Oblivion (2013)
Average Rating: 5.9/10
Reviews Counted: 202
Fresh: 113 | Rotten: 89
Visually striking but thinly scripted, Oblivion benefits greatly from its strong production values and an excellent performance from Tom Cruise.
Average Rating: 5.7/10
Critic Reviews: 38
Fresh: 19 | Rotten: 19
Visually striking but thinly scripted, Oblivion benefits greatly from its strong production values and an excellent performance from Tom Cruise.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.6/5
User Ratings: 59,645
My Rating
Movie Info
Tom Cruise stars in Oblivion, an original and groundbreaking cinematic event from the visionary director of TRON: Legacy and producers of Rise of the Planet of the Apes. On a spectacular future Earth that has evolved beyond recognition, one man's confrontation with the past will lead him on a journey of redemption and discovery as he battles to save mankind. 2077: Jack Harper (Cruise) serves as a security repairmen stationed on an evacuated Earth. Part of a massive operation to extract vital
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Oblivion Trailer & Photos
All Critics (202) | Top Critics (38) | Fresh (113) | Rotten (89)
Feels ever more grounded and stuck ...
Top CriticWas Cruise trying to beat out fellow Scientologist John Travolta for the honor of starring in the dumbest sci-fi epic ever?
If nothing else, "Oblivion" will go down in film history as the movie where Tom Cruise pilots a white, sperm-shaped craft into a giant space uterus.
This is the sci-fi movie equivalent of a pretty damn good cover band.
Glossy, derivative, ambitious and fatally underpowered.
The story eventually devolves into a grab bag of sci-fi tropes but, as with so many other Cruise productions, the sheer scale of everything is so mind-numbing that you may not notice.
The action sequences are well-constructed, but forced: They're concessions to the marketplace, and they interfere with the movie's true interest in the routine rather than the extremes of postapocalyptic survival.
Large-scale, original sci-fi is a hard thing to come by these days, and despite its familiar story Oblivion does dream up some great ideas
An admirable failure; an overlong, awkwardly paced mishmash of cool but familiar ideas and all-too predictable plot-twists.
really no more derivative a science fiction thriller than most these days, it just has the unfortunate tendency of seeming to be more obvious about it
Unfortunately, when the story seems like an afterthought and the audience can't follow the plot progression, the movie ultimately fails
"The dream is always the same."
People who need anything remotely resembling an emotional anchor in their movies had best look elsewhere.
This big budget, epic science fiction film is engaging enough most of the way, although it does wander in the final act until it finally ends up where you thought it would after some plot twists that are mildly annoying.
A giant IMAX screen makes a bad movie even worse.
OBLIVION is a film with the look being a lot more satisfying than the thought.
Tom Cruise is CAPTAIN EO!
Kosinki is no hack. He's made a gorgeous-looking experience, the kind they invented IMAX to accommodate. He's a pastiche artist, cribbing stylishness and building his own beautiful ice sculpture...
The jam-packed storyline piles on themes and sci-fi clichés, pompously wraps them around an obscure Victorian era poem, then throws in an Andrew Wyeth painting for good cultural measure.
While the visuals in Oblivion are superb, the plot wanders into more than a few "are you kidding me?" moments, in particular the timeline, which doesn't make much sense.
First and foremost designed as a platform for Cruise's physical skills. Which is not at all bad for us action fans and those of us who are suckers for concepts of advanced technology.
That I didn't mind seeing it -- apart from finding the opening stretch on the tedious side -- isn't enough in my mind to warrant its reported $120 million price tag.
Tom Cruise entertains in this intriguing sci-fi flick that is full of twists and turns.
It's not like Tom Cruise hasn't made a great sci-fi movie in his career; "Minority Report" is a masterpiece. "Oblivion," on the other hand, is just what the title portends.
You know a picture's derivative when a list of titles in the same genre technically constitutes a spoiler. It's not so much that these films provide the picture's DNA as that Kosinski uses them as his personal cinematic ATM.
Audience Reviews for Oblivion
Super Reviewer
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- Jack Harper: I am Jack Harper. And I am home.
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- Jack Harper: If we have souls, they're made of the love we share. Undimmed by time, unbound by death.
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- Jack Harper: Is it possible to miss a place you've never been, to mourn a time you've never lived?
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- Jack Harper: I wonder, if I come to you, at night, in dreams, in the day, as memories. Do I haunt your hours the way you haunted mine? And I wonder if you see me, when you look at her.
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- Jack Harper: We won the war.Why do we have to leave?
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- Jack Harper: Fuck you, Sally.
Discussion Forum
| Topic | Last Post | Replies |
|---|---|---|
| Excellent Film | 1 hour ago | 12 |
| I like it, but... nagging questions. (Sp) | 2 hours ago | 31 |
| So explain this to me (Spoilers inside) | 21 hours ago | 45 |
| The other tom cruises? (Spoilers) | 4 days ago | 8 |
| I Liked this movie, but hated the Sally revelation (spoilers) | 7 days ago | 12 |
Latest News on Oblivion
April 21, 2013:
Box Office Guru Wrapup: Oblivion Easily Takes Top Spot in DebutNow in his fourth decade of scoring number one hit movies, Tom Cruise enjoyed one of the best...
April 18, 2013:
Critics Consensus: Oblivion Looks Great, But Its Story MeandersThis week at the movies, we've got only one wide release: the post-apocalyptic sci-fi adventure...
April 18, 2013:
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Foreign Titles
- Oblivion (DE)
- Oblivion (UK)
The special effects are well-done, especially when it comes to the mechanical elements like the intimidating drones, which move with both a weightiness and agility that combines to form something you would definitely not want to meet in a dark alley, and Tom Cruise's ship is a really imaginative piece of futuristic technology as well. M83's score is a mixed bag. Choosing this band for this movie is the absolute perfect choice, as they have that epic, desolate futuristic-yet-retro feel to them to begin with. Unfortunately, the score they have composed rarely sounds like their 'actual' music as much as it does an imitation of contemporary blockbuster scores. Had they gone their own route (or used some tracks from their discography), they could have came up with something that really made 'Oblivion' stand out from the pack. This is just an example of the larger problem with 'Oblivion': it isn't a bad movie, but in every instance where it has a chance to be a pioneer and do something fresh, it falls back on the crutches of the past, and ends up feeling rather generic as a result.