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The Tet is an enormous tetrahedral space station, 30 miles per side [1] [2] orbiting Earth that was originally thought to be inhabited by humans who were yet to travel to Saturn's moon of Titan. It was later revealed to be an alien artificial intelligence that invaded Earth, and wiped out most of human civilization in the year 2017.

• 1.1 Behind The Scenes Interview Transcript
• 3 Personality
• 4 References

The Tet's core

Very little is known about the Tet's origins. It presumably originated somewhere outside the solar system. According to Malcom Beech, the artificial intelligence feeds off of one planet after another for its resources, most likely for its own survival, as it was only interested in fusion energy during the harvesting of Earth. Should the Tet collectively (and not just the core AI within it) be an entity, it could be considered a compact mobile Jupiter Brain .

Due to the fact that it is not a biological entity, its creators are likely incredibly advanced. They may even be a civilization made up wholly of robots. Perhaps it may have even created itself.

in an interview with director its is revealed that the aliens who created the Tet are aboard the ship, but as uploaded digital minds rather than as physical forms, that being the only way in which any crew could survive the immense amount of time that it takes to travel from star system to star system.

A subordinate artificial intelligence created by the alien machine, using Nasa mission control director's Sally's video and audio recordings to form an anthropomorphic and complex personality interface, the original AI machine was in turn constructed by an unknown race who uploaded the minds of their species into a computational construct to survive the rigors of space travel and with the goal to power said travel by strip mining Earth and any other planets it came across for resources and energy.

Behind The Scenes Interview Transcript [ ]

Q. We see the Tet at the end-- were there ever any creatures? Was it always that Borg voice?

Joseph Kosinski: Y'know, I met with a group of scientists at the beginning of this project. My own belief, and the consensus among the scientists, was that if we ever actually encounter another intelligent life form, it will much more likely be in the way it is depicted in Oblivion than the way it's depicted in other science fiction films. It won't be some other bipedal creature. The time required to travel the distances that exist between stars is so great that organic life forms aren't going to be able to survive the trip. Any hyper-advanced civilization that has the technology to do what the Tet does is going to be a deeply digital life form. We're ants on an ant hill, basically.

In-Movie history [ ]

The Tet orbiting Earth.

In the year 2017, NASA's deep space and ESA's ESTRACK scanners detected the Tet near Saturn, and redirected the  Odyssey  spacecraft to investigate. After abducting astronauts Jack Harper and Victoria Olsen along with the cockpit of the Odyssey , shortly after the rest of the crew were ejected back to Earth, the Tet proceeded to invade Earth. The Tet would first destroy the moon, causing devastating earthquakes and tsunamis. It then wiped out survivors using an army of Harper and Olsen clones, which were created by the obtained DNA of the original astronauts.

Once humanity had been weakened to a minuscule underground resistance, the Tet began to convert Earth's oceans into fusion energy via gigantic ocean-borne power stations. These hydro-rigs were protected by security drones, which were maintained by repurposed clones of Harper and Olsen.

In the year 2077, the Tet continued to maintain dominance over resistance forces on Earth. However some time in this year, one of Harper's clones known as Tech 49 discovers his true origins, and proceeds to infiltrate and detonate a thermonuclear weapon inside the Tet, ultimately destroying it forever.

Personality [ ]

Sally, seen in original footage from the Odyssey

In 2017, astronauts aboard the Odyssey  spacecraft were redirected to investigate the Tet after it was discovered by NASA. During this encounter, the Tet most likely obtained footage and audio of communication between the  Odyssey  and Sally, the crew's mission director. The Tet then used this footage to develop a complex personality, adopting Sally's appearance and voice to communicate with maintenance clones it would later commission to protect the hydro-rigs.

References [ ]

• ↑ Double Trouble: The Making of Oblivion
• ↑ CGSociety - Oblivion
• 2 Jack Harper

The Ending Of Oblivion Explained

Before Tom Cruise and director Joseph Kosinski combined their efforts to soar on screen and at the box office with "Top Gun: Maverick," the two collaborated on "Oblivion." The 2013 sci-fi film tells the story of Earth in the wake of an alien invasion, when the planet stands largely uninhabitable because of the nuclear arms humanity used to defeat the extraterrestrial invaders. Or at least, that's what we're told at the start.

About 60 years later, most of Earth's survivors live on a massive satellite in space called the Tet. The few remaining people on Earth, like Jack (Cruise) and Victoria (Andrea Riseborough), aid the effort to move humanity to a new home on the largest of Saturn's moons, Titan. To do so, they repair the drones that scour the planet's surface and keep an eye out for Scavs — the last remaining aliens on the surface — in order to protect the hydro rigs that are taking Earth's last remaining resources for humanity's journey.

Things, however, are not what they seem. Jack struggles with vivid dreams that feel like memories and a sense of burnout he can't seem to overcome. He frequently steals away to a lakeside cabin in a part of his sector somehow utterly devoid of the war's destruction. When a craft falls from the sky containing several people, including the literal woman of his dreams, it becomes obvious that what Jack "knows" about his life isn't anywhere near the whole truth. Here's everything you need to know about the ending of "Oblivion."

The Scavs' true identity

The Scavs dominate a large amount of Jack and Victoria's attention in "Oblivion." Early on, we learn these black hooded figures are the last remnants of the invading alien force. While humanity has triumphed over them, these wicked interlopers fight on. Every one of their actions seems directed at disrupting the plan to save Earth's resources and depart for Titan. Unfortunately, the viewers — along with Victoria and Jack — have been lied to.

The Scavs are survivors. That much is true. However, they're not alien survivors. They're human beings. Led by Beech ( Morgan Freeman ), this group is indeed attempting to derail the mission that Jack, Victoria, and the drones have been seeking to protect and maintain. Needless to say, though, these "Scavs" aren't doing it to harm humanity. Rather, they're trying to save it.

Despite the official line that Jack and Victoria have been fed since the film's beginning, and evidently for years before, humanity did not triumph over the extraterrestrial invaders. There aren't any alien stragglers on Earth. There are just desperate people struggling to survive. And for years, Jack and Victoria have been contributing to the ever-more-likely extinction of their own species, all while the real enemy was hiding in plain sight.

