Oblivion (Tom Cruise)

B.A._Baracus

snausages wrote: »

Saw a ridiculous picture of Tom Cruise promoting this film (I think it was this film) in Dublin with a guy following him around with an electric heater. wtf

The media has dubbed his needs/demands as "cruise control" :pac:

degrassinoel

snausages wrote: »

Saw a ridiculous picture of Tom Cruise promoting this film (I think it was this film) in Dublin with a guy following him around with an electric heater. wtf

was it this one?


nicked from ylyl

syklops

Before I saw that trailer I was expecting a Moon meets I am Legend. It could still go that way.

Sad Professor

In fairness, he was walking around wearing just a suit. I guess he could have dressed up in a big coat with gloves, scarf, etc, like everyone else, but I assume the studio (whose movie he is selling) wanted him and Olga looking glamourous.

The most ridiculous photo was actually the one of him with pint of Guinness in his hand. A ritual which all visiting celebrities, dignitaries and royalty have to endure. He doesn't even drink but presumedly downed it in order to be polite. We know how the Irish feel about teetotallers.

johnny_ultimate

The whole "celebrities with Irish roots" thing is getting ridiculous. Whatever about the Guiness, a "certificate of Irishness" is so blatantly absurd that its actually rather baffling it exists at all.

Sad Professor

The certificate business is pure desperation. It's just exploiting the fact that Americans are obsessed with their roots and Ireland is one of the more inoffensive places for for their great grandparents to have hailed from.

The Guinness thing really annoys me though. The Irish are getting a terrible reputation for drinking in places like Australia and yet we continue to let Guinness act as some sort of official sponsor of Irishness. Ugh!

LordSutch

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

The whole "celebrities with Irish roots" thing is getting ridiculous. Whatever about the Guiness, a "certificate of Irishness" is so blatantly absurd that its actually rather baffling it exists at all.

The thing is, why is the Irish side so more important than any other branch?

. . . and in the case of Tom Cruise, the de'Cruise's who were actually Anglo Normans who arrived in Ireland from France Via England.

AnonoBoy

Renn wrote: »

Promising review + entertainment.ie?

Especially from that reviewer. His taste is pretty suspect to be honest.

Sad Professor

That link is a preview, not a review. He's hasn't actually seen it.

AnonoBoy

Sad Professor wrote: »

That link is a preview, not a review. He's hasn't actually seen it.

Very true. He's still a sh*te reviewer though.

Amalgam

Visually impressive, plot is a path well worn, but not too offensive in how it is played out..

The actress Andrea Riseborough hasn't got much press out of this film.. She's lovely. [goes all quiet]

The droid sounds are very Half-Life, the, 'Burrrrrrrrr!' and 'Hooooonnng!' sounds, just before helpings of death and doom are doled out.. if you placed them into the game, you wouldn't bat an eyelid. Someone has to be a fan/gamer at the audio production company.

The similarities don't end there, if you've played Portal, at the end you'll go, 'Oh.. that entity looks rather like G..'

EDIT: The IMC in Dun Laoghaire has a blemish on the screen and white noise at the bottom, Screen 09..

Just a heads up.

constitutionus

well just back from seeing this myself too and a bit conflicted.

on the one hand, being impartial , its a great film. in fact i'd go so far to say its fantastic.

IF

You havent seen independence day, moon, 2001 a space odessey and The time machine (the new one) with a smidgeon] of transformers thrown in for good luck. cause it rips them ALL off wholesale. theres literally NOTHING in this that ya havent seen before in those films.

now mabye im being unfair, maybe the graphic novel its based on predates alot of that but to be honest i couldnt be arsed trying to find out. and THATS this films biggest problem.

john carter syndrome

youve seen it all before in fact

whole swathes of "moon" have been ripped off IMO.

and i reckon those lads should be pissed off.

i was actually one of the few that went to see john carter but its oblivion that made me feel like i was here many times before.

and its a pity cause like i said its a damn good flim when looked at in and of itself.

its looks gorgeous, the cast all do a competent job, no ones scene chewing and in the end it ties up all the subplots very well. hell it even asks some interesting questions about identity and the like with some good "twists" thrown in as well.

i have to say this incase someone takes me up wrong, i didnt hate this, and thats why im gonna be generous to it and say "if you NEVER seen the list of films in the spoilers I put in this post you'll love this"

7 out of 10

if ya have, youll still enjoy yourself but will feel a little underwhelmed.

