The early 2010s weren’t good for neither Tom Cruise nor Joseph Kosinski. Cruise’s Day & Knight and both Jack Reacher flicks failed to catch momentum, and Kosinski’s visually impressive Tron Legacy was a box office disappointment (like all Tron movies, so maybe it’s a curse?)

When I read that both Cruise and Kosinski would make a film together with music by M83, I was enthralled. Kosinski has a great eye for visuals and once I saw this in Cineworld in Sheffield, I was hooked.

A perfect marriage of sound and vision, Oblivion wasn’t what I expected and I loved it for it. Even if the movie did so-so on the box office, it was memorable and I haven’t met a person who has seen it and couldn’t remember at least a couple of things from the movie. Personally, I think once Tom Cruise decides to play a vulnerable, fallible character, he can do wonders. I guess that’s why Kosinski did it again with Top Gun: Maverick to tremendous box office.

My dad was a big sci fi buff and once he saw it (after I bought him for Christmas), he insisted on watching it again and again. Just like Elysium, it was the kinda of eerie old school science fiction he liked: slightly militaristic, hopeful, and not too worried about killing off the protagonist.

After my dad passed, I started reading all the sci fi books he collected. I haven’t finished, but every time I watch Oblivion or Elysium, I think of him. Every time I read Heinlein, I get why he liked him so much. Every rewatch of Tenet makes me sad, as he was super excited to see it.

And every time I listen to Starwaves, I get a small tear thinking about the good times with my dad. The memory of the sun washing over his face while he drove me to the beach when I was a kid is now ingrained to this song. How he was patient enough to walk with me and find a place to fly a kite. How he messed up his fingers picking the kite away from two thorny trees on a deserted Altamira beach, and how he found a fossilised piece of wood and gave it to me as a present.

A song for a movie dealing with loss helped me deal with my own loss.

-Sam J. Valdés López