Review - TRON LEGACY (John’s Take)

TRON LEGACY

Directed by: Joseph Kosinski

Written by: Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis

Starring: Jeff Bridges, Garrett Hedlund, Olivia Wilde, Michael Sheen, Bruce Boxleitner

CAUTION: Extremely wordy and rambling review to follow. No big spoilers though!

Disney has thrown an ungodly amount of money at promotion and marketing of its winter 2010 cash cow TRON LEGACY. The film has effectively had a three year build up, originating in what was essentially an elaborate fan-made trailer to gauge the level of interest in a sequel to the original TRON. Which, as you may or may not know, is not a great film: it’s a dated but innovative visual lark, with little substance to match its style. What substance there is rests with good performances by Jeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner and David Warner; the script may as well be fluff.

So does the new film stand up, or has Disney again pumped a good deal of money into a failing enterprise? The original film didn’t perform too well at the box office, making this sort of a risky endeavor.

The answer: sure. When seated next to its forefather, TRON LEGACY is a fine sequel. It mirrors the tone, successes, failures and faults of the original film, for good and for bad. But when placed next to THE MATRIX or INCEPTION or any film of the modern era, TRON LEGACY doesn’t have the filling to match its delicious exterior.

Which is why it makes recommending the film a bit of a conundrum. Fans of the original will probably devour this, while recognizing its faults: a weak storyline, loose dramatic tension, and its ultimate undoing, which I’ll get to in a minute. Newcomers to the series will wonder what the fuss is about. After all, is there any real appeal to disc battles or lightcycle races if one hasn’t already been introduced to why those things were interesting back in the day? To the average Joe, this movie must look like FAST AND FURIOUS draped in neon.

And as much as I want TRON LEGACY to succeed at the box office — having super risky films that cater to niche appeal succeed financially is a great thing, folks — I find it surprising that Disney ever expected this to be a new PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN. Because as much as I’m a fan of the original and was excited to death by the prospect of a sequel, pumping money into TRON LEGACY is taking a huge gamble on nostalgia, a force that can only be canned and sold to the masses as well as an attempt to engineer a cult classic. And we all know how SNAKES ON A PLANE turned out. The attempt to make LEGACY a franchise launcher, a rebirth of a buried Disney picture from 1982 that survived by word of mouth and the clouded memory of youthful viewers now grown … that’s a ballsy, ballsy decision.

So here’s where we stand: I recognize the myriad flaws of LEGACY. I dislike much of what I saw. But I also can’t help but admire it for ironic and un-ironic reasons, and for some reason I can’t help but wish it the best. And despite having so many problems with it, I still want everyone to get out there and see it.

Let’s start with the Achilles’ heel of the film, which isn’t any performance and it’s not even the script: it’s the computer-generated version of Jeff Bridges (Clu, preserved in youthful form by a computer that his real life counterpart, Flynn, built in his arcade before disappearing into the ether over a decade ago). I admire the chutzpah behind the decision to make a computer generated character integral to a plot involving so many other non-CGI characters. But very honestly, this computerized mask is damn distracting. Not so much badly done as it is noticeably different from everything else being rendered onscreen, the visible lack of realism in Clu’s face is a black hole of dramatic tension. Every line uttered by Bridges when Clu is onscreen seems not to be heard by the audience, who will undoubtedly be transfixed by the effect. In all honesty, I’m resistant to the idea of critiquing certain elements of the storyline because I feel I missed exposition while watching this character.

And in a perverse way, I feel like after a second or third reviewing of TRON LEGACY, I’m going to love that flaw a little bit. In the same way that Steven Lisberger’s original TRON had a reach that exceeded its grasp — if I’m not mistaken, the special features on the DVD for that film reveal that every bit of computer animation could only be rendered on X, Y, and Z axes (ahem) — director Joseph Kosinski’s sequel just can’t seem to push beyond the wall of technical constraints that suffocate it. But again, I admire their cajones.

I’ve seen over a dozen reviews that lambast LEGACY for a weak storyline, and I can only defend it on these grounds: argue if you must, but the original TRON was as big of a “push characters from point A to point B” storyline as it gets. Sure, there were elements that weren’t mimicked in the sequel. The original TRON is about defeating the big boss (literally), and about taking back what was stolen, with Bridges’ antiestablishment rebel acting as almost a cyber-pirate, a more rigid and binary Jack Sparrow. So when LEGACY throws in a more abstract (too much so) explanation of the importance of liberating artificial intelligence, while getting a little philosophical with Flynn’s new Zen-like mentality after being stuck inside a digital world, I can only see that as an improvement. Hell, I even liked newcomer Sam Flynn’s (Garrett Hedlund) piracy of Encom’s new software acting as an introductory centerpiece for the film. It is bizarre and almost doesn’t work, but how weird. What just plain bizarre decisions to make in a Disney tentpole film.

The performances work, pretty much across the board. I like the gravelly voiced Garrett Hedlund, although he’s as much of an empty vessel for the audience to explore the world as Boxleitner was in the original; this is a movie about a setting, not any character, despite its title. Bridges is wonderful, and he is lively as both Flynn and Clu: while the visual execution is poor, it is very engaging to watch him combat his own image. Olivia Wilde and Michael Sheen add humor and flamboyance to the proceedings, respectively, and probably in an effort to mirror the ensemble of the PIRATES films. Everyone takes things very seriously, with the returning Boxleitner actually providing the most understated and dramatically weighty (if brief) role in the film. Too bad it was oversold in trailers and TV spots.

Finally, TRON LEGACY is a beautiful film to behold and to listen to. I would see it in IMAX 3D if possible: the world of TRON seems to be custom tailored for that sort of viewing experience. The idea to bring Daft Punk on board for the score was genius: if you are able to coast through this movies on visuals and orchestral synth, you are likely to leave very happy. The action scenes in the film are well-executed and riveting. Without a doubt, and certainly like the original film, TRON LEGACY will be remembered for the style with which it fuels its mediocre fire.

I paid close attention to the crowd gathered at my early screening of this film. I wanted to see who showed up. Was this attracting teens? Boys? Girls? And the reason I know that TRON LEGACY might not do to well: only a small pocket of the 12 and under crowd showed up. For this franchise to be relaunched, they’d need those seats crammed full of eager eyes and ears.

But let’s not forget that the original TRON has survived in the mainstream for nearly 30 years based on that one kid in each theater, naive to the predecessors it had in cinema history, engaged by its unique nature and futuristic trappings. Today people look back and see a film that is terribly dated, and awfully awkward, but ultimately worthwhile for pushing the envelope.

I don’t think that TRON LEGACY has pushed that envelope, and it shouldn’t have to: this is a love letter to 80′s quarter munchers. But I’m willing to bet that the pocket of young fans it will gain, naive to its failings, will preserve LEGACY as a cult classic alongside the original film. The shoddy quality of Bridges’ alter-ego will be clouded by memory and looked back upon fondly. And in another 30 years, that pocket of fans will have grown substantially, as the nostalgia beast continues to grow, while the negativity of the first reviews will be overshadowed. In the long end run, this isn’t a sort of film that really thrives on reviews anyway.

And while I’m sure Disney has lost a pretty penny on TRON LEGACY already, I hope whoever gave the green light to this film takes solace in the fact that there’s some worth to a Disney film that is remembered by the masses as a misfire, while a certain cross-section of its audience champion it as one of their very favorite movies. Isn’t it fair that this generation gets a TRON of its own?