Before, I get into semantics about how Tron Legacy is a bad movie I am going to explain how I knew it would suck six months prior to its release.
"He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak."
- Michel de Montaigne
How is that quote relevant? As a lot of you noticed Disney was literally marketing the shit out of Tron months before its release; typical, yes. It is after all a multi-million dollar production that exceeded the $100 million mark and rumored to have even broken $200 million, with those types of numbers being thrown in the air, that means that there's a lot riding on its hopeful success; basically failure is not an option. So, what does Disney do in their marketing campaign? Hit every for sure market to over exaggerate the "cool" factor in a movie about a video game program wanting to take over the world.
Disney stopped at nothing to try and make Tron a relevant topic amongst all things "hip" nowadays from customized motorcycles, fixed gear bikes, random little pop up shops in new age art exhibits and even hiring Daft Punk to do their soundtrack Disney has exploited the "underground" market to its fullest for this movie. They even highlighted the "hot bitch" factor in a sci-fi film. There's your biggest indication as to how bad a film is going to be when one of the main selling points are "hot bitches," because "hot bitches" are rarely relevant. Why? Because most of them cannot act, but no matter what the topic, "sex" always sells.
Atop of those factoids you cannot overlook the fact that they hired a newbie director to direct the film. (hint) Big studios hire small directors so they can be pushed around and be told what to do, and we all know how effective a studio's advice can be for a movie...
So, Tron Legacy, I saw it in IMAX 3D from the advice of the trailers, since we are told that we should watch it in IMAX as it was "intended" (I don't think the inflated ticket price has anything to do with it---lol), and I was sorely disappointed. Granted the IMAX sequences looked amazing, but then again so did the scenes in Transformers 2 and we all know how great of a movie that was...
What also was troubling was how one has to watch it in 3D when you're in the IMAX and to attribute to the poor quality of the film there's a disclaimer at the beginning of the movie stating that the movie was shot for 2D...motherfuckers.
The movie starts with a quick montage of events that lead up to Tron Legacy from the original Tron film from 1982, and then to the present where you see an older mischievous Sam Flynn try to sabotage his father's fortune 500 company, this is a key quality in all young rich protagonists, because it automatically gives them a "down to earth" characteristic so the audience can like him, because we all know how selfless trust fund babies are -_-.
Blah blah, he gets into Tron and is immediately thrown into the fray in a gladiator like death match that is known as "the games," this in my opinion was the coolest part of the movie and to me where the movie should have ended haha. Anyways, everyone in Tron is known as a "program" and actual humans are known as "users." The programs are all designed within the parameters of the game program known as Tron which was created by Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) back in the first Tron film. Sam, enters this digital world in search of his father whom has gone missing for the last 20 years, but to his dismay he's accidentally placed right in the middle of a conflict; which is his father's own doing for he created a program in Tron from his own image to make sure everything ran smoothly and this character's name is CLU (it's an acronym, but I forgot what it meant).
CLU, wants one thing and that is to leave the digital world and into ours, but he cannot achieve this due to the fact that he doesn't know how to open the portal to the real world. So, he tricks Sam into opening the portal and entering Tron. Now, the portal is open all CLU needs is Kevin Flynn's disk because it contains all the information he needs in order to take over our world. While in the meantime Sam's one goal is to return back to the real world with his long lost father Kevin Flynn, and Kevin Flynn's main goal is to keep CLU inside Tron to prevent the end of the world. Get it? Real simple.
I like how in this film there's a lot of philosophical references that get mentioned and barely discussed, I guess it gives the film a brain, but in its own right it's also the reason why the movie sucks. It presents all these great ideals and vocab words like "genetic algorithm" to make the audience feel smart when in actuality majority of the audience hears "blah blah blah light cycle blah blah *daft punk soundtrack* blah blah light suit blah blah hot Olivia Wilde." The film even dares to enter the territory of Asimov---wherein the technology supersedes the authority of the creator and takes its function to a literal extreme just like the film I, Robot (which also sucks).
The best part about this film was the short lived "games" sequences with the disc fighting and the light cycle battles; lastly, Jeff Bridges and his CGI composite CLU. They did a really good job integrating a younger looking Jeff Bridges into the film using CGI, it's borderline disturbing.
Why do the programs feel emotion? Why does CLU need to deliver a motivational speech to programs? Can programs be motivated? Can technology evolve on its own? And if it did why does it just regress into typical human patterns? Why is there even a homeless program? Why do programs like to party? Why can't a $170 million dollar budget produce a better film? No one knows. Just leave it to Disney to over simplify a complex topic.
In retrospect when you watch this movie (which I know a lot of you will) think of these films Fifth Element/ Inception/ The Matrix/ Jurassic Park, because it took all the basic points of these films and combined it into a light show.
2/4
-DK
