the time of Heston’s sci-fi trilogy).

Oblivion is a film with really strong aesthetics, from the sterile white technology of Cruise’s character’s sky base, aircraft, and drones to the bleakly gray post-apocalyptic landscape, to the retro-coziness of his hideaway. Each of these elements harken back to different parts of this retro-sci-fi subgenre.

And yet, the film falls short of its lofty ambitions. It has big ideas but paper-thin characters—noble action hero, jealous controlling wife (with strong Total Recall vibes, while we’re here), dream woman love interest, and Morgan Freeman playing That Morgan Freeman Character. In his final confrontation with “Tet,” the evil alien spaceship AI that has been secretly controlling him all this time, Cruise delivers the following line: “And how can man die better than facing fearful odds for the ashes of his fathers and the temples of his Gods?”

It is a badass sounding line, from the Lays of Ancient Rome , a collection of narrative poems by Thomas Babington Macaulay. It encapsulates the science action hero archetype Cruise’s character represents. He’s badass, but also familiar with classical literature. It also shows how his longing for a better past has given him a connection to common humanity which he ultimately turns on his creators and masters.

And yet, we are never really given any sense of what those words mean to Cruise’s character. It’s just something cool to say when blowing up an alien spaceship. Still, the film is elevated by its implied epilogue. After Cruise’s character is dead, and his dream wife (who has now been rescued) is living in Cruise’s history shack, she sees one of Cruise’s clones wander out of the woods. One would like to think that every few months from then on, she will have to deal with a new husband turning up.

Chris Farnell

Chris Farnell is a freelance writer and the author of a novel, an anthology, a Doctor Who themed joke book and some supplementary RPG material. He…

Screen Rant

Will there be an oblivion 2 with tom cruise.

Oblivion is one of Tom Cruise's less successful sci-fi action movies, but the success of Top Gun: Maverick has increased the likelihood of Oblivion 2.

Oblivion is one of the few Tom Cruise-led sci-fi movies, but it's also one of the few of the actor's underperformances at the box office, leaving the possibility of Oblivion 2 in a gray area. The 2013 sci-fi flick follows Jack Harper (Cruise), who roams a post-apocalyptic Earth following an alien invasion. Unfortunately, the film didn't get a strong critical reception, as it holds a "rotten" 53% on Rotten Tomatoes, and it only made $288 million worldwide (via The Numbers ). Given the film's $120 million budget, which doesn't include marketing costs or the movie theaters' cut of the profits, Oblivion was likely still in the red when it left multiplexes.

However, that didn't keep Cruise and director Joseph Kosinski from working together again, as the filmmaker directed Cruise in Top Gun: Maverick, which became a phenomenal success. The legacy sequel made almost $1.5 billion worldwide, and it has a huge 96% on Rotten Tomatoes. In that respect, it's the polar opposite of the Oblivion movie , and it makes a great argument that Kosinski and Cruise should work together again. While Oblivion 2 would undoubtedly be a huge risk for Universal Pictures, it's absolutely worth considering following Cruise and Kosinski's shared success.

There Are No Plans For Oblivion 2

As Oblivion is based on an unpublished graphic novel of the same name, there's likely way more material in Universal's vault that the studio could adapt to continue the series. There were even rumors that Universal was considering not a sequel but a prequel (via Fortress of Solitude ). Unfortunately, those rumors never became confirmations, and the studio didn't once formally comment on the possibility. As it has been a decade since the original film, and it hasn't become a cult classic in that time, it's unlikely that the studio would greenlight Oblivion 2 , even if Cruise himself was interested in returning to the franchise.

Why Oblivion 2 Makes Perfect Sense

The movie had several great elements that were completely unique and different from other post-apocalyptic sci-fi movies of its ilk, such as the designs that were inspired by 1970s sci-fi films and 1940s helicopters. Jack's bubble ship looks identical to the iconic 1946 helicopter, the Bell 47. Given its original visual approach to the genre alone, the Oblivion movie should absolutely get a sequel. But what makes the potential of Oblivion 2 perfect is that it'd reunite Cruise and Kosinski, who have become something of a dynamic duo. Kosinski has developed so much as a filmmaker since 2013, and that's totally proven by Top Gun: Maverick .

