It can be argued that this current phase of Tom Cruise's career is the exciting yet, as he seems to be on a mission(impossible?) to quiet those who wrote him off after a few years of lackluster films. Mission: Impossible-Ghost Protocol was the opening shot out of the gate, reclaiming the franchise many that was going to be passed to Jeremy Renner. Jack Reacher sees him furthering his tough guy persona next month, but it's after that where things get really interesting, as Cruise has turned his attention towards a string of high-profile sci-fi projects. The first one we'll see is Oblivion, the long-developing film from Joseph Kosinski(Tron: Legacy), and we're now getting a new poster and the initial trailer.
Cruise plays Jack Harper, a drone repairman on a devastated Earth after years of war with an alien race. When he discovers a mysterious female in a crashed space pod, her arrival forces him to question everything he thought he knew. The beginning of this trailer looks an awful lot like a live-action Wall-E(with Cruise as the robot), but then it goes into more traditional action/sci-fi mode. Morgan Freeman gets to do his all-knowing cryptic guy thing, and we also get glimpses of Olga Kurylenko and Andrea Riseborough(W.E.) in what could be her first real breakout role. She was excellent in Shadow Dancer opposite Clive Owen and has been on the rise ever since. Melissa Leo, Nicolaj Coster-Waldau, and Zoe Bell co-star, but we don't see them just yet.
Koskinski is clearly borrowing from a number of influences here, and with William Monahan(The Departed) and Michael Arndt(Toy Story 3) having worked on the script there's every reason to think there's a lot more going on than we're being made privy to. Oblivion opens in IMAX on April 12th 2013, then goes wide a week later. [The Film Stage]