The Tet isn't what it seems

Once again, what appears to be true at the start of "Oblivion" proves to be an outright lie when it comes to the Tet. At the beginning of the film, the audience is told that the Tet is a giant space station in orbit above the planet. After the ravages of war, it's where humanity gathered to escape the dying Earth and prepare for the trip to Titan. It's why Jack and Victoria have stayed behind — to ensure that Earth is properly mined and that the people on the satellite can continue their lives in relative safety until it's time to leave.

The idea that the Tet is a satellite filled with people is accurate, but it isn't what you'd think. In reality, the Tet itself is the invading force that destroyed the moon and waged war on the Earth. The aliens, as it turns out, are not humanoids. They're not even organisms as we understand them. Rather, the only real alien enemy is a vast alien artificial intelligence housed within the Tet. It intends to use the hydro rigs to strip Earth bare of resources to power itself for years to come, but the AI isn't the only being on the satellite.

There are people in the Tet, but they're not humanity's last members. As already noted, human survivors exist on Earth, struggling to endure the harsh conditions and the targeting by the Tet via Jack and Victoria. The people on the satellite are just more Jacks and Victorias — a host of clones that the extraterrestrial AI has on hand to dispatch to Earth to continue the work of strip-mining the planet.

The Jack and Vika the audience meets are but one pair of many on Earth. The Tet has divided the Earth into sectors, each patrolled by a Jack and Victoria clone pair. The supposedly radioactive parts of the planet are lies as well — a way to keep one Jack from encountering another while on patrol. By labeling areas as dangerous and forbidden, the Tet manages to curtail Jack's activities despite his curiosity. At least, for a while.

The Jacks and Victorias on the satellite are backups. Should a human survivor get lucky and kill a Jack, another will replace it the next day. Likewise, should an accident happen and a collapsing tower kills a Victoria, a new Vika will be installed in a rebuilt tower as soon as possible.

Saving Earth

While the Earth in "Oblivion" was indeed ravaged by war and its environment was permanently altered by the destruction of the Moon, it turns out that what Jack and Victoria initially believed about the planet's devastated state was a lie told to them repeatedly by the extraterrestrial AI.

In reality, the Tet's victory over humanity was so swift and so total that the world's governments were never able to turn their nuclear arsenal on the invaders. As noted before, the supposed irradiated zones were just a means of artificially dividing up the planet between Jack and Vika pairs. Between the environmental devastation caused by the destruction of the moon and an army of drones and Jack and Vika clones, Earth never stood much of a chance.

The future of the human race does not, in fact, lie orbiting Saturn. There is no colony waiting on Titan. While the invasion did alter Earth and rendered the planet considerably less hospitable than before, it remains capable of supporting life. That is, if The Tet is stopped from draining the planet dry of resources.

The NASA Crew

In 2017, a NASA crew departed Earth on an exploratory mission to Saturn's biggest moon, Titan. The ship was the Odyssey, and the team was set to go as far into space as any human-crewed mission ever had. Included on the squad were mission commander Jack, his co-pilot Victoria, and crew member Julia (Olga Kurylenko), who also happened to be Jack's wife. Unfortunately, things didn't go as planned.

Somewhere on the way to Titan, the team of the Odyssey encountered the Tet. Properly reading it as hostile, Jack and Victoria jettisoned the rest of the crew — still in hibernation — in escape pods, sending them back toward Earth. Meanwhile, Jack and Victoria had no choice but to stay at the controls of the command unit as the Tet drew them into itself. It's not known how long the original Jack and Vika lived after capture, but they provided enough genetic material to create a deadly clone army.

Building a lie

While the Odyssey's escape craft made its journey to Earth, the Tet cloned a literal army of Jacks. With help from some super advanced drones, this endless wave of brainwashed soldiers overran the planet in record time. For all of Earth's considerable manpower and technology, it was no match for the Tet, and humanity fell in record time.

After that, the Jacks became repurposed as guards. The AI lied to them about who they were and what happened on Earth. They were told their memories had to be occasionally wiped to explain their lack of history and the strange dreams they often shared. Next, Victoria clones joined the Jacks to create teams. The Jacks and Vikas became co-workers, friends, and lovers all at once — humanity's last hope of protecting their future, or so they're told. Finally, drones were dispatched to help each pair take out "Scavs" so the clones would never discover they were actually hunting humans. All that remained was for the Tet to wait until all of Earth's resources were sucked dry.

The woman of Jack's dreams

Both Jack and Victoria are told that they receive periodic memory wipes for their own good. However, Jack has vivid dreams that don't seem to come from a previous tour of duty. Instead, he sees a pre-invasion Earth, a New York City teeming with life, and a woman he's never met. That is, until she falls out of the sky.

More than 60 years after entering hibernation and being fired back to Earth, the Odyssey's escape pod finally lands. Despite attempts by the Tet to block the homing beacon — Jack is told early in the film that the beacon trying to summon alien reinforcements — the human "Scav" survivors manage to broadcast the signal long enough to bring the escape pod home.

Our protagonist, a Jack clone referred to as Tech 49, sees the craft crash and pursues it. When he arrives, he finds several coffin-like pods filled with people — asleep, but alive. He frees one, a woman who eerily resembles the woman from his dreams. This is Julia, wife to the original Jack and the person who ultimately wakes up Tech 49 to the reality of what's happening.

Unfortunately, before Jack can wake the rest of the survivors, a drone arrives and opens fire. Despite being the keeper of the drones, Jack is unable to stop them. He saves Julia, but the attack claims the lives of the rest of the NASA astronaut crew.

Beech's plan

For a while, Tech 49 Jack's unusual behavior and voyages to his eclectic cabin don't seem to have registered with the Tet, and if Victoria's concerned, she's not telling. At every check-in, she maintains that she and Jack remain an effective team. Someone who does notice, however, is a man named Beech.

The leader of the human survivors (or "Scavs") in Tech 49's sector observes the clone long enough to realize that something about him is off. Essentially, Beech realizes before 49, or anyone else for that matter, that the clone is somehow more connected to his past self than should be possible. Tech 49's trip to the lake cabin may not have revealed that he was experiencing the memories of the original Jack, but it's unusual enough for Beech to notice.

As a result of these strange trips, Beech hypothesizes that Jack can be "woken up." He can learn the truth about what happened to Earth, who he is, and what he's being asked to do. When Tech 49 does finally awaken, it's Beech who fills in the blanks about how the aliens used Jack to nearly drive people to extinction. It's also Beech who pitches the plan of destroying the Tet for good using a bomb that only Jack can complete.

