Rating: **1/2
The hype was outstanding, which is interesting because when the original TRON came out in 1982 it was, to borrow the phrase, an unmitigated disaster. Still, to a lot of children of the 80s there is something to recommend it with a retro-futuristic charm from back in the day when Commodore 64 and Atari 2600 were the cutting edge of home computing. It’s as quaint as it is antiquated in the cyber-age, and the legend has been fuelled through the years by a small and growing chorus of fans. Disney heard the siren song of endless, sweaty wads of geek money and knew that the long gestating sequel was to be moved to the top of their to-do pile. But honestly, what was the point?
The original TRON, much like last year’s AVATAR, was a creature of style before substance. It was a GULLIVER’S TRAVELS tale of a stranger in a strange land whose triteness was obscured by the cutting edge filmmaking that was being employed to tell the story. I wish that TRON LEGACY had the same problem. The story is a whirlwind of philosophical technobabble and special effects porn tied together by the loosest tendrils of a story. When your film’s called TRON and the actual character the film is named after comes across as a mere after thought, there’s cause for concern.
But that’s just part of the problem. For some reason Kevin Flynn, the computer visionary played by Jeff Bridges in both the original TRON and its sequel has morphed from a young Bill Gates to an older Dude. As in THE BIG LEBOWSKI’s Dude. There’s actually a scene where Flynn tells his anxious son Sam (played with perfect woodenness by Garrett Hedlund) that he’s messing with his zen thing. Well sorry there Flynn, but the son who hasn’t seen you in 20 years has a lot to deal with, including being sucked into the computer-based wonderland of The Grid.
The backstory is basically that Kevin Flynn disappeared two decades ago, leaving behind his son Sam orphaned and ambiguous as to whether or not he wants to continue his father’s legacy at Microsof… I mean, Encom. Content to live like a digital anarchist, Sam does what he can to skewer Encom’s capitalist agenda. He’s still visited by his father’s friend Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner, also of TRON part 1) who this night comes with interesting news: he’s received a page – like, on a pager – from Kevin Flynn’s old arcade, where the porthole to TRON land resides.
Once inside, Sam does the usual TRON stuff like racing on light cycles and throwing flying discs in gladiatoresque struggles. It’s part of the machinations of KLU (a younger-by-way-of-CG Bridges) to escape The Grid and take over the real world because the porthole can only be opened from the outside. Flynn, for his part, has been trying to protect the last of the “isomorphic algorithms,” a group of programs that evolved naturally in the environment of The Grid. Quorra (Olivia Wilde) is the last of these programs after KLU’s genocidal spree.
One of the key problems is that the story is almost needlessly convoluted. What could have been a solid father-son story is loaded with a lot of misspent and unrealized mythology, and that’s a complete turn-off. “Isomorphic algorithms” don’t exactly have the same simplicity as, say, The One Ring, or a mystical alien rain forest, and getting talked down to with the cyber speak by The Dude is somewhat less than appealing. The plot holes were galling, and odd little Easter Eggs are inserted with no subtlety at all. For example, Cillian Murphy appears as “Edward Dillinger II,” a character named after the antagonist played by David Warner in the original film. He appears in one scene, and such heavy emphasis is placed on naming this character with three lines, they might as well have put in one of those You Tube footnotes saying, “See more about Edward in TRON 3.”
The acting is also demure. Bridges looks like he’s thinking about all the better roles he’s done lately and how he’s back here in TRON land in spite of all good sense. “Younger” Bridges doesn’t fair much better as the film seems to teeter between believability and outright goofiness so far as the effects work is concerned. Hedlund almost seems like a computer himself, as Sam is remarkably emotionless in spite of a story that should have had him on a roller coaster of emotion. Wilde manages to defy the odds by being engaging and energetic as Quorra. She’s easily the best part of the film. Michael Sheen also shines in a brief bit as a Ziggy Stardust looking nightclub(?) manager.
But despite the fact that this was a fan driven enterprise, I can’t possibly see why a fan of original TRON could find this film approachable. There’s not a lot of fun here, and because the effects are state-of-the-art, photo realistic 3-D, even the kitsch value of the production design is lost. The movie is pristine to look at, and the music by Daft Punk is amazing, but at most, TRON LEGACY is an awesome, two hour Daft Punk music video. Sadly, TRON LEGACY is another example of a movie not living up to its own hype.
