Escape to the Movies: Oblivion

[deathbeforedecaf]

Bob misses the point again. If you like Sci-fi go and see this film.It's not prefect, it has a lot of problems, but that doesnt stop it being a good film.

 

[BehattedWanderer]

Why, Bob, why would you remind me that Prometheus even existed? That's just mean.

Oh, and something about an ultimately bland, meaningless Tom Cruise movie my friend made me watch, where I was having more fun and interest picking out the piece of raisinette stuck in a broken tooth than watching the movie? Well...I'd have to remember anything of it specifically to say it was bad, but that I didn't even want to pay attention to it should be a big sign.

 

[Olas]

***SPOILERS BELOW***

So Tom Cruise was conditioned to work for Aliens and lost his wife? This isn't an original story, it's a documentary!

***SPOILERS ABOVE***

You see this?

Spoiler

It's called a spoiler tag

Spoiler

You use it to hide spoilers so that people don't accidentally glance over them.

Spoiler

To create one you just put your message between these:

[ spoiler ] [ /spoiler ]

but without the spaces.

Like this:

Now see this one?

Spoiler: Ya, this one

That one had words instead of Spoiler: Click to View

Pretty cool huh?
To create one you just add an extra element to the opening spoiler tag like so.

And here's what it'll look like:

Spoiler: This will be the message

Not to be confused with what you put inside it.

There, you see. Pretty useful.

This and more are explained on [a href="http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.198114-Escapist-User-Guide-to-Posting-Commands"]The Escapist: User Guide to Posting Commands[/a]

Which you should probably read if you haven't already.

Spoiler

So from now you have no excuse for posting spoilers other people can read by accident

Spoiler: This has been an OlasDAlmighty Public Service Announcement

[sup]keep clicking[/sup]

[sup]give it a click[/sup]

 

[Friendstastegood]

Just in case some people didn't watch Bob's COMPELTE spoiler, well, Bob is dead wrong about the story not making sense. It makes perfect sense, but if you go watch this movie with the "I hate Tom Cruise with his smug old face" attitude, no wonder you're gonna fail to like it. I welcome any discussion on this subject and the simplicity with which I can defuse any opposing argument is downright insulting to the complexity of the story and the detail with witch it's told.

I did watch Bob's entire review, I've never really cared about spoilers, if a movie is good enough, even if it has important plot-twists, it will still hold up after you've been spoiled. But now I have to ask: Unless bob completely misrepresented the story, as in he made up most of what he said about the movie, how can any of that possibly ever make any sort of sense?

Also, this is one of my all-time pet-peeves, when people who can't write intelligently try to write intelligence and fail miserably.

 

[daxterx2005]

Johny Depp with a crow on his head....how could you go wrong?

 

[Madman Muntz]

Thank you Movie Bob for watching this drek so I don't have to. So its essentially

Spoiler

Moon meets The Matrix meets Zardoz

How utterly unexciting.

 

[Basement Cat]

I didn't figure that I'd be watching this movie so I ignored the "Spoiler Alert".

*sighs*

I LIKE mindless/empty sci-fi movies and I'm actually interested enough now to want to go watch this one. Darn!!!

Off-Topic: I hope you and your loved ones and friends are okay, Bob. From the episode you did on Boston it was obvious that you love your city and are proud of it. That was one of the first things that came to mind when I first heard about the bombings.

I'm glad to hear that you're not hurt. My sympathies to you and your kin and kith. I hope all of you will fare well.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

On one hand it is bad it wasn't an Elder Scrolls movie, an ES movie would kick ass. The Good? How do you make an open ended movie that really only ends when you realized the last moment of it you remember was 6 months ago?

 

[Littaly]

Spoiler warning is appreciated, but it would be even more appreciated if the reviews relied a little less on spoilers overall. I'm the kind of guy who doesn't enjoy being spoiled, even on movies I have no immediate interest of seeing. So it's a little disappointing with that in mind to only be able to hear the bottom line of whether the movie was good or bad.

