TRON: Legacy
Honestly, this is kind of a tricky film to review. When I watched the original “TRON” a few months ago on DVD, it was easy to get lost in the visual and musical landscape of the film’s virtual world, but the film is not terribly well-paced and goes on too long. 28 years later, and the visual and musical landscape has deepened, but the film still suffers from stilted writing, although the film moves better than its predecessor. One only wishes it’d been more action-packed.
“TRON: Legacy” is in many ways superior to the 1982 groundbreaker that inspired it. The story is more easily palpable on an emotional level (even if it is readily predictable as an adventure epic), which makes the lack of action forgivable to a point. But when you have so many possibilities for truly epic and imaginative action sequences involving lighted life discs, light cycles (still, as in 1982, the highlight of visual and emotional excitement in this gamer’s paradise), and jets that can materialize in mid-air, one feels like some truly great opportunities were missed.
One opportunity NOT missed however was bringing back Jeff Bridges as programmer Kevin Flynn. Even before he won his overdue Oscar for “Crazy Heart,” Bridges has always brought an air of credibility, regardless of the quality of project, and here he’s one of the best things about “TRON: Legacy.” Playing both Flynn and his program doppleganger, C.L.U., with the help of truly impressive visual trickery, Bridges does what he always does: elevates the material to his level of professionalism. True, his Flynn here is basically a God-like figure in The Grid world he helped create, but I challenge you to NOT find a little bit of his “Dude” Lebowski in lines like, “Sam, you’re really breaking my Zen thing, man.” His return alone makes “TRON: Legacy” worth watching.
But what about the rest of the film? As estranged son Sam, Garrett Hedlund provides an instant human connection as he breaks into ENCOM (the software company Flynn left behind) and then finds his father’s secret workstation within Flynn’s Arcade. Olivia Wilde is beautiful and oddly affecting as Quorra, a program who is something of a disciple to Flynn in The Grid; Michael Sheen is a wicked and over-the-top delight as a club owner within the system; and it’s good to see Bruce Boxleitner (however briefly) back as Flynn’s partner, Alan Bradley, and briefly his program self, Tron.
Still, what you really want to know about are the film’s technical marvels. Well, they are indeed marvelous, and the bigger the screen (think a “True” IMAX like Regal’s Mall of Georgia 20 & IMAX, which is where I saw it) the better to appreciate them. Director Joseph Kosinski (who tells a good story from the script by Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz) has designed a world in which to really get lost, digging deeper into the look of the original with an almost hallucinatory ease that’s aided by a groovy and attention-grabbing score by dance masters Daft Punk (who appear onscreen in Sheen’s club). All of this should add up to greatness on the level of “Star Wars,” “2001,” “The Dark Knight,” or hell, the original “TRON.” Unfortunately, it falls short, but like other hotly anticipated “letdowns” (think more “Iron Man 2” than “The Phantom Menace”), it’s got more than enough going for it to get you through and feel like it earned your admiration.
