Watch Tom Cruise’s life as a ‘futuristic blue-collar guy’ in new ‘Oblivion’ featurette

Late last year, we saw the first trailer for Oblivion, a post-apocalyptic thriller set against a vast and desolate landscape. While we already knew the project — from Tron: Legacy director Joseph Kosinski — would involve Tom Cruise as a drone repairman on a world devastated by alien attack, a new three-minute featurette explains a bit more of his life and motivations as a “futuristic blue-collar guy” taking care of Earth.

As we saw in the first trailer, the film seems both twisty and formulaic, from protagonist Jack Harper’s love of discarded present-day artifacts to a smoking, bespectacled Morgan Freeman as possibly either a villain or a Morpheus-like bringer of truth. Once you remember that Kosinski also directed the somber “Mad World” trailer for Gears of War, it’s also easy to draw comparisons with its blend of elegiac meditation and photogenic warfare.

If Oblivion plays out well, we’ll get a beautiful, high-budget setting for classic sci-fi tropes, as well as hints of modern classics like Moon. Otherwise, it will be simply one of several apocalyptic blockbusters that will grace the screen this spring and summer: it’s set for release on April 19th, not long before M. Night Shyamalan’s After Earth.