1) Oblivion
Central Cast: Tom Cruise, Olga Kurylenko, Morgan Freeman
Budget: $125 Million
Release Date:: April 12th (UK) April 19th (US)
Directed by: Joesph Kosinski
The Pitch: The year is 2072 and Tom Cruise plays futuristic repairman Jak, who spends his lonesome days away from the luxury space station he calls home to work amid the ruins of our earthly civilisation. Following an alien invasion sixty years ago, humankind is pushed to stratospheric orbit for survival via gravity-defying glass houses. It’s a life Cruise’s Jak has become accustomed to, until he meets Olga Kurylenko’s mysterious girl in a crashed spacecraft on planet Earth that forces him to question his very existence in the post-apocalyptic world.
The Verdict: Oblivion is the perfect example of a breed of science fiction film that has risen in popularity. Avatar’s success in 2009 was like a rippling effect in Hollywood, compounding studio interest in original sci-fi and effectively spearheading the genre’s resurgence. And it’s a spiralling trajectory that Joesph Kosinski has jumped onto for this year’s Oblivion.
Hot of the neon heels of Tron: Legacy, which also served as his directorial debut, Kosinski is adapting his own eponymous graphic novel to the big screen. Having Tom Cruise in the lead role is a massive boast for the filmmaker, and the story seems to echo the lonely man narrative that has always been a classic trope for the genre – see Silent Running and The Quiet Earth.
Oblivion will go beyond the familiar post-apocalyptic arc and explore a world set decades after humanity’s epic battle with extraterrestrials known as The Scavengers. Oblivion hopes to marry high concept science fiction with high octane action – a branch of chemistry deemed difficult to formulate – and with subtle nods to the genre’s heritage, Kosinski’s film will hope to push a generic sense of familiarity into uncharted creative territory.
Hype-O-meter: 8/10
Continue reading on the next page…
