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Visually striking but thinly scripted, Oblivion benefits greatly from its strong production values and an excellent performance from Tom Cruise.

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Joseph Kosinski

Jack Harper

Morgan Freeman

Olga Kurylenko

Julia Rusakova

Andrea Riseborough

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau

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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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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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Rotten Tomatoes® Score

There’s no denying that Oblivion is derivative.... But director Joseph Kosinski, adapting his own graphic novel, sure knows how to make it look beautiful and evocative.

Oblivion’s characters do little more than service the puzzle-based plot, leaving the sometimes predictable dialogue to the actors to enhance.

The eye-popping visuals help create a futuristic wonder, and the Iceland locations give a perfect sense of desolation.

A grab bag of ancient (in movie terms) sci-fi ideas, Oblivion is a sharp-looking film that will, through its own paucity of invention, be quickly consigned to history.

Filled with amazing post-apocalyptic spectacle, dazzling action sequences, and a heady story of twists and turns, the challenge of "Oblivion" is whether or not you, as the audience, can allow the strong visuals to make up for the weak narrative.

A competently made sci-fi action movie - something that can't be said about the majority of the genre.

Visually arresting and in moments exquisite.

On a pure surface level, the film is well made ... but this seems like it was aimed at an audience that has never seen a science fiction film before.

Because Oblivion borrows heavily from other sci-fi films, it lacks distinction in making the film truly it's own.

Oblivion may be a masterwork on the visual side, but it is a complete void in every other arena.

Additional Info

• Genre : Sci-Fi, Action
• Release Date : April 19, 2013
• Languages : English
• Captions : English
• Audio Format : 5.1

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Joeseph Kosinski 's new Tom Cruise and Morgan Freeman  starrer  Oblivion is the rarest of all things, a big budget scifi film aimed squarely at adults. While the trailers might seem like they give away the whole movie, I assure you they only scratch the surface. Things get really weird and far more ambitious than the I Am Legend -style one sheet implies.

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Movie Review

After the Apocalypse, Things Go Downhill

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By Manohla Dargis

• April 18, 2013

If only it were less easy to laugh at “Oblivion,” a lackluster science-fiction adventure with Tom Cruise that, even before its opening, was groaning under the weight of its hard-working, slowly fading star and a title that invites mockery of him and it both. The agony of being a longtime Tom Cruise fan has always been a burden, but now it’s just, well, dispiriting. You not only have to ignore the din of the tabloids and swat away the buzzing generated by his multiple headline-ready dramas, you also have to come to grips with the harsh truth that it no longer actually matters why and how Tom Terrific became less so. No one else much cares.

Mr. Cruise hasn’t made it easy. His screen presence has continued to grow ever-more self-serious, despite occasional attempts to lighten up, as in the recent would-be satire “Rock of Ages.” Midway through “Oblivion” I wondered when I had last believed there was something true in his laugh, something that felt either genuinely expansive or intimate, as in “Jerry Maguire,” or chilled with a hint of madness, as in “Magnolia.” Mind you, he doesn’t have many occasions to laugh in “Oblivion,” a gray post-apocalyptic tale with rainbow accents, yet when he does, it feels uncomfortably forced. In those moments, was he worrying that the movie wasn’t going to return him to the box office summit? He’s 50 years old and too young to be prepping for a slow fade, yet what are his choices?

Working with better directors — with filmmakers who know how to charm or force performances out of stars or perhaps say no to them — seems like a good place to start. “Oblivion” is only the second feature directed by Joseph Kosinski, after the 2010 release “Tron: Legacy.” That special effects-laden fantasy, a musty hero’s journey largely distinguished by the yawning divide between its poor quality and its $170 million price tag, was a flat line of a dud in almost every respect. It nonetheless made enough money to shore up an exploitable franchise property and spawn a sequel, and while this may not sound like much of an achievement, box office success or the perception of it can beget more opportunities in the movie business, which may help explain “Oblivion.”

Its story primarily unfolds in 2077, long after a cataclysmic war between earthlings and extraterrestrials. Nuked to all but radioactive ash, the Earth has been rendered nearly uninhabitable, and its remaining people have fled to a galactic shelter. The only ones left on the planet appear to be Jack Harper (Mr. Cruise) and his companion, Victoria (Andrea Riseborough), who live in a cantilevered aerie above the clouds that brings to mind a “Jetsons” sky pad. His job is to repair drones that patrol the facilities that extract resources for the surviving populace and that are under attack from the aliens, or Scavs, as in scavengers. She monitors him back at their place, waving her hands over a tabletop computer, while in full makeup and rocking some fabulous end-of-days-to-night dresses and heels.

