Real Parents Review: Oblivion

My husband and 14 year old son attended a sneak preview last week of Oblivion, a new Sci fi movie starring Tom Cruise.  Cruise's character (Jack - Tech 49) is a part of a two person crew assigned to a post-apocalyptic Earth where the Moon has been destroyed by an alien invasion and much of the planet is destroyed.  While the invasion was halted, the planet became mostly uninhabitable and Earth's residents are all moving to Titan, a moon of Saturn.  Jack and his partner, Victoria, are staying on Earth to fix the drones that protect the machines that are collecting all of Earth's sea water to create energy.   There are aliens remaining on Earth who are still roaming the planet's surface and attempting to sabotage these plans.  Jack and Victoria's minds have been erased so that they have no memories of the atrocities that happened, but Jack has some repressed memories of Earth from before the invasion, that continue to bubble to the surface.  This leads Jack to be curious about the world he now inhabits and he uses his mission time to explore the areas of the planet that are not affected by radiation. While on one of these missions he stumbles on to something he did not expect to see.

Based on the trailers we had seen, we were very much looking forward to seeing this movie. We both were pleasantly surprised at how much we really enjoyed it.  We have read some other reviews which commented on the lack of exploration of feelings between the main characters, but as you get into the larger plot you understand why these criticisms are not really valid.  Oblivion is not a chick flick where we want to see Jack be conflicted by his feelings for two different women.  Its a Sci-fi thriller which is exploring an apocalyptic event and how people can survive.  There are a couple of great twists in the plot which we will not reveal here (and we would recommend not seeking them out, as knowing them will really spoil the movie for you), These twists are on the scale of Sixth Sense type of surprises.  We were able to see the screening for this movie in IMAX, and visually, the movie is amazing on the big screen with the enhanced audio.  The movie itself has many elements of other sci-fi/apocalypse movies such as Planet of the Apes, Matrix, Wall-E, and others and at times appears to pay homage to them in a variety of ways.  Keep an eye out for the Statue of Liberty which shows up in all of these types of movies, but has only a brief cameo here.

The movie is rated PG-13, but we didn't find anything too objectionable for children 10 and up.   There is one scene where the main female lead goes for a swim, but there is no nudity (except for a brief view of her backside which is all dark and in shadow).  The violence is minimal except for a scene at the end where there is plenty of shooting by drones at people (although we don't recall seeing anyone hit by the drones).  All in all its a fun movie with some good plot twists to keep you in the story and it is all done in stunning visuals.  We recommend this for anyone over 10 who likes exciting action packed movies.