TBH the worst part for me ? the technical issue that kept me and the audience sitting the the dark for near half an hour as the projectionist couldnt get the film to work and had us fearing half the film would be projected on the ceiling. this was at the IMC tallaght.

thankfully that was all sorted.

Amalgam

constitutionus wrote: »

TBH the worst part for me ? the technical issue that kept me and the audience sitting the the dark for near half an hour as the projectionist couldnt get the film to work and had us fearing half the film would be projected on the ceiling. this was at the IMC tallaght.

thankfully that was all sorted.

Amalgam wrote: »

EDIT: The IMC in Dun Laoghaire has a blemish on the screen and white noise at the bottom, Screen 09..

They need to sort that out. The blemish on our screen was like a small white smear, which was umm.. tolerable. The misaligned screen though, was annoying, as the white sliver peeking out at the bottom was pure bright white.

Mr E

Loved loved loved it.

I won't spoil anything, but I will say this - I thought the trailers gave too much away, but that wasn't the case at all. Most of the trailer was from the first hour, and things happened very differently to how I thought they would happen (which is always a nice surprise).

Yeah there were shades of other movies in there, but it was greater than the sum of its parts.

Oh, and I'm buying the soundtrack.

Outkast_IRE

Mr E wrote: »

Loved loved loved it.

I won't spoil anything, but I will say this - I thought the trailers gave too much away, but that wasn't the case at all. Most of the trailer was from the first hour, and things happened very differently to how I thought they would happen (which is always a nice surprise).

Yeah there were shades of other movies in there, but it was greater than the sum of its parts.

Oh, and I'm buying the soundtrack.

This is good to hear, funds are tight for me at the moment and i havent been to the cinema in months, but i love sci-fi and was hoping the reviews would come back positive....... Woo-hoo cinema sat night it is

SimonTemplar

Just back from seeing it in IMAX in Cineworld.

I was very impressed, in fact it is one of the better sci-fi movies I've seen in a long time. OK, it isn't a perfect film - it is derivative but I found the similarities to other movies tolerable. Tom Cruise gives his typical performance which is within such a limited range it is essentially the same character he's played in countless other action movies, but he is perfectly adequate here.

On the positive side, I loved the world the writer created and there is no doubting a certain visual flair and interesting direction. The plot constantly reveals new nuggets of information that makes you rethink your previous assumptions about the world that you are discovering. Andrea Riseborough is fantastic in her role, and although a significant portion of her screentime involved sitting alone at a computer screen like a glorified switchboard operator, so manages to convey so much emotion in her close ups. There are also several scenes, be it action or suspense, that are genuinely thrilling featuring hardware that is pretty cool.

Definitely recommended, and if you can, see it in IMAX because the visuals do look amazing. It was actually really great to be able to see an IMAX screening that wasn't 3D also.

With this, Elysium and Gravity 2013 could prove to be a very good year for sci-fi.

Mickeroo

Just back from it. Thought it was very good. Even though I felt it was lousy that they showed Morgan Freeman et al in the trailers there was enough in this to keep me guessing a fair bit

was expecting 52 to show up at the end though

.

I never felt it was ripping off any of the other films more a case of certain elements from them being present, I think it did enough here to make them it's own

and I'm pretty sure HAL's red "eye" was deliberate anyway!

It's visually stunning though and really deserves to be seen on the big screen, it rivals Prometheus for being one of the best looking hollywood films so far this decade, hell it even uses one or two of the same locations! It's not as ambitious as Prometheus was I suppose though, but it's a much more well put together and satisfying film imo.

I liked M83's score but it didn't stand out as much as Daft Punk's did in Tron Legacy and was a lot more, well, conventional or even generic than I was expecting.

Anyway, overall I really enjoyed it. It didn't blow me away or anything but it's great to see an original sci-fi movie on the big screen.

Bullseye1

Kosinkis background as an Architect is certainly visible in his movies. If he can improve his storytelling he will be a force going forward.

Padraig Mor

constitutionus wrote: »

well just back from seeing this myself too and a bit conflicted.

on the one hand, being impartial , its a great film. in fact i'd go so far to say its fantastic.