Victoria's role

While Jack handles much of the hands-on work required by the Tet, Victoria is his eye in the sky, helping direct him to disabled drones. Additionally, she communicates with "Sally" (Melissa Leo), their supposed mission control contact on the Tet. Like Jack, Vika is aware of their mindwipes every half-decade and seems to be fine with the arrangement at the start of the film. She also seems to have an awareness, perhaps even sooner than Jack, that things aren't exactly what they seem to be on Earth. However, unlike Jack, she feels highly motivated to maintain the status quo and their arrangement despite this notion. As a result, while the discovery of Julia creates a desire in Jack to learn more, it sees Victoria doubling down on her commitment to the mission.

While the film never offers us the same insight into Victoria's mind as it does Jack's, the implication seems to be that while the cloning issues make Jack overly curious, they've rendered Victoria overly loyal. As a result, she hides her concerns about Jack from Sally and the Tet until she absolutely must reveal them. Doing so costs her her life but ensures that Tech 49 and Julia can escape the drone attack. Even 60 years in the future and countless clones later, Victoria evidently can't stop being Jack's right-hand woman — his co-pilot into danger until the end.

Julia completes the puzzle

The original Jack's wife, Julia was part of the mission that first encountered the Tet in space. She's jettisoned back toward Earth after being placed into the emergency pod with several of her crewmates and dropped into hibernation. The journey takes 60 years, but she does finally land back on the planet. Her arrival and subsequent revelations about her life with Jack finally connect Tech 49 with the original's memories — the Jack collective unconscious, if you will.

When she and Tech 49 encounter another Jack, Tech 52, the fight between the Jacks results in her getting shot. In order to help her, Tech 49 brings her to his secret cabin to tend to her wounds. While there, the two experience a reigniting of old passions. Their bond fully cemented, Tech 49 starts acting much like the original Jack did 60 years prior. While it defies scientific explanation, her bonding with Tech 49 seems to fully turn him into the original Jack in terms of memories, personality, and commitment to humanity.

The truth about Sally

Jack and Victoria's mission contact on the Tet, Sally, is ultimately revealed to be nothing more than a facet of the AI. She's a false human front — another way to keep the Jacks and Vikas from knowing the truth about the past, their present, and the true purpose of their mission.

The decision by the alien AI to use Sally suggests it has some awareness of the metaphysical issues with the human cloning process . While the Tet may not be aware of the regeneration of memories from the pre-clone Jack that Tech 49 somehow develops, the AI seems to understand that previous bonds evidently carry over to the clones. Therefore, the alien presence selects Sally, the mission control operator on Earth for the Odyssey, as a mask.

As for why Sally only appears as a hologram instead of a clone, there are several reasons. First, Jack and Victoria were on the Odyssey when it was taken by the Tet. Sally was on Earth, so there wasn't a body to clone. Secondly, another clone would increase the risk of exposure, especially a clone that needs to broadcast from space. Why bother with that risk? Finally, there's the matter of efficiency. A hologram allows the Tet to broadcast from the sky, provides the familiar face needed to manipulate the pairs, and creates no risk of discovery.

Defeating the aliens for good

With Tech 49 essentially becoming the true Jack again, he and Julia join with Beech and the other Scavs. Unfortunately, before her death, Victoria reveals Julia's return to the Tet, making her a target. However, this also gives the surviving humans their first true means of getting to the Tet in 60 years. Feigning that he remains a loyal soldier, Tech 49 agrees to transport Julia to the Tet. Anxious to eliminate the threat she represents, the AI readily agrees.

When Jack and Julia's hibernation pod is pulled onto the Tet, the AI finds itself facing a very different situation than expected. First, Julia is nowhere to be found. Instead, Jack has brought Beech aboard. Second, they didn't come empty-handed. Instead, they have a bomb. Before the AI can stop them, Tech 49 and Beech detonate the device, sacrificing themselves. The resulting explosion sets off a chain reaction that utterly destroys the Tet and the numerous Jack and Victoria clones onboard. Finally, 60 years after the war on Earth began, humanity has finally, truly, won.

After being made shockingly aware that he wasn't the only Jack on Earth when fellow clone Tech 49 invaded his sector and put him out cold, Tech 52 seemingly experiences a similar revelation. While viewers don't see Tech 52 from the time his clone bests him until the end of the film, the character's final words make it clear that he too has tapped into the original Jack's memories.

Even more interesting is the suggestion that he also has access to the unique memories of Tech 49. These memories help this version of Jack make his way to the lakeside cabin, a place he'd never been before. As he explains, "I know him. I am him."

It still takes Tech 52 three years to make sense of those new shared memories, but in the end, they guide him right to the cabin's front door and Julia. Given that Tech 52 has both the original Jack's memories and Tech 49's memories, the final scenes suggest that he will become Julia's partner now. He is, essentially, the perfect hybrid of both of her lost loves.

Rebuilding for the future

Tech 49's decision to sacrifice himself and save Julia doesn't just save her life, but also that of their unborn child — the first human born on an Earth free of the Tet in 60 years. Three years later, Julia has become the head of the growing community of survivors who begin arriving at the lake, one of the places on Earth unaffected by both the war and the environmental changes enacted by the Moon's destruction. While only a fraction of humanity survived the invasion and the 60 years that followed, many of them arrive at Julia's lake seeking to rebuild their community. Given how the Tet divided the world into sectors, it also seems likely that such evolving communities are forming all over the world.

It may be awkward and halting. It may take generations. But the end of "Oblivion" suggests there is hope for humanity and for the Earth as a whole. By the time the credits roll, the future is finally getting brighter.

Sequel hopes?

"Oblivion" sequel talk has been limited, and there are a few reasons why. First, critics greeted the film with limited enthusiasm , and audiences seemed to feel similarly. Further, while the film wasn't an absolute flop at the box office, it didn't perform quite as well as the studio might have hoped given Cruise's star power.

Second and perhaps more importantly, "Oblivion" pretty definitively wraps up its storylines. The Tet is destroyed and humanity begins to rebuild civilization. Perhaps there are more stories to be told about that or Jack and Julia's relationship and child, but to date, no such script has emerged. According to Hindustan Times , director Joseph Kosinski did express interest in a prequel film back in 2013, but there's been no indication that such a project ever moved past the idea stage.

