For those of you that have always yearned for a live-action version of Wall-E starring Tom Cruise, then Oblivion will quench your perverse thirst. Cruise plays Jack Harper, a drone repairman who stumbles upon a secret society of humans remaining on the dilapidated planet we once called Earth. The voice of Morgan Freeman plays the presumed leader of this society, and he informs Jack – and us – that “They lied to you. It’s time you know the truth.”
I’m sure there will be some sort of Planet of the Apes type reveal – or maybe something more akin to The Village – but my concerns and hesitation about this film stem from a line of dialog that centers on the last Super Bowl ever played on Earth.
Harper tries to explain the gravity and appeal of this moment to his partner, but it feels a bit inorganic and disingenuous.
His partner has no frame of reference or memory of the battle, except that “people tell [her] it’s a classic,” to which Harper reaffirms, “it was a classic game,” with “80,000 people on their feet, seconds on the clock” before the “QB throws a hail Mary.”
For such a classic game, it seems improbable that the QB would lose a name, or that such an apparent football fan who laments the end of football and the joy of victory in miraculous fashion would forget the hero’s name.
We don’t forget the names of heroes, particularly not sports heroes. Ask fans in the Yankee / Red Sox rivalry. Ask a football fan which BC quarterback threw the most memorable hail Mary in college sports. Ask a Met’s fan who bobbled the ball in Game Six of the 1986 World Series.
This might seem small in importance to the grand scheme of the film – though a miraculous play that snatches victory from the jaws of defeat will certainly be symbolic of a secret society on a seemingly defeated Earth, no? – it represents lazy screenwriting, proving that the author – or the editor or the highly-compensated actor — could hardly be bothered to provide a made-up last name in a made-up game in a made-up dystopia.