I'm not overly disappointed because I couldn't watch more than 25% of the review, I know I'm more picky than the average person when it comes to spoilers, and I don't expect the world to adjust itself to my preferences. I'm just saying it's fully possible to do an interesting review without giving away all the twists in a movie, and it's something I personally think Escape to the Movies could improve on.

 

[pearcinator]

Ok I thought it wasn't bad. It was far from being the greatest sci-fi ever but I enjoyed it enough.

It was a bit long and the twists aren't 'OMFG NO WAY!' good but the drones were pretty cool. It is one of those movies where if you over-analyse everything it falls to pieces but if you just 'roll with it' then you can enjoy it.

Much like Prometheus (I also liked Prometheus even if the scientists were extremely stupid)

 

[Drejer43]

I'm not overly disappointed because I couldn't watch more than 25% of the review, I know I'm more picky than the average person when it comes to spoilers, and I don't expect the world to adjust itself to my preferences. I'm just saying it's fully possible to do an interesting review without giving away all the twists in a movie, and it's something I personally think Escape to the Movies could improve on.

possibly, but it makes a more entertaining review for the people who don't care about the movie.

 

[Cpt. Slow]

I am not going to say it was a great film but it was still better than G.I. Joe 2. And on the plus side, I find Andrea Riseborough a fresh face and a solid actress, who hopefully will have more roles in bigger films the coming years.

 

[karamazovnew]

Just in case some people didn't watch Bob's COMPELTE spoiler, well, Bob is dead wrong about the story not making sense. It makes perfect sense, but if you go watch this movie with the "I hate Tom Cruise with his smug old face" attitude, no wonder you're gonna fail to like it. I welcome any discussion on this subject and the simplicity with which I can defuse any opposing argument is downright insulting to the complexity of the story and the detail with witch it's told.

I did watch Bob's entire review, I've never really cared about spoilers, if a movie is good enough, even if it has important plot-twists, it will still hold up after you've been spoiled. But now I have to ask: Unless bob completely misrepresented the story, as in he made up most of what he said about the movie, how can any of that possibly ever make any sort of sense?

Also, this is one of my all-time pet-peeves, when people who can't write intelligently try to write intelligence and fail miserably.

Thanks for the insult, I'll have to write that down, it's a keeper.
Yes, Bob did misrepresent the story. Both you and I can take any movie with a good story, tell it exactly as it is, but make it sound bad. In fact, for the first time in his series, he takes time to tell you the entire story. It takes him just 1 minute of fast talk and smug tone to do it. He then finishes by pointing two major holes in the story which actually do make perfect sense. What pisses me off is that already a few people have watched the spoiler and decided to not see this movie. Bad call...

So this is for you, took me some time to write it. I do hope that you will eventually see this movie. I started explaining where Bob was wrong, but ended up telling most of the story, properly (I hope).

Spoiler

No really, huge spoiler...

Spoiler

The memory erase thing: you're being told in the first minutes that the characters have had their memory erased. The apparent reason is given much later in a conversation (they know too much about the colony on Titan and would be a threat in case of capture). Bob says that this doesn't make sense. It wouldn't, if it were true. Nobody would accept such an excuse BEFORE a memory wipe. But of course it's a lie (you know that already by then) and it's not like the characters have any choice in what information they receive. They woke up in that house without any memory and believed everything they have been told. Anyone would do the same thing in their shoes.

Now this is gonna be difficult. You've seen the spoiler, but not the actual movie. There's a lot more going on so most of what I'll write now would make more sense if you actually went and seen the movie.

