Tron: Legacy was a movie that had a lot of promotion. Disney had high expectations of the sequel to the 1982 original and threw a lot of money at marketing the film. It was almost impossible to not know the movie was coming. If you didn’t see the posters, you would see the toys, the games or other products. Even when I bought my Nokia N8 it had some clips of the movie installed on it. The phone also appeared in the film itself, so it’s logical, but it does show the reach Disney has to get you to notice this film. Luckily I don’t judge movies based on their marketing and promotion, because if I would have done that this movie would have surely received a 10. Of course the most important question is whether or not Tron: Legacy is a good movie.
Of course I first watched the original, which according to John Lasseter was a big part on the road to the existence of Pixar (something which is touched upon in the documentary The Pixar Story. When it was out Roger Ebert called thought it was one of the most overlooked films that year.
By now the film might look dated, but it still gives a clear view of the state of technology at the time. The terminology (bits/bytes and users) was new and was used in the dialog. The movie gave a view into a possible future, supported by more than 20 minutes of state of the art special effects. If I would have seen this movie at the time I would have probably have given it a 9, now it’s a 7.
TRON: Legacy tries to continue the story of the original. Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) has been missing for years and his company is slowly moving away from his ideals. His son Sam (Garrett Hedlund) is still trying to make sure that they are not forgotten. When he receives a tip about a message from his father he goes to his old arcade and ends up in the computer world.
That world differs a lot from the one that was shown in the original and an explanation is given how this world came to be. The movie tries to give a deeper meaning to it all, but unfortunately doesn’t manage to bring this message across effectively.
The visuals are very nice, but because the story itself is too simple nothing seems to matter.
Jeff Bridges plays two different roles in this film, Kevin Flynn and a younger version of himself, Clu. I had a big problem with this younger version. A choice was made to create a completely computer generated version of Bridges (see the picture above) and it just doesn’t look good. I probably would not have minded if he would only appear in the computer world as you could say that it was a computer interpretation of Kevin Flynn. But when the same model is used at the beginning of the film in the real world it only takes a fraction of a second before you notice something is not right about what you are seeing (uncanny valley). It would have been a better choice to use other techniques to get the same result, for example the effects that were used in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button or one of the X-Men films.
Is TRON: Legacy a good movie? Visually it is an entertaining spectacle, but the story just can’t manage to keep up with them.
Score: 5