The heels seem a strange choice given, you know, the whole doomsday thing, not to mention the glossiness of the couple’s floors. Then again, from the way she strips for some late-night nuzzling, her get-up does appear to have instrumental value, even if one misstep and she or at least an ankle would be a goner. A similar kind of tricky balancing act is inherent in science fiction, a genre that often employs recognizable details to tether readers and viewers in fantastical realms. It’s a form, as is often noted, that makes the strange familiar and the familiar strange, a narrative principle that Mr. Kosinski embraces again and again with niceties like Jack’s Yankee baseball cap and Jack and Victoria’s candlelight dinners.

The candles add atmosphere, as does that baseball cap. But because Mr. Kosinski hasn’t come up with a resonant idea to accompany them — a new or different way of looking at the world that exists and the world that might one day come into being — his retro flourishes prove as empty as the lunarlike landscapes. There’s an arresting moment, for instance, when Jack drives through a blasted-out terrain littered with ships partly submerged in earth, a vista that demonstrates Mr. Kosinski’s fondness for playing with negative space. The vision of a man existentially alone conjures up countless cowboys traveling through innumerable westerns and summons up the shock of the half-buried Statue of Liberty in “Planet of the Apes.” Yet again, Mr. Kosinski fails to build on his materials and the allusions soon fade.

All genre fictions build, self-consciously or not, on their progenitors. The problem with “Oblivion,” which is based on an unpublished graphic novel Mr. Kosinski wrote and used to pitch the studio, is that it’s been stitched together from bits and pieces that evoke numerous other, far better far-out tales and ideas, conceits and characters from the likes of Philip K. Dick, the Wachowskis, J. G. Ballard and Duncan Jones, specifically his elegant, elegiac movie, “Moon.” No matter how hard Mr. Cruise squares his jaw or flings his body over and against the scenery, and despite the presence of Morgan Freeman, Olga Kurylenko and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who trickle into the story to aid in Jack’s journey, “Oblivion” never transcends its inspirations to become anything other than a thin copy.

“Oblivion” is rated PG-13. (Parents strongly cautioned.) Zap-gun violence and skinny-dipping.

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Movie Review

US Release Date: 04-19-2013

Directed by: Joseph Kosinski

Starring ▸ ▾

• Tom Cruise ,  as
• Morgan Freeman ,  as
• Olga Kurylenko ,  as
• Andrea Riseborough ,  as
• Nikolaj Coster-Waldau ,  as
• Melissa Leo ,  as
• Zoe Bell ,  as
• Abigail Lowe ,  as
• Julia's Child
• Isabelle Lowe ,  as
• David Madison as
• Grow Hall Survivor

Olga Kurylenko and Tom Cruise in Oblivion .

Writer/Director Joseph Kosinski has said that Oblivion is, in part, an homage to the science fiction films of the 1970s and it's easy to see what he means. 40 years ago, the part of Jack would undoubtedly have gone to Charlton Heston. It has that last rational man on a planet gone to seed feel that Heston made his specialty. It's an old fashioned Sci-Fi film made with today's special effects.

Tom Cruise, who turned 50 during filming, stars as Jack, a drone repairman who works with his partner Victoria, as the last two humans on a devastated Earth rendered uninhabitable by nuclear bombs that were detonated as the result of an alien invasion. He and Victoria are there to oversee the drones that guard giant machines which are harvesting the Earth's oceans to take to Titan, the moon of Saturn, where the remains of the Earth's population are now living. The remnants of the alien invaders still roam the planet looking to destroy what they can while they have the chance. However, just two weeks shy of finishing their task, Jack's ordered routine is disrupted when he is captured by the Scavengers, as the aliens are called, and when an Earth ship containing a woman Jack has been dreaming about, suddenly crashes on the planet. What does it all mean, and will Jack be able to figure it all out before it's too late?

It's an intriguing story, even if it does feel derivative of other films that have come before it. There's just enough mystery to hold your interest, even if it is fairly easy to see the big twist coming. In fact, the movie is actually more entertaining before you know the answers to it all. The mystery is more rewarding than the solution. The ending is not only predictable it's also not that well filmed. It feels as though those final moments are being milked for tension when they should have happened much faster.

The two things that really makes this movie worth watching are Tom Cruise and the look of it all.

Cruise is like the Energizer Bunny. His career has taken some knocks, but he just keeps on going. Although his movie choices have been fairly safe ones of late, he still knows how to act. It's his very human portrayal of Jack that keeps you interested in seeing how this story will turn out. And whether or not he's had work done to keep his youthful appearance, he still makes a very believable action star.

Visually, the film is quite stunning. Much of it was filmed in Iceland and the scenery is breathtaking and looks very alien. Jack and Victoria live on a platform above the clouds that looks like an Apple Store that someone has converted into Penthouse apartment. Jack flies a ship with a bubble cockpit that also looks as if it may have been designed by Apple, as do the heavily armed drone robots. Jack's ship flips and flies, rotating every which way, allowing for several well staged battle scenes.