The whole clone ship thing: Bob argues that this is just a stupid idea and that because of this, the whole story doesn't make sense. Is it? This is one huge ass ship controlled by one AI, designed to go from star to star and survive on the resources it collects by force. It's not a new idea. The ship is so powerful that it destroys the moon in one shot. If it did that to Earth too (just to get rid of us), it would also destroy the actual resources (water) it came to pick up. It does blow up the Moon so that the huge tidal reaction would destroy human society, while leaving the actual water intact. Clever. But humans are like cockroaches. So how can it deal with the pesky human population that will be left alive? These fools would blow up their own planet rather than leave it to someone else. The alien doesn't have an army, just a few drones, perfect for dealing with apes and dinosaurs, but not intelligent humans (or other intelligent species). So what it does is, of course, adapt to what it encounters. It picks up intelligent species on the spot and clones them, building armies for the initial war. If the alien hadn't encountered Odyssey with her precious "heroic" crew, Jack and Victoria, the heroes of Earth, it would've just kidnapped any soldier from Earth (Chuck Norris or Jet Li, probably) and achieved the same thing. Again, not a new idea. We're not shown this initial war. But it is mentioned that when the ship arrived to Earth, it blew up the moon and sent in a ready made invasion force of brain-washed clones. Earth used everything it could, even nuclear bombs, but lost that war. Only a few survivors remained, but enough to pose problems for the following water-gathering operation. Why didn't the alien capture these shattered humans and clone them too? What for? They already had Jack, the real hero of Earth... what was the point? Now those water pump ships are crucial for the alien, but it doesn't have unlimited resources and it can't afford to babysit broken drones. So it uses the already made human clones to do that for it. But it can't use the old brain-washed clones, which were only good for search and destroy stuff. Luckily, Jack and Victoria were great engineers (the best Nasa pilots) so why not use them, brain intact and all? So it leaves them human, but fools them with a believable tailor made story (believable if you've been told you had a memory wipe). So they tell them they are protecting the future of mankind, guarding the resources of the vulnerable Titan colony from the nasty alien scavs, a story that any former Nasa pilot would love to hear. Of course, the minute one Jack would encounter the Scavs, everything would fall apart, so the alien makes perfect use of Victoria. Victoria was a real hero, a real tragic character who chose to stay with Jack. She's a cold perfectionist, the perfect nanny. All she wants is to finish the job and get back "home" (probably as she did when she was on the Oddysey). So of course she will play the perfect stooge and report Jack if anything goes wrong. The question "are you a good team" is revealed to be a safety reset switch. If Jack does find out that the scavs are human, Victoria will doom them both. However, that has never happened before. We're never told just how many Jacks they actually used. There must've been many who just bored themselves to death for years with nothing happening on entire continents (no more humans there), before going back to the alien ship and being destroyed and replaced with new ones (not a new idea, but actually better done than in the movie which invented this idea, won't spoil the name).

