I love sci-fi movies, I really do.
From the unbearably classic Blade Runner, to the dark Minority Report, from the Alien quadrilogy (or at least the first two) to Alice in wonderland in fancy leather coats, sorry I meant the Matrix, sic-fi movies make me cringe. Perhaps it's this archetypical fear of the unknown, the worry that death will come from above, from outside and not from within. Perhaps it's the dystopian future, that I adore in literature too (1984, brave new world, never let me go etc), I don't know what it is, just sci-fi fascinates me.
So, even Oblivion, which is not great, and whose script, as correctly pointed out in this Guardian video review, is a massive mishmash of other sic-fi references (a little bit of Matrix meets Mad Max meets Alien meets Ghost in the Shell meets a bit of Lost meets the Truman show meets of course a bit of Oedipus Rex -- every movie needs a bit of Greek tragedy, no?), I actually enjoyed. Tom Cruise is as stereotypical as it gets, and the storyline did have to get explained to me, but the questions the movie poses have been and will always be important: what makes us human? What makes a being a man, and not a machine (alien, clone or whatever)? Is it our subtle love for literature -- as it also happened in the "humanisation" of the Stasi operative in the lives of others? Is it just our inquisitive nature -- you know that when Vicky says "I don't want to know" that she is lost for ever? Is it simply our ability to love?
Oblivion does not pose any new questions, all the above, we've heard it all before. But isn't it worth it hearing it again, especially with such a beautiful set as a backdrop?
