“Dream of us.”

Justin’s rating: Drone on and on

Justin’s review: When the world talks about Tom Cruise movies, it’s rarely about his science fiction outings. And yet this couch-hopping superstar has a tidy array of them under his belt with what I think of as an unofficial trilogy of the future. There was Minority Report (always a great watch that reminds me how fantastic a flick this was), Edge of Tomorrow (which has built up some serious geek cred and hopes of a sequel), and Oblivion. Really, if few people ever talk about Cruise’s scifi, then nobody mentions Oblivion.

But they should.

Oblivion is to Tom Cruise as Blade Runner was to Harrison Ford: A hauntingly beautiful vision of a possible earth, a slightly muddled script, and a starkly unique soundtrack. French group M83 did the score here, and it’s become one of my favorite film soundtracks of all time.

It’s 2077, and Tom Cruise is Jack Harper, a mind-wiped repair technician who spends his nights floating above a ravaged Earth and days heading to the surface to protect machinery that’s harvesting the last resources of the planet. Up in the sky, the remains of the moon are smeared across the horizon, a souvenir of an alien attack. It’s simple, quiet, technical work.

Yet Jack is haunted by dreams of places he’s never been to, of a girl he’s never met. He feels that Earth is his home somehow, even though he grew up off-planet on the moon of Titan. He’s got questions and a deep suspicion that the answers are being kept from him.

I didn’t really show up for the plot, which offers answers that aren’t terribly satisfying and some mind-trippery that isn’t especially thrilling. Instead, what makes this movie for me is the curious aesthetic that it beholds. For a post-apocalyptic film, Oblivion sports tech that looks fresh off the Apple Genius Bar rather than cobbled-together junkyard scraps. There’s a not-so-subtle color scheme here with one faction almost exclusively using white and its opposite draped in black.

But symbolism aside, Jack’s bubblecopter, collapsible motorcycle, and sleek rifle are sweet pieces of scifi movie tech and have endeared this movie to genre fans. The additional use of Iceland for an exotic filming locale makes this post-human earth look quite unique.

Sometimes you want gorgeous eye candy on 4K monitors, and Oblivion’s visuals often make for sumptuous viewing. Still, I’d freely admit that it’s the weakest of the Cruise scifi trio — worth at least one viewing while the soundtrack should be on repeat.

Intermission!

• The pod-thing flying over the Universal logo
• Man that broken moon is such a cool backdrop
• “We won the war… but lost the planet.”
• If you’re afraid of heights, this would be a terrible job
• Collapsible motorcycle looks neat
• His “ha!” as he escapes up into the air… only to have his rope snap and a slow-mo fall into the darkness
• Guess she doesn’t like grass
• A see-through pool floating miles above the ground? No thank you.
• That’s a beautiful nuke going off
• His secret cabin looks pretty cozy
• How intimidating those drone noises can be