This isn't a perfect film, but it is a fairly entertaining one. It just needed that “Soylent Green is people!” or “They blew it up! God, damn you! Damn you all to hell!!!” moment for the ending. It tries for that effect, but never quite gets there.

Tom Cruise and Morgan Freeman in Oblivion .

I understand exactly what Scott is saying about the derivative nature of Oblivion , but as he also points out, it is done more in the spirit of a fond homage than merely being an opportunistic copycat. I applaud the fact that it isn't a remake, a reboot, or a sequel, which means that by today's big budget Hollywood standards it is, in fact, quite original.

And although it is visually arresting -I liked Scott's Apple Store analogy- it doesn't over rely on CGI.  It maintains a consistently intimate feel, even as it deals with the fate of the entire human race, thanks mostly to the fact that the cast is limited to only about half a dozen speaking parts. Tom Cruise appears in nearly every scene and gives one of his most engaging performances in years.

Oblivion doesn't borrow from just sci/fi movies of the late 60s and early 70s though. It also incorporates a new take on an old romantic twist dating all the way back to the original Love Affair in 1939; lovers meeting atop the Empire State Building (see photo in Scott's review). This turns out to be the least satisfying aspect of the plot, though I can't say specifically why without giving too much away.

Why is it that dystopian future movies are always set near the ruins of famous landmarks, which are somehow always half buried in the ground? And when Beech (Freeman) tells Jack that he will find the truth out in the restricted high-radiation area just beyond his normal patrol limits, it immediately brings to mind the scene in the original Planet of the Apes where Dr. Zaius tells Taylor that he won't like what he finds out in the Forbidden Zone. This is definitely a character Charlton Heston would have played.

So Oblivion is a hodgepodge of  various and sundry sci/fi tropes but it still manages to entertain. The central mystery is compelling enough and I enjoyed the way its various layers are revealed. Again agreeing with Scott, I found the ending to be slightly disappointing. The final revelation of all the facts seems anticlimactic and the dialogue is slightly schizophrenic too. Cruise goes from quoting the famous last stanza of the 19th Century poem Horatius to the most vulgar and common of expletives.

Despite its flaws, however, I quite enjoyed Oblivion . It is somehow comforting to see just how remarkably little Tom Cruise has changed since his Top Gun glory days. His youthful appearance is becoming almost Dorian Gray like. He remains a presence to be reckoned with on the silver screen and Oblivion is much better because he's in it.

Tom Cruise and Andrea Riseborough in Oblivion .

Although it may have some elements of those late 60s/early 70s science fiction films,  Oblivion plays by its own rules. Instead of that one big reveal moment that they seemed to all have, there is a series of revelations. Sure we can guess the mysteries as the film plays, but the fun is also in watching Jack Harper discover and react to them.

Right from the start we see that Jack has already been questioning the world around him. His relationship with Victoria is key in revealing his psyche. He ponders and dreams of the past while Victoria thinks only of their future. She acts like his wife/lover/care taker and co-worker, yet they have very different goals and out looks. Sally, who directs their work from the space station, asks the repetitive question, "Are you an effective team?" which Victoria always answers with a "Yes" even though we quickly see that Jack has very little genuine affection for her.

Although the woman from his dreams becomes the more important relationship in the story, the one Jack shares with Victoria is far more fascinating. She does several things in the film that are never explained. Jack tries several times to get her to open up and see things differently, yet she remains steadfast in her beliefs. One minute she seems in love with Jack and the next she betrays him.  Why she acts the way she does is one of the larger questions the film never answers.

I agree with my brothers. Tom Cruise easily looks ten years younger than his age. More than that though, he is a very competent actor. In Jack we find a man trying to see through some very thick fog. He knows in his heart that what is around him is not as clear as Victoria believes. He goes about his job of fixing the drones as a repetitive duty, while his mind is always thinking of other things. Cruise's performance allows us to see Jack as a man struggling to understand the world around him, thus making Jack very relatable as well as vulnerable.

Oblivion seems a little too cute at times with the famous landmarks that Patrick mentioned. How amazingly coincidental is the Empire State Building conveniently located? During a chase/dog fight in his ship, Jack flies over the broken torch once held by Lady Liberty, in a direct nod to The Planet of the Apes (1968).

Like most science fiction films, Oblivion does not answer all of our questions but it does have a fascinating, albeit unoriginal, setting and a hero worth rooting for. Add in a decent mystery and you have a very solid piece of film entertainment that will pull you in and keep you watching.

Photos © Copyright Universal Pictures (2013)

© 2000 - 2017 Three Movie Buffs. All Rights Reserved.

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Tom Cruise's Latest Headed For 'Oblivion'

David Edelstein

Joseph Kosinski's sci-fi adventure, starring Tom Cruise, is the most incoherent piece of storytelling since John Travolta's Battlefield Earth. It had critic David Edelstein crying, "What? What? " over the din of the explosions.

