Thanks for checking out our Tron Legacy Review
Genre: Action/Adventure/Sci-Fi
Directed by: Joseph Kosinski
Staring: Jeff Bridges, Garrett Hedlund, Bruce Boxleitner, and Olivia Wilde
Released: December 17th, 2010
THE GENERAL IDEA
Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund), the tech-savvy 27-year-old son of Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), looks into his father’s disappearance and finds himself pulled into the digital world of Tron where his father has been living for 25 years. Along with Kevin’s loyal confidant Quorra (Olivia Wilde), father and son embark on a life-and-death journey of escape across a visually-stunning cyber universe that has become far more advanced and exceedingly dangerous.
THE GOOD
The film is beautiful. And I am not just talking about its more attractive stars, I mean every inch of the world of Tron is painstakingly inspiring. Digital dayglow and real landscapes mesh into a perfect fabricated world in which Sam’s father has been trapped for decades. And absolutely worth the 3D, as this film almost seems to want to be in 3D. In fact, all the scenes in the “real world” are effectively in 2D, and the Grid world are all in 3D. This makes the leap of settings that much more effective.
The soundtrack is awesome and so appropriate with Daft Punk offering their digital sound to the film. Every bit of this score is beautiful, and I downloaded it from iTunes on the way home from the theater. Just incredible stuff there.
Considering the film is a 28 years later sequel, I was surprised the effort that went into the nods to the original series. Even with Bruce Boxleitner only being in such a small part of the movie he was a great nod to the original. And a LOT of nostalgia for the original film is a big part of what makes this film enjoyable which this delivers in spades without isolating the new audience that would not be familiar with the first movie.
THE BAD
The plot itself is weak. Clu (young Bridges) runs the grid, and has nothing to gain by eliminating the creator and his interloping son, but he acts like his very existance is threatened by it. In fact his true mission is to get something from old Flynn that will reverse the travel between worlds and allow him to leave the Grid and enter the real world. What he figured he would do once out there is oddly irrelevant and never really explained. Would he have any power or ability in the real world? Not the best villain and better listing him as “the opposition” instead.
That and every character in the movie is just there to spell out what’s going on in this strange new world. No one has a purpose except to explain something new. Very little character development at all in the supporting cast.
Young Jeff Bridges comes SO close to being perfect but when you catch those moments that remind you he is digital it ruins it. SO CLOSE!
Cillian Murphy makes an uncredited cameo appearance in this film as a character named Edward Dillinger. If I hadn’t watched my DVD copy of Tron yesterday, I might not have recalled the significance but David Warner played the badguy in the original Tron and his name was Ed Dillinger. Cool right? But no. No purpose for the charcter, no tie in, no plot involvement. He is just there as an easter egg name dropping the badguy from the first film, but they do very little with him. Why get such a known actor to play the part then if they are just name dropping. Seems a lot of effort to do nothing.
OVERALL
A lot of fun, and I cannot stress just how enjoyable the movie is in visuals alone. I do wish that they had gone deeper into character development instead of a succession of show-and-tell moments, but what is good about this movie is SO good that you find the complaints about the other stuff to be particularily minor.
Still I cannot give the movie a top rating just because the visuals and action deserve it, but I will say that if any film NEEDS to be seen in 3D, this might be it.
I give Tron Legacy a 7 out of 10
Most enjoyable part of the movie for me is the fight scene in the club with daft punk DJing in the background. My perSonal favorite cameo of the movie!!!
Loved the FX, the use of 3D (aside from the early Flynn scene) and I liked Olivia and her character. It took me awhile to warm up to Bridges as The Dude (or was it Bill Django?) but I liked his Mage/Zen-Wizard look. I liked his residence. I HATED Michael Sheen and his Jim Carrey Riddler impersonation. Annoying!!
But there was onr real thing that ticked me off. Not enough for me to hate the film- the visual stuff is too good to to that- but TRON the character.
When there is a “reveal” about the character, it raises several questions, such as:
**SPOILERS***
1- Tron does not contradict his original programming (hrming Users)
2- Tron’s face is covered by a helmet that makes him undististinguishable from other guards (aside from fighting ability) In any case, what would be the point?
3- Why give TRON a name change? Just say it’s TRON. Case in point: Sam says he had “a doll” of one of the arena disc combatants. That means the character had been around roughly the same time as Clu and/or TRON, as this universe is “closed off” from REMCON. (If it wasn’t, Kevin Flynn could, in theory still run the company. See TRON 1 and the correspondance between Dillinger and the MCP.)
Overall, I enjoyed it even if it ran out of steam by the halfway mark.
In the original movie, Flynn had that same power (where he and RAM wake up after being attacked by the tanks and thrown from their motorcycles, when Flynn put together the Recognizer).
The whole bit about Tron dying then finding out he didn’t then all the sudden changing was really poorly explained.
Acting was horrible
Spoiler below:
I liked the movie, and would score it a 7/10 also, but for different reasons. The story wasn’t the strongest, but it seemed to flow relatively well. I could accept Clu needed Kevin Flynn’s disc to enter the “real world”, but what killed the movie was the ending. WHERE THE F*CK DID K.FLYNN GET THIS POWER, ALL OF A SUDDEN?
So, we’re to believe that they have to avoid Clu and Tron to get to the Portal, but as soon as they are there, Tron turns against Clu (after all those years) and K.Flynn can just stop Clu by touching the ground? WTF???
The movie was entertaining and had some fun, amazing CGI, but the last 10 minutes totally ruined everything for me.
