Movie review: Tron Legacy

The Tron arcade game was one of my formative arcade experiences. I first played it in a neon-lit arcade on a caravan site by the sea when I was 9 years-old. All the other games in the arcade were great, from Centipede to Pac-Man to Time Pilot, but Tron looked like something straight out of my sci-fi fantasies. It was a perfect storm of age, imagination, atmosphere and location. Despite seeing the trailers, I didn't see the film until a few years later. It didn't disappointment and much like Last Star Fighter it felt like a glimpse into the future of gaming. Now, almost 30 years later, Disney have released the long-awaited sequel, but in a world where high definition gaming and 3D movies are common place, has Tron lost its edge? Given I don't normally have an excuse to review movies, this seemed like the perfect opportunity.

Bruce Boxleitner, still a
handsome SoB

The plot to the original movie film was little more than window dressing and the same can be said for the sequel. Following the events of the first film, Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) takes over ENCOM International and makes it the most successful software company in the world, partly due to his games, including one based on the heroic Tron program, who helped him escape the binary clutches of the errant Master Control Program. Despite his success, he continues to visit the computer world within the company's mainframes. With help from Tron and also his own CLU program, Flynn builds a grand new world inside the mainframe. Then then one day in 1989, he mysteriously disappears, leaving his friend Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner) and his young son, Sam (Owen Best/Garrett Hedlund) behind. As the decades roll by, Alan and Sam take a back seat in the running of the company, but it's clear neither of them have forgotten about Flynn Senior. So when Alan gets a message from Flynn that apparently came from his old office at the (now abandoned) arcade, he sends Sam to investigate. Sure enough, the arcade is empty, but when he goes to play a Tron machine, Sam discovers his dad's old tales of the world of Tron were real.

Flynn's Arcade, mothballed like most arcades these days

And so, as you might expect and have probably worked out from the trailers, Sam ends up in that same world, which is now under the control of Kevin Flynn's doppelganger, the program known as CLU. This is a bigger, brasher adventure in the world of Tron, starting with a gladiatorial battle which makes the games in the original seem... well, like Gun Smoke compared to Call of Duty. Sam is not alone in this world and soon meets a program called Quorra (Olivia Wilde), who is your typical free-spirited femme fatale — and rather pleasant to look at in her tight, black plastic leggings. Ahem. Together they battle CLU's drones and uncover the plot that lead Sam into this world and the mystery behind Kevin Flynn's disappearance.

Sam and Quorra go for a drive in one of Legacy's many new vehicles

The first thing to be said about this film is that it looks gorgeous — even when Quorra's not in shot. There are no Star Wars prequel-like redesigns, that effectively ret con the whole aesthetic of the original. Instead, it looks precisely like a HD version of the original, with the changes to things like the light cycles being respectful towards their ancestry. What is disappointing is the 3D. In a world of such stark contrasts, it seems the 3D technology fails to provide much depth perception. Basically, there's no enough detail to actually give the scenery and characters much visual depth, unlike Avatar, which is a rich, colourful and densely populated world. What's even better than the visuals is the music, provided by French house masters, Daft Punk. They even make a cameo, in what for me is the best scene in the film.

When Flynn makes an opportune appearance in that same digital night club, just as Sam and Quorra about about to get their hides tanned, I genuinely had a little bit of a nerdgasm. Overall, the acting is a little flat; Hedlund is your typical pretty-but-bland Hollywood actor, who is outshone by every other actor in the film, including Wilde. The best performance is probably given by Micheal Sheen, who plays club owner Castor, but then Sheen is one of those actors who always delivers the goods.

If you're going into this with a love of the original, but at the same time accept that it was a rough diamond, I reckon you'll enjoy this follow up. It's far from perfect and could actually be accused of being a little unambitious, but it isn't the sort of train wreck we've seen in recent years when people have tried to cash in on classic films (Lucas, Wachowski brothers, I'm looking at you!). For everyone else, it's one of those films where the trailer tells you everything you'd need to know, both about the world of Tron and whether or not it's for you.

And because the soundtrack is so brilliant, here's Daft Punk's single from the OST, "Derezzed".

MTW