Oblivion

Reading through the previous reviews, I find myself agreeing with the negative reviews in one sense, but still disagreeing overall. I walked away quite liking this movie.

Most of the complaints are around technical/realism stupidities, or else being a rip-off of previous movies.

Re stupidities: there are plenty, most of the negative reviews are correct, but they miss the point, which is given a more or less silly premise, do the characters fulfill their struggle properly.

For me the answer is strong yes, I tend to respond to the emotions a movie is trying to convey, ultimately this is a story of loss and love, a nice universal theme that always resonates.

Given that theme, the movie's style, effects, music all worked really well to reinforce that. I liked all the performances.

Be careful about critiquing modern SF movies about technical stupidities too much. Most of these have a fatal flaw that would destroy most of them. How about the likelihood of star travel? OK, you have to grant that otherwise most SF movies pretty much fall flat.

But still, the basic premise is not realistic: a star faring race, searching for energy, is not going to bother going to earth for its water, that is so much more easily available anywhere else, energy itself is much more easily accessible without playing with water for fusion, just stay with your own star, mine your own asteroid belt or gas giants.

Sure, it makes no sense for the Tet to make and use human clones, but given that, do we have a good story? I think so.

To me, valid criticisms are when characters, immersed in their realities such as they are, do not act true to their nature. And thus a movie like Prometheus failed since there the highly trained biology experts acted like complete morons.

But that is not the case here. In this movie we have passion, loss, and love, the struggle to persevere.

Plus the drones looked really really cool.

Re copying other movies: get over it. This movie is distinct enough to feel its own. I saw and loved Moon (which granted is the better movie), but I enjoyed this one for what it was.

I think it helped for me to not see any trailers, and to come in with low expectations after hearing about bad reviews.

An engrossing film, with a well-developed post-apocalyptic premise, along with an unpredictable plot, visually stunning cinematography, paired with thrilling action sequences and great performances, although the plot got a bit convoluted at times and there were some plot holes.

Oblivion is nine years old as I write this, and in perusing the reviews written when it opened, they have aged far less well than the movie.

Those reviews are mostly concerned about whatever the hell Tom Cruise was going through at the time, or obsessed with obscure symbolism in the production design.

For whatever reason, it appears the reviewers couldn't get over themselves enough to just watch the movie and evaluate it on its merits.

On the off chance this film has escaped your attention, it is well worth two hours of your time. It is solidly acted and produced, has first class effects, and a spectacular location. The story combines some emotional heft with a clever and satisfying twist at the end.

I watched it again, but this time with my SciFi hating wife. She protested initially, watched the entire thing, and then thanked me for getting her to watch it afterwards.

That's as good as it gets.

I have now watched this movie 3 times, and each time have liked it more than I did the first time, and even then I still enjoyed it a lot. I look at the litany of trash on the screen that DOES make a profit and am dismayed that this one was so unsuccessful. First, it's a GORGEOUS movie, and it definitely has a beating heart. I found the acting quite good, the story involving, and was quite moved more than once. And the technical staff was amazing! I suspect that it will do well on home video and cable and that one day we'll look back on it and wonder why in the world it did so poorly in its initial run. I applaud director Kosinsky and his fine team of actors and the legion of other professionals involved in bringing this to the screen. I REALLY enjoyed this movie!

31Jan14: Months later and I've watched it at least once more from my Blu-ray plus find it almost impossible to NOT watch it when I stumble across it on HBO, and I continue to find it absorbing and I STILL can't watch the end of it without crying! I find it embarrassing to write this, but I think I love this movie.

For decades it has been an accepted fact of life in Hollywood that, no matter how good the movie, endings are a write-off.

Hollywood has learned the hard way that, no matter how good the film (or the book on which it is based) it is impossible to do an ending which satisfies the writer, the director, the producers, the critics, the audience and (duh!) reviewers like this one.

That is why, for literally as long as there have been movies, endings are changed at the last minute; and often even multiple endings are shot so that survey groups can be brought in to make the final choice.

The reason I gave this brief lecture on the importance of endings is simple -- going into the last 20 minutes, this was a rock solid film with a rock solid script and rock solid performances.

But the ending was ... perfect.

And perfect endings are so rare these days that I needed to write a review for posterity that does nothing except note this for future readers and future viewers.

Are we still an effective team???????????