Oblivion: This Movie Deserved Better Writers

I'm going to start a mostly negative review with a statement that may surprise you - we need more movies like Oblivion. There's a good movie hidden somewhere in here under a severely wanting plot and some absolutely stunning visuals, and it's a shame that this movie was just so completely failed by its own writers. This movie reminds me, in some ways, of Denis Villeneuve's Arrival, at least as far as its craftsmanship goes. Both are relatively high-concept science fiction movies with a huge emphasis on visual splendor that forgoes all the poppy-but-empty eye candy we've come to associate with the science fiction genre, visually cutting straight to what looks like something that belongs in an art museum. The only difference between the two movies is that one is a beautifully thoughtful, intimately touching, and wonderfully intelligent masterstroke, while the other is a tragically shallow, strangely clinical, and woefully unbalanced misfire that admittedly seems to be well-intentioned. But I'm going to be somewhat preferential to the intentions of the filmmakers here because one thing that Oblivion has plenty of is vision. I sincerely believe that its visual vision should have been handed to a more talented array of writers because it made me more than a little sad to watch this movie beautifully flounder about like a wedding dress model who's had one too many drinks.

Oblivion is a 2013 science fiction movie that follows Jack and Victoria, two memory-wiped technicians who have been dispatched to a nuclear war-ravaged Earth, tasked with repairing combat drones and guarding energy-collection stations from pirates who roam the wastes. However, Jack's life is changed when he rescues a mysterious woman from a crash landing, setting off an unprecedented series of events.

I do want to make something clear to you immediately: like most bad movies, there are some good things to be said about Oblivion. This movie has some striking sequences that utilize the visual medium of film to wonderful effect in unexpectedly artistic ways. As for the general aesthetic of the movie, Oblivion is incredibly pleasing to look at, combining impeccable visual effects with genuinely stunning cinematography to craft a vision of Earth that feels legitimately unexplored. What's more, the visuals of this movie never feel like they're too much. They're minimalistic but undeniably beautiful, and brimming with personality at times, evocative of the ruins of Old Russia from Bungie Studios' Destiny, if you're familiar with that game. As for the story, there's also a pretty good plot twist to be had around halfway through the movie. It's nothing earth-shattering or revolutionary that we haven't seen done before in other movies, but it did effectively change the direction of the narrative.

Unfortunately, this is where most of the good things to say about Oblivion end. The narrative of this movie that I just mentioned is oh-so-thin, and it became pretty apparent to me that this movie was counting on its visuals to save it from its own story, which is....not a great idea to say the least. Perhaps one thing that could have helped this movie along was giving the deuteragonist pirates who inhabit Earth a more intentional presence in the movie, which would have more effectively rounded out the world. But no. The pirates exist but act more like a mildly dangerous perk of the world than they do a legitimate threat to either our protagonists or anyone else for that matter. It's never established why exactly we should fear them, and so I never did. They're too present to be mysterious, yet too underutilized to be relevant.

As for our heroes, Jack, Victoria, and eventually Julia, they're regrettably one-dimensional for how few characters this movie actually has, which is just something that cannot and must not happen in a movie with a small leading cast. This is definitely my least favorite aspect of Oblivion and is frankly kind of unforgivable. The movie's trying to act as something of a character study of Jack, but there's just not much to be said about him, and when combined with its incredibly thin narrative, this movie isn't entirely unlike a beautiful painting that doesn't really know what exactly it's trying to depict. This movie is gorgeous but tragically vapid, full of underdeveloped ideas, character dynamics that work on paper but fall flat due to a frankly shocking lack of depth, and a paper-thin narrative that foolishly leans heavily on spectacle to try and save it.

But lastly, I must say that even though this movie's plot and characters are severely lacking, Oblivion often acts like it should have been great. There are some interesting things going on here, but the movie too often tries to dazzle us with its admittedly stunning visuals instead of expanding on what could have legitimately been a one-of-a-kind experience. This movie is surprisingly uneventful and tries to be meditative without ever really giving us anything worthwhile to meditate on. This puts me in a frustrating position because I was rooting so badly for Oblivion, a movie whose art department is hitting all high notes in an industry that is killing creatives. I wish that the masterful brushstrokes we see here had ended up painting a picture that would encourage studios to make more movies that are, in a lot of ways, like Oblivion. Instead, we ended up with a beautiful but ultimately empty piece that, even if shapeless, is occasionally breathtaking to behold.

Oblivion - 5/10

Isaiah 65:17