ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

For all its faults, the original movie had a very straightforward plot: the Master Control Program (MCP) wanted to rule over the cyber world, and David Warner had the same ambitions in the real world.

This movie goes plum nuts with a complex plot and a trainload of cyberspace characters with ridiculous names. I've seen the movie and I've read the Wikipedia summary of the plot. And yet I still don't know what it's about -- except that an evil computer program wants to take over the real world.

Oh my goodness. Somebody actually thought that was a good idea. (Well, maybe I should watch it again before saying things like that.)

It made a ton of money (budget of $170 million and a box office take of $400 million), so lots of folks liked it better than I did.

For years the Disney people have been diddling around with ideas for a sequel, even stating they planned a trilogy of sequels, but the whole thing seems to have stalled out, and Wikipedia states that the deal fell through because "Tomorrowland" didn't do as well as expected.

Wow, the inner workings of Hollywood are more complex than the cyber world of "Tron"!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Pow]

Both movies are a visual splendor to behold.

The plots stink on ice.

[alltare]

Even after all these years, I still don't know much about Tron Legacy, mainly because I can't stay awake through the entire movie.

[Pow]

The original Tron movie plot was pedestrian.
Tron Legacy convoluted.

The next film requires a plot that is clever in its inception without being bogged down by a confusing & overly complex story line.

The visuals on both films are stunning to behold.

[Maurice]

I wrote this review on my old blog back when I saw a preview screening at the Stag Theater at Skywalker Ranch, which was attended by the director Joseph Kosinski, who did a Q&A afterwards.

Original review here:
https://mmolyneaux.wordpress.com/2010/12/20/the-legacy-of-tron/

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the legacy of tron



Is this the computer world or Darth Vader's Apple Store?

TRON: LEGACY is title of the sequel to 1982's Tron, and in a way the title is apt, because the new film has so much in common with the original, being a flashy and visually striking film with a number of exciting action sequences that ultimately ends up being about nothing much at all.

Where Legacy succeeds is visually. The world inside the computer is stark, simple, and often stunning: if a tad too black. The 3D is used well, switching on only when we enter the digital realm, and generally avoiding the 3D film cliches: the dimensionality is played behind the screen, rarely poking out in front of it. The action scenes are generally well-done and exhilarating.

If the film were a story told in pictures this would be fine. If it were showing us stuff we've never seen before or so graphically interesting that story didn't matter it would also succeed. Heck if, it was really fun it'd be great. But it's none of those things, and as such must rely on primarily on story and character.

But the problem with the story is that there isn't much of one. Sam Flynn is sucked into the computer world and forced to play games by a sapient program named Clu, who was created by and is the spitting image and creation of Sam's long-lost father, Kevin Flynn. A program named Quorra spirits Sam from the "Game Grid" and takes him to meet his real dad, who's been trapped in the computer for decades. There's a limited amount of time in which to escape, and the race is on to get to the "portal" that will let Sam and his father out. Of course, the baddie Clu wants information dear old dad has that will let him invade the real world. Sam must escape, dad must stop Clu, and Quorra is the love interest.so you know what her function is. That's pretty much it. Oh, there's some mumbo jumbo about life forms generated spontaneously in the computer and about changing the world and about the corporation that Sam Flynn is ignoring even though he owns a majority holding, but as none of those amount to a hill of bits they're not worth discussing.

The second problem is with the characters. Sam Flynn is just another generic bad-boy good guy. He's daring, smart, sexy, the hero, with nothing much of interest to say and about as much charisma as a computer program. His dad, Kevin (Jeff Bridges) seems like a high-tech version of "The Dude" (from The Big Lebowski), and speaks most in platitudes. Quorra a is just a wide-eyed neophyte who's a badass fighter, albeit she has a few mildly endearing moments. Clu is just evil with a capital EEEEEV.


Hoodies...of the digital world!

The poor story and underdeveloped characters result in the entire film being little more than a flashy 3D chase movie with about as much dimension as a computer screen (despite its being filmed in 3D).

