Tron: Legacy

20 years ago, ENCOM founder and computing wizard Kevin Flynn disappeared. His son Sam, heir apparent to ENCOM, is more interested in playing pranks on the board than managing the company. One day, he gets a tip off that his father may not be gone forever, and discovered something strange in the old arcade...

Tron Legacy was well received. We watched it in 3D, which I can’t say I noticed too much but on the other hand it wasn’t a bad thing. The glasses this time round were less cumbersome and didn’t want to reshape my nose so much. The best thing, as anyone who has seen the trailers will guess, is the visual element, which is sleek and shiny and glowy and sexy. This, as far as I’m concerned, is box ticked and movie on the ‘good’ pile. The plot, characters and other supporting film elements are all perfectly acceptable. The story, if you are so bothersome as to ask, is ‘blah blah blah GOES INTO AN AWESOME WORLD OMG (something about saving his dad and winning the girl and an evil-twin dad blah).

Seriously, you do not need to know anything except that this is awesome.

My favourite scene I think is when they go to a club owned by a man who is the lovechild of Alex from A Clockwork Orange and David Bowie, because his character is just so cheesy and charismatic (think Austin Powers but good-looking). I know I’m not doing this review much justice but Jim is the one who actually knows anything about the original Tron story so I am confidently leaving him to the serious analysis.

4/5

For a man whose favourite phrase when describing films with heavy special effects (like Hellboy II) is 'all icing and no cake', one might expect me to lean back and scoff snobbishly at Tron: Legacy.

However I think in this film its a case of 'all icing, just enough cake'. The cake consists of the goody characters; Flynn Junior, Quorra Kick-Ass and Terry Gilliam (actually Jeff Bridges although the two look so similar now I swear one day they will coalesce into a single entity) who are all thoroughly likeable and good to look at, in different ways of course and the story, which is enjoyable nonsense, and the sweet father-son sub-plot.

The icing is simply some of the most gorgeous costume, set and effects design in all of cinema history, nostalgic yet still futuristic, every skin-tight costume, glowing machine and ultra-cool cyberpunk background character guaranteed to make techo-fetishests like me drool. Plus we saw it in 3D and it was...well, it was fine. The only down side was watching trailers for awful upcoming 3D digimations, and I won't blame Tron for that.

Most of the old stuff was there, although I was deeply sad that 'The Bit', the flying eletro-puppy which spoke in binary ('Yes' and 'No'), only appeared as an ornament in Jeff Bridge's Ikea-decorated Zen apartment.

So, Bit, are you in the film?

Oh...well, that's a bit rubbish...

There were really only two gripes I had about the film...number one: the ISOs. In case you haven't seen the film (shame on you) these were artificial life forms which spontaneously sprung out of Flynn's virtual grid world. Apparently they held the key to absolutely everything, but were then made nearly extinct by Jeff Bridge's fascist alter ego Clu. They were also one of those sci-fi MacGuffins that is built up/explained just enough to make you ask questions but is too vague to actually answer them. HOW exactly were they the key? And what was Flynn planning to do with them? Harvest their organs and sell them? Nobody knows, and it is this central problem that leads most of Tron Legacy to not make an awful lot of sense. Just like the Matrix, I was niggled by the question of whether average workaday programs are sentient and if so, how this works and how they are different from the messianic ISOs.

Okay, so that was one. Two: I'm pretty goddamn sure Kevin Flynn was NOT a big hippy in the original Tron, and I am definitely going to watch it again so as to be sure. Jeff Bridges, as a friend of mine pointed out, gets a LOT of mileage from acting the big damn hippy, and he is charming in that mode, but it just doesn't fit. As far as I recalled Kevin Flynn was a cynical, sharp witted, jerk-with-a-heart-of-gold whose brilliance had given him a demeanour of swaggering arrogance. Sure, he has given up his fighting ways, but character continuity is important.

Anyway, my advice is this: watch Tron: Legacy, try not to think too much and bring a handkerchief for all that techno-drool.

4/5