Copyright © 2013 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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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Product Description

Tom Cruise stars in Oblivion , an original and groundbreaking cinematic event from the visionary director of Tron: Legacy and producers of Rise of the Planet of the Apes . On a spectacular future Earth that has evolved beyond recognition, one man’s confrontation with the past will lead him on a journey of redemption and discovery as he battles to save mankind.

The contrast between stunning blue-hued technology and the moldering remnants of an Earth that has been decimated by environmental catastrophe and weapons of absolute destruction is kind of a neat parallel to the twisty story that makes Oblivion such a fun, albeit decidedly bleak Tom Cruise sci-fi crowd pleaser. Cruise is Jack Harper, a futuristic maverick who patrols the wasteland of our planet in 2077, 60 years after an alien invasion by the "scavs" left it a dying cinder. His girlfriend/partner Victoria (Andrea Riseborough) whispers directives in his ear from their iPad-like headquarters in the clouds, getting her orders from a video-only spectral overlord named Sally (Melissa Leo), who oozes not-quite-right with every politely southern-drawled command. Jack's job is to zip around repairing security drones and keep safe from scav attacks the enormous fusion converters that are sucking Earth's last ocean resources dry for the surviving humans who now populate Saturn's moon Titan. Very soon Jack and Victoria will be departing to the massive hovering mothership for their escape to Titan and a life of love and leisure. But something's not quite right in Jack's perception of things, in spite of the "security memory wipe" both he and Victoria live with. He can't shake persistent dreams of a thriving New York City, a place he experiences in reality only as crumbling canyons marked by the ground-level spire of the Empire State Building. There are other troubling signs as Jack whizzes through dangerous atmospheres and landscapes in a snazzy bubble-shaped spacecraft or rides a streamlined motorbike that's the perfect accessory for his sleek leather suit and ergonomic armaments. He thinks the scavs are trying to capture, not kill him, plus he's spending more and more secret time shooting hoops and listening to Led Zeppelin at a bucolic lakeside log cabin where Victoria can't track him. Oblivion takes its time with this absorbing mood-setting background of visually ravishing tableaux. At the halfway mark, it starts throwing around wild twists and turns after Jack investigates the crash landing of a spaceship from Earth's past. From it he rescues the woman of his dreams (Olga Kurylenko), which is the breaking point for his already almost-blown mind. The sinister vibe that has been a background rumble throughout quickly gains volume. An appearance by Morgan Freeman in cool-cat shades and a black cape gives the extra complexity some real class. It's a bit of a paradox that the script has such bold insights, yet is also so brashly derivative. The stylistic flourishes and elegant conceptual designs are singular in their vision, but there are direct references and plot cues taken from dozens of other movies, including WALL-E , The Matrix , 2001: A Space Odyssey , Planet of the Apes , Moon , and Total Recall . It's not too hard to see where the threads lead, but flying along as Oblivion ties them together is a trip of its very own. --Ted Fry

Product details

• Aspect Ratio ‏ : ‎ 2.40:1
• Is Discontinued By Manufacturer ‏ : ‎ No
• MPAA rating ‏ : ‎ PG-13 (Parents Strongly Cautioned)
• Product Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 0.7 x 7.5 x 5.4 inches; 2.47 ounces
• Item model number ‏ : ‎ 26920187
• Director ‏ : ‎ Joseph Kosinski
• Media Format ‏ : ‎ Color, NTSC, Multiple Formats, Widescreen
• Run time ‏ : ‎ 2 hours and 5 minutes
• Release date ‏ : ‎ August 6, 2013
• Actors ‏ : ‎ Tom Cruise, Morgan Freeman, Olga Kurylenko, Andrea Riseborough, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau
• Subtitles: ‏ : ‎ French, Spanish
• Producers ‏ : ‎ Joseph Kosinski, Peter Chernin, Dylan Clark, Barry Levine, Duncan Henderson
• Language ‏ : ‎ English (Dolby Digital 5.1), Spanish (Dolby Digital 5.1)
• Studio ‏ : ‎ Universal Pictures Home Entertainment
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B008JFUO36
• Writers ‏ : ‎ Karl Gajdusek, Michael DeBruyn
• Country of Origin ‏ : ‎ USA
• Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 1
• #151 in Science Fiction DVDs
• #885 in Action & Adventure DVDs

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Morgan Freeman Recreated the AMC Ad to Honor Nicole Kidman

Nicole Kidman was the recipient of the AFI Life Achievement Award on April 27, the highest honor given by the American Film Institute. So naturally, Kidman’s famous friends and collaborators, like Reese Witherspoon, Meryl Streep, Naomi Watts, and her husband Keith Urban, all lined up to honor her at the awards gala. Also amongst those showering Kidman in praise throughout the evening was Morgan Freeman , who recreated Kidman’s iconic AMC ad to celebrate the actress and her illustrious career in film, as seen in a clip shared by Deadline .

