I have seen the future and it looks like about half a dozen other sci-fi films poured into a cauldron and left to smelt. Influences are one thing, but "Oblivion" is a bit of a Frankenstein's monster, its plot composed almost entirely of bits hacked off from other well-known films.
Tom Cruise plays, well, Tom Cruise basically, but this time he's some top-gun bubble-craft pilot/blue-collar mechanic named Jack who lives on an orbital platform above a depopulated Earth in the year 2077. His job is to repair the drones that protect the massive space-tankers that are sucking off all of Earth's remaining water to bring it to wherever it is that the rest of humanity has relocated. He also has to watch out for the darkly scurrying alien Scavs, who destroyed Earth in a war and are still plotting down on the barren and irradiated planet.
The rips from other films come fast and furious. Anyone who's seen "12 Monkeys" will instantly recognise Jack's ghostly dreams of a woman he seems to have known from a different time and place. Similarly, "Wall-E" fans will feel a strong sense of deja vu as Jack visits his little shack down on Earth, the last man standing amid his collection of pop-cultural artefacts. Jack's journeys through a panoply of destroyed/abandoned American landmarks invariably recall the "Planet of the Apes" series.
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