First. This is a pretty good movie. Second...until the actors open their mouths.
It is rare that I experience a science fiction movie where the eye candy would give your pupils a serious cavity: beautiful and deeply rendered as a most unique landscape the likes I have not seen. This is truly a film grounded in its own world, and you feel that; but when the action diverted to the actual plot - it was hard to keep my eyes open long enough to really care about these people, let alone to sympathize that they were really in any danger.
Tron Legacy continues the story that began all this CGI maddness in 1982, when Atari and Pac-Man were the leading video games. At that time the plot was a bit heavy-handed and well before it's time, because Cyber, Downloading, Virtual...were all things uncommon to the public. Back then the story involved a computer hacker (Jeff Bridges) proving his ability to hack into a companies system, and in doing so, his friend creates a system called TRON that protects it better - but through this and that, the crew is accidentily drawn into the computer games within the companies system, and TRON is trying to protect itself from the ones that created it.
Okay...enough back story. Tron Legacy emerges, when Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) now the owner of the company ENCON, is missing, but he has fathered a son Sam (Garrett Hedlund) who's had to grow up without parents(and who I can't seem to separate from his character in Star Trek - which I loved him in too) and has become a renegade himself, traipsing the city on his motocycle, or parachuting off buildings, or hacking computers like dear ol'dad (running a company was not on his to-do list). But when a family friend Alan (Bruce Boxleitner - the original TRON creater who joined his father on that first foray) gets a page from Kevin, Sam goes to the office that the number originated - an office in an old gaming arcade his father once owned.
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| Waiting For The Blu-Ray |
Actually, if that was all the plot we needed, it would have been great. But as Sam investigates the place, and discovers a hidden room of where his father used to work (or hack, you pick), he accidently transports himself as his father once did, back inside the game...and this is where it gets interesting.
The game recognizes him as a foreign object, or program, and brings him along to a section of the computer where the weak programs die while the strong survive, and considering that this is a gaming computer, it can only handle these corporate disputes by...you guessed it...putting on a game.
Sam immediatly has to fight for his life, and the action he is thrust into and the environment he views is magnificent. You can tell that the program within the computer has really undergone some property enhancements, and the characters we see each have a certain way they move, talk, speak - as seperate functions and programs that do what they do cause they were created that way. The thrills come at you quick and fast, with a music score that reminded me a bit of Pink Floyd's classic The Wall. But then the action stops, as it must, and Sam meets with Kevin - and I am like, "Really? Must we get all mushy and teary-eyed?" And the plot boils down to Son-Must-Get-Dad-Out...yet why does dad stay?
During the games, Sam is discovered as being a Human - or a USER, and one of the programs saves him, as she knows who he must be. Her name is Quorra (Olivia Wilde) - her performance is really light, and she fits well into this role. She's not taking none of this very serious. But I really wish the writers took this character very serious. Quorra holds a secret, and I really wish that this secret was the crux of the movie. You see, Kevin has created a code that can cause the human body to replicate itself when injured...but while he was caught in the game, he created a doppleganger of himself as a program, to watch and improve the environment while he was gone, who's name is Clu (also Jeff Bridges, himself rendered in CGI as a younger person).
Clu has been programmed to improve the world he is in, but that was his only program. So now that he has exhausted the computer game (it is a small space afterall), he now wants to improve the world his creater has come from, that being Earth. This is why the games against programs exist, so that he can build the best army. Kevin sees the danger in this, and has decided it was best to chill in OZ and not give Clu the chance to steal his secrets about his world, because afterall, what does a program know about Earth when your creator didn't provide you any details? He can't let Kevin leave until he knows what he knows.
Sam wants out, and he wants his daddy to join him. That is the plot. What I have revealed above I had to squeeze out of some very deadpan dialogue. In my mind I had created the movie I should have been seeing. But the movie does not focus on Quorra's secret, not Kevin's God-like image, nor the society that was created, nor the dictatorship of Clu, nor what the hell has TRON been doing since it has been protecting NOTHING for 28 years, nor the demise of the programs as they show human traits of fear, love, longing, and anger - which is really useless for a program dont'cha think? The holes in this plot just keep getting wider.
This could have been the next BLADERUNNER. I wanted it to be. But successfull science fiction stories have human elements and situations about society that we can relate to. What would have been great, would have been if during the 28 years, Kevin had become bitter and was wanting revenge on society and Earth, and Clu had become the hero trying to keep Kevin inside to save our world. It would have been Created against The Creator. Like in Star Wars, or on some level Avatar. But it didn't, and I was left very unnerved, because near the end, something happens that made me think..."And this couldn't have been done 28 years ago?" and then the credits roll.
I believe this movie will play better on video, with the biggest screen and best sound you can get...at least when the actors come on screen to actually talk, you can get up and go the fridge - instead of to the consession stand for another bank-loan in confections.
FYI - For those who remember even hints of the original, this movie will be a treat in nostalga as none other. The light-cycles, and other machines are here and better than ever!
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