It would be hilarious if they came out as little tiny men.
TRON: Legacy - Review and Grading
- Thread starter Neroon
- Start date
I plan to get the soundtrack as soon as possible.The snippets in the trailers were one of the first things that got me excited about the movie, and I think my two personal favorites are "The Game Has Changed" and "Fall."
I bought it as soon as it came out as well. Tracks 12-14 make me want to drive VERY fast.
TRON: LEGACY is title of the sequel to 1982′s Tron, and in a way the title is apt, because the new film has so much in common with the original, being a flashy, visually striking film with a number of exciting action sequences that ultimately ends up being about nothing much at all.
Where Legacy succeeds is visually. The world inside the computer is stark, simple, and often stunning, if a tad too black. The 3D is used well, switching on only when we enter the digital realm, and generally avoiding the 3D film cliches. The dimensionality is played behind the screen, rarely poking out in front of it. The action scenes are generally well-done and exhilarating.
If the film were a story told in pictures this would be fine. If it were showing us stuff we’ve never seen before or so graphically interesting that story didn’t matter it would also succeed. Heck if, it was really fun it’d be great. But it’s none of those things, and as such must rely on primarily on story and character.
But the problem with the story is that there isn’t much on one. Sam Flynn is sucked into the computer world and forced to play games by Clu, the creation of his long-lost father. A program named Quorra spirits him from the game grid and takes him to meet his dad, who’s been trapped in the computer for decades. There’s a limited amount of time in which to escape, and the race is on to get to the “portal” that will let Sam and his father out. Of course, the baddie Clu wants information dear old dad has that will let him invade the real world. Sam must escape and dad must stop Clu and Quorra is the love interest so you know what her function is. That’s pretty much it. Oh, there’s some mumbo jumbo about life forms generated spontaneously in the computer and about changing the world and about the corporation that Sam Flynn is ignoring even though he owns a majority holding, but as none of those amount to a hill of bits they’re not worth discussing.
The second problem is with the characters. Sam Flynn is just another generic bad-boy good guy like Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins or Jim Kirk in 2009′s Star Trek. He’s daring, smart, sexy, the hero, with nothing much of interest to say and about as much charisma as a computer program. His dad, Kevin (Jeff Bridges) seems like a high-tech version of “The Dude” (from The Big Lebowski), and speaks most in platitudes. Quorra a is just a wide-eyed neophyte who’s a badass fighter, albeit she has a few mildly endearing moments. Clu is just evil with a capital EEEEEV.
Hoodies...of the digital world!
The poor story and underdeveloped characters result in the entire film being little more than a flashy 3D chase movie with about as much dimension as a computer screen (despite its being filmed in 3D).
Neophyte feature director Joseph Kosinski’s insistence on real sets and self-lit costumes seems queerly at odds with the film’s subject matter. If ever a film should revel in its artificiality, a Tron film should be it. Instead, by insisting on real/functional costumes and real sets where possible, the film’s design and look becomes shackled to practical concerns. The costumes look like clothing, complete with wrinkles. Skin looks like skin. Makeup looks like makeup. As such, the world ends up looking like a bunch of fancy nightclubs and Apple Stores populated by clubbers in form fitting vinyl with glowy appliques. Even when there are visual effects generated backgrounds and settings the film frequently fails to stylize the environment. Mist and cloud look like just that. It does not compute.
Does this look like the digital realm to you?
As technically awkward as the original Tron looks in hindsight, its world generally looks more alien and unworldly than most of Legacy. The film escapes these limitations occasionally, as the game grid with its disk games set in floating glass boxes and lightcycle battles on a multi-leveled glass arena with curving ramps are wonderfully unreal. There’s some real excitement to these sequences, but they’re neither so dazzling nor numerous enough to carry the film.
