When Bill O’Reilly announces his retirement in 2118 to pursue his main hobby, fishing, he will be replaced by a more aggressive talk show host, Bill O’Blivion. This, of course, is science fiction. Bill O’Reilly does not plan to retire before 2132. Go Fish.
Between now and 2132 you can still watch Bill and, if you desire, you can watch 50 year-old Tom Cruise play a younger role in the new sci-fi film, Oblivion. Right up front, Oblivion is not a film based on a book by Philip K. Dick, although it sure seems like it. PKD produced lots of books and short stories that were made into movies including Minority Report, Blade Runner, Next, Total Recall, Imposter, and The Adjustment Bureau. I have seen all of these films and Oblivion is an awful lot like them. If you have seen any of them, you know what you are in for. Oblivion also seems to have elements of Moon (2009), Mad Max (1979) and quite a few other sci-fi films tossed in the mix.
However, this movie is based on an idea by Director and Writer Joseph Kosinski. It has apparently been turned into a “illustrated novel” (i.e. comic book) to be published at the time the film is released. JK also directed Tron Legacy, a bad idea made into a worse movie.
Oblivion takes place in the future. The last Super Bowl was played in 2017 and everything else in the story takes place after that. Apparently aliens have attacked the Moon and pretty much blown it to shreds. This messes up everything on Earth and ends romance as we know it. All of the planet, except the oceans, is a wreck. The war with the aliens was won but at great cost. Everybody has moved to Titan, a moon of Jupiter. Real estate values there continue to climb and are awaiting the bubble. TC and his live-in sweetie are still on Earth while all the ocean water is being siphoned into big ships to take to Titan. TC flies around in a ship, fixing drones the defend the water sucking machines from Scavs – which are humans trying to sabotage them. They look like Mad Max characters and live in caves. Morgan Freeman is their boss. We know something is amiss when TC explains in the prologue narration that all but the past five years has been erased from memories to keep from remembering who won the last Super Bowl and an even BIGGER secret. Uh Oh. Big RED FLAG going up.
But it’s going to take almost two long hours for them to tell us what it is. Lots of good CGI effects cannot help the strain of the long running time, although, they try to fool us with the type of tricks played on us in the Philip K. Dick novels and films. Another one is on the way. Don’t blame Philip. Not this time.
Rated 2.5 out of 4.0 reasons you can forget it. It wasn’t the Detroit Lions.