Movie Breakdown: Oblivion

People are doing traditional-style reviews all over the web, so we decided to try something different.  In each “breakdown” we’ll take a look at what a film’s marketing lead us to believe, how the movie actually played, and then what we learned from it all.  Read on!

The Impression:

Tron Legacy director Joseph Kosinski gets back into theaters with a Tom Cruise-lead live action take on Wall-E.

The Reality:

Oblivion is a movie heavily influenced by pretty much anything sci-fi that’s come along before it.  So much so in fact that I think the only thing in the film that I’m willing to give credit to Joseph Kosinski for is the much advertised Bubble Ship.  Aside from that, there’s nothing!  Somehow, though, this doesn’t work against it.  While so much of Oblivion seemed familiar, and despite the fact that it was easy to predict what was going to happen next, I still found the film to be a rather entertaining time.  If you just want to see sci-fi on a big scale, the kind that isn’t concerned with taking itself too seriously, then you could certainly do much worse than Oblivion.

The Lesson:

A lack of originality isn’t always a bad thing.