Tron: Legacy Review (spoilers behind the cut)
The original Tron is my favourite movie of all time. I wore out two VHS tapes and own both the original and DVD collector's editions, so naturally that's going to inform my reactions. I wasn't sure if that would be in a positive or negative way, though.
Last night I went to the midnight, IMAX, 3D shooing of Tron: Legacy.
I'm going to put my reactions behind a cut because they are EXTREMELY SPOILERY
Also, the review got incredibly long.
First of all, visually the movie is spectacular. I think they hit the styling spot on, although there were bits I disagreed with. Specifically, the four female programs who strip and redress Sam were ridiculous--what was the point of that, aside from some beefcake?
The review that have come out (I checked them out this morning) almost all say the visuals are awesome and the plot is terrible. Everyone said (and still says) the same thing about the original. *g* I liked the plot just fine, except for two things: (1) I think it was unnecessarily grandiose and (2) it was the same plot as the first movie.
Regarding (1), all I can say is that I was rolling with the plot right up until we got to the part about Clu wanting into the real world. That started to go too far to me, although I guess it was a set up for the idea that Quorra could transfer. But it really lost me when they got to Clu doing the whole, let's invade the other world and take over. We didn't need that. It came right at the end of the movie, it wasn't set up very well, and it was over the top.
Still, whatever, I can handwave that. I'm a very forgiving viewer.
It's (2) that's really getting me. The plot of the first Tron was: Flynn's ideas are stolen. Flynn breaks into ENCOM to get evidence. The bad guy arranges for him to be transported into the system and tries to kill him on the game grid. With the help of two programs, Flynn escapes. Flynn and Tron (and RAM) race to get Tron's disc encoded at an I/O tower (and then to the MCP) with a system-changing identity disc. They succeed, Flynn's life is changed.
The plot of Tron Legacy was: Sam's dad is missing (kidnapped). Sam acts out by breaking into ENCOM. The bad guy arranges for him to be transported into the system and tries to kill him on the game grid. With the help of a program, Sam escapes. Sam, Flynn, and Quorra race to get Flynn's life-changing disc to the portal. They succeed, Sam's life is changed.
Is anyone else having deja vu here?
I loved the plot of the first movie, I really did. But I wanted to see what had changed in the system, what effect the internet had, how things had grown, how having so many more Users interacting with the computer world affected things, how wi-fi and adding computer elements to so many more different things had changed the grid. I didn't want to see that the entire system had been reset to exactly where it was at the beginning of the first Tron and watch them not even get it back to where it was at the end of the first Tron.
I found the end of Tron Legacy to be sad and bittersweet. Clu is destroyed, but we never know how that changes the system. Does someone else just step into the gap and it's the same totalitarian state? I kept waiting for a tag where Tron wasn't really dead and he took over to lead them to the way it was supposed to be, but it never came.
And that's another thing. Here's a list of the fates of all the named programs (I'm not counting people who never entered the grid) from both movies, in roughly chronological order of when we knew their fate:
The first (original) Clu: Dead
RAM: Dead
Sark: Evil & Dead
The MCP: Evil and dead
Dumont: Unknown
Yori: Unknown
Castor: Evil and dead
Tron: Presumed dead, then brainwashed into doing evil for 20 years, then dead
New Clu: Evil and dead
Flynn: Kidnapped, then dead
Sam: Alive…happy?
Quorra: Alive and happy
That's a depressing list. I got choked up a number of times in the movie and the ending was terribly bittersweet to me…with the emphasis on the bitter.
I'm particularly choked up about Tron's fate. I figured out that Clu's mysterious warrior was Tron really early on, well before the flashback using the same fighting style that was intended to clue us in and hours before Flynn saw and recognized him. We didn't see him die and we knew from Sam's first entry into the grid that Clu could repurpose programs, so almost the minute we met this spectacular warrior I was sure it was going to be Tron. He was always the best on the game grid.
