- Directed by Joseph Kosinski
- November 30, 2010 (Tokyo) / December 17, 2010 (US)
- Based on characters created by Steven Lisberger and Bonnie MacBird
The son of a missing computer programmer goes looking for his father and ends up inside a computerized world where he must stop a digital creation from escaping into ours.
Tron: Legacy is a movie that continues to get better with age for me. I took a brief look at what I first wrote about it for this blog and I think I was perhaps a bit too harsh and nitpicky. I can tell my experience this time was much more positive than the last. Occasionally movies may be okay when first seen/released but age well over time. Not among the greats for me, Tron: Legacy was much better now than the first time.
I still hold to the view that Garrett Hedlund was not a good casting choice to play the son of Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges). Bridges looked more like a geek than Hedlund-as-Sam ever could. He is too much of the extreme sports type as demonstrated by jumping off ENCOM Tower which in a later scene Kevin seems surprised/impressed existed even though he worked there in Tron. The final scene of that film is Kevin, Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner), and Lora Baines (Cindy Morgan) walking off the helipad there together.
The geeks and the nerds that could identify with Flynn and embraced the concepts in the first film could not identify easily identify with Sam in the second. He was and still is the near mythical sexy nerd. Much like bigfoot, most never actually encounter one while Hollywood pushes them still like they are everyday things. He may be into parachuting off buildings but is capable of various bits of hacking and technological sabotage,
The Grid we see here is some of what we saw in Tron but leans much more into the videogame aesthetic of the day this was released allowing a connection to gamers. It is slick and glossy with a cyberpunk style and regular doses of rain.
I cannot say I approve now of the relegation of the title character to minor character status. It is revealed the original Tron (Bruce Boxleitner), a creation of Alan Bradley, is lurking off to the side and not truly identified until needed to the conclusion. Boxleitner was not then in his early 80s shape but they used a body double so why not do the same more often. The first word of the title is his name but the legacy not so much.
Daft Punk was a fantastic choice for the music with their cameo being cute too. It works on the same level as the original music by Wendy Carlos did. It elevates the fantasy and almost surreal nature of a world next to our own consisting of anthropomorphic representations of computer programs. What they wrote was, well, videogame music.
The start of it all is Sam taking a look at the first signs of life from his dad in decades. Even though Alan gets the message and wants answers too, it is Sam that acts. You got a book club meeting you can’t miss Alan? We discover that Kevin, to solve a major issue, has been doing the laziest thing possible: wait and hoping everything works itself out. He is trapped now which forces me to ask why did he never create some way to get out if the window closed? He was such a visionary (he envisioned wi-fi), yet it never occurred to him he might somehow get delayed and stuck? Worse for a bit of Legacy he wants his son to do the same. Not sure if that makes sense for any worthwhile father to expect.
Maybe it was accidental or maybe it was on purpose but Kevin doing nothing is not all that different from what Sam is doing when it comes to ENCOM. Both think they are accomplishing a goal, but neither is really doing anything. They are just slowing up the inevitable. The villain will still find a way since it has unlimited time and ENCOM will continue to soil Flynn’s legacy though at a slower rate.
Kevin created a CLU (Codified Likeness Utility) for this Grid in order to help make it the perfect system. In true science-fiction fashion he fails to give it clear directives, making CLU the villain of the story who having brought order to this system seeks to do so for the world with Flynn and the info on his identity disc being the way to become real.
CLU plans to spread his goals to reality because that is what he does. So the genius Flynn never gave him parameters to follow? It’s an interesting plan by CLU and he’s put thought into it by building an army but at no point did he go after Flynn. He’s able to find him because we see a scene where he goes into the Flynn’s hideout, so why didn’t he look for him before as part of his preparation? This all happened in a system unconnected to the world at large so where did all the other programs come? Legacy occurs in a computer in Flynn’s old arcade and appeared largely if not entirely unconnected to the rest of the world. CLU wiped out all the isomorphic algorithms because of their ‘imperfection’ so there should not have been many other programs to repurpose.
A whole buncha CGI was used to put old Jeff Bridges’ face on a different body (that of John Reardon) and make it look young. Perhaps one of the finest moments of unintended horror in a Disney production ever. The emptiness of the eyes is disturbing. Bridges is fully capable of playing genuinely threatening baddies, but the CGI certainly hurt his work here. CLU lacked the grand nature of Obidiah Stane.
There’s a combination of CGI and practical sets combined to create a grandiose, truly alien world that’s sterile yet beautiful. We get plenty of recognizable, if not updated elements. From the portal to the Recognizers to even a few references to the light sail ship though not in a way that overwhelms you and takes from the moment.
As with many movies, there’s a love interest though she is more like casual acquaintance. Quorra (Olivia Wilde) has an inexperienced, almost child like naivete which makes any interactions perhaps…questionable. They are certainly a couple by the end but maybe keep it all very new and at the beginning until a direct sequel where she can have matured. Friendship can be as strong of a motivator coupled with his father’s desire to keep her safe which connects as well to getting her into reality.
Sam’s need to reconnect with his father and his father eventually regretting his choices that put his desires and dreams ever being there for his son are strong in Tron: Legacy. Kevin spent his time looking for something better and missed that he had something great all along. An understandable human element. It adds a little meat to the story rather than good versus evil with cool stuff.
Overall Tron: Legacy is a good continuation of the universe that began in Tron. Due to a lack of the title character’s involvement or centrality to the story it probably should have been given a different title but that is a minor quibble. Nothing truly disappointing and just an enjoyable movie.
Warren Watched A Movie 