Of course, one should never say never. Cruise's hit-to-miss ratio has risen in the years since "Oblivion," making him a surer thing. "Oblivion" stands well as an isolated story, but with Hollywood more invested than ever in building franchises, there could always be another movie on the horizon. It remains to be seen if "Oblivion" will remain one of the many Tom Cruise movies to never get a sequel .

Oblivion Ending, Explained

‘ Oblivion ’ continues to divide critics and audiences even today; nothing too polar since the film’s popularity has somewhat been masked by other stellar Tom Cruise outings, but enough to warrant a discussion even now. The audience verdict was much more favourable than what critics had to say about the film. However, the one thing that united the two factions with respect to the film seemed to be the visual aspects. Completely true, since even if the film isn’t a masterclass in cinematography as, say, ‘ The Revenant ’, or another sci-fi film, ‘ Interstellar ’ is, ‘Oblivion’ is simply gorgeous to look at, in its virgin landscapes, aerial flights of fancy and the ruins left behind by an all ravaging war.

However, what the two factions also lamented over was the intrepid “lifelessness” of the film, and a clear assertion of style over substance. This may also be stemming from the film actually being based on director Joseph Kosinski’s unpublished graphic novel, and that it clearly has a lot of classics, both literary and cinematic to draw from. However, this is also an unbecoming irony, since the unequivocal best part about a sci-fi film is not the tech part: the machines, the flying cars, the robots, the AI. It’s the humanity.

Agreeably so, ‘Oblivion’ does seem to struggle between intimacy and spectacle, and while it is most certainly a completely watchable film, there is no denying that the film works more as a popcorn entertainer than a head scratcher, which is again a contradiction, because somewhere beneath all the blitz and fury, there is a good film dealing with complex ideas and I dare say, even philosophical themes. Which is what we are going to discuss in this write up.

The Ending, Explained

In order to get to the ending, we need to understand the many tropes involved in ‘Oblivion’, who director Joseph Kosinski had no inhibitions stating was inspired from 70s and 80s sci-if films, and quite honestly, it shows, especially from the choices of music and score. There clearly is a protagonist here who is a cog in the wheel and is about to discover an important piece of information that is going to change the fate of the world he lives in and is unknowingly oppressed by.

In doing so, the film also borrows from a number of classic dystopian novels and films, including 1984, Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ and of course, the Replicant scenario from ‘ Blade Runner ’. In our attempt of moving towards the ending, let’s first decipher what we are told in the beginning of the film, and what is discovered as the total truth by our protagonist, Jack Harper, tech 49.

The Lie We Are Told

As the film begins, we hear in voiceover from a disillusioned protagonist himself about how the Earth was ravaged in the war between humans and its extraterrestrial invaders , the Scavengers. The film begins roughly 60 years after the invasion took place, and the Scavengers as they are termed by the humans, attacked and destroyed the Earth’s moon, causing the effects of lunar gravity on Earth to go berserk, resulting in a number of natural calamities.

What followed was a full-blown war between the humans and the scavengers on Earth, leading to humans deploying nearly all their nuclear resources and weapons. It is told that the war was won, but the planet was rendered an uninhabitable, barren landmass, with no resources to sustain life, and many places pushed to a perpetual nuclear winter. Looking towards a new future, the humans look to transport the populace to Saturn’s biggest moon, Titan, until which time, they are all aboard a mysterious floating pyramidal ship, in orbit around the Earth, called the Tet, awaiting transportation.

Gigantic machines called Hydro rigs are charged with draining the planet’s significant water bodies and oceans for the purpose of producing a steady flow of renewable energy through fusion to sustain humans on Titan. During this time, a team of surviving humans, Jack Harper and Victoria ‘Vika’ Olsen are charged with guarding the hydro rigs, and servicing and maintaining large combat drones, designed and assigned to fight off any remaining scavengers back on Earth.

Within the duo, Jack takes care of the on-ground work and is the tech partner, while Victoria maintains contact with the mission control in Tet headed by Sally, the mission director. The two undergo a mandatory memory swipe every five years, something which the two seem to know about. The film opens with two weeks remaining for the duo to be called back to Tet for transportation to Titan, when the Hydro-rigs’ work was complete.

The Truth We Discover

Through Jack’s journey and his discovery of the truth, the most significant revelation and the film’s main twist turns out to be how humans never won the war against the alien threat, and that the Tet wasn’t a ship containing the surviving human population to be transported to Titan. The Tet was the alien threat that appeared and destroyed Earth’s moon, setting the events of the film in motion. Presumably so, the threat was never organic, and Tet seems to be some sort of AI threat that had thousands of Jack and Victoria clones do their bidding on Earth.

The scavengers too weren’t some alien threat, but the surviving humans on the ravaged Earth, aware of the truth and attempting to overthrow their alien overlords, even sixty years hence. They are in constant tussle with the killer drones charged with eliminating them, in an attempt to scavenge its parts, especially its nuclear fuel cells in an attempt to craft a nuclear bomb to be carried aboard the Tet, to destroy it. In that, what the Hydro Rigs too are doing is draining the planet of its resources, sucking the planet dry quite literally. The way they plan to get the bomb aboard the Tet is to have one of the drones they captured carry it, to be re-programmed by the technician Jack Harper that they have been monitoring in Sector 49.

A big part of the Scavengers’ plan to overthrow the Tet and the alien invaders involved seeking the help of Jack, the technician they monitored in Sector 49. It is to be presumed that the Scavengers monitored a lot of the technicians (Jacks) in different sectors, before zeroing in on the one in Sector 49.

The reason for the same is the perceivable humanity that the Scavengers find in this one, since it is revealed that this Jack, Tech 49, often switched off his comms and ventured into a secret “earthly” habitat that he had maintained, his own sanctuary where he enjoys living by the lake, indulging in essential literature, including ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ and ‘War and Peace’, and listening to classic rock. Their approximation on this Jack also served to be right, since this Jack, tech 49, was the most human among all of them, as a testament to which he frequently dreams of the black haired woman and the viewfinder atop Empire State Building.

