TRON: Legacy - Dazzling Fun, Little Else

In 1982, Disney released a computer-generated special effects extravaganza that sent audiences into the world of technology, a world that at the time was still in its infancy. Accounting and security programs were sentient beings that lived on a physical plane of existence divided by blue and red neon highlights and used discs with their identity and information as weapons. It featured religious allegories with programs created in the user’s image and the idea of the existence of these creators as a persecuted religious concept. Unfortunately, TRON failed to use these ideas to say anything interesting. In hindsight, TRON is a cheesy, dated experiment with great unrealized ideas and bad dialogue.

Thirty-eight years later, a sequel is born, TRON: Legacy, full of whiz-bang special effects of the 3D digital age that makes the original look ancient. The sequel, directed by newcomer Joseph Kosinski, tells us that a few years after the original, Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), the cocky yet easy-going vindicated game-developer-turned-industry-leader, was trapped in the ‘grid’, having been betrayed by his own program, Clu, while building a new, perfect technological world. Meanwhile, in the real world, his disappearance is an unsolved mystery, leaving some to posit Flynn simply walked away from success in self-exile, as well as his bewildered little boy suffering from abandonment issues.

That little boy, Sam, is now a rebellious technological genius in his late twenties (played unexceptionally by Garret Hedlund). He receives a page (remember pagers?) from his dad’s abandoned arcade. One thing leads to another and soon he, too, finds himself in the grid, coming face-to-face with neon red sentries and dumped into technological gladiator games. Before long, Sam – and the audience – is caught up to speed, meets his father and is plotting to get them both back home.

TRON was a movie that had a lot of interesting ideas about a fictional technological world that a sequel, nearly thirty years later, had the potential to run wild with. If you’re hoping for a film that expands on the original’s ideas and religious allegories, you’re out of luck. The Matrix redux, this is not. You won’t see today’s programs, apps, social networks, or other forms of technology represented in sentient form or as part of some expansive universe. Nor will you see religious allegories treated with more than a cursory interest.

But as a simple, straight-forward sci-fi spectacle, TRON: Legacy delivers. It still makes flimsy attempts at themes of the dangers of today’s technology ruling our lives, with religious symbolism threaded in. However, unlike with The Matrix, that’s not what one should come to TRON: Legacy expecting. This movie is all about the dazzling special effects – and you will be dazzled – and cool action. It doesn’t even seem to pretend its intentions are to be anything more. This may disappoint anyone who remembered the original with anything other than rose-colored glasses and hoped for more.

Light cycle races and gladiator-style disc fights will no doubt entertain, especially in 3D, which the film was shot in and lacks the adjustment period last year’s Avatar required. Also, some of the performances help keep TRON: Legacy from being a dull special effects money-waster, chiefly by Olivia Wilde, Michael Sheen, and Jeff Bridges.

Olivia Wilde adds to the film’s eye-candy and fills the role of the butt-kicking babe so often seen in these films by memorably playing an ally program with a secret. Sheen, however, as Castor, is clearly having fun as a sort of dance club owner who knows the location of a key character. Decked out in such brilliant whites that you’d think he were a David Bowie iPod app, Sheen is over-the-top fun in a world dominated by sincerity.

Jeff Bridges reprises his role as a bearded Kevin Flynn, all full of Zen-like easy-going just this far away from rolling a doobie. He manages to refrain from cartoonish hippy-dippiness, making Flynn a man who understands the stakes and his mistakes; more Jedi than Lebowski.

Bridges also does double-duty as enemy program Clu with impressive de-aging CGI. This character was speculated to be the crack in the film’s showy effects, but turned out to be competently executed and believable.

As a simple sci-fi action film that Legacy strives to be, it still falls short, sometimes lacking sense. A key character’s sudden switch of alliances and a dinner scene are examples of things that become equally perplexing simply because not enough effort is made to make sense out of them.

TRON: Legacy may not be the brilliant sequel that many hoped would deliver on the original’s ideas in a way great science fiction stories can. It takes a more straightforward route – and fails to excel at that, as well – thereby making it inferior to the year’s other video game-influenced film, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. But for those looking for pure escapist spectacle, TRON: Legacy abides.


6/10

Should you see it? The film literally explains it's intended to be seen in 3D, so buy tickets – it’s worth it.


TRON: Legacy is now in theaters in 2D, 3D, and IMAX 3D.