It’s hard to blame Tom Cruise, now aged 50, for clinging to the kind of high-concept, spectacle-heavy, sci-fi action films he’s made his career on. Between his limited thesping skills, increasingly unhinged private life, and refusal to hang up his leading-man aviators, the middle-aged star is facing fewer and fewer ways to stay on the A-list. After three decades in the biz, though, you’d think that Cruise, who stars in and produced Oblivion, would know how to spot an obvious turkey by now.

Oblivion takes place on a whitish-gray, post-apocalyptic Earth with two inhabitants, pilot/drone repairman Jack (Cruise) and his ground controller/wife Victoria (Andrea Riseborough, W.E). Decades ago, Earth was destroyed during a war against extraterrestrial invaders called Scavengers, a catastrophic event that left the planet under human control but inhospitable to life. The human survivors settled on a moon off Saturn and have been converting the remaining water left on Earth into energy.

Jack and Victoria’s mission is to oversee the drones that perform energy extraction. They know their memories have been wiped to make them an effective team, but they seem surprisingly fine with that. They live in a glass house in the sky (because hey, it’s the future), but Jack keeps a secret lake-side cottage where he goes to try on baseball caps, read old books, and talk to his belongings – traits that are supposed to prove his likability, but just remind you of your not-totally-there grampa.

Two weeks before the end of the mission, a space capsule crashes near Jack during patrol, and its lone survivor turns out to be the beautiful, not-at-all age-appropriate woman Jack always sees in his dreams. Her name is Julia (Olga Kurylenko, Skyfall) and she claims she’s his wife, leading to an awkward Three’s Company scenario with Victoria.

The rest of the film is structured as a series of reveals: who Jack and Julia used to be, how Julia ended up on Earth, where the Scavengers come from, and what’s really on the Saturnine moon. Two, maybe three, of the reveals are genuinely surprising and presented in visually imaginative ways. One even complicates the romance between Jack and Julia in a way that seriously threatens their relationship.

But audiences can only be expected to care about character- and universe-subverting twists when we have a firm grasp of their specificities and an emotional investment in them. Sadly, neither the script nor the stars – all of whom act as if they were in completely different movies – provide any reason to care about any of the characters. And it doesn’t help that the film’s mysteries unravel so slowly that the film is three-fourths over by the time Act One breaks, nor that the plot developments are, on the whole, so by-the-numbers it’s impossible not to dwell on the crater-sized plot holes and the countless cribbings from much better movies like Total Recall, Planet of the Apes, and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Ultimately, Oblivion is aptly named – no other movie so far this year has been so instantly forgettable. For those who need their fix of movies about ravaged dystopias, they should wait a few months for the can’t-be-any-worse-but-could-definitely-be-better Elysium, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, After Earth, or World War Z. (It’s nice to see Hollywood’s so hopeful about the future.)

See it now, see it later, or run in the other direction? See it later, ideally when you’re bedridden with the flu and the syrupy slowness of the plot will lull you into sweet dreams of Olga Kurylenko.

Tom Cruise stars as a drone repairman who lives in orbit with his wife. By day, he helps clean up the surface of a dead Earth and eliminate the alien beasts that still inhabit it. His life is shaken up when he begins to experience visions of a woman he’s never met, and is pulled into a conspiracy when that mystery woman arrives on Earth via escape pod.

It looks like it combines elements from several existing science fiction films. Except Battlefield Earth. Scientology learned their lesson with that one.

The film offers a soldier in battle, repeatedly living out the day of his death, and over time becoming, a better soldier. Doug Liman, who directed the first two Bournes (and Swingers!), will be directing the project. It’s anticipated that filming will start in fall of next year.

Aside from his weird turn in next summer‘s Rock of Ages, it seems that Tom Cruise has been pursuing more action-oriented fare recently, filming One Shot where he will play serial badass Jack Reacher, and signing on for Joseph Kasinski’s sci-fi film Oblivion.

That’s why they call it “acting,” I guess.

4 photosGina Carano Just Beating The Hell Out Of People In 'Haywire'

Fortunately, Relativity aren’t quite so witholding with their films, so we have been granted a January 20, 2012 release date for Steven Soderbergh‘s Haywire, starring MMA star Gina Carano.

There really aren’t enough hours in the day, ya know?

Cruise will play a soldier in this post-apocalyptic world where the Earth’s surface becomes toxic, forcing humans to live in the sky. The soldier is stuck on the planet, repairing robots and shooting stuff, until along comes a beautiful girl to change his outlook on everything. So… WALL-E? A live action version of WALL-E? I could be down, if Jeff Garlin at least makes a cameo. (Deadline)

Update: The title has been changed to Horizons, apparently.

The deal only got sweeter, as Kosinski had managed to land Tom Cruise in early talks for a starring role in. With Cruise’s name added to the “pros” column, Universal only has one thing left to ask of Kosinski – get the budget down to $100 million. Considering Cruise’s fee could take a quarter of that amount all by itself, don’t be surprised to see Tom get involved in a production role in order to get some of that sweet, sweet back end.

This new arrangement could be a blessing for all involved. Kosinski gets more control, Disney doesn’t have to worry about sullying their image, and Cruise gets yet another opportunity to demonstrate to the public that he isn’t a lunatic. Win-win-win. (Deadline)

Regardless of what it should be called, Disney doesn’t want to do it. Why they don’t want to do it remains a bit of a mystery, as the project had undergone a draft by The Departed screenwriter William Monahan and was considered a high priority by Disney the last they spoke of it to the trades. Since the project was tracking well, it’s a safe bet that external pressures or a noteworthy substitute are waiting in the wings to fill the void left by this project.

As for Oblivion, Kosinski is free to shop it around where he would like at this point, so don’t be surprised to find a number of studios clamoring to get after this project. Unless Disney is keeping quiet about some shortcoming of the project, which rarely happens. The “keeping quiet” part, not the shortcomings. (Variety)

The plot of the sci-fi action flick follows a soldier hired to patrol a deserted planet who comes across a mysterious visitor. So it’s like that “pop-in” episode of “Seinfeld” with the much-needed addition of laser guns. (THR)