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Oblivion | 2013 | PG-13 | - 4.6.5

Decades after aliens destroy the moon and most of the Earth, two soldiers (Tom Cruise and Andrea Riseborough) exterminate scavenger aliens and help extract Earth's remaining resources. While mysterious dreams cause one of the soldiers to question their mission, the other just wants to go to their new home on Saturn's moon Titan. Also with Olga Kurylenko, Morgan Freeman, Melisa Leo and Nickolaj Coster-Waldau. Directed by Joseph Kosinski. [2:05]

SEX/NUDITY 4 - On a dark balcony at night we see a woman wearing a deep V-neck dress that reveals some cleavage and she removes her dress to jump into a lighted swimming pool (we see her from above as she swims and her full nude back, buttocks and legs are shown); she raises her head and hands from the water at the side of the pool, pulls in a fully clothed man who removes his T-shirt (his bare chest and shoulders are seen), they kiss and the camera cuts to a distant shot in which we see both swimming nude (no details are seen).
 A man and a woman begin to walk into an isolated cabin; the camera cuts to a scene of the cabin at night and cuts again to the cabin in the morning (sex overnight is implied). Two couples hug and kiss briefly in three scenes each.
 In two shower scenes, we see a man from the waist, up: we see his full bare chest, shoulders, and arms and in the first shower scene we also see a woman in a waist-up shot that shows her back and the top of her buttocks.
 We hear that a strange entity on a space station cloned a thousand men from a single person; inside the station, we see two long walls of aquarium-like windows, each containing liquid in which floats one or two nude, hunched over, cloned men or women who do not yet have facial or obvious gender features (we see backs, thighs, legs, arms and shoulders).
 A woman is shown wearing a knee-length nightgown, revealing cleavage. A woman wears a long T-shirt that reveals bare legs. A woman wears a tight tank top that clings to the curve of her bosom. A woman wears a clingy white lace body suit with long sleeves and pant legs. A man gets out of bed and we see his bare chest.