When Jack is captured and the truth about the Scavengers is revealed to him, he is allowed to venture into other zones, designated as irradiated and restricted zones by the invading forces to prevent any of the multiple technicians across multiple sectors from crossing into another and discovering the truth for themselves. Jack does so, along with Julia, and learns the truth about himself and the invasion after crossing paths with Tech 52, a clone of himself, and after travelling to the tower for the same sector and discovering another clone of Victoria ‘Vika’ Olsen for that sector, thereby deciding to side with the Scavengers.

The first part in Jack’s realisation of the truth is his discovery of Julia, the same black-haired woman from his dreams, as one of the survivors of the ship that crash landed, following a transmission sent out by the scavengers using the Empire State Building’s antenna. The woman soon reveals to be his wife, and Jack regains part of his memories of being married to Julia before the invasion. They recover the flight recording that Jack later listens to on his way to the Tet for the final part of his mission, learning the full truth about himself, including what the Odyssey mission was sixty years ago.

Jack Harper was aboard the same ill-fated ship as the captain piloting it along with co-pilot Victoria on a mission to find life on Titan, when they were diverted to the alien object, Tet. The program was headed by NASA in 2017, with Sally as their mission director on Earth and several other astronauts on board in stasis, to be awoken on Titan. However, as they approached the Tet, the pyramid began drawing them in strongly despite reverse thrusters employed, and seeing a certain doomed fate, Jack undocks the ship’s sleep module, also containing Julia, to return in orbit safely around Earth.

Jack and Victoria hold hands as the Tet opens up and sucks them in, with the film not revealing their fate in exaction, but heavily implying that the original Jack and Victoria from 2017 were no longer there, and had been cloned thousands of times to override Earth as tech and support team Jack and Victoria, aboard various towers of various zones/sectors, like our protagonists in 49. The signal then that the Scavengers were sending that brought the Odyssey’s sleep module back to Earth was a homing beacon, to draw the ship in from the orbit where it had been for 60 years, containing several astronauts including Julia in deep hyper sleep.

The House in The Woods

With all aspects and complexities of the plot explained, we come back to the final few minutes of the film, wherein Jack and Malcolm hatch a plan to infiltrate the Tet on a one way mission to detonate the bomb. After the realisation that the drones that attacked them and the one that the scavengers had captured before wouldn’t work in carrying the nuclear fuel cell bomb to the Tet, Jack volunteers to carry it himself, along with Julia, who volunteers too, after Sally commands Tech 49 to retrieve her from Earth and bring her back to the Tet.

As the two approach the Tet, with Jack piloting and Julia in hyper sleep in her pod, they are let aboard after a series of tests that Jack cleverly manoeuvres through, discovering thousands of his and Victoria’s clones suspended in the Tet’s stasis chamber. Upon reaching the core, where they see a giant eye like structure with Sally’s voice, they reveal the pod carrying Malcolm Beech instead of Julia, and the bomb they had made out of the drone’s fuel cells. The duo detonate the bomb, sacrificing themselves and destroying the Tet, immediately disabling all drones and rigs on Earth.

Julia awakens at the same lake house that Tech 49 used as his sanctuary. It is revealed that she was pregnant, since three years later, she and her daughter are shown to be living at the lake house, when the surviving members from the Scavengers and ‘Tech 52’ Jack show up there. While the film closes there, it would be fair to assume that Julia and Jack 52 would have started a life together, since this clone too seems to have had memories of Julia, and to be connected to the unique memories of Tech 49 in some way, as is revealed by his final speech: “For 3 years, I searched for the house he built. I knew it had to be out there, because I know him. I am him. I am Jack Harper, and I am home”.

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If nothing else, "Oblivion" will go down in film history as the movie where Tom Cruise pilots a white, sperm-shaped craft into a giant space uterus. The scene is more interesting to describe than it is to watch. Cruise's sperm-ship enters through an airlock that resembles a geometrized vulva. He arrives inside a massive chamber lined with egg-like glass bubbles. At the center of the chamber is a pulsating, sentient triangle that is also supposed to be some kind of mother figure. Cruise must destroy the mother triangle and her space uterus in order to save the Earth.

Like director Joseph Kosinski's debut, " Tron: Legacy " (2010), "Oblivion" is a special effects extravaganza with a lot of blatant symbolism and very little meaning. It starts slow, turns dull and then becomes tedious — which makes it a marginal improvement over the earlier film. It features shiny surfaces, clicky machinery and no recognizable human behavior. It's equally ambitious and gormless.

"Oblivion" is set in the year 2077, 60 years after an alien invasion rendered the Earth largely uninhabitable. Cruise stars as Jack Harper, one of a handful of people left on the planet. The other survivors have long since relocated to Titan. Harper and colleagues remain as technicians, servicing robot drones that defend resource-gathering stations from alien stragglers.

Harper lives in a penthouse-like tower with his communications officer, Vica ( Andrea Riseborough ). Vica's eyes are permanently dilated. Like Olivia Wilde 's Quorra in " Tron: Legacy ," she often resembles a marionette.

Harper and Vica spend their days fixing drones, eating candelit dinners, and swimming in a glass-bottomed pool. Their boss, the creepily cheerful Sally ( Melissa Leo ), supervises them from an orbiting control center. In order to maintain the integrity of the mission, Harper and Vica's memories have been wiped; nonetheless, Harper is haunted by extremely cheesy black-and-white dreams of a beautiful woman meeting him in pre-invasion New York.

One day, Harper spots an antique spacecraft crashing into the countryside. He manages to rescue one survivor, a Russian astronaut ( Olga Kurylenko ) who looks exactly like the woman in his dreams. Harper brings her back to his tower. This incites jealousy and suspicion from Vica, who is both Harper's partner and his lover.

The astronaut has been in cryogenic sleep for the past six decades but refuses to disclose the nature of her mission to Harper and Vica until they recover her flight recorder. It goes without saying that the flight recorder unearths all kinds of secrets about Harper, Vica, and the alien invasion. It also creates one of the movie's more glaring logical errors, but that's a different story altogether.

The film's opening stretch is its one strong point —  a gradual, immersive build-up of details. It's a smart technique for science-fiction storytelling; it eases the viewer into the world of the film. The problem is that the world "Oblivion" introduces — an abandoned, depopulated Earth — is more interesting than the story it tells. Or, more accurately, the stories it tells, because "Oblivion," derivative to a fault, tries to be several science-fiction movies at once. It tries and it fails.

