‘Tron: Legacy’: Too many zeroes
I’ve been a movie critic long enough that I reviewed “Tron” when it came out in 1982. It was a dud as a movie and a box-office flop – the first film with computer-generated imagery, but a story that either went nowhere or went in circles.
Of course, if you were a 5-year-old (or even a 10-year-old) in 1982, then you’re exactly the right age to be calling the shots at a Hollywood studio today. And so you’re the perfect age to say, “Hey, you know what movie I loved when I was a kid? ‘Tron’! Why hasn’t anyone made a sequel of that?”
“Tron: Legacy” carries the legacy of the original – it’s deadly dull, self-important and besotted with its own computer graphics. While there are a couple of action sequences that grab the eye, “Tron: Legacy” mostly rehashes the story of the original, with flashier effects but not much more dramatic sense or sense of drama.
It’s 20 years since Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), who got sucked into “the Grid” in the original film, disappeared for good. He’d reemerged from inside the video games he was creating to become a sort of proto-Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, leading a tech company that’s now threatening to take over the world. But then he disappeared.
Now his post-juvenile delinquent son Sam (Garrett Hedlund) gets a clue that Dad may in fact be alive: a pager message sent from the old video arcade where Kevin once had his lab. When Sam visits, the equipment springs to life and digitizes him, pulling him into the Grid too.
There, he meets CLU (Bridges, given a digital facelift to look like he did in the original film), the program Kevin had created to put the Grid in order. Instead, CLU is a digital dictator, working on finding a way for the computer programs to rise up and escape the Grid into the real world. Same old same old.
Sam is hijacked into digital-gladiator mode, hurling deadly glow-in-the-dark Frisbees and riding those silly light cycles that leave a solid wall of exhaust for opponents to run into. That battle is much more free-form now, operating on multiple levels, even while the script remains locked in a single dimension.
Rescued by another program named Cora (Olivia Wilde, in a Louise Brooks “Lulu” wig) before CLU can mow him down, Sam is taken off the Grid to a distant digital penthouse, where he finds the now gray-bearded Kevin Flynn. So their mission becomes to get Kevin and Sam back to the real world, without letting CLU and his digital forces get access to “the portal.”
Now I’m no techie, but I think I understand the notion that all digital information is programmed in a series of 0s and 1s. Yet somehow, in the Grid, there are places that are off the Grid where CLU and his folks are incapable of traveling. Hmm. And somehow, in this digital realm, Kevin is able to summon up a dinner featuring a suckling pig. And CLU’s minions each look different – not just different but diverse, as in: They’re all dressed the same (in a Fashion Week wet-dream of black neoprene and neon) but played by actors of an assortment of ethnicities.
And – oh, why go on? If you start questioning the logic of this world, it will shatter and crumble into little digital shards, the way those gladiators do when they’re hit by one of those Frisbees. Which raises the question: What would happen if Sam got hit by one? When his opponent thumps him at one point, he sheds actual blood so … what?
Director Joseph Kosinski has created shining towers and dizzying visual effects in this digital world. But the script by Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz (a pair of “Lost” alumni) is so short on either sense or actual drama – and Hedlund is such a limited actor – that it’s all like a sample reel of special effects, with a little action thrown in, rather than an actual movie. Even seeing it in IMAX 3D, which I did, can’t gloss over the hollowness of the enterprise. It would be lovely to see this kind of visual sense applied to something like a film version of William Gibson’s “Neuromancer,” a visionary book in its time that dealt with similar worlds.
Of course, we all live in the Grid now. So for “Tron: Legacy” to come back, almost 30 years later, with something as tame and lame as this seems like the film equivalent of a computer trying to tell a joke: It does not compute.
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December 15th, 2010 at 9:08 pm
So you didn’t like the original, and you don’t like this one. Big deal. Next reviewer please.
December 15th, 2010 at 9:36 pm
Just for the record, in Unix you can have a file of information that is there, but not seen by the program. It’s called a Zombie (the nerds that wrote Unix had a sense of humor). I have not seen the movie yet, but yes you can have a file of information that the operating system cannot see.
December 15th, 2010 at 9:38 pm
Just for the record you can have a lost file in Unix. It’s called a Zombie (the nerds that wrote Unix had a sense of humor). So technically you can have a file (world) that the main program cannot see.
December 15th, 2010 at 9:40 pm
Obviously, your review stays away from making objective points of argument and is entirely based on your bias against anything sci-fi or requires a bit of imagination. Nowhere in the review do you make any detailed arguments supporting why you think the movie is so short on sense and drama.. All you managed to tell me is that 1) you clearly lack any sort of imagination, 2) you are clearly biased against this kind of genre in movies, and 3) you are being unprofessional for putting forth your own bias ahead of what you are supposed to do professionally: be objective, make detailed arguments, and think hard about what this movie really is trying to do. Well, maybe you aren’t even a professional. Just putting up some website with your picture on it doesn’t automatically make you one.
December 15th, 2010 at 9:43 pm
This review is so off-base. I’m betting yuor review of The Matrix was similar. If not, then you obviously weren’t able to shed your bias based on the first film. IN fact, if you want any of your arguements to be valid you need to look at the Matrix and this movie. Same basic thing going on: digital worlds, epic struggle for control, real impact on humanity.
