Tron: Legacy

Tron: Legacy

I was excited about the new Tron movie. I enjoyed the original. It was silly, cheesy and ridiculous, but was kind of fun. With modern special effects and a strong cast and crew, the sequel Tron: Legacy seemed like a winner.

The hero of the original film, computer genius Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) vanishes without a trace, abandoning his company, his partner Alan (Bruce Boxleitner) and his son Sam. Twenty years later, the adult Sam (Garrett Hedlund) goes in search of his father and ends up getting sucked into The Grid, the computer world where programs compete in gladiatorial games. He finds The Grid to be far from paradise - it's a virtual police state ruled viciously by Flynn's avatar CLU (an all CGI 40-year old Jeff Bridges). But there is a resistance, led by the real Flynn, now in his 60s, and his young protege, Quorra (Olivia Wilde).

I wanted to like this movie; I really did. And there is some cool stuff going on in here. The world, with its neon blue and red lights, is beautiful. The gladiatorial games, including the LightBike chases and the Killer Frisbee Game, are just as entertaining as they were in the original film. Jeff Bridges shows that he is just incapable of giving a bad performance at this stage in his career, Garrett Hedlund gets the job done as the romantic hero, and Olivia Wilde is simply a stunner in her costume.

The positives end there. This movie is mostly lame from beginning to end. The story ultimately makes little sense. I understand there has to be suspension of disbelief, but there were too many moments where I thought, "why the hell did that happen?" The CGI Jeff Bridges is really just creepy looking and makes me feel like I'm watching a bad video game. Michael Sheen possibly turns in a career worst performance as the over-the-top and fey owner of a night club (which is a shame because I really like Michael Sheen) (and why are computer programs going to a night club, anyway!?!). Want some more badness? SPOILER: Considering the name of the movie is Tron, the character of Tron himself is totally abused and shat upon in his film, especially considering the bizarre ending of the character, changing teams out of nowhere by simply yelling, "I fight for the users!!!!!" to himself and then promptly and anti-climactically getting killed off. This is a moment of such profound poor writing and direction. It literally makes no sense.

Sigh. This could have been a great movie. And a lot of people like it - it got over 7 out of 10 at imdb, which is a pretty good user rating. But I thought it was a bit of a turd. I'd advise you to save your money and just go back and watch the original again.  

MVP: Jeff Bridges. His Flynn character is still fun to watch, a sort of genius version of The Dude. He wants to be meditative, authoritative, and zen-ful, sort of like Obi-wan Kenobi, but his zen-ness keeps getting overridden by his very Flynn-ness. There are a lot of "dudes" and "mans" in his dialogue, and I thought Bridges did a admirable job of making these two contradictory elements consistent.

BEST LINE: Kevin Flynn: "You're messing with my zen thing, man!"

TRIVIA: The two DJ's performing at the night club are played by Daft Punk, who also wrote the original score for the movie.