Oblivion: Slow, Beautiful, Thought Provoking

Joseph Kosinski's Oblivion is a tightly focused and hugely entertaining science fiction extravaganza. Despite many negative reviews and a fairly unenthused audience I saw it with (the man behind me was loudly snoring for most of it), I found Oblivion to be rather brilliant in an understated-spectacle kind of way. It's a more thoughtful and leisurely paced film than I expected; this will come as a negative attribute to those expecting star Tom Cruise to basically be doing Mission Impossible in Space. But I loved the time it took to establish the world, the context, and especially the almost mathematical detail put into the technology (such as the spaceships, the drones, and the blaster rifles).

I love sci-fi movies. Always have. They give us the opportunity to see things we normally wouldn't, or couldn't, or shouldn't. Because they're so difficult to pull off and usually require hundreds of millions of dollars (unless you're Darren Aronofsky, Duncan Jones, or Shane Carruth of course), sci-fi films usually have a higher level of passion behind the camera. These filmmakers desperately want to tell their stories—even Kosinski's past film, Tron Legacy, was clearly a labor of love more for him and other Tron fans than for the studio itself. But while that film disappointed on a story level by being incredibly mundane, Oblivion is much more coherent, surprising, and emotionally involving.

I really want to say the name of the 2009 science fiction drama that Oblivion reminded me of the most, but I'm afraid that if I even just barely mention that aspects of Oblivion are similar to it that I'll spoil some of the fun surprises Kosinski has up his sleeve, so I'll keep my mouth shut. Most of the twists in the screenplay (by Kosinski, Karl Gajdusek, and Michael Ardnt) are of the kind that surprise you for a second, then make you say "oh, yeah, I guess I've seen that before". But that's more of a statement of the nature of the genre rather than the screenwriter's abilities, and I can honestly say that a lot of the movie kept me guessing until the end. It's a shockingly introspective film, considering its marketing and release date.

Oblivion chronicles the story of Jack Harper (Cruise, in a solid if unspectacular performance), who is an employee of "The Titan," a large space station hovering over a post-apocalyptic Earth. The job he and his wife are assigned to do is stay on Earth for a couple months, fixing the robot drones that help clean up the planet. Once the tour is finished, he and his wife will return to the station and fly to Saturn with the rest of Earth's survivors. But there are still sinister remnants of the alien war on the surface and Cruise rapidly begins to question the mission and even his own existence.

From a storytelling perspective, Oblivion does the job it sets out to do—in fact, once the arrival of the beautiful Olga Kurylenko occurs, the film becomes more of a suspense/mystery than an action/adventure, and indeed the whole movie is often more reminiscent of Minority Report thanTransformers. But the biggest asset of the film is, of course, the visuals—Kosinski paints with wonderfully wide strokes here, where the barren and desolate landscape of Earth is shot with sublime cinematography and excellent CGI. I'm usually a cranky old douche bag when it comes to the excessive use of computer special effects, but….boy, did they look good in Oblivion. Couple that with a gloriously epic and frequently cheesy score by the great band M83 (the "cheesy" was a compliment, by the way), and you've got an incredibly inviting visual and aural delight.

So at the end of the day, how good is Oblivion? It won't change anyone's lives, certainly, and for the people searching for the next big action flick, Oblivion may disappoint with its thoughtful characters and more glacial pace. But for the people like me who really love science fiction, I think we can all agree that while we very rarely get a great sci-fi, we almost always see a really bad one, so simply having a very good entry into the genre is a welcome surprise. Oblivion is extremely enjoyable from start to finish, and even managed to be a little thought-provoking to boot. See the film on the big screen if you can, and then go buy the fantastic soundtrack and happily immerse yourself in Kosinski's world.

Final Note: This has nothing to do with Oblivion, really, but I figured I should say something about Roger Ebert's passing, since this is my first review since his death.Without Ebert's passionate and compulsively readable reviews, I wouldn't be writing about films today. I learned more about what makes a good movie good, and a bad movie bad, from reading his reviews than any class in film school. While watching Oblivion, I occasionally thought "I wonder what Ebert would've thought of this flick?" and I know it won't be the last time I think that.