Surprisingly, given the ubiquity of digital technology today, the film is incredibly naive or flat out ignorant about computers. For instance, Kevin Flynn says that Clu can only repurpose (brainwash) programs but not create them, which is completely at odds with the digital world we all know where viruses make copies of themselves into new systems, and where every copy is a perfect reproduction with no loss in quality.
And that’s what’s particularly sad about Legacy: it’s really got nothing to do with computers and the digital realm that’s part and parcel of our modern age. We live in a world where our lives are increasingly spent interacting with computers and where even our friends and friendships are conducted in a large part digitally. Our relationship status, interests, medical information, and legal misbehavior are all in that computer world, and there’s plenty of opportunity to make a story about the conflict between the “real world” you and the digital ones. But Legacy doesn’t talk about any of that. South Park’s episode “You Have 0 Friends” (click to view) has a hundred times more to say about our relationship to computers than Tron: Legacy. It’s too bad the filmmakers chose the easy path of flash minus substance when they could just as easily have opted to have all that sound and fury signify something.
So, In the end, Tron: Legacy is just a roller-coaster ride through a cool looking world absent anything really to say about computers and how they effect the human condition. In that way, it’s just like the Tron, which is why “legacy” is the perfect summation of Trons past and present.
END OF LINE
Where Legacy succeeds is visually. The world inside the computer is stark, simple, and often stunning, if a tad too black. The 3D is used well, switching on only when we enter the digital realm, and generally avoiding the 3D film cliches. The dimensionality is played behind the screen, rarely poking out in front of it. The action scenes are generally well-done and exhilarating.
If the film were a story told in pictures this would be fine. If it were showing us stuff we’ve never seen before or so graphically interesting that story didn’t matter it would also succeed. Heck if, it was really fun it’d be great. But it’s none of those things, and as such must rely on primarily on story and character.
But the problem with the story is that there isn’t much on one. Sam Flynn is sucked into the computer world and forced to play games by Clu, the creation of his long-lost father. A program named Quorra spirits him from the game grid and takes him to meet his dad, who’s been trapped in the computer for decades. There’s a limited amount of time in which to escape, and the race is on to get to the “portal” that will let Sam and his father out. Of course, the baddie Clu wants information dear old dad has that will let him invade the real world. Sam must escape and dad must stop Clu and Quorra is the love interest so you know what her function is. That’s pretty much it. Oh, there’s some mumbo jumbo about life forms generated spontaneously in the computer and about changing the world and about the corporation that Sam Flynn is ignoring even though he owns a majority holding, but as none of those amount to a hill of bits they’re not worth discussing.
The second problem is with the characters. Sam Flynn is just another generic bad-boy good guy like Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins or Jim Kirk in 2009′s Star Trek. He’s daring, smart, sexy, the hero, with nothing much of interest to say and about as much charisma as a computer program. His dad, Kevin (Jeff Bridges) seems like a high-tech version of “The Dude” (from The Big Lebowski), and speaks most in platitudes. Quorra a is just a wide-eyed neophyte who’s a badass fighter, albeit she has a few mildly endearing moments. Clu is just evil with a capital EEEEEV.
Hoodies...of the digital world!
The poor story and underdeveloped characters result in the entire film being little more than a flashy 3D chase movie with about as much dimension as a computer screen (despite its being filmed in 3D).
Neophyte feature director Joseph Kosinski’s insistence on real sets and self-lit costumes seems queerly at odds with the film’s subject matter. If ever a film should revel in its artificiality, a Tron film should be it. Instead, by insisting on real/functional costumes and real sets where possible, the film’s design and look becomes shackled to practical concerns. The costumes look like clothing, complete with wrinkles. Skin looks like skin. Makeup looks like makeup. As such, the world ends up looking like a bunch of fancy nightclubs and Apple Stores populated by clubbers in form fitting vinyl with glowy appliques. Even when there are visual effects generated backgrounds and settings the film frequently fails to stylize the environment. Mist and cloud look like just that. It does not compute.
Does this look like the digital realm to you?
