Trailer: A look at Oblivion and Drone repairman Jack Harper

Trailer: A look at Oblivion and Drone repairman Jack Harper

The Oblivion trailer shows us Jack Harper, played by Tom Cruise, who looks back at his best, falling into some trouble sixty years after Aliens attacked earth. "We won the war," narrates Cruise in the trailer, "but they destroyed half the planet."

Intriguing, huh? Cruise plays a drone repairman called Jack Harper, which is one of the most typical film protagonist names. Joseph Kosinski - director of the film, who's credits include Tron: Legacy - has spoken to MTV about the story of the movie. 

"I started writing this small character-driven science fiction story that was in the vein of those science fiction films of the 1970s that involved this lone survivor among the ruins of civilization, like 'Mega Man' or 'Silent Running' -- it was kind of in that vein," he explained. "I thought if it was going to be my first movie it would have to be something very small and contained in order to even get a chance at pulling it off. So it's the story of a drone repair man, Jack Harper, who is one of the last human beings left on earth after a massive war, which was the result of an alien invasion. Even though humankind won the war, Earth was left in such a state that we had to look for another place to settle, and Jack is left behind to monitor and secure the resource gathering operation that's happening where we're gathering the last bit of energy out of the earth's seawater in order to move onto the next step."

Oblivion hits American and British cinemas on the April 12th, 2013.