IF

You havent seen independence day, moon, 2001 a space odessey and The time machine (the new one) with a smidgeon] of transformers thrown in for good luck. cause it rips them ALL off wholesale. theres literally NOTHING in this that ya havent seen before in those films.

now mabye im being unfair, maybe the graphic novel its based on predates alot of that but to be honest i couldnt be arsed trying to find out. and THATS this films biggest problem.

john carter syndrome

youve seen it all before in fact

whole swathes of "moon" have been ripped off IMO.

and i reckon those lads should be pissed off.

i was actually one of the few that went to see john carter but its oblivion that made me feel like i was here many times before.

and its a pity cause like i said its a damn good flim when looked at in and of itself.

its looks gorgeous, the cast all do a competent job, no ones scene chewing and in the end it ties up all the subplots very well. hell it even asks some interesting questions about identity and the like with some good "twists" thrown in as well.

i have to say this incase someone takes me up wrong, i didnt hate this, and thats why im gonna be generous to it and say "if you NEVER seen the list of films in the spoilers I put in this post you'll love this"

7 out of 10

if ya have, youll still enjoy yourself but will feel a little underwhelmed.

TBH the worst part for me ? the technical issue that kept me and the audience sitting the the dark for near half an hour as the projectionist couldnt get the film to work and had us fearing half the film would be projected on the ceiling. this was at the IMC tallaght.

thankfully that was all sorted.

This. With added Beneath the Planet of the Apes and The Matrix.

It's funny - it's actually a good film, very well made, but I left it feeling a bit 'meh', without being able to pinpoint quite why.

johnny_ultimate

One of the worst films I've seen so far this year.

Really disappointing in terms of audio / visual, certainly a shame given the director's previous film. A few nice shots here and there, an OK musical track from time to time - but overall lacking in any sense of genuine wonder or cleverness. I think the strongest compositions in the film were the slickly askew close-ups of Riseborough in her little command centre - which isn't good in a film so full of sweeping desolate landscapes and strange extraterrestrial sights. The

Morgan Freeman reveal scene

was well shot, though, for the most part. The M83 soundtrack was largely uninteresting, at times amusingly derivative of the Dark Knight and other films. What a difference a bit of Midnight City would have made!

The story was so earnest in its ridiculousness the nicest emotional response I could conjure up at times was pity. Every time there was a strong, promising sequence it would be swiftly followed by one of the lamest romantic melodrama or another lazily obvious plot twist. Some of the setpieces were decent (like the sinkhole scene or the

'dust' clouds left by evaporated drone victims

), but the film fell apart when it required characters to speak or - heaven forbid! - emote. Scenes like the Tom Cruise chilling in his lakeside cabin were just awful. The opening, exposition heavy prologue was also IMO a big mistake - would have been much more interesting to reveal that information during the scene at the dinner table around forty minutes in. Could have been a lovely way of creating this mysterious sci-fi world and asked the viewer to actively engage with the setting - but alas somone didn't have enough respect in the intelligence of their audience for that kind of thing.

Was there any doubt Sally was a computer from the first time we saw her on the display console? By the time it becomes 2001: A Space Odyssey by way of Independence Day featuring the universe's stupidest omnipotent AI (laziest security ever), I just wanted it to end - but of course they offer an awful epilogue to round things up.

While I'm not usually one for plotholes, the magical mystery recording box was probably the most grievous I've encountered in a while.

How the heck was it recording stuff from the cockpit even though it was recovered from the long since ejected sleep pod? Space Wi-Fi, I guess!

Indeed, the narrative really doesn't justify any level of reflection or analysis - it really is riddled with inconsistencies and barely credible conveniences. Par for the course in a Hollywood blockbuster, but even Prometheus didn't leave me so bothered by the loose internal logic.

And, as much as I'd tend to defend Tom Cruise given his strong performances in selected films, he really was insufferably smug here.

I was excited to see what Joseph Kosinski due to the promise shown in the uneven but curious Tron Legacy. Alas, if this is all he's capable of that will be a real shame.

catallus

I liked it. It was stylish sci-fi fun. Seems to be steal all of its ideas from a lot of other films and smash them together, but it does it quite well. Questionable plot progression but I went with it and was entertained.

The holes and inconsistencies are easily covered over by the twisty nature of the story.

I thought the cast did a nice job. Soundtrack was painfully bad!

Goldstein

I thought this was going to be a lot better than

Aliens want our water...again. You know that abundantly available compound of hydrogen and oxygen that can be easily obtained in massive quantities in moons, asteroids, comets etc anywhere throughout the entire universe. No wonder they lost the war.

and that ridiculous idea is every bit as idiotic now as it was in the 80s. It's an unforgivably stupid premise that keeps being recycled by clueless writers and undermines the story from the beginning.

