JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

As the world’s most famous practitioner of Scientology, a religion founded by a science-fiction writer, Tom Cruise is uniquely qualified to play a science-fiction hero. But does he have to play the live-action Wall-E?

In recent years it’s become the custom to beat up on Tom Cruise—his odd behavior, marriages, control freakiness, even his height. Things haven’t been the same for Tom since he jumped up and down on Oprah’s couch to declare his love for his now ex-wife. The viewers forget that they loved him once. Fickle, fickle. We didn’t love him, not like Ambeth’s sister who drove to Fort Ilocandia when he was shooting Born on the 4th of July so she could get a glimpse of him. (She saw him walking on the beach. He had patay na kuko. Disillusioned, she got back in the van and drove back to Manila.) But we liked him when he was dancing in his underwear (Risky Business) or playing assholes (Magnolia, Maguire). Cruise is effective when he’s not micro-managing his image as the All-American Action Hero. Unfortunately that happens very rarely. He took a huge risk with Rock of Ages and it didn’t pay off.

Oblivion is Tom Cruise sticking very closely to the image of Tom Cruise. It is set in the not-so-distant future, where the Earth has fought off alien invaders with nuclear weapons and destroyed itself in the process. The surviving humans have all moved to Saturn’s moon, Titan. Tom Cruise plays Jack Harper, who with his domestic/work partner Vika (Andrea Riseborough) is assigned to Earth to clear the debris from the wasteland, like Wall-E. Their memories have been wiped, like in Total Recall. Jack has recurring memories of an unknown woman (Olga Kurylenko), like in La Jetee (and 12 Monkeys). Periodically Jack’s ship is attacked by “scavengers”, like in Mad Max. Of course things are not what they appear to be, like in The Matrix.

Yes, Oblivion is cobbled together out of bits of better science-fiction movies. It’s not terrible, but it doesn’t have a real reason to exist. It looks expensive—the cost of this movie could probably pay for an entire season of Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones (and probably all of The Wire), which are much more satisfying experiences for the viewer. (This really is the platinum age of television.)

Our attention had drifted from Oblivion, we were busy answering emails (There was no one near our seat to be annoyed by the lit-up screen) when we spotted a familiar jawline onscreen. Jaime Lannister! Well, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. Most of his scenes are in a dark cave; the light just bounces off his bone structure. Too handsome, and yet he seems more real than Cruise.

Rating: * * 1/2

* * * * *

Juan pointed out that Oblivion also borrows from Moon by Duncan Jones. The movie is a sci-fi sampler, down to the 2001-like monolith.