I set a personal record for myself this week, I saw "True Grit" on Thursday, "The Fighter" on Friday and this one on Sunday. As another aside, maybe I'm not the best person to be seeing and reviewing this one, I've only seen the original once, and only kind of remember it - but hey, here goes nothing. The original "Tron" is a sci-fi classic that has achieved "cult" status in the 28(!) years since its release. Indeed, the original was the first film to use CGI in a feature film. Given the state of film today, that becomes quite the milestone. A rough outline of the original goes as follows - brilliant computer programmer and video game designer named Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) who's had his designs stolen by a rival discovers a way to transfer himself into a digital world and directly confront the programs and games in highly stylized "battles" that replicate the games designed by Flynn. The story doesn't make a lot of sense in a realistic type of way, but it's original and had a visionary approach to the future that has turned out to be increasingly accurate (in terms of the involvement of computers and games in our lives). So the original is remarkable for the visuals, which were entirely groundbreaking at the time. Here were are at Tron: Legacy. 20 years have passed since Kevin Flynn inexplicably disappeared, leaving behind his young son, Sam, after promising to show him his creation. Sam is running from his father's legacy, choosing to shun involvement in the empire built on his father's creations. When a mysterious page from his father's office to his former partner shows that something may be stirring, Sam investigates, and winds up immersed in the digital world his father created so many years prior. Searching for his father, Sam finds himself embroiled in a struggle between his father and rebellious creations who have corrupted "the grid" and threaten our world as well.
So there's the plot - pretty nonsensical, indeed, but this isn't a flick you're seeing because of the narrative structure. This is a spectacle. Escapism and entertainment at a very high level. Movies can be a great storytelling venue - but at a certain level, there's an appeal for visual spectacle, the kind of thing that can never be achieved in a book or story. This film looks great. Seamlessly melding CGI environments with physical actors is a trick that hollywood just about has mastered. The bright colors, unique world, soundtrack (scored by Daft Punk) and fantastical outfits, buildings and machines all serve to create a sort of techno-gothic land of perpetual twilight. There are some terrific action sequences and the nature/physics of the environment allows for some pretty cool stunts.
What grounds this one are the performances. Without the gravitas of Bridges (who plays two roles), this could slip to B-movie schlock, but Bridges keeps the necessary humanity present and grounds the outlandish nature of pretty much everything going on. Olivia Wilde is great as well as Bridges' surrogate daughter figure, and the very underrated Michael Sheen makes the most of his limited part. While the lead can't match the strength of Bridges or Sheen, he does what he needs to, playing the headstrong young hero part, and definitely resembles Bridges.
This is a fun movie that looks amazing. I was impressed, it was significantly better than I thought it would be. The visuals, color scheme, soundtrack and design of the architecture and vehicles all combine to create some sort of technological bad dream. Considering the original was made in 1982, the TRON franchise has a lot of credibility as far as sci-fi goes, for who could have envisioned in 1982 how central computers would eventually become to our existence?
A good time at the movies, and well worth seeing on the big screen.
7/10.
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