Agenda Movie Club: Tron: Legacy

Tron: Legacy

Joseph Kosinski

2010

I’ll just say right up front that I had a good time watching Tron: Legacy, I’m glad I went, and it was certainly worth my money and my time to see it. I start that way because I have a feeling I’m going to spend a lot of the rest of this talking about what I didn’t like about it.

The first Tron had many faults, but I can forgive them all because it created an entirely new world, and I think that’s what it was really there to do. The rest of the movie was just a delivery system for the exhibition of that world, so it wasn’t actually all that relevant to whether it was a good movie or not. I realize some people will disagree, but that’s how I see it. This update, though, doesn’t have that to fall back on. Tron: Legacy is probably a victim of history, because it comes at a time when there’s not much that happens in it that we haven’t seen before. If this had been made 15 years ago, it would be revolutionary. As it is, we’ve seen plenty of movies now that create entirely digital worlds, and this is just another one of those. So, for me, its faults were magnified because I wasn’t engaged on this other level.

I’m not sure how to explain this without sounding like I don’t know what I’m talking about and I’m contradicting myself, but the fact that the “Grid” world in this Tron looked so darned real actually made it less interesting for me. The Grid in the first movie was so unlike anything in reality that I felt transported, I felt like it genuinely was a different place. This one doesn’t give that feeling to me. It looks very sleek and sharp, but I don’t want a place that seems real. I want a place that seems unreal.

And it’s just so gloomy. The whole place is dark, the people are frowny, everything is so serious. Goodness. The only thing perking it up a bit is when Jeff Bridges uses 1980s slang, presumably because he’s been stuck in this grid since the 1980s and hasn’t learned anything else.

The best parts of the movie, for me, were those that reference the first one, especially the “competition” scenes– the disc throwing and the light cycles. The light cycles again look great, although their movement is too fluid for me. I liked the extreme angularity of the old light cycles on the grid (their unnatural movement is what made them cool), these just move like motorcycles. That’s not how things should be in a computer world. That said, they do look great.

The original movie had this kind of beautiful economy– there were certainly no scenes in it that didn’t need to be there, and there were probably a couple that did need to be there that weren’t. Not the case here. This could easily be half an hour shorter, there’s a subplot or two that could be completely removed. It’s just bloated. The disco fight scene with Michael Sheen only really seems to be there so that it can look neat and so that they have a reason to put Michael Sheen in the movie. Not that I mind him, I don’t. I rather like him. Still– not necessary, they could have gotten where they needed to go without any of that.

I’m not one who likes to compare different movies, even when they’re from the same series, but I think in this case it’s not only justified, it’s necessary (if you couldn’t tell this already). I say that because I think these two movies are trying to do basically the same thing, and one succeeds despite its flaws while the other has trouble. It’s possible that it can’t, given its place in history. I don’t know. I do think it’s interesting that, in the first Tron, you can see a few elements that movies like The Matrix later borrowed, while the new movie seems like it’s taking those elements from movies like The Matrix. Maybe it’s all about timing.

And the 3-D IMAX didn’t really do a lot for me. I think I would have enjoyed the movie equally had I seen it on a smaller screen in 2-D. I didn’t feel “immersed” because I didn’t feel like I was in a different world. Making the screen bigger doesn’t change that.

STILL: I had fun. In nearly all cases, I’m going to argue that that’s enough. That’s true here, too. There are plenty of exciting scenes, it really does look great, even if it’s not unique and is a bit gloomy (I blame the 3-D for some of this), and, frankly, there’s just some really cool stuff. Plus, really, it’s Tron, and unless it was a total disaster, it was going to be fun for me no matter what. I’m perfectly happy to have seen it, and even to have paid the extra money for the IMAX. I’m not sure I would do that again, but once was just fine.