The positives were all aesthetic. The design of the outpost was fantastic, a tribute to modern minimalism and joy to gaze at in every scene. However I'm struggling to think of anything beyond the visuals that stood out in any way as a positive.

Every transplanted plot twist all of which you'll have seen before are blatantly telegraphed so you see them coming five minutes away.

There are so many ideas and even entire scenes reused from other movies. Oblivion blurs the line between "paying homage to", ripping off, and awkwardly and unnecessary nodding to other movies (Oh, you've seen 2001, here's your medal!). Time that may have been better spent concentrating on their own movie's screenplay.

The dialogue is woeful and delivered with a degree of woodenness that would make the Ents jealous. Every line of the script is forced and the content and actions of the characters feels artificial and very unnatural. I haven't been as conscious in ages of the fact that I was watching actors read prepared lines. Coupled with this is an utter lack of any character development so the supporting cast come off as two dimensional puppets there to perform the duties of their stereotypes and bounce the story into its next uninspired set piece (The internal action shootout scenes were particularly generic).

I'm grateful Marling and Chastain narrowly avoided being cast in this as their considerable talents would have been utterly wasted.

There were a lot of silly contrivances throughout like

the lightning strike at the start inserted just to be used convieniently as cover at the end.

I found the Tron-lite score overbearing and frequently out of place reminding me of The Hobbit in that regard. There seemed to be two modes: Grandiose or nothing.

A few other small things were irritating too:

Why does everyone transform into rocks when they are killed?
How was there real time communication with Earth from Titan?
How did the rear of the Odyssey magically escape what the front could not?
Earning the respect of the cynical tough guy with the ridiculous sniper rifle. Hate that cliché.
The tacky insertion of the statue of liberty torch in the canyon chase. Straight from an Emmerich movie. We know it's New York!

It's a shame as there's the framework for a decent and interesting story there. I wouldn't call it a bad movie compared to some of its recent colleagues, just a badly executed one (visuals aside) that had great potential.

In what will surely be one of the greatest years for science fiction on the big screen in years Oblivion will not be one of the reasons.

Retro Police

Really disappointing.

I thought it looked well in places and the setting was somewhat believable. However, the plot was so boring, unoriginal and predictable that any positives were completely outweighed. The trailer gave the entire thing away in my opinion and this made for a lackluster two hours. Could and should have been so much better.

sxt

Oblivion > Prometheus

rossy1044

Wow that was terrible. Had potential but it was just so cheesy and unoriginal. Very disappointing.

rossy1044

sxt wrote: »

Oblivion > Prometheus[kQUOTE]

That's a tough one. Both were massively disappointing but I think Oblivion was a far worse movie. Although Prometheus was bad at least its plot was ambitious possibly to a fault. Also people were discussing Prometheus long after they watched it. Its thread here was 164 pages which I cant see happening with Oblivion.

sxt

I thought Prometheus was a pretty good movie, visually stunning. It warranted alot of discussion as there was so many plot holes and unanswered questions, plus it was a prequel to the most iconic horror /sci-fi movie ever made ( which had so many unanswered questions as well). Oblivion doesn't really have any unanswered questions.

indough

rossy1044 wrote: »

sxt wrote: »

Oblivion > Prometheus

That's a tough one. Both were massively disappointing but I think Oblivion was a far worse movie. Although Prometheus was bad at least its plot was ambitious possibly to a fault. Also people were discussing Prometheus long after they watched it. Its thread here was 164 pages which I cant see happening with Oblivion.

people were discussing it that much because it was such a disappointment

nyarlothothep

It was a tribute to Tom Cruise's ego,

think about it an army of Tom Cruises, Cruise on Cruise (the fight scene), Cruise doing a Lazarus at the end.

The next film Tom Cruise is in should be Tom Cruise: The Movie because his recent films have been vehicles for his ego. That said I enjoyed the film, and Tom Cruise in it, because of the smugness, it was funny, I got a distinct Mass Effect vibe from the stylisation and the soundtrack. The plot was derivative and hokum but it trundled along nicely, it reminded me of pre Star Wars 70s flicks for some reason, I guess with the action-man archetype that gets into scrapes in a future/alien environment.

catallus

When they mentioned that part in the film I asked myself "Well, why didn't they make THAT movie? That would have been cool!"

Anyway, Tom Cruise is one of the best actors of any generation, I couldn't see the smugness.