"Oblivion" is a political allegory about a lowly "technician" sending unmanned drones to hunt and kill a demonized, alien Other — until it forgets that it ever was. It's a wannabe mindbender that raises questions about its lead character's identity — except that the lead character is too sketchy to make these questions compelling. It's a story about humans struggling for survival in an environment controlled by technology — except it appears to be much more interested in the technology than in the humans. It's a rah-rah action flick — except its action scenes aren't very good.

The only thread "Oblivion" follows to the end is its "creation myth." Harper is an idealized man; he's good with a gun, good with his hands, good in bed, loves football and rides a motorcycle. Though most of the movie's characters are women, not one of them is able to do anything without Harper's help — not even the mother triangle that lives in the space uterus. Only his rugged-but-sensitive masculinity holds the key to humanity's survival. The movie reaches for profundity, but all it grasps is misogyny.

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Film credits.

Oblivion (2013)

Rated PG-13 for sci-fi action violence, brief strong language, and some sensuality/nudity

126 minutes

Tom Cruise as Jack

Morgan Freeman as Beech

Olga Kurylenko as Julia

Andrea Riseborough as Victoria

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Sykes

Melissa Leo as Sally

• Joseph Kosinski
• Karl Gajdusek
• Michael Arndt

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Oblivion (2013) Movie Ending Explained

Oblivion (2013) plot.

The screenplay of Oblivion is written by Karl Gajdusek and Michael Arndt and is based on a graphic novel written by Joseph Kosinski. The narrative begins with a dreamy sequence where Jack Harper (Tom Cruise) sees a woman (played by Olga Kurylenko) in the busy streets of New York City. While he senses that it is a dream, he feels that he has memories associated with her. He recalls it being reminiscent of how Earth looked like before the war. He wakes up in the present day and year – March 14th, 1977. It has been five years since he has gone through a mandatory memory wipe.

He is a veteran technician who was signed to fulfill a particular mission along with a woman named Victoria (Andrea Riseborough). After half a century of scavenger extraterrestrials having destroyed the Earth’s moon and ruined earth, they relocated Saturn’s largest moon. While they won the war, the planet became inhabitable. Most of humanity was wiped clean off the face of the earth. Before the migration, they had built the TET, a temporary space station. His mission is to stop the scavengers from disrupting their mission for the survival of humanity. Their job as a team is security and drone maintenance.

The thread connecting him to the ground gets cut, and he falls. However, a drone starts shooting around and saves him at the moment. After returning to his base, he reads some lines from a poem that remind him that he cannot put a finger upon. He also feels that before, people on the ground were not trying to kill but catch him for some reason. The next day, during his journey, he comes across the Empire State Building, reminding him of his dreams’ vision. He goes on a perimeter check and finds a natural habitat.

Once she regains consciousness, they tell her that she is the only person who can survive among her troop. They keep mentioning the passage of 60 years, and she finds it hard to believe. Meanwhile, even when Jack trusts her, Vika feels unsure about Julia’s roots and motives. The next day, he goes along with Julia to learn what happened to her ship and her peers. Vika notes that she cannot protect him in that case, but he cuts the contact with her. When they reach this spot, he gets attacked by a person whose identity is masked beneath helmet and dark clothes. This is the same person he sees before rescuing Julia.

While the troop is about to take the lives of him and Julia, drones start swarming outside their base. So, Beech frees both of them to learn the truth in a desert known as a radiation zone. When Julia reveals that she is Jack’s wife, it reminds him of proposing the Empire State Building to her. Victoria decides to help them both escape, but upon learning about this information, a drone sent by their commander Sally gets her killed. Meanwhile, while fleeing on their jet, Jack and Julia come across Jack’s clone in a desert. While she gets shot during their encounter, he goes to his clone’s base and finds a clone of Victoria.

What does Jack learn about Sally and their past?

While Jack manages to recover Julia with the available medical supplies, he learns crucial details about himself that alter his perception of the present. Upon returning to Raven’s Rock, Beech informs them that TET is an A.I. ship that uses several clones of Jack to destroy the Earth’s moon and extract the planet’s natural resources. Jack realizes that he has been fed many lies about Earth’s victory and their escape to Titan.

Does humanity survive the danger of destruction? 

On their way, Jack listens to a flight recorder from the Odyssey, which reveals shocking information about his past. He realizes he is a clone of the NASA mission commander, who was previously sent to explore Saturn’s moon – Titan. He also learns that Victoria was his co-pilot back then, whereas Julia was a new crew member. Sally, who was their commander now, was the Earth mission director. Their mission was interrupted due to the TET, and he and Victoria were later captured and cloned. Since Victoria was jealous of his relationship with Julia, she manipulated him into believing they had a romantic relationship.

As a result, TET is obliterated, and Raven Rock’s troop sees an explosion in the sky. At the same time, they also get killed in the same. Three years after this incident, Julia starts living in a house (from before) reminiscent of Christina’s world and raises their daughter. The troop members who survived the war meet her and one of Jack’s clones (the one he sees in the desert). Despite being a clone, he has recovered all the memories of the NASA astronaut. Through that, the film attempts to convey the determination and will of the human spirit to win over the odds of selfish and destructive forces in authority.

Related: Prometheus (2012) – Of Visual Beauties And Faltered Ambitions

Oblivion (2013) trailer.

Oblivion (2013) Movie Links: IMDb Rotten Tomatoes Oblivion (2013) Cast: Tom Cruise, Olga Kurylenko, Andrea Riseborough, Morgan Freeman

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Oblivion (2013 film)

Oblivion is a 2013 post-apocalyptic science fiction film starring Tom Cruise . It is based on Joseph Kosinski 's unpublished graphic novel of the same name.

• 1 Jack Harper
• 3 Malcolm Beech
• 6 External links

Jack Harper [ edit ]

• If we have souls, they are made of the love we share... undimmed by time and unbound by death.
• Fuck you Sally.

Victoria [ edit ]

• Our job is not to remember, remember?

