Obliviousion

I already knew the secrets of this movie before I saw it, but the problem I have with it isn't that the reveal isn't interesting. It's that this is an action movie.

Jack and Victoria are two people who maintain the drones that protect the devastated planet Earth. While they live in a high tech tower, Jack happens to have his own place out in the wilderness. And into this, the woman he's been dreaming about drops in and says 'hey, I'm your wife'... and that's in the first part of the movie, but I'm not going to give away what happens in the last half, although maybe I will by what movie I compare this to.

The obvious one is Moon, but I was also reminded, as others were, of Matrix and Independence Day. But I'm not holding the twist against it. Fine enough twist, works if you don't think about why the aliens are hanging around when there are much easier ways for them to get what they want from other planets, but here's my problem: Moon works because it was a character piece first, and didn't feel the need for flashy action sequences. This movie wants to be a character piece, but either the writer or the director or the studio or whoever decided that it needed to be spiced up with a coupe of big action sequences with lots of CGI and cool gun shooting and heroic moments for Tom Cruise (because no-one else but the star is allowed to save the day). No... with what this movie wanted to achieve, the action just undercut everything, made the tone too discordant. It could have worked, but they wanted the bang bangs to help sell it.

Basically, this movie wasn't sophisticated enough, or mature enough, to make its point. That's why you should watch Moon, to see the same theme done right.

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