As many of you may know Man of Steel hit theaters this past weekend, and being a HUGE Superman fan I was extremely excited to see it. Unfortunately I had to work opening night. So instead of just going to any old theater and watching it later in the week Chris suggested we visit the drive-in near our town. I agreed because 1. I could hardly wait to see this movie and 2. drive-in theaters are the best invention for movie goers in my opinion. You get to enjoy the comforts of your car, bring whatever food you want, and see two movies for the price of one. How can you beat that?
So we already knew what the first movie was going to be, but the second movie we were conflicted about. Sure we could watch Hangover 3, but neither of us had seen the second installment. Then there was Iron Man or Star Trek, but we’d already watched both of those flicks. After some debate we chose Oblivion, mainly for the fact that we both love science fiction, and the trailers looked promising. As a bonus the movie was produced by the same guys that did Rise of The Planet of The Apes, and I for one enjoyed that movie. It was sure to be at least a mildly interesting end to our night, right?
Wrong. Although the movie did have a good concept, it was one that is extremely generic and overplayed at best. The main character was Jack Harper, played by Tom Cruise. The movie was set in the year 2077, almost 60 years after the earth was attacked. A group of “scavengers”, an alien race” destroyed the earth’s moon making earth uninhabitable. The survivors of the attack relocated to Titan. That’s right, Saturns moon.
Jack Harper and his love interest Victoria (Vica), played by Andrea Riseborough, are sent as the “mop up crew” to sort of tie up the loose ends on earth and repair the droids that they use to survey the planet. Vica watches over their mission from the Skytower, aids Jack in all navigational help, and communicates with mission control on objectives. In the meantime Jack is busy flying his space craft around trying to fix broken droids, and occasionally going offline to hang out at an abandoned house by the lakeside.
In order to keep the objective of the mission their only focus, and so Jack can’t tell any of the mission secrets if captured, Jack and Vica have both had their memories erased. However, that doesn’t stop Jack from having cheesy flashbacks of meeting a mysterious lady at the empire state building pre-apocalypse. It isn’t long after that when Jack actually stumbles upon a wreckage, against mission control commands to stand down he insists on exploring it. Lo and behold who does he happen to find in a survivor crate? The mysterious lady, who has been in a cryogenic sleep for six decades. That’s the only survivor Jack rescues…despite there being at least three others.
From that point you could probably predict everything that was going to happen. It’s easy, just imagine everything that good science fiction movies have had in the past….and yes they’re all here in this movie. It’s as though the director was unsure what he liked best about the sci fi genre and decided to stick all his favorites in there. Unfortunately he doesn’t even do it in an original way.Everything this movie shows has been done before, is extremely cheesy, and leaves much to be desired.
The mysterious lady turns out to be non other than his wife, who could have seen that coming? Then Jack must figure out who he really is. Should he trust his newly discovered wife and flashbacks, or the life he has with Victoria and his objective?? What about those pesky “Scavs” who have attacked, and that radiation area that mission control keeps telling him to avoid at all costs??
I’m sure you can imagine the rest. This movie starts off slowly and proceeds into boredom. Luckily we got our money worth during Man of Steel, because I’d wait for the dvd on this one. (maybe not even then)
