…when I get up and running on WordPress (which will be very soon), when I can protect such posts from accidental viewing. In the meantime, please enjoy this post from Film School Rejects, which explores “9 Big Questions Left Unanswered by ‘Oblivion.’” Which it amusingly explains thusly:
Oblivion is the kind of science fiction movie that plays with a lot of other movies’ toys and forgets to clean them up afterward. Then we all step on a HAL 9000 doll in the middle of the night when we’re going for that last piece of fried chicken in the fridge, and the bruise reminds us to yell rhetorically at the Tom Cruise-starring movie the next morning. How many times have we told it to pick up its things?
Do not click over unless you’ve already seen the film, or unless you don’t care if it’s spoiled for you.
Also don’t read on unless either applies.
I added a tenth thing in comments, which is this:
There’s also the matter of “the big game” that original-Jack-on-the-space-shuttle tells Mission Control he doesn’t want spoiled (and so he doesn’t know how it ends) and that 49-Jack recounts the ending of for 49-Victoria. Unless there’s two completely different “big games”… in which case, WTF is going on with all this big-game stuff?
Basically, you barely need to start thinking about Oblivion before it falls apart.
My question – and i haven’t seen this yet – then becomes, do these 9 (10) questions occur to the audience while viewing the film, or do they only crop up later, while retrieving that midnight snack? I am coming to believe that, if it’s the latter, if the emotional momentum of the film carries it through logical inconsistencies, then the movie is not a failure. More of a qualified success.
You think of some of these while watching the film, some after.
Well, that’s probably a better batting average than the ’08 version of “The Day the Earth Stood Still”. (I realize that’s an odd film to reference, but Mrs Dr Rocketscience and I watched it last night. She has to write an essay on remakes for her film history class.)
Yes, this is my baseline too – but only because if I held films to the standards of books there would hardly be any I could recommend.
Most of these questions are pretty frivolous, but a few of them occur during the film, and a couple afterward. it doesn’t ruin things, though. Not all the way.
SPOILERS:
MaryAnn I’m not sure about your confusion on the game… it was the Superbowl (the last one, though they didn’t know it at the time) and Jack didn’t want it spoiled… during the flashback, he intends on living through his mission and returning to Earth to watch the game.
At some point during Jack 49’s five year mission he read about it in one of the books or papers he discovered in his explorations, and the game held special significance for him, though at the time he didn’t know why. He clearly states this when recounting the game.
Oblivion very obviously cribs from dozens of (mostly better) sci-fi movies, recent and classic — and I enjoyed it despite this. There are very few logical plot holes in the story as written (until the end)… though understanding some parts of it does seem to require knowledge of the source material. And in other parts your knowledge of the sources ruins major reveals in the story.
Most of the confusing things that article points out are not actually that confusing. For instance, why does Morgan Freeman wear sunglasses all the time? Sunglasses are cool.
SPOILERS:
How does Morgan Freeman know what part of the book Jack read? Because it has a bookmark on that page, and they’ve obviously spied on him at this retreat. Of course, this does make one wonder why it takes Jamie Lannister 3 whole years to find it… but that’s the end part that doesn’t make a lot of sense, which I mentioned above.
My favorite part of the article, though, is where the author states “that’s not how clones work” as if clones are a real thing with definite rules. Huh? Which clones don’t work that way? The ones in other fucking movies?
END SPOILERS
Anyways, Oblivion is an above-average sci-fi action film, and I liked it well enough to recommend it.
I agree with you. I think my biggest problem with the movie is that, while the first hour is quite good, the last half hour takes a little more than an hour.
MORE SPOILERS
It seems like the story gets stretched out in order to set up a situation where it seems appropriate for Jack 49 to sacrifice himself. During all of that fumbling about, the narrative starts to unravel.
The article puts it at number 3, but I think that’s actually the biggest flaw in the script. It’s a fundamental failure in world building: why does the Tet need clones at all? Just about anything else about the clones can be hand-waved away, but that’s a lot to swallow.
I had the exact same reaction to the articles “clones don’t work that way” bit. Oh really Mr Genetics Expert? Done a lot of cloning, have we?