Oblivious

We're doing something called The Food Project in my class, where we're assigned a food and have to tell everyone why it's good/bad for them. As part of it, today we watched a video in the theater about how meat is raising cancer rates, milk is feeding diabetes, and the entire animal-based food industry is killing us slowly. I don't give; I'm having hot dogs for dinner. YAY, teenagers!

It's been a while since I've been to a movie theater, seeing as Iron Man 3 doesn't come out until next week. But to tide me over, today I went to see Oblivion, the latest Tom Cruise Tom Cruise-fest. I had heard mediocre things about it, and so I went in with low-ish expectations. After all, who gives a flying f**k about Tom Cruise? But I was pleasantly surprised-- Oblivion is easily the best movie I've seen this year.
Graham Vert
Okay, it's April, and the only other one I've seen is A Good Day to Die Hard, so there's not much competition. But Oblivion, minus the Tom Cruise part, was an entertaining, visually stimulating thrill ride that featured never-ending plot twists. It's some pretty absorbing sci-fi.

         
However, this wouldn't be a real review of mine if I didn't list everything wrong with the movie. On the other hand, the problem here isn't so much what's wrong with it as it is what's RIGHT with it. Specifically, this movie ripped off every single science fiction movie ever made. The only mildly original parts are where it pays tribute to other Tom Cruise movies, like Top Gun (repeated shots of aviators) or A Few Good Men (baseball and glove sitting in his house). So for your reading pleasure, I will now list EVERY MOVIE THAT OBLIVION RIPPED OFF!!!

• Moon/The Island: Infinite clones, one guy trapped on a barren world? Please, it's too obvious.
• The Matrix: Thousands of Tom Cruises sitting in tanks, all over the wall. Just substitute Keanu Reeves (an even worse actor), and you've nailed it.
• The Phantom Menace/The Avengers: When the alien ship is destroyed, all the baddies die seconds before they're about to wipe out our heroes. How convenient. Plus the drones were highly reminiscent of Darth Maul's droid-thingy. Yep, I'm a nerd.
• Alien/Aliens: Cryostasis freezing lasts 60 years... because plotline.
• Prometheus: Not many people might agree with me here, but sometimes it seemed as if the panorama shots in this movie were the exact same ones from the opening of the Alien saga prequel.
• 2001: A Space Odyssey: The evil robot looks and acts exactly like HAL, plus the spaceship they ride to the alien ship on is highly reminiscent in design to the Discovery. Oh, and it's also called The Odyssey. So there's that.
• Independence Day: The entire alien ship looked identical to the one in this classic disaster flick, from the triangular doors to the hollow interior.
• Return of the Jedi: Good guys dress up in full-body armor and wear voice scramblers to disguise themselves.
• Attack of the Clones: Clone army. That's all I'm gonna say.
• Total Recall: The man's memory is wiped, and he is then placed in an awkward situation between his wife and his random girlfriend. However, Arnold Schwarzenegger's acting is far more versatile than Tom Cruise's.
• Wanted: Morgan Freeman plays essentially the same character in this 2008 thriller as he does in Oblivion.
• The Book of Eli: This might be the weakest connection here, but the two movies have the same tone and general plot points-- plus Tom Cruise finds a book in the ruins of a library that he carries with him through the movie.

Anyway, although Oblivion is shamelessly derivative, it's hard to come up with truly groundbreaking sci-fi these days. It borrowed heavily from far better sources, but what it did with that material was pretty gripping. Although most of the dialogue stank, and the acting (besides the obvious exception of Morgan Freeman) offered nothing interesting, no one watches Tom Cruise action movies for their fantastic scripts. Final score: 6/10 stars. Worth a viewing, but not necessarily in theaters.

Bye!