I also believed he'd come back to himself eventually, but it took far too long. Plus, we never got to see his face. He and Flynn never got a reunion, never even got to meet each other's eyes. Tron was forced to serve a regime he'd have hated, a type of regime he helped bring down once, and he died without ever seeing it change again. And we never got to see his face, damn it! Young Jeff Bridges was in half the movie, but ten seconds of young Bruce Boxleitner was beyond them?
I'm just so sad for the world of the grid. Was Quorra getting out into our world all we were supposed to care about? I was glad for her, but to be honest I cared more about RAM in the first movie (who had maybe 20minutes of screen time) than I did about her. And I really care about that entire other universe and what happens to it, and they tell us nothing about that. Hell, I would have settled for thirty seconds after the credits in which Tron shows up alive to step into the vacuum left by Clu.
And for one last quibble…did they forget about world building entirely? That was my favourite thing about the original--discovering this new world. The programs and the gaming grid and the I/O towers and the identity discs and the solar sailer and energy!water and programs looking like their users and all of it.
The only new element in Legacy is the Isos….and they were exterminated (except for Quorra) years before the movie even opens. The lack of world building was really freaking obvious, too. If nothing else, why was the system isolated in the middle of a wasteland?!? Thanks to the internet, the world is more interconnected than ever before. Except for extremely high security areas and computers that aren't online at all--neither of which applies to the grid given that the entry point is in Flynn's basement--isolated systems like that just don't exist anymore.
In conclusion
I loved the visuals. I was completely absorbed.
My overwhelming feeling during the movie was deja vu.
I loved all the nods to the original.
My overwhelming feeling at the end was sadness, but there was a large dollop of disappointment in there, too.
I guess you could boil it down to this: I love Tron, and I was prepared to forgive this movie anything as long as it gave us more of the computer world. Instead, it actually managed to take away much of what the first one gave us.
I'm very glad I saw it in IMAX 3D. I'd probably go again if friends or family really want to see it with someone. But I don't think I'll see it again on my own.
[This entry was originally posted at DreamWidth (http://crimsonquills.dreamwidth.org/698846.html). Please comment there using OpenID or anonymous commenting. (
comments at DreamWidth.)]
Last night I went to the midnight, IMAX, 3D shooing of Tron: Legacy.
I'm going to put my reactions behind a cut because they are EXTREMELY SPOILERY
Also, the review got incredibly long.
First of all, visually the movie is spectacular. I think they hit the styling spot on, although there were bits I disagreed with. Specifically, the four female programs who strip and redress Sam were ridiculous--what was the point of that, aside from some beefcake?
The review that have come out (I checked them out this morning) almost all say the visuals are awesome and the plot is terrible. Everyone said (and still says) the same thing about the original. *g* I liked the plot just fine, except for two things: (1) I think it was unnecessarily grandiose and (2) it was the same plot as the first movie.
Regarding (1), all I can say is that I was rolling with the plot right up until we got to the part about Clu wanting into the real world. That started to go too far to me, although I guess it was a set up for the idea that Quorra could transfer. But it really lost me when they got to Clu doing the whole, let's invade the other world and take over. We didn't need that. It came right at the end of the movie, it wasn't set up very well, and it was over the top.
Still, whatever, I can handwave that. I'm a very forgiving viewer.
It's (2) that's really getting me. The plot of the first Tron was: Flynn's ideas are stolen. Flynn breaks into ENCOM to get evidence. The bad guy arranges for him to be transported into the system and tries to kill him on the game grid. With the help of two programs, Flynn escapes. Flynn and Tron (and RAM) race to get Tron's disc encoded at an I/O tower (and then to the MCP) with a system-changing identity disc. They succeed, Flynn's life is changed.
The plot of Tron Legacy was: Sam's dad is missing (kidnapped). Sam acts out by breaking into ENCOM. The bad guy arranges for him to be transported into the system and tries to kill him on the game grid. With the help of a program, Sam escapes. Sam, Flynn, and Quorra race to get Flynn's life-changing disc to the portal. They succeed, Sam's life is changed.