As a tech-head and avid film lover, I understand the whole premise of the film and the parts you have tried to highlight as junk.
Is it possible for one program to not be able to see\reach another? You bet – ever hear of antivirus that does just that? Or Windows Vista or 7 blocking even you from launching a program you just clicked on?
Why aren’t the subroutines that CLU uses all the same person as in the Matrix? Each subroutine is coded differently and does different things. Of course they will look different.
Got a problem with the suckling pig? I bet you hated the food in the Matrix there. They even answered the question of why everything oddball tastes like chicken.
The plot and acting talent in Avatar was pretty thin in my opinion, but it sold a ridiculous amount of tickets and DVD’s.
This is a MOVIE. It’s fictional. And a screen full of o’s and 1′s isn’t going to entertain anyone. So you have to use artful symbolism to tell the story and make it something that your brain can relate to, unlike your review of this film. The fact that you were reviwing the original TRON makes you dangerous as a critic based on your age alone. Because you don’t get the technical stuff you immediately can’t relate to the movie. Reviewers should be in the target demographic of the film in order to be accurate.
You completely left out the real-world engineering that went into the film such as the rimless motorcycles, the clothing they wore that was an engineering marvel, and the CGI.
I will be seeing it Friday, in IMAX 3D, regardless of your review. It may still stink, but not for the reasons you give here.
December 15th, 2010 at 9:54 pm
I was one of those teens that fell in love with TRON when it first arrived on the big screen. It might be true that the plot is weak and the characters two-dimentional (pun intended), but I will hang on to the same youthful exuberance for TRON Legacy as I had for TRON.
December 15th, 2010 at 10:23 pm
Wow! You are hater!
December 15th, 2010 at 11:21 pm
Hey Marshall,
I’m so sorry for you that this movie doesn’t have all the sex, drugs, and rock n roll that the Terminator franchise had. However, the original Tron was enough to spawn the Matrix and several new animators. As a 20-yr-old at the time, I was intrigued with the whole idea, even if I did wish more depth in the script.
Though it may not be Academy Award material, I’ll bet Tron Legacy is just as inspiring, if not more. And with a PG rating, we’ll have a whole new generation of dreamers and animators very soon.
December 16th, 2010 at 1:12 am
You are a bad reviewer. Just saying.
December 16th, 2010 at 2:20 am
Marshall, you my sir are a douchebag. You would know a good movie if it hit you in the face.
December 16th, 2010 at 12:12 pm
The film version of Neuromancer was this little movie called \The Matrix.\ Maybe you’ve heard of it.
December 16th, 2010 at 1:10 pm
I think maybe your review time in Amsterdam left you a little \foggy\. Its just a movie, its entertainment. Im sure your books are just fabulous though….
December 16th, 2010 at 1:27 pm
The first movie that employed digital enhancing was The Andromeda Strain in 1971. The first “True” computer animation employed in film is found in the short film titled The Hunger in 1974. The first film using digital 3D animation film was Futureworld in 1976.
December 16th, 2010 at 2:39 pm
i WAS NOT A CHILD WHEN THE FIRST TRON CAME OUT, AND i LOVED IT- IT ENTERTAINED… THAT IS WHAT MOVIES ARE SUPPOSED TO DO, ENTERTAIN. NO ONE MOVIE WILL ENTERTAIN ALL; WE ALL HAVE DIFFERENT TASTES. IN SAYING THIS MOVIE WAS DULL, YOU PUT DOWN THOSE WHO DO OR WILL LIKE THIS TYPE OF FILM, AND MAKE THEM LOOK LIKE THEY HAVE NO IMAGINATION OR INTELLECT. YOU NEED TO LEARN HOW TO REVIEW A FILM WITH OBJECTIVITY.
December 16th, 2010 at 3:38 pm
No no no… Sigh.
I can’t wait to see the movie to see how I think it measures up. I have to make some corrections to what you Kevin Flynn didnt get sucked into “The Grid” he was sucked into the main computer at Encom. Kevin emerged from the system and was made CEO of the company because he found proof that his former coworker had stolen his code and used it to make him look good and get promoted. CLU was a program Kevin created to look for the information trying to hack from outside the company. CLU in the orginal movie got caught and Dilonger cuts everyone that had the access of the type Kevin used to try and hack the system. Some of his friends who still work at Encom tell Kevin about it and that is why he convinces them to sneak him in so he can try hacking into the system from on the inside.
I’m a bit disappointed from some of the costume choices I’ve seen compared to the original but will see how it goes once I see this “sequel”.
December 19th, 2010 at 1:34 am
I’m going to review his review with the same intellect that he used in his writing. Your take on Tron: Legacy sucks.
January 16th, 2011 at 5:36 pm
> Now I’m no techie, but I think I understand the notion that all digital information is programmed in a series of 0s and 1s. Yet somehow, in the Grid, there are places that are off the Grid where CLU and his folks are incapable of traveling. Hmm. And somehow, in this digital realm, Kevin is able to summon up a dinner featuring a suckling pig ..
The 0s and 1s are stored in a file system, there are numerous ways they could hide, one of which is using a rootkit. Presumably Flynn senior would be capable of programming such. Same with the ‘suckling pig’, the taste of which is just a particular pattern of electrical impulses in your brain
You are right though, apart from the effects the story and characters were non-existent.