REVIEW: Tron: Legacy Is All Moneygrubbing Sequel, Very Little Legacy
Alan, summoned by a buzz on his good old pager (it ostensibly comes from the long-missing Flynn), brings Sam to his dad's old arcade. Shortly thereafter, Sam is scooped into a spacecraft that resembles a giant crab and is transported, along with a bunch of other poor slobs, to a shiny neon kingdom where they're forced to fight a series of opponents, gladiator-style, by flinging deadly neon Frisbees at one another.
Suddenly, Sam's dad appears, in the guise of Creepy-Young Jeff Bridges. But this CGI-Botox'ed creature is not really his dad -- it's Clu, Flynn's alter-ego gone bad. Clu wants to destroy Sam. But luckily, an adorable brunette pixie in a Louise Brooks hairdo (her name is Quorra, and she's played by Olivia Wilde -- she's the only character here who seems human, and she isn't even human!) shows up in her roadster-of-the-future just in time and whisks him away to see his real dad, the Thankfully-Old Jeff Bridges. The three of them sit around a big Plexiglass Louis XIV table with a papier-mâché roast pig plopped inexplicably in the middle, while Dad bores Son with a seemingly endless backstory about how fantastic Woodstock was. Or something.
And that's barely the beginning. There's more extraneous stuff, including a race of special individuals (known as "Isos") who have been wiped out by genocide, a giant glowing estrogen ring that gets screwed into one's back to help one do, well, something or other, and Michael Sheen camping it up in a David Bowie outfit.
Maybe all of that makes Tron: Legacy sound like the movie Burlesque should have been. If only! Impenetrable and repetitive, Tron: Legacy -- directed by first-timer Joseph Kosinski -- keeps introducing new characters, plot points and invented mythologies, possibly to distract us from the old characters, plot points and invented mythologies it never bothered to explain in the first place. Even Jeff Bridges doesn't really give a performance here. He shuffles around in his Issey Miyake-meets-Armani kimono suit, looking grizzled and amused while fondly recalling his hippie-programmer days in a laid-back drawl: "We were jamming, man -- building Utopia." What Bridges does here isn't acting; it's barely even Duding.
But, look: Movies aren't always "about" their plots, and a picture can sometimes carry you along on its visuals, or on a fantastic vibe of feeling, alone. So how does Tron: Legacy stack up in those terms? When Sam first appears in that bright, gleaming gaming universe, the whole shebang is actually rather shiny and seductive. (I saw it in IMAX 3-D, though I think I would have preferred the 2-D experience -- I find the murkiness of most 3-D exhausting.) The movie's retro-futuristic design is, when it's first shown to us, something to behold: Sam gets outfitted in a skintight neoprene unitard, his muscles defined by black-light stripes. During those gladiator fights, the unlucky souls who get zapped by those flying discs shatter into a million gleaming crystals, which shimmer in the air before falling away to nothing. In one of the movie's 1,001 chase sequences (an early one), the poor sods being pursued by Clu's baddies leap into the air, and as they do, cad/cam motorcycles miraculously appear between their thighs to spirit them away. That's computer-animation magic at its best, but it accounts for only a stingy portion of Tron: Legacy. There's no legacy to be found here; you'll be lucky if you even find a sequel.
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I don't want to bust your bubble here but you admit you've never seen the original TRON, which is cool - I get it and you would understand why I do if you had seen it. I think that having never seen it however you would be rather disappointed in the original. It's not really an action movie or a romance or buddy movie or even your standard sci-fi fare. It has all of those aspects to it (in little, unsatisfying, never-quite-realized bits) , but the original was in fact an EXTREMELY slow paced movie(almost plodding, in fact) with amazing visual effects and it's primary theme was that of the quest and the exploration involved in that quest. From what you've described this actually sounds like a true sequel. Of course I haven't seen it yet - I'm going to the midnight showing tonight. You could be absolutely right and I could be wrong, in which case I'll come back and back up everything you said.
It's weird - I'm clearly in the minority in liking this movie. Tron: Legacy isn't perfect, but it is a perfect sequel to a movie that is by no means perfect - the story is thin, the characters are fragments, the stakes are confusing - but something really worked for me in both.
The original promo for this film (which has no footage from the film) will be remembered as the best thing to ever utilize the Tron universe. It is a perfect short film. I could watch it a million times.
I absolutely love that the Great Tron Shortage of 2010 has claimed its first victim.
I find reading this grouchy review exhausting.
Well, that it took the Mouse Co., almost THIRTY Years to do a "Sequel"; shows they didn't know what 2 make of the original. So WHY, in this age of HollyWood sequel-itis, should we think they'd KNOW WHAT To do in a ret-con, of the film.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_system
I don't think the title is crass at all.
This reviewer is typical of all movie critics. Out-of-touch, elitist, and unhappy unless it's an independent art film, subtitled. Tron Legacy rocked. It was was fantastic. Awesome. Fun. I pity people like the reviewer who cannot enjoy a movie like Tron Legacy. In short Stephanie Z, I think you're completely wrong.
As a film reviewer, NOT seeing the first film before watching the sequel, makes absolutely no sense. At least in this case of the very strong critique you've somehow felt justified in giving.
To say you have absolutely no clue on what you are talking about (from reading this one movie review) may be as inaccurate as your review was of Legacy. Legacy was a fantastic film. FX aside, it was an entertaining story with beautiful camera composition work and crisp editing. There were no weak links in any of the actors.
No fanboy, tongue-in-cheek, pop culture references. Making for a fantastic sequel.
I thought Tron: Legacy was fantastic, and yes, having an insider's knowledge of what happened in the original Tron enhances your experience with Tron: Legacy. It's a lot of little finesses about it. For example: "That's a really big door", or the uncredited Cillian Murphy character of Dillinger are key nods back to the original that new audiences wouldn't get.
...why is this movie rated higher than Inception?
...I know that's usually a joke, but I mean it this time.