Jack: it doesn't take a brain scientist to figure out that the scavs didn't trust the Jack clones. They used to be slaughtered by armies of Jacks. From afar, they just viewed these clones repairing those damn drones, for years and years. The movie does a great job in making you hate those bloody drones. Anyway, our Jack 49 sits in a particular grid where he finds a lake, with green trees and Led Zeppelin albums. No wonder, his grid is right next to old New York. He might be in Central Park... who knows? Luckily, Victoria 49 never finds out and Jack 49 is not stupid enough to tell her. Others might have just seen desert. But Jack 49 falls in love with Earth and this triggers back old memories, which then change how he reacts to finding Julia. At the lake, Jack 49 is of course spied on by the local scavs which realize he might be different. They try to trap him, but fail. It is only here that the story does need a bit of explaining. Back in 2017, Jack and Victoria released the living module of the Odyssey. Nasa of course knew of this. But it must've taken many years for that pod to reach Earth, and by that time there was no more Nasa to pick them up. So the pod just orbited Earth waiting for a landing signal. The scavs must've known this for a long time. But of course there was absolutely no point in bringing the pod down. But now... If this Jack 49 was different... Why not let him see his wife? They bring down the pod and stealthily direct Jack 49 to it. They still don't trust him. It's a real wild card. He might just report it, and Julia would just end up on the alien ship in no time. But Jack 49 finds Julia and protects her with his life. Now the scavs realize he really is different and trap him as soon as they can. But of course, they know the truth, that all Jacks are clone. Jack 49 has no idea. They see that the poor guy refuses to do anything that would result in potentially killing humans and release him to see the truth for himself. Which he does, eventually. He really doesn't trust them, he barely realizes Julia is his wife. Of course, what the frack was his wife doing on a Nasa ship? Even she has no clue... she was asleep in the pod. That's why she desperately wants to find her black box. She can't trust him either. She has no idea what he did back in 2017. So it takes him seeing Victoria 49 blowing the whistle (from jealousy) and getting killed by a drone to finally turn. As he tries to get back to the scavs, things go wrong and he ends up where the scavs actually sent him in the first place, outside his grid and inside Jack 52's grid. You might think that spoilers don't affect you, but trust me... when Jack 49 encounters Jack 52, the movie shows it's value. The word "clone" is not even mentioned. Both you and the characters just suddenly get it. They react very realistically. Meaning that they fight and Jack 52 is left tied on the ground. Julia is shot accidentaly, so Jack 49 steals 52's ship puts it on autopilot for home and starts searching for a first aid kit. Of course, he encounters Victoria 52 and things get really sad and creepy. For once, he realizes there's no mistake.. he is a clone, and was Vicky. And who knows how many there are out there. This is only implied, he doesn't say it out loud. However he does try to save Vick 52. But she can't be saved. I think back at this scene, because Jack still has no idea who Vicky is. If he did, he surely would've saved her, knock her over the head, drag her out by force if needed. Jack 49 has no idea that HE was on the Odyssey, that he and Victoria released the living pod and that unlike himself, the Tom Cruise action hero, poor Victoria sacrificed herself to stay with him. Again... Victoria was a real gem in this movie, I will never accept any movie review that doesn't mention her as a main pillar of Sci-fi characters. Poor Vicky... unwillingly dooming so many, and herself.

Any questions so far? Any missing points? You need to remember that if I try to sound intelligent in a language which is not my native one, it's only for fear of not making myself understood. In Romanian, this would take me a lot less to explain.

So as Jack 49 goes back to Julia and finds that 52 has escaped. Here's another cool implied story moment. During the encounter with 49, Jack 52 (the new guy) sees Julia and suddenly remembers her too (sort of). It's clear at this point that this is the first ever he has had such a memory (he didn't have a lake house with Led Zeppelin albums like Jack 49 did). Couple that with the fact that he has just seen his frickin clone... the guy's messed up. He must've just left bewildered and is not spoken of again. He might've been just another Jack clone, but know he's starting the process of waking up slowly into a nightmare. But back to our 42. Julia of course is freaked out. But she starts to accept him. You've got to understand her a little. Jack 42 is not just a clone, she's seen 52 for herself. 42 really is different. He is almost Jack Harper the real one. Maybe even better. So yeah... sex scene implied. Finally they get to the scavs and reprogram a drone to deliver a nuke to the main alien ship. Hurray for Independence Day. Actually fuck Independence Day. That short scene with the drone waking up is 2001 material. It's really, really good. However... the plan goes to shreds and they loose the drone. So now Jack 42 decides to sacrifice himself in a certain one way trip. Julia does so too, for some reason... I guess she's just so frickin' tired she just wants closure. A few days ago she was a Nasa pilot, happily sleeping, about to encounter friendly aliens, now she's on a desert planet, and fucking a clone of her long dead husband. It's not really clear if she has listened to the black box, but she probably did while Jack was first being held captive. Anyway, it's not that far fetched that she just wants to finish it.