Freeman walked into an empty movie theater, just we all see Kidman do whenever we watch a film at AMC , but rather than speaking poetically about the joy of the movies — Freeman spoke more specifically about Nicole Kidman in movies. “Somehow she makes heartbreak feel good in a place like this,” he said, as the screen in the parody showed some of Kidman’s career highlights, like Moulin Rouge! and Eyes Wide Shut (a shot without Tom Cruise, of course). After the spoof played, Freeman took the stage to pay tribute to Kidman further, noting that Moulin Rouge! is one of his favorite films and singing a line from Elton John’s “Your Song” to the actress — because, like AMC, she makes movies better.

• Drag Queens of the World: Nicole Kidman Wants to Join You
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Morgan Freeman Spoofs Nicole Kidman’s AMC Theatres Ad as She Receives AFI Life Achievement Award

Morgan Freeman hilariously sends up Nicole Kidman in parody of her AMC Theatres ad before paying tribute and singing a line from Moulin Rouge.

• Morgan Freeman parodied Nicole Kidman's AMC Theatres ad before honoring her with the AFI Life Achievement Award.
• Freeman paid a heartfelt tribute to Kidman on stage, serenading her with a song from one of her best movies.
• Nicole Kidman's illustrious 40-year career has seen her star in numerous iconic films, earning her a well-deserved place among Hollywood's elite.

Morgan Freeman hilariously parodied Nicole Kidman ’s AMC Theatres ad before paying tribute to the actress as she received the AFI Life Achievement Award on Saturday. From one Oscar winner to another, Freeman appeared in a video spoof of Kidman’s viral ad , flipping the purpose to suit the occasion. In the video, Freeman is seen mirroring Kidman’s original entrance into a cinema, before taking his seat and watching in awe at the images on the big screen. However, rather than the latest blockbusters, Freeman was being treated to a montage of the actress’ greatest hits. Check out the video as shared by Deadline below.

Freeman then appeared on stage to pay a personal tribute to Kidman, and while speaking about the actress, he noted that he knows exactly what it is like to have the honor of sitting in the chair and receiving the “highest honor for a career in film.” He ended with a little serenade from one of Kidman’s best movies, which he cited as one of his favorites of all time.

“I’m here to say that I sat in that chair and I know exactly what’s going through your mind. You’re thinking the American Film Institute? The highest honor for a career in film? ME?? You’re also thinking that you can smile…f*cking-A. We’re here to prove it. Now let’s get started. Because Moulin Rouge is one of my favorite films of all-time. Let me end simply by saying (sings) ‘How wonderful life is, while you’re in the world.’”

Nicole Kidman’s Career Has Spanned 40 Years

As one of the most recognizable stars in Hollywood, Nicole Kidman has come a long way since her movie debut at the age of 16, in a remake of the Australian festive movie Bush Christmas . Appearing in many Australian TV and movie productions throughout the 1980s, the actress first came to the full attention of many when appearing in the 1989 thriller Dead Calm , in which she starred with Sam Neill and Billy Zane.

From here, the actress’ career soared with roles in Days of Thunder alongside her soon-to-be husband, Tom Cruise, who she met for the first time while working on the movie, Far and Away (also with Cruise), Malice , and as Dr. Chase Meridian in Batman Forever . She continued to work consistently throughout the 1990s before really hitting her stride in the 2000s . This led her to movies such as Baz Luhrman’s Moulin Rouge , horror movie The Others , and her Oscar-winning performance as Virginia Woolf in The Hours .

Nicole Kidman's 10 Best Movies, Ranked by Rotten Tomatoes

Kidman has continued to be a force in Hollywood, having released at least one movie every year since 2001 – and even before that, has only had three years in her entire career without a movie release. Following her role-reprisal as Queen Atlanna in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom , Kidman has several movies set for release soon. This includes a voice role in Skydance’s animated musical Spellbound , the rom-com A Family Affair , the thriller Holland, Michigan , and the A24-produced erotic thriller Babygirl , in which she appears with Antonio Banderas.

As a Hollywood icon, Kidman has consistently been a part of Hollywood’s elite for her entire career, and her most recent accolade from the American Film Institute is clearly well-earned, and one that is hard to deny is completely deserved.

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Morgan Freeman spoke the words, but pretty much everyone who took the stage at the presentation of the AFI Life Achievement Award agreed: " Nicole Kidman. She makes movies better."