VIOLENCE/GORE 6 - In two scenes a man in a shuttlecraft flies through heavy bolts of lightning in storms, unharmed; in the second scene, he and a female passenger are pursued by drones firing laser machine guns at them and bumping into them trying to destroy their vessel, unsuccessfully; the man flies into a radiation zone and is unharmed, although we hear warnings from the sky-tower that the radiation will quickly cook him from the inside, he ejects the pilot/passenger cabin, lands safely in a desert and confronts another man in a fistfight with a lot of rifle pointing, but no firing; a laser rifle misfires and hits the woman (we see blood on her hand), the first man chokes the second man and ties him up, he sees the woman on the ground with a large stomach wound and blood pooling, he sprays a substance on the woman's abdomen and tells her it will hurt as he directs a laser across the wound to heal it (the camera cuts away to the sand and we hear extremely loud screaming).
 A man hears noises and enters a sinkhole above a dark, wrecked public library using a climbing cable to investigate: he walks on a metal beam across a chasm and confronts several aliens, firing his laser-rifle, a drone appears behind him and fires laser-guns to destroy two walls and frighten away the aliens, we see what appears to be an armless, mechanical robot torso roll toward the camera in close-up and the man uses dead electrical cables to climb out of the sinkhole after his climbing cable breaks and causes his fall to the floor (he gets up with a limp).
 A man takes a woman to a crash site to retrieve the flight recorder and when he returns to a sky-tower a drone fires four laser-cannons at him, missing and then fires on a woman in the sky-tower, evaporating her; another woman fires laser-cannons at the drone from a shuttlecraft and destroys the drone.
 Outside a cave, several drones scan the entrance and enter, firing laser-cannons, while people inside return fire; we see several bursts of sparks and flames, with smoke in the background; one man is thrown off-screen and we do not see him again, a few people fall (we do not see blood) and an elderly man lies on the floor (we cannot see his wounds).
 A man and a woman land a shuttlecraft at a space capsule crash site and are swarmed by black-dressed aliens, all with one red eye; one alien slams a rifle butt into the man's face, cutting his nose, which bleeds across both cheeks.
 A man is tied to a chair in a dark room where an older man lights a cigar and smokes it as he turns on lights to reveals several dozen humans who bring forth a woman; after several threats to the man and the woman to gain their cooperation and arguments about repairing a drone, the older man sends the couple into the radiation zone, telling them that there is no radiation there, but only the truth; during the conversations, a man fires a projectile at the chest of the captive man, who falls down stunned but unharmed.
 We hear that a strange entity on a space station cloned a thousand men from a single person; inside the station, we see two long walls of aquarium-like windows, each containing liquid in which floats one or two nude, hunched over, cloned men or women. We see an abandoned New York City, we see the smoldering ruins of the Pentagon, the top of the Washington monument tilted out of a sea of stone, a smashed amusement park and demolished buildings; black rock outcroppings near sharp black mountains lead to some dark underground refuges, deserts cover most of the Eastern Seaboard under a blazing hot sun and only one small green area is left; we hear that the moon was exploded and we see debris in the sky forming a ring. We hear that the mission of drones on Earth is to kill all human survivors of a war and ensure harvesting of the remaining water. Dozens of spherical robot drones, each with four laser-guns, patrol Earth and fire on anything that moves, except one man that is their mechanic; they blow up rocks and two walls in an abandoned library causing sparks, flashing lights and tall flames. At night, we hear an explosion and a large mushroom cloud in the distance, indicating a nuclear bomb.
 A space capsule crashes and a man examines the wreckage; he finds six sleeping pods of astronauts on the ground and a drone demolishes five of the pods with laser gunfire, but the man protects the last pod and takes it to a sky-tower, where he and a woman open it; a woman inside the pod, facing the camera, sits up suddenly, gasps and vomits a large amount of dark colored substance into the camera.
 A NASA ship encounters a strange white tetrahedron in space and loses control of navigation; the commander ejects the cargo hold and flies the pilot's cabin into the tetrahedron; the cargo hold rotates the Earth for decades, protecting six sleep pods with astronauts in them.
 A man flies a shuttlecraft into a space station and argues with an entity (it is a voice in a black speaker with a read electronic eye), two men then press a button on a detonator, exploding the space station in bursts of flame and smoke; we see attack drones drop to the ground on Earth, deactivated.
 Aliens in black jumpsuits and head-covering helmets peek out of a cave, showing single glowing red eyes and we hear that they are scavengers ("Scavs") left after a war; a few Scavs skitter across dim scenes, making deep clicking noises and we glimpse a few faceless helmets.
 A man fires a gun into the air to frighten a dog that we see once. One wall of a living quarters is filled with laser rifles and laser handguns and a man is always shown carrying two weapons outside.
 A man argues several times with a woman in their sky-tower base about regulations not allowing her outside, where he should patrol, and daily life.
 A woman gets up from a gurney, stumbles dizzily and recovers her balance after refusing a medical injection (please see the Substance Use category for more details). A man has black and white dreams about a past life before a war, although we hear that his memory was wiped clean by the government. A woman rises from a sleep pod in a rural cabin, climbs out and falls to her knees in sorrow that she is alone. In a close-up of a man and a woman, we see the woman's face change into another woman's face and the scene ends.

LANGUAGE 5 - At least 1 F-word, 6 scatological terms, 9 mild obscenities, name-calling (crazy), stereotypical references to men, women, Southerners, soldiers, evil aliens, guerrilla fighters, NASA officials, human cloning 3 religious profanities, 2 religious exclamations.

SUBSTANCE USE - We see untouched and empty wine glasses on a dining table, an unopened bottle of champagne sits on an end table, a woman reminds her husband that he once said they'd grow old and maybe drink too much, and a Mission Control official tells a man and a woman that she will buy them drinks after their mission is successful. A woman attempts to give another woman a hypodermic of some drug, but is stopped by the other woman grabbing the first woman's wrist (please see the Violence/Gore category for more details), and a man sprays a skin repair medication on skin burned red by an electronic gun. A man lights a large cigar and takes several puffs.

DISCUSSION TOPICS - Corrupt governments, greed, murder, justice, space travel, aliens, human cloning, relationships, conflicts, reconciliation.

MESSAGE - Space exploration may lead to strange events.

CAVEATS

Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.

We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.

Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.


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