( CNN ) -- Remember when the movies held the impending extinction of human life on the planet as a worst-case scenario -- something that could and would be heroically averted , if only at the last second ? Nowadays , the end times are only the beginning : an apocalyptic backdrop is something we 're going to be seeing a lot of this year , so we might as well get used to it . In the glossy , derivative , ambitious and fatally underpowered `` Oblivion , '' Tom Cruise is the last guy on Earth . He 's Jack , a technician -- a mechanic , really -- whose job is to fix broken down drones ( in a cute touch he sticks the first one back together with chewing gum ) . In other words , he 's a bit like WALL-E , and Andrea Riseborough is his latter day Eve . They live in a billion-dollar birdhouse perched up above the clouds , and in a quaintly chauvinist set up , he reconnoiters the skies in a flashy starfighter prototype , while she sits at an interstellar telephone exchange and relays the commands of mission controller Sally ( an irritatingly twangy Melissa Leo ) from on high . See , the remainder of the human race has taken refuge on a giant spaceship ( it looks like a floating audio speaker , something that would n't be out of place on the cover of an '80s progressive rock album ) . The plan is to scoot over to Saturn just as soon as they have sucked up enough hydropower from the Earth 's oceans to fuel the journey . But why ? Well , because of the alien invaders who destroyed the moon and threw the biosphere out of whack , that 's why . As Cruise mournfully intones in the movie 's lugubrious prologue , we won the war , but lost the planet . That 's what the drones are for : to kill off the last remaining hostiles , or `` scavs , '' who have taken refuge on the edge of the radioactive wastelands that cover most of the globe . That 's more than enough backstory , I know , but there 's much more to come out , even as Jack goes about his daily routine , tracking down lost drones , revisiting ruined New York landmarks ( the top of the Empire State Building now sits at ground level on a sea of dust ) , and occasionally going AWOL himself to grapple with fragmentary memories of a beautiful girl ( Olga Kurylenko ) , and a lost world he has no right to remember . The story is officially credited to an unpublished comic book by the film 's director , Joseph Kosinski . But if you poured all the most memorable sci-fi films from the past half century into a blender , from `` 2001 : A Space Odyssey '' and the original `` Planet of the Apes '' all the way down to last year 's `` Prometheus , '' you would probably wind up with something very similar and equally synthetic -- though quite possibly more exciting . While he immerses us in an often dazzling futurescape , for the most part Kosinski ( `` Tron : Legacy '' ) lacks the poetic imagination to animate this requiem for a dying world -- comparisons with `` WALL-E '' are certainly not to this film 's advantage -- and fails to convince us that he genuinely cares about the fate of his characters , let alone the planet . The movie 's few action scenes are competent but unlikely to wow any battle-seasoned gamers out there . Kosinski does produce one rabbit from his hat , a real surprise late in the game that sends the movie for a loop , but also undermines a good deal of the credibility he 's worked hard to build up over the preceding hour and a half or so . Like `` Prometheus , '' this is another of those earnest , overdetermined spiritual allegories that falls apart in the rear-view mirror . It is certainly nice to look at though . Director of photography Claudio Miranda was last seen picking up an Academy Award for his breathtaking work on `` Life of Pi , '' and his images of an Earth turned to ash are almost as alluring . They 're enough to lend the picture a sense of scope and even grandeur , but they ca n't paper over the cracks running right through its core . `` Oblivion '' shoots for the moon and falls short .
`` Oblivion '' is a Tom Cruise sci-fi film ; he stars as the last guy on Earth . Critic Tom Charity says movie is shot beautifully but does n't deliver . Director lacks the poetic imagination to animate this requiem , Charity says .