There was a war, and all that remains of Earth now is a desolate land that’s been ravaged by the after effects of that war — which went nuclear. Jack (Tom Cruise) is playing out his duty as a technician on Earth to maintain drones that have been left to protect resource gathering devices from the planet.
It’s difficult to give an honest plot synopsis of this film without giving into a lot of the non disclosed elements of the plot which actually are some of the most questionable parts of the film. On the surface the film plays very similar to a Reign of Fire, just replace dragons with drones and robots and such. We’re given a protagonist who manages to be charismatic in a world that requires no charisma or care just effectiveness and we’re immediately ready to root for him. However, it’s also painfully obvious from the ease to which the first half of this film moves that there’s something very wrong. The way that the film feels where we see Jack’s curiosity, desire to engage in art and even have his own little secret cabin in the woods; these are all things that we as we are now would be doing because they seem sensible and at the same time he can’t just say “I’m doing this awesome thing” to his partner, Victoria (Andrea Riseborough).
With that in mind we as the viewer begin to put doubt into everything we see and hear. So by the time we actually meet this resistance (Skavs), including: Morgan Freeman and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lanister in Game of Thrones), we as an audience are already on their side. No matter how crazy it sounds to Jack, because he’s been led to believe that they’re these bad things, we hop skip and jump over that step of needing evidence and go straight to saying “YES” to everything they say. Which leads to the evidence.
I know that this film is a science-fiction film and complaining that there’s science-fiction in it is like complaining that water is wet, but that reveal was so lazy. Even more it was borderline boring. For a moment that movies like this live for I was left uninterested and just wanting to see the eventual final resolve hoping for crazy explosions to happen. More than anything else I was starting to wish I was watching Jack Reacher again instead of this film. Why didn’t more people see Jack Reacher? That’s the better film with Tom Cruise playing a guy named Jack.
I’d continue complaining and talk about the ending, but I feel I’ve already complained enough. The film’s biggest flaw is that it feels uninteresting. Oblivion (which why isn’t this an Elder Scrolls film?) is as paint by numbers as they come and while technically not a bad movie is one that barely cares that it exists.