Malcolm Beech [ edit ]

• [explaining the history of the war to Jack] I'd been in the army less than a year when that unholy Tet arrived. Saw the Moon get taken out, right up there in the night sky. [voice breaking] Couldn't believe it. After that, nature took over.. there's bedrock around Chicago so we were spared the worst of the waves, quakes. Most people just starved. Then the Tet sent troop ships down. The doors opened and out you came: astronaut Jack Harper, thousands of you. Memory wiped. Programed to kill. It had taken one of our best and turned him against us. No soul, no humanity. The Tet... what a brilliant machine. Feeding off of one planet after another for energy. Phase two was drones, repairmen. Fifty years of watching those hydrorigs suck our planet dry. Then one day, I saw you set down, another drone to fix. But in the rubble that day was a book. You picked it up, you studied it. And I... thought I saw a way. When you stepped in front of that drone, saved her [indicates Julia] I knew: you were in there, somewhere, I just had to find a way to bring you back.
• [after seeing the looks of hope on the Scavs thanks to Jack] Welcome back, Commander.

Dialogue [ edit ]

Cast [ edit ].

• Tom Cruise as Commander Jack Harper
• Morgan Freeman as Malcolm Beech
• Olga Kurylenko as Julia Rusakova Harper
• Andrea Riseborough as Victoria "Vika" Olsen
• Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Sergeant Sykes
• Melissa Leo as Sally
• Zoë Bell as Kara

External links [ edit ]

• Oblivion quotes at the Internet Movie Database

• Post-apocalyptic films
• Science fiction films
• Comic book films
• Cloning in films
• Screenplays by Michael Arndt

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That Moment In Oblivion (2013): Jack Meets Jack

Oblivion is a 2013 science fiction adventure film about life after a devastating alien attack that leaves a drone repairman questioning what he once thought was the truth.

Jack Harper ( Tom Cruise ) spends most of his time wandering about the safe zones of his perimeter on the now desolate earth, ruined in a hard-fought war with extraterrestrials. Years earlier, the “Scavengers” came and destroyed earth’s moon, hurling the planet into chaos. Earthquakes and tsunamis ravaged the population, and during the upheaval, the aliens attacked. With no choice, man used the nukes and though they won the war, they lost the planet. Those that remained built the Tet, a massive space station that harbors survivors before the migration to Saturn’s Titan.

Jack’s job, along with a series of high-tech, well-fortified flying drones, is to protect the enormous ocean-based fusion energy generators providing power to the Tet from the last bands of “Scavs” trying to destroy them. He lives a lonely life with his working partner and lover, Vika ( Andrea Riseborough ) , waiting for their term to end so they can join the others on Tet. They have two weeks to go. But there is a problem: Despite a mandatory memory wipe five years earlier, Jack is haunted by visions of a beautiful woman. Who is she?

One day, he detects a beacon from atop the now nearly buried empire state building sending landing coordinates to an orbiting spacecraft. When he dismantles the beacon, a pre-war vessel crashes nearby. He investigates and finds working stasis chambers with sleeping astronauts, one of which, to his surprise, is the woman in his dreams. Right then, a drone rushes to the site and begins firing. Jack is able to save only her, barely escaping and making it back to his domicile. He and Vika revive her. When she wakes, she calls him by name.

Oblivion is a taut, high-concept sci-fi thriller that has more than a few surprises. Outstanding special effects and powerful performances all around, the story is challenging and forces viewers to question a lot of what they are seeing. Marred only by an unnecessary (albeit brief) narration, the film is thought-provoking, beautifully shot and directed. And like every movie, it has one great moment.

Jack Meets Jack

Things have gone horribly wrong. Whatever Jack thought was true, now appears to be otherwise and he is learning that the Tet and the female commander giving him daily instructions are not to be trusted. The beautiful woman, Julia, and Jack are on the run and have narro wly escaped an attacking drone. Their tiny craft and the pursuing drone have crashed in the dunes near the restricted zone.

The film to this point has been straight-forward sci-fi action with lots of suspense and a few revealing thrills. We’ve learned that “Scavs” are not in fact aliens, but the last remnants of the human resistance. But now, as the scene unfolds, we learn something even more shocking, and it elevates the premise into more than sci-fi. We’ve suspected something was off about the memory wipe because Jack’s dreams have been echoes of his past. But what he meets on the other side of the dune is wholly unexpected.  

Clones in film are nothing new. I wrote a post on Moon , which is entirely about cloning. Even aliens cloning humans has been done. I can go back to classics like Invasion of the Body Snatchers to see its origins. Not all are evil aliens either, such as the beautiful  John Carpenter film Starman , which features an alien cloning a man to explore life on earth as a human. In Oblivion, we learn that clones are used as workers and fighters to fend off the humans trying to take back the planet. Much like Sam in Moon , we have come to identify with Jack and enjoy him as a person, so it’s shocking to see that he is not who we thought he was. And equally so for him. 

Let’s watch:

No matter what the movie is, if it stars Tom Cruise, it automatically becomes that: a Tom Cruise film. Few actors share this level of renown. Even more so, his name is a brand, it carries an implication of success and marketing that over the years has probably caused more harm that good. Expectations for blockbusters with every release meant his movies became bigger, more expensive, and imaginative with every new title. He was a cash cow for the studios. So it was big news when Eyes Wide Shut didn’t break the domestic $100 million mark as his previous five films had done before.

Cruise is best known for his action and humor. He’s not played the ladies man, despite his good looks, and stuck mostly with success to roles that allow him to play the hero, if not a little cartoonish to boot. His biggest moneymaker is Steven Spielberg’s  War of the Worlds . And sadly, that is how we think of Cruise–a moneymaker. Apart from some very impressive dramatic roles in Born on the Fourth of July , Magnolia , and the aforementioned Eyes Wide Shut, all of which are among his least financially successful movies, Cruise has played it close to the hip in casting himself as a certain type. And that type has sold a lot of tickets.

With Oblivion , Cruise returns to the well and plays a man who fights to right the wrongs of a bigger power. It is familiar to us and because so, it is comfortable for the audience. We have no fears of the outcome because it’s Tom. Tom always wins. We can sit back, enjoy the spectacle and stuff our faces with popcorn.  There’s no need to think . . . until we meet Tech 52, the Jack clone, and we, like Jack, learn that the number on his jumpsuit isn’t just a station identifier, it’s his place in the clone line up.

So let’s pause for a second here think about this situation. Meeting your clone. I mean, well, let’s face it, that would be friggin’ awesome . . . at first. My mind immediately jumps to Michael Keaton and the overlooked comedy, Multiplicity  because that is probably how it would be and I’m an incurable film dweeb that can only relate to anything if its been in a movie I’ve seen. I’d have my clone doing all the crap stuff I don’t want to do while I enjoy the finer things in life (which for me would be decidedly less classy than what the sentence implies).

