Much-maligned movie which has supplied me with my go-to soundtrack for writing heroic scifi fiction. At last watched it, and it was quite interesting with fabulous design. Architecture, costumes, machine design - all very well though out. It was nearly a good movie. Or a good movie unfortunately constrained by Hollywood stupid action movie expectations. If a few lame one-liners had been cut, chase scenes shortened, and one scene where the obvious is explained to the slowest people in the audience completely obliterated, it would have been… but what’s the use of speculating like that. It is what it is. Close call with greatness and still so far from it.

 

Oh! if you watch it, better be prepared for it being male-centric in the unselfconscious, innocent way of action and scifi movies before 2017 or so. But it is so earnestly a guy movie, not pretending in the least to be equal opportunity, that I can’t be upset at it. 

 

The protagonist Jack (Tom Cruise) is a hard-working simple guy, who reminisces of baseball and fixes machines. Earth has been ruined in a war with aliens, and he’s helping the rest of the humanity to escape to Saturn’s moon Titan by keeping sea-water distilling machines working. Or so he’s been told. Just as in the Matrix, our hero finds out all his life has been a lie. 

 

Wouldn’t that be great! 

 

It’s our tragedy and pain that we’ve been told the truth. The world is just as we’ve known all along. There is no excuse, no ethical pillow for soft landing, we are in falling and falling and falling - failing and failing and failing to act according to our moral beliefs or even in the best interest of our own species. Is there going to be a terrible impact at some point, splattering blood and skull shards around? Probably not. In real life changes are gradual and payouts delivered unfairly, those who have the most power to ruin the world will suffer from it the least. But still, the instinctual feeling of dread need to be resolved, a plausible explanation found, in the dream world of cinema if nowhere else. 

 

It would be so nice if Morgan Freeman father figure delivered us of our personal responsibility, accepted our pleas: But I didn’t know! I had no idea, in my lovely penthouse apartment, on the top of the world, going to work every day in my cool vehicle, that I was working for the enemy destroying our world! I’m just a simple dude, naive though hard-working, longing for the good life in the country, hoping my stuck-up wife was a little more spontaneous and she and her boss always micro-managing my time. It’s not my fault, none of it! 

 

He would nod, reassuring, approving, certain that now that you know what’s right, you’ll do it. Like a hero, one of thousands and yet special. Ready to sacrifice anything for the right cause. Even life itself. If only it was a simple single task and not a million inconveniences, like in reality.

 

Well, saving the world is a million inconveniences, and not many of us bother with them, so we need movies like Oblivion to resolve the stress caused by knowing the right thing and not doing it. Thank you Oblivion, the catharsis you provided was good, and the emotions it made me feel were real.