• From: Van Dieman's Land
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Topic: Oblivion - spoilers

Oblivion - Spoilers!

Anyone seen it yet?

Just saw it in IMAX on a 4K presentation. Absolutely stunning! Great cinematography, production design and effects.

Lots of comment in the reviews about all the clichés and references to previous sci-fi e.g. Wall-E, Matrix, ID4, Moon, etc. Yep. All true.

But I'd like to commend it on the clichés it DOESN'T have...

Oblivion has no bullshit zombies, vampires, or monsters
Nor does it have any bullshit superheroes, supervillains, or superpowers.
Nor does it have any mystical fantasy or supernatural elements.
Nor does it have any bullshit 'destiny' or 'chosen one' clichés.
And there's no camp arch-villain out for revenge, nor does it end with the typical one-on-one punch up next to a ticking time-bomb.
Nor is it a franchise.

It's good ol' fashioned hard sci-fi. Should be more like it.  smile

not long to go now...

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  • From: Farmington, CT
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Re: Oblivion - spoilers

Well, that sounds pretty great to me. Doesn't open here in the states until Friday, but I'm probably going to check it out.

"The Doctor is Submarining through our brains." --Teague

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Re: Oblivion - spoilers

Just saw it, this movie is really fucking good, borderline great.

I was really skeptical going in, cause I hated Tron Legacy, but man Kosinski is really a guy to watch.
The design and vfx work here is STAGGERING. I can't believe this is a March release, a few years ago this would be the tentpole movie of the summer. And unlike Tron, this has strong confident pacing, well directed/hard-hitting action sequences, and likable actors and characters.

That being said, it is very derivative, pretty predictable, and the premise makes no sense when you think about it, but that doesn't bother me this time out because it has its heart in the right place. The logic problems are really with the basic premise, but once you accept that (and I did), the story holds together pretty damn well, doesn't pull any 3rd act bullshit, and is REALLY, REALLY well executed.

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Re: Oblivion - spoilers

That's not really fair though, Tron Legacy had a shit script, but also really dull and lifeless direction,
from all the performances, to the pacing, to the boringly staged, anti-septic action scenes.
Kasinski was fairly blamed for that stuff, but I'm really glad to see him come into his own here.
There's a mid-movie extended setpiece in Oblivion that is really exciting, well shot, and has a really good
build to it. Very effective stuff. Also, the VFX work is absolutely seamless, like I seriously hope the other summer movies can step their game up to this level.

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  • From: Van Dieman's Land
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Re: Oblivion - spoilers

For those that haven't seen it yet, I recommend the IMAX presentation as (1) you're more likely to get the 4K resolution (2) much greater screen coverage due to the squarer aspect ratio.
In other words, you literally see only 'half' the movie in a bog-standard suburban multiplex.

not long to go now...

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  • From: Sweden
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Re: Oblivion - spoilers

I saw it a few days ago here in Sweden, 2.35-presentation digitally.

The end feling was a lukewarm 5/10. Unfortunately it is awfully derivative, and there isn't enough substance in other areas to compensate for this. Basically, you've seen this movie before if you've seen Independence day, Moon, The Matrix. Most likely you will be able to guess the plot way before any twists occur.
The score is also your standard Zimmer clonejob. Certain 30-second passages you literally could not tell which was which, even if you had the two side by side. Labelled. No nuance, just string ostinato lines and brass blaring sections from Inception at you.

Visually great, but that also becomes a bit "meh" after a while, after the first 10 minutes you've seen most design elements already.
For me the rotten tomatoes score of 56% seems accurate. I suppose your milage will vary depending on how fresh the story elements feel to you.

Last edited by TechNoir (2013-04-21 19:59:29)

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Re: Oblivion - spoilers

Reading up on the behind the scenes, they pulled some real crazy shit on this one, which may explain why it looks so damn good.

Apparently stuff like this shot https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/22474792/oblivion.png is 100% practical. They built the entire house set, built a full-scale bubble-ship, put it on the landing pad outside, and built a giant rear-projection wall around the entire set which projects cloud-footage they shot in Hawaii.
The computer console is real in-camera as well. They play back pre-animated footage on queue which the actress times her movements to, no green-screen computer interface there at all.