Of course, that would be the fantasy. Knowing my luck, it’d mostly likely end up with me framed and imprisoned in a South American while my clone empties my already limited bank account and runs off with a supermodel. Geesh, you know what? I hate clones.

Anyway, this being a Cruise film, naturally, the two clones fight. We suspect the idea is to be amazed at how two Cruises could be fighting each other, but no matter how good special effects get, nobody ever thinks a fisticuffs between two people played by the same actor is anything more than a trick. It’s not like someone in the audience suddenly thinks, “Wow, I never knew Tom Cruise had a twin brother!” Well, maybe someone does. And truthfully, why not? Who wasn’t surprised when we found out one of the coolest special effects in Terminator 2 indeed involved Linda Hamilton’s non-acting twin sister. So huh? Maybe Cruise does have a twin!

Back to That Moment. The meeting and confrontation between the two clones is the turning point. All at once, we realize the most terrible thing has happened. Humans did not win the war. The nukes didn’t work, and there is nobody but the “Scavs” left. Mankind is reduced to pockets of hiding rebels, living in caves, trying to survive in a desolate, alien-infested world. Grim stuff.

But in this same meeting, we witness something that flickers by quickly and might be missed the first time viewing. Tech 52, when he sees Julia, has a flashback. And it’s exactly the same as Tech 49’s.

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The Best 'Oblivion' Quotes, Ranked

Movie fans everywhere have come together to vote on this list of the most memorable quotes from Oblivion , the 2013 science fiction film directed by Joseph Kosinski. This visually stunning and thought-provoking movie stars Tom Cruise as Jack Harper, a drone repairman stationed on Earth after a devastating war with an alien race called Scavs. As he uncovers the truth about his mission and his past, we are treated to some truly unforgettable lines that capture the essence of this post-apocalyptic world.

From Jack's poignant musings on what it means to be human to his witty banter with Victoria (played by Andrea Riseborough), every quote in this list has earned its place for its impact on both the story and our hearts. Whether you're a die-hard fan of sci-fi or just appreciate a good dose of action-packed drama, these lines will leave you pondering long after the credits roll.

So why not take a trip down memory lane and relive some of Oblivion 's most iconic moments? And if your favorite quote didn't make it onto our list, don't fret – there's still time to vote up your favorites and see them rise through the ranks. Let's celebrate this cinematic gem together and honor its legacy with words that will echo through time.

Made of the Love We Share

Jack Harper: "If we have souls, they're made of the love we share. Undimmed by time, unbound by death."

Earth Was Attacked

Jack: "60 years ago Earth was attacked. We won the war but they destroyed half the planet. Everyone's been evacuated. Nothing human remains. Our job is security and drone maintenance. We're here for drone repair. We're the mop up crew."

Miss a Place You've Never Been

Jack: "Is it possible to miss a place you've never been, to mourn a time you've never lived?"

I Know You but We've Never Met

Jack Harper: "I know you, but we've never met. I'm with you and I don't know your name. I know I'm dreaming, but it feels like more than that. It feels like a memory. How can that be?"

Time You Know the Truth

Beech: "I've been watching you, Jack." Jack: "Who are you?" Beech: "The people you work for lied to you. They told you to found the fortress and soon you would join the others. It's time you know the truth." Jack: "How do you know my name?" Beech: "You're curious. What are you looking for in those books? Do they bring back old memories? Don't ask too many questions."

Two More Weeks, Jack

Jack: "This is Jack Harper. I'm good to go." Victoria: "Two more weeks, Jack, then we can finally leave and join the others. Don't take any chances."

The Thing Is to Die Well

Jack Harper: "How can a man die better…" Sally: "You don't have to die, Jack. She doesn't have to die." Jack Harper: "Everybody dies, Sally. The thing is, to die well."

Unidentified Impact

Victoria: "We have an unidentified impact. Jack, an object came down in 1-7." Jack: "Tower, we have got survivors. There are four, check it, five, survivors. They are human!" Victoria: "This is ordering you to return to tower… Jack?" Jack: "They're firing on survivors."

I'll Show You the Future

Julia: "I don't know what happened. But you are not who you think you are. Jack, we were here. You asked me to meet you and brought me up on top of the world. I could tell you were nervous that day. It was right here, Jack. You said: Look through here…" Julia, Jack Harper: [together] "And I'll show you the future."

I Am Your God

Jack Harper: "How can man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his Gods." Sally: "I created you, Jack. I am your god." Jack Harper: "F*** you, Sally."

Classic Game

Jack: "The last Super Bowl was played right here." Victoria: "Please don't tell me it was a classic." Jack: "Classic game, 80,000 people on their feet. Seconds left in the game the QB throws a Hail Mary. Touchdown! … 166 is back online."

You Should See the Other Guy

Malcolm Beech: "You had me worried for a second. I thought you weren't coming back." Jack Harper: "Well, I had to prove him wrong." Malcolm Beech: "You look like s***." Jack Harper: "Oh, you should see the other guy." Malcolm Beech: "I told you, what you'd find out there. You've thought I was crazy." Jack Harper: "Oh, I still do."

Do You Remember?

Victoria: "I want to go first thing." Jack: "Do you have any memories before the mission? Before the security went?" Victoria: "Our job is not to remember, remember?" Jack: "Do you remember her?" Victoria: "Jack, that was a scav beacon that brought her down. We don't know who she is or what she is."

I'm Home

Jack Harper: "For three years I searched for the house he built. I knew it had to be out there. Because I know him. I am him. I am Jack Harper, and I'm home."

You Need to Know What Happened

Julia: "You need to know what happened." Jack: "What aren't you telling me? Who are you?"

This Is the Only Way

Victoria: "Jack, this is ordering you to stand down." Jack: "I'm not going to do that. This is the only way."

Earth Is Still My Home

Jack Harper: "I can't shake the feeling, that earth, in spite of all that's happened, earth is still my home."

What Have You Done?

Jack: "What have you done?" Victoria: "I can't protect you."

I Gotta Work On That

Victoria: "Be careful out there." Jack Harper: "I always am." Victoria: "No you're not." Jack Harper: "You're right. I gotta work on that."

Pattern of Insubordinate Behavior

Sally: "There's been a pattern of insubordinate behavior recently." Jack Harper: "Yeah. I feel bad about that."

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