Universal Studios has posted a new video teasing its upcoming post-apocalyptic sci-fi film.
Oblivion takes place in a devastated future world, in which a failed alien invasion has left the Earth uninhabitable. Jack, a caretaker of the abandoned planet discovers a crash site, with survivors, who are being killed off by his own organization. He manages to save one of them, a woman who seems to know him from another life, from his own dreams, and together they have to unravel the mystery of their world’s strange nature.
The mystery was spoiled almost two years ago, when a synopsis for the film made it seem like aspects that are now being hidden were part of the initial exposition. I’ll let you decide if you want to go back and read the story I wrote about it at the time. Of course, the details of the setting may have changed significantly since then. Since it’s not based on any existing source material, Universal could have decided to rework the whole thing when they changed the title (they eventually changed it back).
This new trailer offers up considerable more more detail on the plot of the film, and introduces us to a character we haven’t seen before, a representative of the organization Jack works for. We also see quite a lot more Morgan Freeman:
Interestingly, though he receives high billing in some of the promotional material, the trailers have shown us nothing of Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jamie Lannister on Game of Thrones). His character is described as a “battle-hardened, physically imposing, intelligent and extremely athletic” weapons expert. I’m assuming he’s part of the camp that Freeman’s character is running underground.
The current official synopsis is thus:
Jack Harper (Cruise) is one of the last few drone repairmen stationed on Earth. Part of a massive operation to extract vital resources after decades of war with a terrifying threat known as the Scavs, Jack’s mission is nearly complete.
Living in and patrolling the breathtaking skies from thousands of feet above, his soaring existence is brought crashing down when he rescues a beautiful stranger from a downed spacecraft. Her arrival triggers a chain of events that forces him to question everything he knows and puts the fate of humanity in his hands.
A tie-in graphic novel was under production when Disney was running the film, but nothing has been heard about that since the film changed hands over two years ago, and it’s starting to look less and less like it’s still part of the plan.
Oblivion, which also stars Olga Kurylenko and Andrea Riseborough, is slated to hit IMAX theaters on April 12, 2013 and all other theaters a week later.
