Oblivion’s Bubble Ship Could Have Been Much Different If It Weren’t For Tom Cruise
“Oblivion” feels like the rare big-budget Tom Cruise vehicle that doesn’t get talked about very much, despite being helmed by the A-lister’s “Top Gun: Maverick” director Joseph Kosinski. The film casts Cruise as Jack Harper, a humble maintenance techie (and Yankees fan — sports enthusiasts, judge him as you will) who oversees operations on Earth in the wake of an alien attack that forced humanity to abandon the planet. All is not what it seems, though, as Jack keeps having visions of a mysterious woman from his past (Olga Kurylenko), only for her to abruptly crash-land on Earth out of the blue (or into the blue, as I guess it were). Basically, if you were to chuck “The Twilight Zone,” “2001: A Space Odyssey,” the original 1977 “Star Wars,” and a handful of other ’60s and ’70s sci-fi titles into a blender, you might come up with something like “Oblivion.”
“Oblivion” aims for a blend of big sci-fi ideas, emotional storytelling, and spectacle similar to Kosinski’s feature directing debut on “TRON: Legacy,” albeit with less success. (Yes, I’m a “TRON: Legacy” defender; let’s move on.) Even so, it works better than its middling critical reception might suggest, in no small part thanks to the stellar production design inspired by the intriguing concepts and arresting visuals in Kosinski’s original unpublished comic book of the same name. That’s particularly the case when it comes to that nifty bubble ship Jack uses to traverse the post-apocalyptic Earth in the movie.
Cruise being who he is, you would half-expect him to insist on the bubble ship being made for real so he could actually fly it. But although the production didn’t go quite that far, Cruise nevertheless played a hands-on role in determining the vehicle’s look for the film, specifically that of the cockpit.
Oblivion’s Bubble Ship Could Have Been Much Different If It Weren’t For Tom Cruise
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