Old Guy Walks Into TRON Legacy, Doesn't Like It
TRON Legacy opens on kind of a cool artistic sequence of data gridlines which eventually morph into a bustling city street. This is probably the closest to anything artistic this movie has time for.
The first scenes take place in The Uncanny Valley where Jeff Bridges' character shows his son TRON merchandise and extols the virtues of the magical computer grid. This might be the only movie I've ever seen that features its own action figure!
The film makers clearly spent a lot of time recreating Jeff Bridges... remember back around 1987 when he had longish hair, a fake overly angular looking face and pretend eyes? This was that Jeff Bridges.
The closest computers have ever come to reproducing a convincing human on screen was in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, which was a bomb big enough to bring down the studio that made it. But that didn't stop Disney from doing a half-assed job on it ten years later. People complain that The Polar Express is creepy-looking, but this movie does a much worse job. Few movie execs realize the plain truth that the technology to duplicate a person convincingly just isn't there yet. If you paste a face, 3D or not, onto a younger actor, it will look creepy.
TRON ends with Kevin Flynn safely returning to our world after surviving insurmountable odds in the machine. The idea that Flynn would go back onto the grid is, frankly, a joke. He was a hacker, a programmer, a game designer... he wasn't a philosopher, scientist or doctor. Curing all diseases isn't a bad premise... but it's not something for Flynn to do. They turned their Han Solo into the Dalai Llama, while turning Alan (the actual spiritual one) into a wink machine. (Incidentally, he should have gone after Flynn a LONG time ago.)
So we get his son, Sam Flynn, an awful unrelatable douchebag. Harry Potter works because a put-upon, misunderstood young boy is a great wizard, to his own astonishment. But Sam Flynn, the protagonist of TRON Legacy had a father who disappeared, which turned him into a badass daredevil. This is not a relatable character. Base jumping from skyscrapers is not something a computer geek does.
The ENCOM board room scene gives us an avalanche of wretched dialogue along with open-source metaphor that is almost instantly disposed of. Cillian Murphy is here, to taunt the viewer with what might have been if this film had a proper villain. It is soon evident that someone is sabotaging ENCOM's brand new OS release!
As Sam runs away from a security guard on top of the ENCOM building, he shouts some platitude like "My father wanted all of this to be free." I doubt that very much, considering one of the climactic points of the first film is Flynn regaining ownership of the games he created. If he wanted software to be free, he would have let people play his games for free.
Alan Bradley is introduced, playing the role of plot dispenser. "Hey Sam... I just wanted to stop over to give you this precipitating incident."
To see Flynn's Arcade in its long-abandoned glory is where the film makers gambled for nerd boners. I have to say that my nerd boner disappeared so far into my torso that I was briefly making love to my own ass from within. Nothing in this scene is interesting or earned... it all feels entirely by rote.
Also he has a computer or mainframe sitting under the arcade that has been running unmaintained for twenty years.
We see the kickass digitization laser warming up behind Sam... I got a little excited to see where this was going to go. And... nothing. He's in the machine. No process of transfer, no nothing. A person is now digitized. Huh. It's like a scene got cut because of poor testing. "Nobody's buying this thing where he gets put into the computer... let's just say he's in there already."
Sam then has to suit up in his new computery outfit. Please tell me, what is the point of being transferred into the digital realm if they have to dress you up like data? "I'm in the computer now... I hope four "sexy" computer ladies dress me up like I'm in a computer."
Flynn makes mention of miraculous rogue programs called "ISOs" and their subsequent holocaust, or purge. This idea wasn't half-baked. This idea wasn't slightly baked... this idea was never on the same planet as an oven, even an E-Z Bake.
My first response to hearing that Daft Punk was scoring TRON Legacy was "I don't know what that is." Rather than take a single lick from the original soundtrack, Daft Punk has chosen to use the exact soundtrack we expect for a film made in 2010 called TRON Legacy; that is, a vague electronic thrum throughout the film. The original Wendy Carlos score is no doubt fairly obscure and a hard sell now, but they couldn't throw the original fans a bone? My brother tells me that somebody sang the theme in the movie, and we heard the original arcade game theme! Awful, awful bullshit.
