It’s unfortunate that TRON: Legacy is not an ambitious failure. Trying so hard to achieve something and having it slip through your fingers is understandable—even respectable. In 1982, TRON was on the cutting edge, not just in movie-making, but in thinking about how computers and humans interacted, and also for how the former created metaphors for the latter. Twenty-eight years have gone by since then, and at no point do screenwriters Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz and director Joseph Kosinksi ever attempt to advance those interactions and metaphors from a world where personal computers were still a startlingly new concept to today’s world in which most of us are carrying computers around in our pockets.
Instead, TRON: Legacy simply wallows in nostalgia for itself. Only one new idea is presented in the entire movie, and it is an incredibly stupid one—unfortunately, saying what it is would be a big spoiler, so I won’t give it away.
©Walt Disney Pictures
With TRON: Legacy, the only thing the audience gets is the 1982 version of TRON rebuilt with 2010 CGI technology. The world on display in TRON was cool in 1982—and it remains so in 2010—but only because it remains in 1982. Simply bringing that same thing forward to 2010 is about as much fun as if this review had to be typed on a Commodore 64.
The movie starts in 1989. Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) has had a few years to build on his experiences from the first movie, and Encom is on its way to becoming even more of a giant Microsoft-esque corporation. Flynn relates to his 6-year-old son, Sam (doing the math, Flynn must have gone right out and impregnated someone as soon as he got back to the real world in 1982) what’s been done since 1982: Flynn is still returning to the digital world regularly and working with a digital clone of himself (Clu), and he’s building the perfect network that will one day change the world.
Flynn says good-night, rides off into the dark, and is never seen again.
Flash forward to 2010, and Sam is now a 27-year-old rapscallion who is technically the majority shareholder in the now monolithic Encom, but does not want to take up the mantle, leaving it to the board of directors to act like movie-stereotype craven corporate overlords (don’t get attached; after a brief early scene, they’ll never be seen again). Sam limits his corporate involvement to committing one high-profile prank a year designed to embarrass the company.
©Walt Disney Pictures
This year’s prank has Sam releasing the company’s new and expensive operating system upgrade to the Internet, allowing everybody to get it for free. Apparently, Sam is unaware that this already happens to every piece of software anybody wants. One thing leads to another, and Sam ends up at Flynn’s Arcade for the first time in decades. Fortunately the power hasn’t been shut off, and all of the video games, unused in 20 years, still work perfectly. Otherwise, how else would he conveniently stumble into dad’s secret lab and accidentally get himself disassembled and dropped into The Grid, the same digital network his dad has been lost all these years?
Cue nostalgia. A disc battle? Check. A lightcycle competition? Check—”modernized” by adding ramps to it. Ooo. Glowy circuit board Spandex suits? Check—though now the CGI is so seamless, the suits end up looking even goofier than in the original. An escape and run for the border? Check.
Sam is soon over his head, but is rescued by a mysterious program named Quorra (Olivia Wilde) who, it turns out, is an acolyte to Kevin Flynn, who is himself in hiding from Clu, who had taken over the network and is looking to take over the world (the real one, that is). Don’t worry about the story, though—because the story is stupid, and doesn’t stand up to even the amount of thought that would go into you reading any more summation of it.
Jeff Bridges in the early 1980s had a featureless yet emotive face that was perfect in roles such as TRON and Starman. To maintain that for Legacy required the use of CGI magic to “youthanize” the 1989 Kevin Flynn and Clu back to that look. This transformation works inside the computer world because everything there is manufactured, but the real-life scenes look a bit plastic. It might not be right to say that if it were done without warning that it would be clear what was wrong, but something would be off. The actual Flynn, however, is allowed to age into Bridges’ current craggier look. Along the way, though, he still seems to have played The Dude as there is much of that character in the zen master Flynn has apparently become. It could be a cool characterization (if a bit too familiar), but there’s almost nothing for him to work off of.
Olivia Wilde’s Quorra is nothing but a pretty face on the screen, who gets to beat people up every once in a while. She’s cute but there’s never any reason to care about her, and her ultimate nature is an underwhelming revelation.
Garrett Hudland is so generic in his performance and look of Sam that it could have been any of a half dozen actors on the screen and nobody’d notice the difference. The one shining bit is an extended scene with Michael Sheen as Zuse, a bar owner and information monger. Known best for playing Tony Blair in The Queen and David Frost in Frost/Nixon, he surprises here with a performance reminiscent of an even more flamboyant Ziggy Stardust. Sure, it’s probably just that Zuse is the only character (human or not) that shows any sign of having a personality and so is like an oasis in the desert, but another 20-30 minutes of screen time would have been welcome.
A lot of people are going to love TRON: Legacy. Many will write to critics who give this movie a bad review and suggest that anybody who doesn’t like it has just lost the ability to let go. There’s merit to that position; there’s nothing inherently wrong with bad movies—many bad movies are very entertaining. But they have to meet you halfway, they have to make you want to go along with the bad and the stupid. This time around, simply re-creating a beloved set design from childhood is not enough (though the TRON-inspired Walt Disney Pictures logo might have been the most impressive visual item in the whole movie).
©Walt Disney Pictures
And it really doesn’t help that the central peril that supposedly drives all the conflict is itself lame. Honestly, it is as if a Bond movie had a villain whose devious plot was to paint all the houses on Catalina Island a slightly revolting shade of pink.
Finally, a note on projection: This movie will be presented in 3D everywhere they can get a screen. Much as in Avatar, the entire world is manufactured, and so the digital effects are compelling and the filmmakers never really stoop to cheap gimmicks and audience tricks. However, the entire movie essentially takes place at night, and one of the flaws of 3D glasses is that they result in a dimmer picture. In the case of my screening, the result was so dim that at times it was so dark that I found it more pleasing to watch the movie, blurry, without my glasses, just to get a brighter image.
Unfortunately, this could just be an issue with my theater, and I can’t say whether it will be a problem for everyone. But if you’re on the fence about 3D anyway, it might be best to seek out a 2D screen if you can find one.
TRON: Legacy is a Walt Disney Pictures release
- Wide release on Friday, December 17
- Directed by Joseph Kosinksi
- Screenplay by Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz
- Starring Jeff Bridges, Garrett Hedlund, Olivia Wilde
- Rated PG for sequences of sci-fi action violence and brief mild language.
- Alex Rating: 5 out of 10
