When Tom Cruise’s Jack Harper pilots an airborne vehicle through canyons in the 2013 sci-fi action movie Oblivion, Cruise isn’t actually flying a super-powered aircraft from the future. Still, it’s easy to regard those scenes as a precursor to Cruise and director Joseph Kosinski’s collaboration on this year’s mega-hit Top Gun: Maverick. When Jack’s “bubble ship” goes into freefall and then pulls up at the last minute before crashing, or navigates a narrow space between canyon walls, there are flashes of what Kosinski and Cruise would later accomplish with actual functional jets in Maverick.
Those shots aside, Oblivion has little in common with the rousing hero worship of Maverick. Like Doug Liman’s Edge of Tomorrow from the following year, it subverts Cruise’s image as the square-jawed action hero, taking him down a peg before building him back up, almost reluctantly. Jack isn’t a leader or an inspirational figure in his dystopian future. As he tells rescued astronaut Julia Rusakova (Olga Kurylenko), he’s just part of “the mop-up crew.” Jack and his romantic/professional partner Victoria Olsen (Andrea Riseborough) are tasked with drone maintenance on the remnants of an Earth ravaged by alien invasion and nuclear war.
At least that’s what Jack believes. In the opening narration, he explains that 50 years ago Earth was attacked by aliens known as “scavs,” and while humans were eventually able to defeat the enemy, it came at the cost of destroying the planet’s civilization and natural resources. Whatever is left of humanity is migrating to Saturn’s moon Titan, and Jack and Victoria are on rotation from the orbiting space station known as the Tet, with two weeks left to go on their shift monitoring and repairing drones. Large machines are draining the Earth’s oceans for resources to take to Titan, and scattered bands of remaining scavs mount occasional attacks.
Jack also explains in that opening narration that his and Victoria’s memories have been wiped in order to protect the integrity of their mission, which raises an immediate red flag for anyone who’s seen a sci-fi movie. The pair’s commander, Sally (Melissa Leo), communicates with them via a shaky video feed, ritualistically asking if they’re “an effective team,” like Angela Lansbury in The Manchurian Candidate asking Laurence Harvey if he’d like to play solitaire. Leo, appearing exclusively on a tiny black-and-white screen, makes the character menacing just via her sickly-sweet sing-song Southern accent. Kosinski and screenwriters Karl Gajdusek and Michael deBruyn create an atmosphere of dread in the film’s first half, just waiting for sinister revelations about what’s really going on with Jack and Victoria.
The movie doesn’t hold back those revelations for too long, and there’s a narrative shift about halfway through as Jack learns some of the truth about his mission. That coincides with the arrival of Julia, whom Jack has been seeing as a mysterious figure in his dreams. That soulmate connection leading him to question the nature of his reality hearkens back to another Cruise movie, 2001’s Vanilla Sky, and while much of Oblivion is deliberately sleek and antiseptic, there’s a sensual quality to Jack’s dynamic with both Julia and Victoria. A scene of Jack and Victoria swimming naked in the infinity pool in their skybound base is a rare erotic moment in Cruise’s recent filmography.
That base is a design marvel, somewhere between a command center and a luxury high-rise apartment, and even when Oblivion gets lost in its plot mechanics, it never looks less than stunning. Kosinski carries over some of the design sense from his 2010 debut feature Tron: Legacy, including a showpiece motorcycle that Jack uses for ground transportation. Kosinski also continues his collaborations with electronic musicians, hiring M83 to create a score along with composer Joseph Trapanese, which mixes synth sounds and more traditional orchestral instrumentation.
The clean futuristic style of the base provides a jarring contrast to the verdant oasis where Jack sneaks away to commune with the Earth that no longer exists. Like many sci-fi protagonists, he fetishizes the past, collecting artifacts including old books, a Yankees hat, and even a pair of aviator sunglasses that look like they could be worn by Pete “Maverick” Mitchell. The movie introduces a third type of sci-fi environment when Jack discovers an underground human settlement of people dressed in Mad Max-style post-apocalyptic garb.
The performances from Cruise, Riseborough, and Kurylenko are all restrained and subtle, with minimal dialogue, so Morgan Freeman makes a splash when he enters from the shadows wearing leather and sunglasses, smoking a huge cigar. His presence kicks off the narrative shift, as Jack explores beyond his prescribed domain, and those pieces don’t always fit together. But Cruise, who effortlessly excels in the action scenes, also holds Oblivion together emotionally, making its familiar sci-fi twists resonate. It’s a gorgeously detailed futuristic vision with a soulful center.
“Oblivion” is now streaming on Netflix and Hulu.