Neophyte feature director Joseph Kosinski's insistence on real sets and self-lit costumes seems queerly at odds with the film's subject matter. If ever a film should revel in its artificiality, a Tron film should be it. Instead, by insisting on real/functional costumes and real sets where possible, the film's design and look becomes shackled to practical concerns. The costumes look like clothing, complete with wrinkles. Skin looks like skin. Makeup looks like makeup. As such, the world ends up looking like a bunch of fancy nightclubs and Apple Stores populated by clubbers in form fitting vinyl with glowy appliques. Even when there are visual effects generated backgrounds and settings the film frequently fails to stylize the environment. Mist and cloud look like just that. It does not compute.

As technically awkward as the original Tron looks in hindsight, its world generally looks more alien and unworldly than most of Legacy. The film escapes these limitations occasionally, as the Game Grid with its disk games set in floating glass boxes and lightcycle battles on a multi-leveled glass arena with curving ramps are wonderfully unreal. There's some real excitement to these sequences, but they're neither so dazzling nor numerous enough to carry the film.

Surprisingly, given the ubiquity of digital technology today, the film is incredibly naive or flat out ignorant about computers. For instance, Kevin Flynn says that Clu can only repurpose (brainwash) programs but not create them, which is completely at odds with the electronic world we all know where viruses make copies of themselves into new systems and where every copy is a perfect reproduction with no loss in quality.


Does this look like the digital realm to you?

And that's what's particularly sad about Legacy: not only is the story trite, but it's really got nothing to do with computers and the digital realm that's part and parcel of our modern age. We live in a world where our lives are increasingly spent interacting with computers and where even our friends and friendships are conducted in a large part digitally. Our relationship status, interests, medical information, and legal misbehavior are all in that computer world, and there's plenty of opportunity to make a story about the conflict between the "real world" you and the digital ones. But Legacy doesn't talk about any of that. South Park's episode "You Have 0 Friends" has a hundred times more to say about our relationship to computers than Tron: Legacy. It's too bad the filmmakers chose the easy path of flash minus substance when they could just as easily have opted to have all that sound and fury signify something.

So, In the end, Tron: Legacy is just a roller-coaster ride through a cool looking world absent anything really to say about computers and how they effect the human condition. In that way, it's just like the orginal Tron, which is why "legacy" is the perfect summation of Trons past and present.

END OF LINE
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"The absence of limitations is the enemy of art."
― Orson Welles

[Bud Brewster]

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Bless my soul, Maurice! I read your superb review five years ago, but I didn't reply right away because I wanted to take my time and do your post justice.

Unfortunately I got lost in the cyber-world All Sci-Fi and my brain came down with a nasty of case of "corrupted database" which made me forget about the post!

Geez, don't you just hate it when that happens?

Anyway, this modest little board is starving for more quality reviews like yours, so I hope you have a few more in your memory banks that you could share us.

I promise not to let half-a-decade go by again before giving you what you richly deserved; praise and adoration!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Maurice]

[Bud Brewster]

[tmlindsey]

Still haven't seen this one. Is it worth even a look?

I liked the original well enough, but it was more about taking in and appreciating the (then) cutting edge CGI visuals than having to focus on a complex plot as well.

Since CGI is EVERYWHERE now, I imagine the makers of the sequel realized that CGI is so unremarkable now that they had to try to get audiences into the story. It sounds like they didn't succeed.

I think the main reason for this movie's success is more to do with nostalgia viewing than the movie actually being good. Tron managed to gain a cult audience with the kids of the 80s & 90s and they seem ravenously hungry for anything that digs up the things from their childhoods; whether good or bad in its execution.
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"Have you never wondered what it would be like to walk between the ticks and tocks of Time?"

[Bud Brewster]

[Maurice]

[tmlindsey]

[Bud Brewster]

[Maurice]

[tmlindsey]

Aaaaaaand they just announced filming will start on another sequel: https://collider.com/tron-3-ares-filming/
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"Have you never wondered what it would be like to walk between the ticks and tocks of Time?"