People like to see Tom Cruise flying things. Clearly, that’s why Oblivion made $38.2 million this weekend (and hit $112 million internationally in its second week of release) while Jack Reacher stalled out at the box office over Christmas.

I’m still not sure if Oblivion‘s shameless derivativity is more annoying than Jack Reacher‘s insistence that Tom Cruise can pass for Steven Seagal in the right light, but certainly the sci-fi trappings didn’t hurt the movie’s prospects. I just wonder whether Oblivion will be able to sustain a second weekend; in an ideal world, word of mouth would have killed it stone dead by Saturday morning.

Guess we’ll find out, huh?