Oblivion Trailer, Now With Commentary by Director Joseph Kosinski

By Nick Venable | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

After seeing all the lukewarm reviews for Jack Reacher the last couple of days, I’m thinking Cruise is lucky the epic-looking Oblivion already has such a strong buzz going for it. I mean, a Tom Cruise movie is always going to bring movie fans out of the woodwork, but sci-fi is almost always a tough sell when bringing in the masses. My wife wants to see neither and doesn’t want much to do with Tom Cruise most of the time, so lost causes are always there somewhere.

A good way to bring in “on the fence” filmgoers for a film like Obvlivion is to add a little context to the flying ships and mystery survivors the film’s first trailer flails in front of our eyes. Luckily, Jim with IGN.com sat down with director Joseph Kosinski (TRON: Legacy) for a detail-friendly extended look at the trailer.

I’m always a sucker for commentaries for movies I like, so this kind of promotional tool works perfectly for me. Kosinski shared quite a bit of relevant information, despite not being able to delve too far into where the plot development goes.

Cruise plays Jack Harper, who repairs drones on an Earth abandoned by humankind after an alien invasion sixty years previous. A downed spacecraft, and the woman he finds inside change his perception about everything he thinks he knows, including the existence of a group of underground survivors. Kosinski talks a bit about the ravaged Earth, though is mum when the subject of the survivors comes up. To me, the most interesting aspect is the pronounced use of physical in-camera effects, rather than relying on CGI for every single scene. And while it irks me that Jack is wearing a Yankees cap, I can at least take comfort in knowing that the Yankees don’t exist anymore at this point.

You won’t be able to feast your eyes on Oblivion in theaters or IMAX until April 12, 2013, but there will probably be a half-dozen other trailers to come out between now and then to whet the appetite. And if you just have to get your Tom Cruise/alien fix, there’s a solid forty-five minutes mixed up in War of the Worlds that you might be interested in.