Video above: Nicole Kidman 2023 Met Gala look

The line came in a video parody of Kidman's AMC Theatres "we make movies better" ad that opened the Saturday night ceremony at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. It got huge laughs from the crowd of multigenerational A-listers there to honor the 40-year career of the 56-year-old Australian that has included roles in "Moulin Rouge," "Eyes Wide Shut" and an Oscar-winning turn in "The Hours."

Meryl Streep, Kidman's "The Hours" co-star who presented to Streep the Life Achievement Award that she won herself in 2004, got laughs nearly as big when, in a mock-boastful voice, she described the hardest part of being "incessantly called the greatest actress of my generation."

It's when you come up against someone else who is "really, really, really, really, really, really great" and you realize they did things you couldn't do, as happened with Kidman the first day they worked together on the HBO series "Big Little Lies," Streep said.

Streep and their "Big Little Lies" co-star Reese Witherspoon both did spot-on, Australian-accented impressions of Kidman that had the audience in stitches.

Streep also drew tears from Kidman when describing what she believed motivated her.

"People call it bravery when an actress bares all and leaps off into the unknown and she dives deep into the darker parts of what it is to be a human being," Streep said. "But I don't think it's bravery. I think it's love. I think she just loves it."

Kidman teared up for the first time in the evening when her husband and fellow Australian, singer Keith Urban, said she showed him "what love in action really looks like" when his substance abuse problems emerged almost immediately after they wed in 2006.

"Four months into our marriage, I'm in rehab for three months," Urban said, looking at Kidman where she sat on a dais with their two daughters and other family. "Nic pushed through every negative voice, I'm sure even some of her own, and she chose love. And here we are 18 years later."

Kidman said the night was the first time she allowed their teenage daughters to join her on a red carpet. She also has two children with her first husband, Tom Cruise.

She accepted the AFI award in the same venue where she accepted her Oscar in 2003 for playing Virginia Woolf in "The Hours."

She thanked by name every director she has worked with, including Stanley Kubrick, Jane Campion, Baz Luhrmann, Sofia Coppola, Yorgos Lanthimos, Sydney Pollack and Lars von Trier.

"It is a privilege to make films. And glorious to have made films and television with these storytellers who allowed me to run wild and be free and play all of these unconventional women," Kidman said, wearing a floor-length, glittering-gold gown. "Thank you for making me better at my craft and giving me a place, however temporary, in this world."

It was announced back in November of 2022 that Kidman would receive the award, first handed out in 1973, whose previous winners include Orson Welles, Bette Davis, Alfred Hitchcock, Gene Kelly, Sidney Poitier, Barbara Streisand, Tom Hanks, Robert De Niro, Denzel Washington and Julie Andrews.

The ceremony originally was scheduled for June of 2023, but delayed because of Hollywood's strikes. It will air on TNT on June 17.

Kidman also was nominated for Academy Awards for "Moulin Rouge," "Rabbit Hole," "Lion," and "Being the Ricardos," whose director, Aaron Sorkin, also sang her praises at the ceremony.

Others honoring her included Zac Efron, Miles Teller, Zoe Saldana and Mike Myers, who came on stage in disguise in one of the eerie orgy masks from "Eyes Wide Shut."

Kidman began her career as a teen in Australia in films including "Bush Christmas" and "BMX Bandits." Naomi Watts, a friend from those days, described meeting Kidman when both had to sit in a waiting room in bathing suits for two hours at an audition. Aussies Russell Crowe, Hugh Jackman and Cate Blanchett all gave video tributes to the first from their country to win the award.

Kidman said in a video played at the ceremony that her appearance in the 1989 thriller "Dead Calm" brought her to the attention of, among others, Cruise, the only time his name was spoken Saturday night.

She had her breakthrough Hollywood role alongside him in 1990's "Days of Thunder" — they would marry the same year — and also starred together in 1992's "Far and Away" and in 1999 in Kubrick's final film, "Eyes Wide Shut."

She divorced Cruise in 2001, but her stardom only grew. Some of her biggest roles, and her Oscar, were still to come.

The role most often cited as a favorite during the awards show Saturday night was her musical turn in Luhrmann's 2001 "Moulin Rouge."

Freeman, the 2011 AFI honoree, in his in-person presentation that followed the video spoof, serenaded Kidman with the modified Elton John lines she sings in the film: "How wonderful life is, now you're in the world."

• by HItFix Staff

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Meryl streep says she was “traumatized” watching nicole kidman in ‘big little lies’ at afi life achievement gala.

Kidman received the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award in a star-studded tribute Saturday, featuring Streep, Reese Witherspoon and Morgan Freeman.

By Kirsten Chuba

Kirsten Chuba

Events Editor

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Nicole Kidman was honored with the 49th AFI Life Achievement Award on Saturday night, as an A-list group of her friends and collaborators looked back on her long Hollywood career.