Olivia Wilde is one of the few bright spots in the movie, and that's not saying much. She's believable in the "quirky program" role, and she's hot, so she fits that bill. The only decent emotional depth in the film belongs to her. This doesn't fix the inherent anti-feminist nightmare of the character. She is more or less filling out the stereotype of an Asian housewife. "You just think I'm docile and like how I depend on you so much." I would be WAY more interested in the story that follows this... how a program adjusts to becoming a person. REVERSE TRON would be a much better sequel.
Every line of dialogue in TRON Legacy is like being punched in the face with awfulness. Every word screams "focus group" or "catch phrase". When end credits rolled I found out that this film had been scripted by Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz, the prodigies responsible for Nikki and Paulo on LOST. I guarantee this script was run through the Hollywood script-writing mill 50 to 100 times, so these guys can't take all of the blame. But I'll be looking out for their names before I spend money in the future.
The original film was peopled with scared users; people forced to fight in games against their will, or forced into prisons. This feels essentially like a six character film, with bland digital (or otherwise) extras dotted in to look sexy or scary. The light-cycle chase was fairly cool. I'm sure it would look great in 3D. It felt like a direct rehash of the original movie, only with fewer right-angles. It's a more fluid world, and a very cool looking world. I just wanted to like it a bit more.
The original TRON's computer/user metaphor was a sort of Wizard of Oz style. I design a little program, it looks like me in the machine. It probably only prints "Hello, World!", but it looks like me. The conceit of this movie is that Flynn had a computer so advanced (in 1989) that he could sequence the human genome into it, digitize it and clone it. This is not even an avatar, it's an exact copy. And since it's a totally different computer system, that's viable for this movie. Sometimes you clone yourself into a computer and then your clone turns evil, I guess.
Tron 2.0 (or Tron: Killer App) did a much better job on almost every front in extending the TRON universe to today. It has a few douchey things, too, but at least the metaphors remain the same. It also makes room to deal with the internet, and viruses... fascinating things in the realm of the computer/human metaphor which were all entirely avoided by this movie. Maybe that's where the Cillian Murphy sequel comes in. I hope not.
I love the original TRON. As TRON fans go, I am a devoted member of "the core," and I hate this movie.
A few other quick things:
The first scenes take place in The Uncanny Valley where Jeff Bridges' character shows his son TRON merchandise and extols the virtues of the magical computer grid. This might be the only movie I've ever seen that features its own action figure!
The film makers clearly spent a lot of time recreating Jeff Bridges... remember back around 1987 when he had longish hair, a fake overly angular looking face and pretend eyes? This was that Jeff Bridges.
The closest computers have ever come to reproducing a convincing human on screen was in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, which was a bomb big enough to bring down the studio that made it. But that didn't stop Disney from doing a half-assed job on it ten years later. People complain that The Polar Express is creepy-looking, but this movie does a much worse job. Few movie execs realize the plain truth that the technology to duplicate a person convincingly just isn't there yet. If you paste a face, 3D or not, onto a younger actor, it will look creepy.
TRON ends with Kevin Flynn safely returning to our world after surviving insurmountable odds in the machine. The idea that Flynn would go back onto the grid is, frankly, a joke. He was a hacker, a programmer, a game designer... he wasn't a philosopher, scientist or doctor. Curing all diseases isn't a bad premise... but it's not something for Flynn to do. They turned their Han Solo into the Dalai Llama, while turning Alan (the actual spiritual one) into a wink machine. (Incidentally, he should have gone after Flynn a LONG time ago.)
So we get his son, Sam Flynn, an awful unrelatable douchebag. Harry Potter works because a put-upon, misunderstood young boy is a great wizard, to his own astonishment. But Sam Flynn, the protagonist of TRON Legacy had a father who disappeared, which turned him into a badass daredevil. This is not a relatable character. Base jumping from skyscrapers is not something a computer geek does.
The ENCOM board room scene gives us an avalanche of wretched dialogue along with open-source metaphor that is almost instantly disposed of. Cillian Murphy is here, to taunt the viewer with what might have been if this film had a proper villain. It is soon evident that someone is sabotaging ENCOM's brand new OS release!
As Sam runs away from a security guard on top of the ENCOM building, he shouts some platitude like "My father wanted all of this to be free." I doubt that very much, considering one of the climactic points of the first film is Flynn regaining ownership of the games he created. If he wanted software to be free, he would have let people play his games for free.
