oblivion

I watched Oblivion. I really wanted to like this movie, but there are too many “wait, what?” moments peppered throughout it for me to consider it serious SF. There are so many ways they could have made this movie suck less.

What I liked:
It was really pretty. The tech was pretty. Turns out it was almost all meaningless, due to the main plot conceit, but it was neat.
The music was awesome. Like Tangerine Dream produced by Hans Zimmer.
The effects, especially the landscape shots were just gorgeous.
I’m always happy to look at Olga Kurlyenko.
Tom Cruise is fun to watch.
A fairly subversive but insufficiently explored subtext about each of us unthinkingly carrying out our role in society, which is actually being ruled by entities which don’t have our best interests at heart, and are running drone attacks on those who could potentially ally with us.

What I didn’t like:
Vika is made out to be an unlikable person; the idea that the two of them would get along for the duration of the three year contract in isolation is unrealistic but, already, I’m arguing about something realistic in a world of cartoon logic.
The repeated phrasing of “Are you an effective team?” is an unnatural phrase which should have greater impact or some larger reveal, but it’s just a key point on which Vika can be made more dislikable.
The story is basically nonsense.
No, really: utter nonsense. The idea that the aliens are playing some weird memory game with Vika and Jack to keep them docile, when it’s later revealed that the aliens had “thousands” of Jacks cloned as dog soldiers in their invasion, is inexplicable. Or, rather, it’s explicable but in a movie as short on logic and thin on story, why not throw in some exposition?
THOUSANDS of Jacks being used in an invasion, but now dozens or hundreds of cloned Jacks are now being used as drone maintenance men, so let’s go through the trouble of setting up designer houses and rebuilding -- or inventing -- our tech so that it can be used by humans.
Hm... the aliens have managed to make their way to Earth, and have set up factories for harvesting energy, which need to be protected by drones, because the drones are made to largely look like human technology...
WHY NOT JUST USE WHATEVER TECHNOLOGY YOU USED TO GET TO EARTH, AND USE IT ON EARTH, INSTEAD OF MAKING STUFF WHICH CAN BE USED BY YOUR CONFUSED CLONE WORKFORCE?

...Jesus.

Also, everyone else hit by alien/drone weapons is burst into charcoal tidbits. It’s a great effect. Morgan Freeman is not burst into charcoal; he has time to give a last soliloquy -- and a bit more on top of that.

I’m glad I saw it, I won’t see it again, and people who are comparing it favorably to PKD’s oeuvre need to read some more books to understand what separates wheat from chaff.