Reese Witherspoon , Morgan Freeman, Naomi Watts, Zoe Saldaña, Aaron Sorkin, Zac Efron, Miles Teller, Joey King, Mike Myers and husband Keith Urban all took the Dolby Theatre stage throughout the event to pay tribute to Kidman. To close out the evening, Meryl Streep presented her with the award.

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“For me, the very, very hardest part of being incessantly called the greatest actress of my generation,” Streep teased as the audience roared, throwing her hand theatrically over her head, “What is the hardest part? Oh! The hardest part is when you come up against, or you’re acting with, another person who is also really, really, really, really, really, really great. That’s difficult.”

“It’s like somebody who you work all day with and you go home — ‘That was a great day, great day,’ and you go home and you go, ‘How did she do that?'” the star teased as she pretended to pour a drink. “‘I could do that.’ ‘No, I don’t think I could.’ ‘Yes you could!’ ‘No, no, you couldn’t do that,'” miming downing the drink.

Looking back on Big Little Lies , Streep recalled, “That’s the time when I really came within breathing distance of the formidable gifts Nicole has, and her process and her seismic bank of emotion she’s got locked up inside there and her stamina and her drive to be an artist and her discipline.”

She remembered when Kidman chose to shoot a very emotional screaming scene on the first day and do it over and over with equal passion. “I haven’t recovered from that first day, I’ve never seen anything like that in my life,” Streep added. “For me, it was traumatizing because I thought this woman is a Valkyrie. How is she able to sustain that? Never letting up, never letting down.”

In her speech, Kidman reflected on her journey to Hollywood stardom, which started in Australia and with her sleeping on friends’ floors and sofas while she tried to book jobs. She spoke about her love of actors and learning from them along the way, noting, “some of them you may never meet again and some of them you do meet again. Some of them you have incredible laughter and jokes with and you cry with; some of them you fall in love with, some of them you marry,” seemingly referencing ex-husband Tom Cruise.

Nicole Kidman arrives at her AFI Life Achievement Tribute in Los Angeles pic.twitter.com/bjIlYsYAMT — The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) April 28, 2024

Kidman celebrated the many directors she worked with, saying that filmmakers “take you in, they teach you, they take you under their wing and then they blow your mind. I have so many directors who were so good to me, and I’d like to thank them all,” before listing all of her previous directors and thanking them. She also expressed gratitude to “the audiences that have stuck by me through everything — I just want to say thank you because there’s so many little weird films I’ve done and I know there’s people out there that go and find them and watch them. You’ve stood by me and stuck up for my weird, weird choices and I’m so grateful for that.”

Urban’s portion of the program was particularly emotional, as he recounted getting her number at an event in 2005, and then four months into their marriage went to rehab for drug and alcohol addiction. “I had no idea what was going to happen to us, and if you want to see what love in action really looks like, give that a whirl,” the country star told the crowd. “Nic pushed through every negative voice, I’m sure even some of her own, and she chose love, and here we are today, 18 years later.”

Morgan Freeman spoofs Nicole Kidman’s AMC ad at her AFI Life Achievement Tribute pic.twitter.com/YERJHzTcCs — The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) April 28, 2024

Freeman also brought the laughs when he kicked things off with a spoof of Kidman’s famous AMC Theaters ad, where he sat in a theater and watched just her movies. On top of the star power in the room, Cate Blanchett, Hugh Jackman, Jimmy Fallon, Russell Crowe, Jane Campion, George Miller and Baz Luhrmann all appeared virtually to express their congrats to Kidman, who became the first Australian to receive the AFI honor.

The event raised over $2 million, with all proceeds from the AFI Life Achievement Award supporting the American Film Institute as a nonprofit organization. The tribute special will premiere on TNT on June 17 and on Turner Classic Movies on June 27.

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Nicole Kidman, who 'makes movies better,' gets AFI Life Achievement Award

• Published: Apr. 29, 2024, 7:18 a.m.

Honoree Nicole Kidman speaks from the stage during the 49th AFI Life Achievement Award tribute to her, Saturday, April 27, 2024, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello) Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP

• Associated Press

LOS ANGELES (AP) —  Morgan Freeman  spoke the words, but pretty much everyone who took the stage at the presentation of the AFI Life Achievement Award agreed: "  Nicole Kidman . She makes movies better.”

The line came in a video parody of Kidman’s AMC Theatres “we make movies better” ad that opened the Saturday night ceremony at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. It got huge laughs from the crowd of multigenerational A-listers there to honor the 40-year career of the 56-year-old Australian that has included roles in “Moulin Rouge,” “Eyes Wide Shut” and an Oscar-winning turn in “The Hours.”

Meryl Streep , Kidman’s “The Hours” co-star who presented to Streep the Life Achievement Award that she won herself in 2004, got laughs nearly as big when, in a mock-boastful voice, she described the hardest part of being “incessantly called the greatest actress of my generation.”

