Tron was one of those movies I would occasionally rent from the local Library as a kid of about 7 or 8 years old. At the time I viewed it (the early 90s) the 1982 movie already seemed dated, but it had a special charm and an interesting cast of characters including Kevin Flynn played by the “Dude” himself actor Jeff Bridges. It also presented some interesting concepts centering around artificial intelligence and how computers (and humans) connect to each other. Now, almost 30 years later we have the sequel Tron Legacy. How does the sequel compare with the original? Does it improve on what made the original still loved as a cult classic to this day?
A little backstory before we begin the review. In the original Tron we met protagonist hacker Kevin Flynn (and his program counterpart inside the electronic world, CLU), Tron (and Tron’s “user”, Alan Bradley), Yori (and her “user”, Dr. Lora Baines), and Ram. The film tells the story of Flynn as he attempts to hack into the ENCOM mainframe to find Dillinger’s piracy, but ends up being transported to the digital world itself as a user. There, he teams up with Tron, Bradley’s program, to defeat the Master Control Program, who has been controlling the digital world. (Thanks Wikipedia!)
This is not Tron as I once knew it however, the visuals and story continue the theme of the first movie but this iteration of Tron more resembles the likes of Blade Runner and the Matrix. Almost 30 years of Sci-Fi film evolution are applied to the Tron aesthetic, and its fantastic. The film opens with the iconic Disney Castle only Rezzed out with the ominous glow of flickering blue lights, this is almost worth seeing on its own. Then we are thrown into some beautiful 3D motion graphics bringing us up to speed on what has happened since the first Tron. (Anyone who hasn’t seen the original may be confused as there isn’t a lot of explanation as to what happened in the first movie.) The story picks up 20 years after the mysterious disappearance of Kevin Flynn, our protagonist from the first film. In this story we follow his son: 27 year old Sam Flynn, former CEO of ENCOM turned computer hacker, who is investigating a mysterious page that was sent to a family friend named Alan Bradley. This mysterious page intrigues Alan Bradley who sends Sam take a look around the abandoned Flynn’s Arcade. Sam finds his Dad’s hidden office and accidentally sets off a machine that sends him to the digital world from the first Tron where he meets the character CLU in a Disc Battle. The character of CLU is rendered in CG and looks eerily like Jeff Bridges from 20 years ago but suffers from a sort of zombie-like dead eyed stiffness that other human looking CG characters suffer from (Polar Express and Beowulf are some examples).
After meeting with CLU who shows his distaste for Sam and throws him into a deadly game of Lightcycling. The Disc Battle and Lightcycling are the highlights of this movie. We actually don’t see any 3D until Sam enters the digital world of “the Grid” which makes these first set pieces all the more exciting. Speaking of 3D, Tron Legacy uses the effect in subtle but effective ways. From the trails of the light cycles to the overlay of interweaving signature Tron textures, this movie uses 3D to draw you into the environment rather than poking objects out at the viewer in slow motion every 5 minutes (Resident Evil: Afterlife was notorious for this).
Things go south for Sam during the Light cycle battle but he ends up being saved by a program named Quorra (played by Olivia Wilde). The young Flynn is lead to his Dad who has resided in the digital world of “the Grid” for the last two decades. This is where Tron Legacy starts to show its weakest link. When there isn’t a lot of cool light cycle battling or adrenaline fueled battles Tron Legacy quickly becomes slow moving and exposition heavy. We see this problem in a lot of Science Fiction, it seems that the writers and directors want to have the characters “explain” every bit of back story in dialog rather than showing it to us (usually because it would take forever and cost a fortune). Once we get back to the action however things quickly pick up again and we are treated to a couple of more great set pieces and a climactic ending that ties up the stories of the 1st and 2nd film very nicely (I won’t go into spoilers here).
There’s one last thing I have to mention about Tron Legacy that I found to stand out more than the 3D effects and stunning production design. What stood out to me more than anything, and really brought the movie together was the music by French Tech-Pop duo Daft Punk. Just check out this video of one of the songs featured in the movie to see what I mean:
The Verdict
Though the movie occasionally slows to a crawl during non-action scenes we do get some pretty amazing set pieces that are worth the price of admission.
