Tom Cruise, Joseph Kosinski and Universal Pictures look set to push forward on the love story / post-apocalypse film Oblivion. The film which has also been referred to as Horizons was originally backed by Disney but the film was dropped after the studio’s realisation that an uninhabitable future Earth and a not too happy future populace didn’t fit entirely with their usual demographic.
The dark themes of the movie are being adapted as a graphic novel by Kosinski prior to film-making. A route other directors have taken in a bid to spark interest and raise awareness of their projects. Darren Aronofsky did it with The Fountain and Duncan Jones has recently stated in an interview that this might be his intention with his own film project incarnation Mute.
The film, whichever way titled, will introduce yet another imagining of a post-apocalyptic Earth with the majority of humanity living above the clouds with a deserted and inhabitable surface home to alien folk of some kind. Cruise’s role will see him become a military maintenance man tasked with repairing the drones that patrol this baron surface, mopping up said pesky alien folk. However after stumbling across a crashed spacecraft and discovering therein a beautiful lady the two will embark on a journey that will challenge his world view and change him, we suspect, for the better.
The plot sounds basic enough with it holding a comparison to films such as Wall – E, Solaris, Sunshine and even kind of Alien, though the Nostromo’s crew’s lives were changed arguably for the worse. We can only hope that they’ll be no slipping of Scientology (does that deserve a capitol letter?) into the new film and that Cruise returns to top form given the film’s ambition and expansive possibilities.
The director, Joseph Kosinski, has definitely proved he has a flair for the visually stunning with his last film, Tron: Legacy. Let’s hope the world of Oblivion or Horizons is equally imaginative and immersive.