It’s when you come up against someone else who is “really, really, really, really, really, really great” and you realize they did things you couldn’t do, as happened with Kidman the first day they worked together on the HBO series “Big Little Lies,” Streep said.

Streep and their “Big Little Lies” co-star Reese Witherspoon both did spot-on, Australian-accented impressions of Kidman that had the audience in stitches.

Streep also drew tears from Kidman when describing what she believed motivated her.

“People call it bravery when an actress bares all and leaps off into the unknown and she dives deep into the darker parts of what it is to be a human being,” Streep said. “But I don’t think it’s bravery. I think it’s love. I think she just loves it.”

Kidman teared up for the first time in the evening when her husband and fellow Australian, singer Keith Urban, said she showed him “what love in action really looks like” when his substance abuse problems emerged almost immediately after they wed in 2006.

“Four months into our marriage, I’m in rehab for three months,” Urban said, looking at Kidman where she sat on a dais with their two daughters and other family. “Nic pushed through every negative voice, I’m sure even some of her own, and she chose love. And here we are 18 years later.”

Kidman said the night was the first time she allowed their teenage daughters to join her on a red carpet. She also has two children with her first husband, Tom Cruise.

She accepted the AFI award in the same venue where she accepted her Oscar in 2003 for playing Virginia Woolf in “The Hours.”

She thanked by name every director she has worked with, including Stanley Kubrick, Jane Campion, Baz Luhrmann, Sofia Coppola, Yorgos Lanthimos, Sydney Pollack and Lars von Trier.

“It is a privilege to make films. And glorious to have made films and television with these storytellers who allowed me to run wild and be free and play all of these unconventional women,” Kidman said, wearing a floor-length, glittering-gold gown. “Thank you for making me better at my craft and giving me a place, however temporary, in this world.”

It was announced back in November of 2022 that Kidman would receive the award, first handed out in 1973, whose previous winners include Orson Welles, Bette Davis, Alfred Hitchcock, Gene Kelly, Sidney Poitier, Barbara Streisand, Tom Hanks, Robert De Niro, Denzel Washington and Julie Andrews.

The ceremony originally was scheduled for June of 2023, but delayed because of  Hollywood’s strikes . It will air on TNT on June 17.

Kidman also was nominated for Academy Awards for “Moulin Rouge,” “Rabbit Hole,” “Lion,” and “Being the Ricardos,” whose director, Aaron Sorkin, also sang her praises at the ceremony.

Others honoring her included Zac Efron, Miles Teller, Zoe Saldana and Mike Myers, who came on stage in disguise in one of the eerie orgy masks from “Eyes Wide Shut.”

Kidman began her career as a teen in Australia in films including “Bush Christmas” and “BMX Bandits.” Naomi Watts, a friend from those days, described meeting Kidman when both had to sit in a waiting room in bathing suits for two hours at an audition. Aussies Russell Crowe, Hugh Jackman and Cate Blanchett all gave video tributes to the first from their country to win the award.

Kidman said in a video played at the ceremony that her appearance in the 1989 thriller “Dead Calm” brought her to the attention of, among others, Cruise, the only time his name was spoken Saturday night.

She had her breakthrough Hollywood role alongside him in 1990′s “Days of Thunder” — they would marry the same year — and also starred together in 1992′s “Far and Away” and in 1999 in Kubrick’s final film, “Eyes Wide Shut.”

She divorced Cruise in 2001, but her stardom only grew. Some of her biggest roles, and her Oscar, were still to come.

The role most often cited as a favorite during the awards show Saturday night was her musical turn in Luhrmann’s 2001 “Moulin Rouge.”

Freeman, the 2011 AFI honoree, in his in-person presentation that followed the video spoof, serenaded Kidman with the modified Elton John lines she sings in the film: “How wonderful life is, now you’re in the world.”

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Tom Cruise produced a movie in Eugene during the summer of 1996 about Steve Prefontaine

In 1996 a film crew descended on Eugene to make a movie about Steve Prefontaine.

The film followed the relationship between record-breaking distance runner Steve Prefontaine and his coach Bill Bowerman.

Prefontaine was a star athlete from Coos Bay who ran for the University of Oregon and later competed in the Olympics in the 1970s.

He died in an automobile accident in Eugene on May 30, 1975, at the age of 24.

The film was written and directed by Robert Towne and produced by Tom Cruise.

Hundreds of locals appear as extras in the film at locations around Oregon, Lane Community College and Hayward Field.

The $25 million movie was released and distributed by Warner Bros. in 1998.

Cruise himself visited Eugene in 1998 for a screening of the film at the McDonald Theater.

The movie was well-received by critics but ended up grossing only $777,000 at the box office.

Contact photographer Chris Pietsch at [email protected] , or follow him on Twitter @ChrisPietsch and Instagram @chrispietsch