Is anyone else having deja vu here?
I loved the plot of the first movie, I really did. But I wanted to see what had changed in the system, what effect the internet had, how things had grown, how having so many more Users interacting with the computer world affected things, how wi-fi and adding computer elements to so many more different things had changed the grid. I didn't want to see that the entire system had been reset to exactly where it was at the beginning of the first Tron and watch them not even get it back to where it was at the end of the first Tron.
I found the end of Tron Legacy to be sad and bittersweet. Clu is destroyed, but we never know how that changes the system. Does someone else just step into the gap and it's the same totalitarian state? I kept waiting for a tag where Tron wasn't really dead and he took over to lead them to the way it was supposed to be, but it never came.
And that's another thing. Here's a list of the fates of all the named programs (I'm not counting people who never entered the grid) from both movies, in roughly chronological order of when we knew their fate:
The first (original) Clu: Dead
RAM: Dead
Sark: Evil & Dead
The MCP: Evil and dead
Dumont: Unknown
Yori: Unknown
Castor: Evil and dead
Tron: Presumed dead, then brainwashed into doing evil for 20 years, then dead
New Clu: Evil and dead
Flynn: Kidnapped, then dead
Sam: Alive…happy?
Quorra: Alive and happy
That's a depressing list. I got choked up a number of times in the movie and the ending was terribly bittersweet to me…with the emphasis on the bitter.
I'm particularly choked up about Tron's fate. I figured out that Clu's mysterious warrior was Tron really early on, well before the flashback using the same fighting style that was intended to clue us in and hours before Flynn saw and recognized him. We didn't see him die and we knew from Sam's first entry into the grid that Clu could repurpose programs, so almost the minute we met this spectacular warrior I was sure it was going to be Tron. He was always the best on the game grid.
I also believed he'd come back to himself eventually, but it took far too long. Plus, we never got to see his face. He and Flynn never got a reunion, never even got to meet each other's eyes. Tron was forced to serve a regime he'd have hated, a type of regime he helped bring down once, and he died without ever seeing it change again. And we never got to see his face, damn it! Young Jeff Bridges was in half the movie, but ten seconds of young Bruce Boxleitner was beyond them?
I'm just so sad for the world of the grid. Was Quorra getting out into our world all we were supposed to care about? I was glad for her, but to be honest I cared more about RAM in the first movie (who had maybe 20minutes of screen time) than I did about her. And I really care about that entire other universe and what happens to it, and they tell us nothing about that. Hell, I would have settled for thirty seconds after the credits in which Tron shows up alive to step into the vacuum left by Clu.
And for one last quibble…did they forget about world building entirely? That was my favourite thing about the original--discovering this new world. The programs and the gaming grid and the I/O towers and the identity discs and the solar sailer and energy!water and programs looking like their users and all of it.
The only new element in Legacy is the Isos….and they were exterminated (except for Quorra) years before the movie even opens. The lack of world building was really freaking obvious, too. If nothing else, why was the system isolated in the middle of a wasteland?!? Thanks to the internet, the world is more interconnected than ever before. Except for extremely high security areas and computers that aren't online at all--neither of which applies to the grid given that the entry point is in Flynn's basement--isolated systems like that just don't exist anymore.
In conclusion
I loved the visuals. I was completely absorbed.
My overwhelming feeling during the movie was deja vu.
I loved all the nods to the original.
My overwhelming feeling at the end was sadness, but there was a large dollop of disappointment in there, too.
I guess you could boil it down to this: I love Tron, and I was prepared to forgive this movie anything as long as it gave us more of the computer world. Instead, it actually managed to take away much of what the first one gave us.
I'm very glad I saw it in IMAX 3D. I'd probably go again if friends or family really want to see it with someone. But I don't think I'll see it again on my own.
[This entry was originally posted at DreamWidth (http://crimsonquills.dreamwidth.org/698846.html). Please comment there using OpenID or anonymous commenting. (
comments at DreamWidth.)]