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  • From: Farmington, CT
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Re: Oblivion - spoilers

Holy fucking shit. Now I'm tempted to buy an extra ticket just to support these crazy bastards.

"The Doctor is Submarining through our brains." --Teague

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  • From: State of Idaho
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Re: Oblivion - spoilers

Doctor Submarine wrote:

Holy fucking shit. Now I'm tempted to buy an extra ticket just to support these crazy bastards.

I'm with you. Also, might buy the DVD to see all the behind the scenes work as well.
I like the idea of practical work smile

God loves you!

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  • From: Van Dieman's Land
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Re: Oblivion - spoilers

WARNING SPOILERS:

Question:

  Show
Does Oblivion endorse suicide bombings? Cruise did all but strap those fuel cells to his waist at the end.

not long to go now...

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Re: Oblivion - spoilers

avatar wrote:

WARNING SPOILERS:

Question:

  Show
Does Oblivion endorse suicide bombings? Cruise did all but strap those fuel cells to his waist at the end.

SPOILER Show
You can certainly read a pretty strong anti-US message into it if you want, what with the unquestioning drone repair people keeping a drone army running that wipes out local insurgents, the omnipotent badguy overlord with a thick southern accent.
I think it's stretching a bit though, I don't get the feeling the writers and film-makers were going out of their way to make any kind of political message, its way less blatant than something like Avatar.

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  • Registered: 2009-11-23
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Re: Oblivion - spoilers

Aaaabsolutely LOVED Oblivion.

To paraphrase Trey: it's not perfect - but I'm SO GLAD they make these movies!

I gave it a 9/10. After thinking about how much fridge-logic there actually is, maybe I'll push that to 8.5/10.

It didn't touch movie-of-the-year (Wreck-it Ralph, 10/10) but it's a good 2nd so far.

/Z

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  • From: Van Dieman's Land
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Re: Oblivion - spoilers

These clowns have a go...

http://redlettermedia.com/half-in-the-b … -of-salem/

not long to go now...

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  • Registered: 2010-05-21
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Re: Oblivion - spoilers

Saw it. The first half of the flick is pretty great and presents a few interesting questions, but then everything starts to fall apart as they answer them.

I couldn't really get behind the fact that it all boils down to...

  Show
... A mean spaceship. That's it. The spaceship came to our solar system, and was mean.


-- Branco

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  • From: Van Dieman's Land
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Re: Oblivion - spoilers

http://www.fxguide.com/featured/inside-oblivion/

not long to go now...

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Re: Oblivion - spoilers

Branco wins.  He pretty much sums up the movie.

That and:

SPOILER Show
The movie lost me once I saw the friggin' Tom Cruise clone!  mad   The last thing this world needs is a Tom Cruise clone!

Last edited by switch (2013-05-01 04:16:28)

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  • From: Iceland
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Re: Oblivion - spoilers

A good friend of mine went to Hrossaborg yesterday and shot this:

Hrossaborg is one of the location that was used to shoot Oblivion here in Iceland. It was used as a run down ruins of an old football stadium.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/999082_288079557998127_1212033905_n.jpg
Nailed it smile

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  • From: Iceland
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Re: Oblivion - spoilers

Ridges like that have been filed down for many thousands of years. There is plenty of snow, wind and rain but a decade or few don't make any dent in them in such a short timespans.

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  • From: Farmington, CT
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Re: Oblivion - spoilers

So I FINALLY caught up with this last night. AMC was doing a $3 showing for charity, so my friends and I decided that we might as well. I really, really liked it. Was it derivative of other sci-fi movies? Maybe. But while you can draw comparisons to other movies, I think that Oblivion is great in its own right. I'm so glad that movies like this exist. It isn't trying to reinvent the wheel, it's just trying to tell a cool story. And I found a lot of its twists pleasantly surprising. If I have one complaint, it's that for most of the second act I was REALLY confused about what was going on, mostly pertaining to Morgan Freeman and his people. Other than that, though, Oblivion is a great movie, and I'm glad I got to see it on the big screen.

"The Doctor is Submarining through our brains." --Teague

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