OBLIVION

I know, I know. Yes, I went to see OBLIVION on opening night. I can't help my obsession with Sci-Fi, action, thriller movies.  I should have realized that it was going to be a spoon fed script, and it was. I should have known it was going to have a Tom Cruise happy ending, and it did.  I should have known a rad actor like Nikolaj Coster-Waldau would have a small 'sort of" supporting role, with meaningless dialogue,  and he did.

I will say that I should have read the book first. I didn't. However, the film did surprise me sometimes.  I didn't hate the movie. I was entertained but not in a thought provoking way.  The opening scene is Jack Harper (Tom Cruise) telling the audience everything that he thinks has happened over the last fifty years while we watch him and Vica wake up, eat breakfast, workout, shower and start their day.  

I wish so badly that the filmmakers would have shown us more and told us less.  The story has such great potential to make the audience think, guess, wonder, discover and truly care about the characters.  I almost got to each of the points I listed above. Almost but it didn't really get me there because it wanted to be dumbed down for a wider audience.  I think this is a mistake being made frequently in Hollywood.  Audiences want to think more than Hollywood gives them credit for.  The use of original songs that we've heard over and over in other movies was so lame.  I would have liked to spend more time with Jack Harper actually reading and studying the old books than being told about it in Voice Over.  I would have also liked spending less time with present day Jack Harper and more time with the real Jack Harper and his mission crew.  Why not add more scenes with the present day humans in hiding? I didn't leave the film bored but I did leave unimpressed.

I give OBLIVION a COOL! But only because it really could have been a RAD if the writers and producers would have risked it.