At this point (spoiler alert, well, duh), the movie pulls a fast one on us. No, it's not a story bug, the movie director has been carefully working up to this point, even remembering to show us the scavs saving two pods (the unused ones, that were left empty on the Odyssey by Jack and Victoria, talk about story detail). So Jack puts Vicky in one pod and sends her to the lake. Why? Maybe the plan won't work, maybe they won't be able to blow the alien ship. Maybe the humans will all get killed. At least she'll be alive near her small secret lake, hidden from everyone. She'd never accept seeing him die, so he just quietly accepts "sacrificing" her, just to avoid any weird goodbyes. But he does take the other pod too, with the wounded scav leader who has mentioned before how much he wanted to be there Of course the viewer doesn't know and only finds out up on the Alien ship. On the way to the alien ship, Jack 42 finally has time to listen to the black box of the Odyssey and at lastfinds out who he was and who Victoria was... again, the movie doesn't just YELL OUT DETAIL. It's subtle... Then they get to the alien ship and there's a cool moment where the alien could just kill Jack if he senses he lies. But he carefully chooses a truthful answer, almost revealing to the public that there's no way in hell he'd have Julia die. And yes, seconds later, the scav leader shows his smug face from the pod. I expected it but still laughed when the entire cinema audience yelled "YES!!!!". Just expecting it doesn't mean you're not glad it does happen. Yes, it's "have your cake and eat it too", but I was glad to see the old man with a really really smug smile in front of his hated enemy. The ending is heroic, Jack material, we get the nicely prepared heroic quote from the beginning of the movie... it's good. The ship blows up, and as the drones everywhere loose power, it's not hard to figure out what happened to the rest of the Earth living clones. Their tech failed and they were left stranded in the middle of deserts, without nice scavs to save them. They all die! Except for one.

Now Julia is revealed to have lived on the lake for a while, maybe 2-3 years, having a cute baby (she did have sex with Jack 42). This could be the only forest and lake left on Earth, maybe not, but scavs will come here to live with her. But they bring a surprise, you've guessed it, Jack 52. Talk about a weird happy end. This could be the only Jack left in the world, who knows. But what is important is that he is very similar to Jack 42, having had time to grow and learn for himself to be the real Jack Harper. I liked this... others might not, but it did make sense.

 

[Insideout Ink Demon]

Oblivion

MovieBob takes us to the future in this spoiler laden review of the post-apocalyptic Oblivion.

Watch Video

Damn it Bob, thats two of your videos this week i couldnt watch due to spoilers, c'mon!!!!

 

[blackrave]

If anyone wants to a version of this movie that's actually good, go watch Moon.

On a side note, if they're clones, why would they need to be tricked or have memories of pre-war stuff?
That's not how cloning works. Even if the aliens some how managed to make it work like that, they could still use propaganda to convince them they're doing the right thing. It's not that hard to turn humans against each other.

The only thing this movie's accomplished is remind me that Republic Commandos 2 isn't a thing.

Glad I wasn't the only one who thought that it kinda resembles Moon
And that was one really good movie
Sad that Oblivion wasn't good, I hoped it will be
Really hoped

 

[RA92]

Dear Lord, I didn't expect people to write essays defending this movie.

Anyway, Les Goldman remains as Tom Cruise's best performance.

 

[Marowit]

love the Prometheus dig at the end haha

 

[Deacon Cole]

Sounds like a better movie to watch instead of Oblivion would not be Prometheus, but Moon. It has a similar twist, but that's the second act climax. It's revealed early on and more importantly Sam Rockwell has to carry the largely action-free sci-fi drama by, get this, acting. In fact, it sounds like someone decided to remake Moon as an action movie filled with obsolete Hollywood cliches and they came up with Oblivion.

 

[The Artificially Prolonged]

Just got back from seeing Oblivion. Kind of meh in my opinion, not terrible but not anything brilliant. It seemed to be a mash up of ideas from better movies slammed together into one bland package. Plus the predictable plot line kind of killed my interest in the first few minutes

 

[duchaked]

it bothered me that I saw this movie's trailer right before (or after idr) seeing the After Earth trailer (the one with Will Smith?) during the same film screening's previews lol...

seriously do studios just happen to come out with Armageddon and Deep Impact films at the same time or what?