The Specialists

Tron was the first movie to use computer-generated effects, and though it looks pretty primitive by today’s standards, it was a real spectacle when it was released in 1982. It was unlike anything that we’d seen before. I was ten when Tron came out, and I grew up loving the movie.

Of course, the years have not been kind to Tron. I watched it with my wife several months ago, after having not seen it in years. Though the effects looked cheesy, they weren’t the real problem. It just doesn’t survive the transition from childhood to adulthood very well. However, I still have a nostalgic affection for it, and I’ll always love some of its inventions, like the light cycles and data disk fights.

So I was really excited for the new sequel, Tron: Legacy. My hope is that it would take all of the things that I still thought were cool about the original movie, and update it with effects and a storyline that were more palatable to my adult self. I wouldn’t say that my expectations were particularly high. I just wanted an entertaining, effects-laden action spectacle. I was disappointed.

We saw a midnight show, in an IMAX 3D theater. Since I had to get up for work this morning, I’m pretty tired. So I’m just going to list out the good points and the bad. This should be fairly spoiler-free.

The Good

• The movie looked good, for the most part. The effects were just fine (with one huge exception, which I’ll note below), and the design of the computer world was pretty cool. The updated costumes had a much more modern look, while still retaining the glowy bits of the originals.
• Daft Punk’s soundtrack was pretty great.
• It had Jeff Bridges (like bacon with food, Jeff Bridges makes any movie better).

The Bad

• You’ve no doubt seen the computer-generated face of the young Kevin Flynn and CLU in the movie’s trailers. If you thought it looked fake, you’ll be disappointed to hear that it’s no better in the final movie, and it gets a lot of screen time. In still images, it doesn’t look too bad, but as soon as it moves, it looks like a character from a video game cut scene. The awfulness of this effect really confounds me. Gollum looked more realistic in the Lord of the Rings movies, and those were several years ago. There’s just no excuse for a an effect this bad in a movie so reliant on its effects. And if they couldn’t pull off a convincing all-digital character, maybe they could have gone with a digital “youthening” process, like what was used to make Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen look like younger versions of themselves in the (otherwise lousy) third X-Men movie.
• Somehow, Kevin Flynn has morphed into Jeffrey Lebowski. I wonder if the screenwriters (Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz) had never seen the original Tron and just based Flynn on the Jeff Bridges roll that they were most familiar with. This culminated in the line, “You’re messing with my whole zen thing, man.” Why?
• Michael Sheen’s performance as Castor is embarrassingly over-the-top. Is this really the same guy who’s been praised for his portrayal of Tony Blair in two different movies? It was weird and distracting.
• The movie takes itself so seriously. It gets bogged down in dull philosophizing, much like the Matrix sequels. And yet, a lot of concepts are introduced that are never adequately explained. For instance, without giving too much away, there are programs called “isos” that apparently have the potential to change the world, yet it’s never quite clear why that is. Also, the main villain is motivated by the desire to create “the perfect system,” but what does that actually mean? What imperfections is he trying to eradicate, and how do his actions make things more “perfect”? It’s such a vague and nebulous motivation that it could have been interpreted to mean almost anything.
• The plot is extremely predictable. I can’t go into much more detail without venturing into spoilers, but every major plot development or twist is telegraphed far in advance.
• The 3D is barely noticeable. It wasn’t a bad effect, like in some other recent movies, but it really wasn’t worth the extra price. I took off my glasses several times to see if the current scene was actually 3D, because I could rarely discern any extra depth in the frame.

That’ll do for now. I apologize for the inelegant review, but in my current sleep-deprived state, I’m barely functional. I should also point out that the two friends that my wife and I saw this with enjoyed it, so clearly, your results may vary. (They did agree that the 3D wasn’t very good though, so if you see it, you might at least avoid that extra expense.)

Shawn