Recommendation? Watch it, but leave your brain at home.
BTW, the movie is made 28 years later, but the storyline takes place 17 years later (I’m guessing, since Sam is like 10 when his dad leaves, and he’s supposed to be 27 when we see him next).
You guys who are going on about “CG Flynn Looking Fake” are forgetting that CG Flynn in the beginning of the movie in the “real world” looked fake too.
It was just bad CG on Flynn throughout the entire movie.
Well I saw this film in 3d at a midnight release at my local theatre and I liked but not as much as you. I will agree that the visuals and the scrore were great and fit in with the movie very well. But the 3d actually kept bothering my eyes, I had to keep taking the glasses off and rub my eyes every other 10 mins or so. I think I would have preferred to watch it in 2d and still been ok with it. But they used the digital face crop of young Sam way too much, I think with Clu it was good but for some reason with young Flynn in the flashback scenes it looked really bad. The plot was very weak but the action scenes where cool as hell. And like how Jeff Bridges decided to ressurect “The Dude” to be the original/ older Sam Flynn.
Just saw it, it was amazing. and…. really cool
but im also pretty happy Tron himself decided to drop in on a couple of scenes between coffee brakes.
The movie should have just been called “The Grid” or something. Since thats what it was about.
The title is accurate as this was the Legacy left by Tron.
i thought it was the Flynn legacy though…
lol it was like, Flynn: “wait…THATS Tron!”
and im like “what? the fourth left hand henchmen of evil-twin-jeff-bridges? why HIM?”
idk i just thought hed be like the 2nd main good guy… i pretty much thought he was going to be what Olivia Wilde was
hey did they show the TF3 trailer? thor? green lantern? coz i really want to know what trailer they show
thanx =p
i walked in after the trailers started but i saw Thor, POTC, cars,
The film is beautiful, but I dont think the 3D was that good. I am wondering if we saw the same movie.
More then the weak plot line I was really bothered by how the didn’t even try to make sense into a very senseless world. Maybe I`m too much of a sci-fi freak but I really can’t truly enjoy watching a world that is completely illogical. And I can’t tell why, but this didn’t bother me in the original.
That said, the movie is fun and visuals are stunning. It`s probably the best looking movie I’ve ever seen and it sounds awesome too.
Digital Flynn was a copy of the original Flynn, but didnt have the emotional aspect the original did, thus could only look digital. Probably. Newer creations or upgrades made programs seem more real then “CLU” -after all he was thousands of cycles old. That being said, it wasn’t made to be that way and his character constanly pulls me out of the movie. However Olivia Wilde stole the movie. Couldnt get enouph of her!
Loved the movie, but wish it had clu’s character development from the comic “Tron Betrayal”. It gave the character a little more depth.
LOVED IT!! Amazing movie!! I agree the story was a little weak, but it was good enough that I was intrigued for 2 hours. Visually flawless, great action, perfect soundtrack! Cant wait for the blu-ray!
P.S. – oh ya! Biggest complaint = CG Flynn. Not bad, but it was too plainly obvious that he was CG. In every scene to me! Didnt like CG Flynn.
Here’s the way I see it: What if CG Flynn is SUPPOSED to look fake? This IS a digital world we’re talking about anyway! And every character IN the film’s plot knows that this character IS digital. So…wht not remind us visually that he is indeed digital? It works in the level it’s supposed to work I believe. :-)
that is logic you can’t argue with. A digital character looks digital.
Except that ALL the characters on the Grid are programs (digital) except for the Flynns.
So there goes that.
But wouldn’t the Flynn’s have to be digital reproductions of their organic self’s to exist in the Grid.
I kind of buy the argument—but there is that scene in 1989 (a big mistake in the TRON timeline–as Kevin Flynn is with his 7 year old son. A son not mentioned in the first film. This suggests Sam was born in 1982. In the first film, Kevin Flynn was unmarried with no children. In fact, he was slightly jealous of Brad for seeing Lora Baines. Nor did he win Lora, much less Yori- TRONs g/f- at film’s end.)
This visuals in this blew my mind. Absolutely. The soundtrack was too good. I have to be honest though, I was dissapointed. The story/characters were just so flat and empty, the enjoyment of the visuals just wasn’t enough. I think 7 out of 10 is a bit much. I think 6 is fitting. I felt like some of the characters were wasted, especially the white haired siren. I felt like they could’ve done something with her.
I think Cillian Murphy’s character will have a much bigger role in the next film, this one was probably just set up for his appearance in that one.
Great review, keep up the good work!
After 28 long years I finally get to see what happens next. I loved it and I can’t wait to see it again. I like where they took the characters and I want to see more. The Daft Punk soundtrack was brilliant and I hope they get an Oscar for best Soundtrack to go along with the much accolades they deserve. I felt some of …the lines were a little corny especially the protagonist, Sam Flynn, but it didn’t detour me from enjoying the movie. I totally want people to see this movie but I really advise seeing the first one right after seeing this if you haven’t already. I may explain a few minor details. Though there is a flashback sequence that does explain a lot. The first movie dealt with ideas of Religion (mostly Christianity) and Artificial Intelligence. This one deals with ideas of the Nazi Party, Genocide, and the Perfect System (Übermensch). I liked how it all worked out. The Light Cycle sequence was great but I would like to seen more, even if it came later on in the movie.. This movie definitely could open for a sequel and I cant wait!!!
Great review. I will be checking this out this weekend!