It is 2077. Sixty years ago, an alien invasion wracked the Earth. Humanity won, at the cost of leaving the planet almost uninhabitable. The plan is for the surviving population, currently living in orbital habitats, to relocate to Saturn's moon Titan. However, this requires vast reserves of energy. These reserves are being gathered from huge machines on the Earth's surface.
Jack Harper is one of the handful of humans left in the Earth's atmosphere, where he works to protect the fusion generators from alien scavengers that still plague the planet. His job is vital to the future of the human race, and yet he cannot shake a vague sense of unease about the entire situation ...
You've probably already guessed 90% of the movie's twist from the above two paragraphs, but that's okay since (a) the film's own trailers spoiled at least that much about it, and (b) a film can be entertaining even when it is completely unsurprising.
Unfortunately for Oblivion, I feel it falls rather short on the entertainment front. The true story of what's going on doesn't make a whole lot of sense, for one thing. For another, the antagonists' actions after the truth comes out don't seem to make a lot of sense. They operate more on the principle of 'what will lead to a big action sequence' than 'what would actually achieve their goals'. I like a big action sequence, as my enthusiasm for The Fast and the Furious franchise shows, but they need to come with a logical in-universe reason for them to happen. What is 'logical' varies from film to film, of course: I forgive things in a Fast film that I would not in a more 'grounded' project like this one.
Oblivion, alas, fails to find a way to bridge the gap between its competing objectives of character drama and action spectacle.
No comments:
Post a Comment