Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Movie Review: Tron Legacy

I saw the original Tron again a few months back (I was showing it to a friend who wanted to see the original before she saw the movie) and afterwords I was thinking that this might make a nice Christmas gift for my brother and checked out the prices on Amazon. Wow, holy cow, I have never seen a used VHS go for that much money before, one of my friends swears she's going to gold plate and hang her VHS on the wall if they go for that much. I've heard a rumor that Disney has a lot of the old DVDs and was also telling retailers not to sell them, fearing that people might not want to see the new movie. Having seen the new movie I believe that Disney is crazy and missing out on a chance to make even more money, sure the old one looks bad but this new movie looks really good regardless.

Tron Legacy


Summary: After Kevin Flynn's escapades in the original Tron he now leads ENCOM International and spends most of his time working but still finds time to tell his son Sam stories before bed. He vanishes one day however, breaking Sam's heart and the trust of everyone in the company except his old friend Alan. A couple of decades on Sam is drifting through life with no real purpose, except to mess with the heads of ENCOM once a year, but soon enough he's pulled into the world of Tron just like his father was and it's a race against time to get out.

The Good: There were several little details in the cyberworld (The Grid?) that I thought were really neat and unique. To say more about them would be spoiler-ish but I'd love to see some video games that explored the world more (maybe a prequel when Kevin was creating the world?). The plot may be lacking but the setting and ides surrounding it are not and, of course, the visuals are pure eye candy and the music is pretty cool too. So, the package for the story is very cool and it's worth seeing for the visuals alone. The other stuff however....

The Bad: I think the original movie actually accomplished more in terms of plot than this one actually. In the first movie there was an actual bad guy that had to be defeated to "save the world," here the plot isn't quite sure what it's doing. It's a quest of some sort and in the end it's just a beat the clock quest which is rather dull. But no one really came to see the plot of this movie so, a few other problems. There were a couple of subplots that I felt got axed halfway through filming so the basis for them (programs rebelling against CLUE is the one I noticed) is still there but nothing ever happens. Also, Quorra's character was just odd. Sometimes she acted like a regular person and other times it seemed like she didn't know how to interact with the other characters and that random inconsistency (well, along with her flatness which plagued all the other characters as well) didn't make me like her that much.

The Music: I actually did not like the music as much as I hoping and that made me quite sad. Derezzed was a pretty awesome song but not much else on the soundtrack stuck out to me. Oh well, at least I can buy Derezzed separately and put it on repeat.

The Visuals: I didn't see this movie in 3D, so I can't exactly comment on that, but I suspect it probably would have looked good in 3D. The CGI was slick and, while the film was visually dark, I never had any trouble making out details on screen. Someone (or more likely, many people) had a lot of fun creating the visuals for this movie. The CGI isn't as far ahead of it's time like the original Tron was but the visuals are fantastic none the less.

I was really disappointed with the plot here (I was expecting it to be lacking but not this lacking!) but I'm still glad I saw it for the visuals. Would I buy this, or the original Tron, on DVD/BR in the future? Probably not, but I can see my brother buying this or a friend so if I ever want to see it again I should have no trouble finding it.