Alan Bradley is introduced, playing the role of plot dispenser. "Hey Sam... I just wanted to stop over to give you this precipitating incident."
To see Flynn's Arcade in its long-abandoned glory is where the film makers gambled for nerd boners. I have to say that my nerd boner disappeared so far into my torso that I was briefly making love to my own ass from within. Nothing in this scene is interesting or earned... it all feels entirely by rote.
Also he has a computer or mainframe sitting under the arcade that has been running unmaintained for twenty years.
We see the kickass digitization laser warming up behind Sam... I got a little excited to see where this was going to go. And... nothing. He's in the machine. No process of transfer, no nothing. A person is now digitized. Huh. It's like a scene got cut because of poor testing. "Nobody's buying this thing where he gets put into the computer... let's just say he's in there already."
Sam then has to suit up in his new computery outfit. Please tell me, what is the point of being transferred into the digital realm if they have to dress you up like data? "I'm in the computer now... I hope four "sexy" computer ladies dress me up like I'm in a computer."
Flynn makes mention of miraculous rogue programs called "ISOs" and their subsequent holocaust, or purge. This idea wasn't half-baked. This idea wasn't slightly baked... this idea was never on the same planet as an oven, even an E-Z Bake.
My first response to hearing that Daft Punk was scoring TRON Legacy was "I don't know what that is." Rather than take a single lick from the original soundtrack, Daft Punk has chosen to use the exact soundtrack we expect for a film made in 2010 called TRON Legacy; that is, a vague electronic thrum throughout the film. The original Wendy Carlos score is no doubt fairly obscure and a hard sell now, but they couldn't throw the original fans a bone? My brother tells me that somebody sang the theme in the movie, and we heard the original arcade game theme! Awful, awful bullshit.
Olivia Wilde is one of the few bright spots in the movie, and that's not saying much. She's believable in the "quirky program" role, and she's hot, so she fits that bill. The only decent emotional depth in the film belongs to her. This doesn't fix the inherent anti-feminist nightmare of the character. She is more or less filling out the stereotype of an Asian housewife. "You just think I'm docile and like how I depend on you so much." I would be WAY more interested in the story that follows this... how a program adjusts to becoming a person. REVERSE TRON would be a much better sequel.
Every line of dialogue in TRON Legacy is like being punched in the face with awfulness. Every word screams "focus group" or "catch phrase". When end credits rolled I found out that this film had been scripted by Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz, the prodigies responsible for Nikki and Paulo on LOST. I guarantee this script was run through the Hollywood script-writing mill 50 to 100 times, so these guys can't take all of the blame. But I'll be looking out for their names before I spend money in the future.
The original film was peopled with scared users; people forced to fight in games against their will, or forced into prisons. This feels essentially like a six character film, with bland digital (or otherwise) extras dotted in to look sexy or scary. The light-cycle chase was fairly cool. I'm sure it would look great in 3D. It felt like a direct rehash of the original movie, only with fewer right-angles. It's a more fluid world, and a very cool looking world. I just wanted to like it a bit more.
The original TRON's computer/user metaphor was a sort of Wizard of Oz style. I design a little program, it looks like me in the machine. It probably only prints "Hello, World!", but it looks like me. The conceit of this movie is that Flynn had a computer so advanced (in 1989) that he could sequence the human genome into it, digitize it and clone it. This is not even an avatar, it's an exact copy. And since it's a totally different computer system, that's viable for this movie. Sometimes you clone yourself into a computer and then your clone turns evil, I guess.
Tron 2.0 (or Tron: Killer App) did a much better job on almost every front in extending the TRON universe to today. It has a few douchey things, too, but at least the metaphors remain the same. It also makes room to deal with the internet, and viruses... fascinating things in the realm of the computer/human metaphor which were all entirely avoided by this movie. Maybe that's where the Cillian Murphy sequel comes in. I hope not.
I love the original TRON. As TRON fans go, I am a devoted member of "the core," and I hate this movie.
A few other quick things:
- I missed the bit. I get that a bit would be too small a unit for these programs to see, but it seemed like a giant oversight to ignore it completely.
- Digital armies are awful. Stop using digital armies, directors!
- If I met my in-world avatar online, I would be having sex with her right now. She would likely be protesting. Now THAT'S self-loathing.