Tom Cruise is used to saving the world, we know that by now. Even if he’s not quite able to do so, he always gives it his best shot and we’re thankful for that. Nowadays, Mission: Impossible might be the franchise most closely associated with the star, but it’s easy to forget that Cruise loves a sci-fi movie.
Minority Report is still one of his best, while Edge of Tomorrow fans have been screaming for a sequel for over a decade now, but somewhere between the two sits a movie that never quite received the same level of affection. That movie is Oblivion, and audiences are discovering it all over again on digital.
Oblivion follows Cruise’s Jack Harper, a technician who’s stationed above Earth alongside a communications officer, Victoria Olsen (Andrea Riseborough). With humanity supposedly having abandoned Earth for a new home, Jack’s job in the year 2077 is to maintain the drones protecting enormous machines extracting the planet’s remaining resources. But after Jack rescues a mysterious woman from a spacecraft that crashes onto the planet, everything he thought he knew begins to dramatically unravel. It’s one of the wildest projects Cruise has in his filmography, and it swings from a post-apocalyptic sci-fi into a much weirder movie. The film is one of Joseph Kosinski‘s earliest efforts, before he went on to become a hero of action cinema with Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick and Brad Pitt‘s F1.
Collider Exclusive · Sci-Fi Survival Quiz Which Sci-Fi World Would You Survive? The Matrix · Mad Max · Blade Runner · Dune · Star Wars
Five universes. Five completely different ways the future went wrong — or sideways, or up in flames. Only one of them is the world your instincts were built for. Eight questions will figure out which dystopia, galaxy, or desert wasteland you’d actually make it out of alive.
💊The Matrix
🔥Mad Max
🌧️Blade Runner
🏜️Dune
🚀Star Wars
01
You sense something is deeply wrong with the world around you. What do you do? The first instinct is often the truest one.
02
In a world of scarcity, what resource do you guard most fiercely? What we protect reveals what we believe survival actually requires.
03
What kind of threat keeps you up at night? Fear is useful data — if you’re honest about what you’re actually afraid of.
04
How do you deal with authority you don’t trust? Every dystopia has a power structure. Your approach to it determines everything.
05
Which environment could you actually endure long-term? Survival isn’t just tactical — it’s physical, psychological, and very much about where you are.
06
Who do you want in your corner when things fall apart? The company you keep is the clearest signal of who you actually are.
07
Where do you draw the line — if you draw one at all? Every survivor eventually faces a moment that tests what they’re actually made of.
08
What would actually make survival worth it? Staying alive is one thing. Having a reason to is another.
Your Fate Has Been Calculated You’d Survive In…
Your answers point to the world your instincts were built for. This is the universe your temperament, your survival instincts, and your particular brand of stubbornness were made for.
The Resistance, Zion
The Matrix
You took the red pill a long time ago — probably before anyone offered it to you. You’re a systems thinker who can’t help but notice the seams in things.
You’re drawn to understanding how the system works before figuring out how to break it.
You’d find the Resistance, or it would find you — your instinct for spotting constructed realities is the machines’ worst nightmare.
You function best when you have access to information and the freedom to act on it.
The Matrix built an airtight prison. You’d be the one probing the walls for the door.
The Wasteland
Mad Max
The wasteland doesn’t reward the clever or the well-connected — it rewards those who are hard to kill and harder to break. That’s you.
You don’t need comfort, community, or a cause larger than the next horizon.
You need a vehicle, a clear threat, and enough fuel to outrun it — and you’re good at all three.
You are unsentimental enough to survive that world, and decent enough — just barely — to be something more than another raider.
In the wasteland, that distinction is everything.
Los Angeles, 2049
Blade Runner
You’d survive here because you know how to exist in moral grey areas without losing yourself completely.
You read people accurately, keep your circle small, and ask the questions others prefer not to answer.
In a city where humanity is a legal designation rather than a feeling, you hold onto something that keeps you functional.
You’re not a hero. But you’re not lost, either.
In Blade Runner’s world, that distinction is everything.
Arrakis
Dune
Arrakis is the most hostile environment in the known universe — and you are precisely the kind of person it rewards.
Patience, discipline, and political awareness are your core strengths — and on Arrakis, they’re survival tools.
You understand that the long game matters more than any single victory.
Others come to Dune and are consumed by it. You’d learn its logic and earn its respect.
In time, you wouldn’t just survive Arrakis — you’d begin to reshape it.
A Galaxy Far, Far Away
Star Wars
The galaxy far, far away is vast, loud, and in a constant state of violent political upheaval — and you wouldn’t have it any other way.
You find meaning in being part of something larger than yourself — a cause, a crew, a rebellion.
You’d gravitate toward the Rebellion, or the fringes, or whatever pocket of the galaxy still believes the Empire’s grip can be broken.
You fight — not because you have to, but because standing aside isn’t something you’re capable of.
In Star Wars, that willingness is what makes all the difference.
Was ‘Oblivion’ a Success?
The film wasn’t exactly a flop when it arrived in 2013, either. Oblivion earned $286 million worldwide against a reported $120 million production budget, although its reception was considerably more divided. It currently holds a 54% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes, compared with a much healthier 61% audience score. Kosinski also gave Oblivion a visual identity that has aged remarkably well. Its stark white technology, enormous landscapes and striking Sky Tower still look spectacular, while M83’s thundering electronic score does an awful lot of heavy lifting in making the whole thing feel suitably enormous.
The cast also includes Olga Kurylenko (Quantum of Solace) as Julia Rusakova, Morgan Freeman (The Shawshank Redemption) as Malcolm Beech, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Game of Thrones) as Sykes, Melissa Leo (The Fighter) as Sally, Zoë Bell (Death Proof) as Kara, and Abigail Lowe as Julia’s younger self.
