It’s been nearly a decade since we saw Tom Cruise in a solid sci-fi movie, so his new action-adventure film Oblivion has been hotly anticipated since the first trailer dropped in December. That first glimpse sketched for us the parameters of Jack Harper’s (Cruise) world: Sixty years after an alien invasion, Earth is uninhabitable. Humanity has retreated to cities above the clouds, with gray-suited drone workers like Jack sent to the planet to retrieve vital data.
What Jack discovers instead is human survivors dressed all in black—including a rad Morgan Freeman doing his best impression of Morpheus from The Matrix—and a planetwide conspiracy. The new trailer, released this morning, starts to fill in those lines with more hints as to what caused the attack on Earth and why “the good guys” are firing on other humans.
At this point, we can grasp the dynamic between the sterile, gray humans of the sky and the dirt-covered, leather-clad resistance fighters underground. But this trailer also tells us more about Jack’s stoic colleague Victoria (Andrea Riseborough) and their Mission Control liaison Sally (Melissa Leo). Leo is really creepy as their quasi-mother figure, especially when she intones, “Are you an effective team?”
Thankfully, this looks to be less War of the Worlds and more Minority Report. (The color palette is even similar.) Director Joseph Kosinski wrote the graphic novel on which Oblivion is based, though he was aided in the screenwriting process by none other than Star Wars Episode VII scribe Michael Arndt.
<a href=“http://movies.uk.msn.com/trailers-and-clips/?videoid=86e083a6-9cc7-4253-a190-138c9b89c383&src=v5:embed:syndication:&from=shareembed-syndication” _cke_saved_href=“http://movies.uk.msn.com/trailers-and-clips/?videoid=86e083a6-9cc7-4253-a190-138c9b89c383&src=v5:embed:syndication:&from=shareembed-syndication” target=“_new” title=“Oblivion – exclusive trailer”>Video: Oblivion – exclusive trailer</a>
Interestingly, at the end of the trailer the following blurb popped up. While still vague, it’s a more detailed synopsis than we’ve seen thus far:
A court martial sends a veteran soldier to a distant planet, where he has to destroy the remains of an alien race. The arrival of an unexpected traveler causes him to question what he knows about the planet, his mission, and himself.
Oblivion opens exclusively in IMAX theaters on April 12 and then nationwide April 19, 2013.
Natalie Zutter is a playwright, foodie, and the co-creator of Leftovers, a webcomic about food trucks in the zombie apocalypse. Her writing has appeared on Ology and Crushable, where she discusses celebrity culture alongside internet memes (or vice versa). Weekly you can find her commenting on pop culture on KoPoint’s podcast AFK On Air, calling in to the Hunger Games Fireside Chat podcast, reviewing new releases at Movie Mezzanine, and on Twitter.
The blurb at the end is very intriguing… I am starting to look forward to this movie.
I’m looking forward to this one and Will Smith’s After Earth.
There’s the text in the trailer that says:
I am particularly interested in the idea of memory becoming central to this movie’s story. Whatever Tom Cruise’s character unravels, I hope it speaks to the fragility of memory and how easily it can be manipulated by the powers that be.
The weapon Cruise’s character wields looks a bit like the M-97 Viper sniper rifle from the Mass Effect universe…
@taconista – I wish I were more amped up for After Earth. Maybe it’s because it looks to be more action than mystery, and there is some secret explanation in Oblivion for why the Earth is like that.
@Power Land – Good point! I definitely think Jack Harper’s memory has been tampered with in some way, because if an attack really did happen “sixty years ago,” then he can’t be having those dreams about the girl in the spaceship. Also, that’s a lot more insidious than aliens carving up the planet.
Actually the rifle looks suspiciously like it was either modelled on or modd’ed from a real rifle, Kel-Tec’s RFB (Rifle Forward ejecting Bullpup)