Tom Cruise’s Best Sci-Fi Movie Is Coming To Netflix
Netflix releases Tom Cruise's sci-fi flick Oblivion on the streamer this Tuesday, November 1st.
As the Halloween season comes to a close, many streaming viewers might be looking to start their November off right with a new set of movies they’ve never watched before. Netflix is hearing those calls and will be gifting audiences with the Tom Cruise science fiction flick Oblivion, which will be coming to the subscription streaming service on November 1. According to What’s On Netflix, 2013’s Oblivion will join the first three seasons of Key & Peele, the Sam Worthington action thriller Man on a Ledge, Brad Pitt’s Moneyball, the romantic comedy Notting Hill, and the Whitney Houston blockbuster The Bodyguard on Netflix tomorrow.
After the success of Joseph Kosinski’s feature film directorial debut, Tron: Legacy, the director wanted to make Oblivion his next project and had Tom Cruise in mind to star as Jack Harper as early as 2011. Several other performers were considered for other main roles after Tom Cruise joined Oblivion and had to audition, with Olga Kurylenko coming in alongside Jessica Chastain, Olivia Wilde, and Noomi Rapace to read for the role of Jack’s wife and crew member Julia. Chastain originally won the part and was contracted to start production until she was cast in 2012’s Zero Dark Thirty about the mission to capture and kill Osama bin Laden.
Cruise let her out of her contract to do the historically important film, and Kurylenko was cast as Julia in replacement of Chastain.
Directed by Top Gun: Maverick helmer Joseph Kosinski, Tom Cruise stars in Oblivion as Jack Harper, a technician repairman of drones on Earth who begins to question his mission when he encounters a spaceship crash that throws his world upside down. Set in the year 2077, the movie is an adaptation of Kosinski’s unpublished graphic novel. Karl Gajdusek developed a screenplay for the big screen.
Michael Arndt was tasked with revising some of Kosinski’s and Gajdusek’s writing, and used the pseudonym of “Michael deBruyn” as his writing credit for the film.
Alongside an impressive ensemble cast, Tom Cruise stars in Oblivion with Academy Award winner Morgan Freeman, Ukrainian-French actor Olga Kurylenko, English performer Andrea Riseborough, Game of Thrones alum Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Melissa Leo, and Quentin Tarantino’s frequent collaborator Zoë Bell. The film was a financial success for Universal Pictures upon its release into theaters on April 19, 2013. Oblivion went on to gross over $287 million against a budget of $120 million.
After the film’s triumph on a global scale, Tom Cruise chose to work with Joseph Kosinski again on the sequel to 1986’s Top Gun, which was released this year to rave reviews and a huge box office haul of nearly $1.5 billion to date.
While Tom Cruise scored a massive victory at the box office for Oblivion, due in large part to the film’s ability to show a strong performance in IMAX theaters across the United States, the movie didn’t score as many points with critics and audiences. Rotten Tomatoes currently ranks Oblivion with a 53% on its Tomatometer based on 260 critics’ reviews, as well as an Audience Score of 61% from over 100,000 ratings from verified users to the site. Alternatively, Metacritic reflects a Metascore of 54 based on 41 critics’ reviews, and a slightly better User Score of 7.1 based on 1,145 ratings from users, which typically denotes mixed or average reviews from critics and generally favorable reviews from audiences.
After the success and box office run of the movie for Tom Cruise and company, Oblivion director Joseph Kosinski started work directing Only the Brave. The film released in 2017 with Jeff Bridges, Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly and Josh Brolin starring, while Cruise immediately went back to his blockbuster Mission: Impossible franchise with additional entries Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation and Mission: Impossible – Fallout released in recent years. Just as Cruise and Kosinski collaborated again on Top Gun: Maverick, Kosinski has been known to work with several actors multiple times on movies, with Connelly costarring in both Only the Brave and Top Gun: Maverick for the director.
Likewise Miles Teller worked with Kosinski on Only the Brave, Top Gun: Maverick, and the Netflix original film, Spiderhead, costarring Chris Hemsworth. Spiderhead was released this summer on the streamer.
