BEFORE: From a film I was dreading to one that I've really been looking forward to, and Jeff Bridges carries over from "Tideland". Good to see him up and around again. I was into the original "Tron" at the time, both the film and the arcade game - in fact I spent a lot of time, and most of my paper route earnings, at one arcade or another. Back in 1982, the best games were at the arcade, and home gaming was in its infancy - I had one of those Odyssey games that only played 8 different variations on Pong, and then of course we got the Atari 5200. 8-bit to 16-bit, that was a big year.
If you think about it, this film fits in my chain because the original "Tron" was really like an updated "Wizard of Oz", with the newly-invented video-game/computer world standing in for Oz - Flynn would be Dorothy, Tron is the Tin Man, the MCP is the Wizard, and David Warner's executive was like the Wicked Witch. And the programs in the video-game world looked suspiciously like the people working for the company in the real world. It's funny how some movie conventions don't change, right?
THE PLOT: The son of a virtual world designer goes looking for his father and ends up inside the digital world that his father designed.
AFTER: Movie plot points don't change, but the special effects sure do! We've come a long way in 30 years - this makes Tron look like it was in 2-D, which it kinda was, if you think about it. Suddenly there's this whole other dimension, let's call it "up", and everything looks bigger, fuller, more fleshed out - the computer world now looks like the city in "Blade Runner"!
I'm sort of glad that they waited so long to do a sequel to "Tron" - if they had done it in the 1990's, it would have been filled with a bunch of virtual-reality crap, and if they had done it in the early 2000's, it would have been all internet stuff. So here's to "doing nothing" for 30 years and waiting for the pieces to fall into place.
Especially since motion capture and CGI have allll-most gotten to the point where you can't tell they're being used. (not quite, but I applaud the effort). So we have Jeff Bridges in two roles - as the programmer Flynn in his later years, and thanks to special effects, the young Bridges (or a simulation, obviously) appears as Flynn's alter ego/polar opposite, a program named Clu.
Some of the action sequences in this one had me on the edge of my seat - and THIS is really the way they should update a film from the 80's, when you think about it. A point off for a somewhat corny ending, but other than that, really good job tonight, Hollywood.
Also starring Garrett Hedlund (last seen in "Friday Night Lights"), Olivia Wilde, Bruce Boxleitner, Michael Sheen (last heard in "Alice in Wonderland"), with a cameo from Cillian Murphy.
RATING: 9 out of 10 light-cycles
As you may recall, I saw the original TRON with you in the movie theater.
ReplyDeleteI was really glad to get more TRON, even having to wait 30 years.
I do applaud the use of the "young" Flynn and the tributes paid to the original, though I wish we could have seen a young TRON, and I felt TRON should have had a deeper role in the film.
I wasn't really thrilled with the over the top special effect which made the action sequences a blur of color and hard to follow. I couldn't tell how well or badly the protagonist was faring.
Also, the clothing removing scene may have increased the audience appeal, but I cannot figure out why a computer program would need to have it's clothing cut off. Couldn't it just be changed instantaneously?
I was really let down that they didn't have Wendy Carlos do the score. I feel her original score was fantastic, while this one did nothing for me. Also, I would have loved to see David Warner again. I feel he played a phenomenal bad guy in the 80s.
I feel that the computer game TRON 2.0 was a more worthy successor to the original TRON than this film was.
Yeah, maybe I cut this one a bit too much slack. I didn't catch any nitpick points tonight, for some reason. Maybe the film just looked better in comparison to "Tideland".
ReplyDeleteI agree that Tron's character could have had a bigger presence. Besides the scenes where he appeared in flashbacks, his presence was implied, but not stated outright. If someone didn't pay too close attention, they might not even have realized that he was a major player in the final acts.
Maybe Bruce Boxleitner wasn't available? Maybe they blew the effects budget on making Clu look like a young Jeff Bridges, and they couldn't do the same for him?
However, I think they were definitely going for a more modern vibe, rather than an 80's thing. Mentally I connect Wendy Carlos with the moog sound, like the "Clockwork Orange" soundtrack, and synthesizers are SO 80's. Maybe they're retro now, but some might just find that dated. I don't know much about Daft Punk, but I bet they fit better with the modern feel the filmmakers were going for.
David Warner's one of my favorite actors, but he's getting up there - I think he's 70 by now. Maybe he was busy - but IMDB is telling me that he reprised his role in a short film that was connected to this feature, called "Tron: The Next Day". Might be worth checking out.
The programmer that appeared briefly in this film, at the board meeting for the new software launch, was supposed to be the son of Warner's character from the first film. Edward Dillinger Jr.? Maybe Warner wasn't available, so they cast Cillian Murphy as his son?
Cillian Murphy played the Scarecrow in "The Dark Knight", so there was at least a lost opportunity to do something with him in this film. He could have played a cool villain here, but for some reason it didn't happen.