Wednesday, April 17, 2013

"Oblivion:" the bullet points edition

--"Oblivion" is decently entertaining.  It's impressively pretty and, for the most part, ingeniously staged and shot.
--It's also really, really awful.  I mean, wow.
--It's weirdly derivative of practically EVERY OTHER SCI-FI MOVIE EVER ("The Island," "Moon," "Minority Report," "Independence Day," "Vanilla Sky," "Wall-E," "Total Recall," "Soylent Green," and "Planet of the Apes," to name a few.  Also "Top Gun" - not a sci-fi movie, you say?  Shut up, "Oblivion" doesn't care - and a whole collection of more obscure books and TV, like the '80s Japanese show "Tekkaman Blade"). 
--Seriously, this movie really ripped off "Moon" something fierce.  Don't see it.  See "Moon" instead. 
--But it's based on a graphic novel, so maybe I've gotta blame the graphic novel?
[BONUS BULLET: --Hollywood: stop adapting graphic novels, or if you've gotta do it, please do it better.  Graphic novels may look like conveniently pre-storyboarded screenplays, but they're usually not as good as everyone thinks they are.  And that's before the director starts monkeying with them.  Also, adapting them even halfway 'faithfully' often makes your movie feel as static and preordained as the worst parts of the worst "Harry Potter" flicks.  What comes off as 'room for imagination' on paper (often just barely) translates to 'stupid' onscreen.]
--"Oblivion" is very stupid.  I'm honestly not sure if *anything* in this movie made sense.  I'm not exaggerating either.  You can be more forgiving with some crazinesses than with others, but I mean, c'mon.  C'mon.  Why is Tom Cruise on that motorcycle.
--Tom Cruise did a great job but was woefully miscast.  So was Olga Kurylenko.  Morgan Freeman rocked but was given slightly less than nothing to work with.
--Wow, this movie was bad.
--Can you photobomb a motion picture?  If so, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau totally photobombed "Oblivion." A Lannister always survives the apocalypse!

--Oh god, just go watch "Moon" already.


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