Oblivion (2013)

SPOILER WARNING!!! This post spoils movie Oblivion (2013).

Oblivion is movie I should like, but I don't like it. It tries to be intelligent science fiction, but fails, when little things doesn't make  sense. In many ways this reminds me of Moon (2009). And fewer ways some other better movies. First, let compare this to Moon. In Moon, there was one maintenance guy and his intelligent robot looking after him and the base. In this movie, Tom Cruise is maintenance guy, who has female colleague looking after him in their base. In Moon that made sense, because there weren't any real danger for the guy. In this movie, Scavengers try to kill him, when he is there on ground. He has security drones, who might come to help him, but security drones only come there to kill everything they see and then leave. If anyone waited long enough to security drones to leave, Tom Cruise would be easy target. What makes this even stupider, Tom Cruise does things way that puts him on harm's way instead of doing them more secure way. He should have one security drone looking for him all the time. This stupidity is annoying.

Intelligent robot and female colleague have similar roles in both movies. Female colleague was hotter, but they did exactly the same role. There is reason, why they were only team of two. But we don't know that at beginning of the movie. When we learn the reason, many things make even less sense. Why even have the team of two, to fix robots? If they needed humans to fix machines, why not put them together to fix robots? One was sitting in base while other was in danger fixing robots. Why security drones didn't follow Cruise, when he was on ground? They were sent to him, when he was in danger, but that always took some time. This movie just copied Moon and never gave second thought what their additions to story meant.

Earth should be dry wasteland. There is space station TET orbiting Earth. TET monitors earth all the time. But there is forest valley, that TET doesn't know and nobody sees Tom Cruise, when he goes there. Tom Cruise seems to visit there constantly, but his colleague doesn't see anything alarming, when constantly goes under the radar for long times. This is not total rip-off of Moon. Premise is like premise of Moon. After story starts to open movie start to add own things or rip-offs of another movies. Director Joseph Kosinski says this is homage to 70's science fiction movies. That sounds strange, because I see this movie ripping off small film from 2009 and blockbuster from year 1996. It probably does that to other movies too, but I can't point which ones.

I don't want to spoil this totally. Someone might find this interesting and twist of the movie is interesting even when it is partly rip-off and partly original. I just want to say, I hate the end. It cancels emotional moments from earlier parts and opens questions, which can't stand further analyses. Someone has said, they needed that kind of ending even when it eats impact of the movie.

Movie needed couple rewrites. Now we see too clearly, where inspiration came from. Original ideas were good. Rip-offs weren't though enough. What made sense in original movies, didn't make sense here, where world was different. It is like movies I like, but misses too many points.

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