Kosinski shot 800 hours of footage for Top Gun: Maverick , and most of what's seen on the screen is totally practical. Kosinski could apply this approach to Oblivion 2 , as it'd undoubtedly feature much flight footage too, and the design of the aircraft could simply be altered digitally. The lack of thrills in Oblivion is what made it underwhelming, but Kosinski showed with the 2022 blockbuster that he can now make a movie on an epic scale. After all, while Top Gun: Maverick was overwhelmingly critically acclaimed, the original 1986 movie is rated "rotten," just like Oblivion. With the right screenplay, Oblivion 2 could have Top Gun: Maverick -like success.

This 20-Year-Old Tom Cruise Movie Can Lay The Blueprint For His Future After Mission: Impossible

• Tom Cruise's action star status faces a challenge as he ages, so exploring villain roles could be the key to his future success after Mission: Impossible .
• A return to the character depth of his role in Collateral could provide Cruise with exciting new opportunities in his career.
• Practical stunt work sets Cruise apart in action films, but taking on antagonistic roles could help him stay relevant in the industry.

Tom Cruise has been a movie star for over forty years, and one of his most underrated films could be the key to the next phase of his career after Mission: Impossible . Cruise, in his most recent star era, has become synonymous with daring stunt work and large action set pieces in his blockbuster films. The two most notable examples are his long-running Mission: Impossible franchise, which is currently filming its eighth installment, and Top Gun: Maverick , which was the highest-grossing film of 2022 .

In many ways, Cruise is as popular as he's ever been and remains one of the last examples of a true movie star. There's just one issue he faces, and it's one that will only get worse with time: he's now in his 60s. He's still in amazing shape for his age and can still perform all the stunts his action roles require of him. Yet, at a certain point, Cruise just won't be able to physically accomplish these feats anymore, and the question will arise of what he will do to define the next era of his career.

10 Movies That Defined Tom Cruise's Career

Tom cruise should follow collateral's blueprint after mission: impossible.

The answer regarding a future after Mission: Impossible lies with one of Cruise's most memorable roles as the cold-blooded hitman Vincent in Michael Mann's Collateral . Collateral follows a single night in the life of cab driver Max (Jamie Foxx), who is forced to transport Vincent around L.A. as he crosses off targets on his hit list. The film doesn't just feature excellent action scenes but also a fascinating back-and-forth between the two leads. Many long exchanges of dialogue happen within Max's cab, and the audience sees him and Vincent argue philosophically about the value of human life and their differing ideologies.

Cruise had to train for Collateral since it was an unexpected role, as the actor had never played the main villain of a film before, and to this day hasn't done it again since. The uniqueness of this notion paid off, as Collateral proved to be a healthy hit. It grossed $220 million worldwide from an estimated $65 million budget (via Box Office Mojo ). Cruise's movie star charisma brought layers of charm to Vincent's sociopathic demeanor, and it is still widely considered one of the best performances of Cruise's long and illustrious career. A return to this type of role would be an exciting prospect for the actor.

Every Michael Mann Movie, Ranked Worst To Best

Villain roles can help tom cruise stay relevant.

As Cruise gets older, it'll become more challenging for him to remain at the center of these action franchises. Unlike films like Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny , which heavily relied on CGI to assist 81-year-old Harrison Ford with the action scenes, Cruise's movies use their practical stunt work as a selling point. Top Gun: Maverick had Cruise flying real jets , and Mission Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One had him jumping off a massive cliff on a motorcycle. Too much CGI would cheapen the impact of these stunts, which have become a big part of Cruise's brand.

However, if Cruise takes on more antagonistic parts in movies like Collateral going forward, he could not only avoid putting his body at risk in as many huge stunts but also access an untapped well of potential film roles. Cruise would still be a selling point in whatever franchise he chooses to be a part of, and he'd be able to explore the darkness he displayed as Vincent all those years ago. It'd be an exciting development for fans to witness, full of possibilities, and could prove to be the key to Tom Cruise staying relevant through the 2020s and beyond.

Source: Box Office Mojo