As technically awkward as the original Tron looks in hindsight, its world generally looks more alien and unworldly than most of Legacy. The film escapes these limitations occasionally, as the game grid with its disk games set in floating glass boxes and lightcycle battles on a multi-leveled glass arena with curving ramps are wonderfully unreal. There’s some real excitement to these sequences, but they’re neither so dazzling nor numerous enough to carry the film.
Surprisingly, given the ubiquity of digital technology today, the film is incredibly naive or flat out ignorant about computers. For instance, Kevin Flynn says that Clu can only repurpose (brainwash) programs but not create them, which is completely at odds with the digital world we all know where viruses make copies of themselves into new systems, and where every copy is a perfect reproduction with no loss in quality.
And that’s what’s particularly sad about Legacy: it’s really got nothing to do with computers and the digital realm that’s part and parcel of our modern age. We live in a world where our lives are increasingly spent interacting with computers and where even our friends and friendships are conducted in a large part digitally. Our relationship status, interests, medical information, and legal misbehavior are all in that computer world, and there’s plenty of opportunity to make a story about the conflict between the “real world” you and the digital ones. But Legacy doesn’t talk about any of that. South Park’s episode “You Have 0 Friends” (click to view) has a hundred times more to say about our relationship to computers than Tron: Legacy. It’s too bad the filmmakers chose the easy path of flash minus substance when they could just as easily have opted to have all that sound and fury signify something.
So, In the end, Tron: Legacy is just a roller-coaster ride through a cool looking world absent anything really to say about computers and how they effect the human condition. In that way, it’s just like the Tron, which is why “legacy” is the perfect summation of Trons past and present.
END OF LINE
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"...where, due to a terrible miscalculation of scale, the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog."
"...where, due to a terrible miscalculation of scale, the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog."
This.
"...where, due to a terrible miscalculation of scale, the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog."
I think Clu's army would have come out on our side as some kind of global super-virus that would rampage through the internet, and just start shutting everything digital in our world down.
As much as I respect DS9Sega's opinion/review above, my counter to the point that the real sets and costumes detract from the digital world is that, unlike the already existing network/grid Kevin Flynn stumbles into in the original, this new world of Tron is something of his own creation, so he could craft it to look more like reality.
As to the concern about wrinkles in the clothes, I can see the point, however... I see very few wrinkles on Olivia in the pic above.. YUM! (ok yes.. at the one bent knee and the elbow)...
As to the concern about wrinkles in the clothes, I can see the point, however... I see very few wrinkles on Olivia in the pic above.. YUM!
(ok yes.. at the one bent knee and the elbow)...
What about the wrinkles on the roast pig?
Where did they get a pig, anyway?
Where did they get a pig, anyway?
Some earlier posters indicated a preference for Clu to have sought to gain control over the Internet, instead of the real world. If we follow the logic of "programs" in the digital world and "users" in the real world, and further accept that programs serve users, and since Clu seems to be leading a revolt against users, why would Clu want to conquer yet another realm where he and his fellow programs could continue to serve user masters?
Also, remember that Clu knew everything Flynn knew. In other words, Clu was forced into the position of knowing about our reality, and having understanding gleaned from Flynn's memories, while being "trapped" in the Grid. (In the Black Guard rally scene, Clu even projected a map of the Earth and had his geography correct. The guy was drawing up authentic world conquest plans.)
So yeah, Clu seems to have had a pretty good idea just what the real world was like.
Clu's motivation seemed to be a twisted directive based on Flynn's ambition to advance the human condition at the time he created the Grid. He said something like "and our grid will spread" while displaying the map of the world. Seems his idea was to "upgrade" the real world... actually a bit like the Cybermen from Doctor Who and "humanity 2.0".
Personally, I actually find I prefer the idea of Clu teleporting an army into the real world to say, programs taking over users via the Internet. The body snatchers / possession idea seems like the wrong kind of cliche for Tron; Tron seems to be about a collision of worlds, and events in one world having huge effects on the other world.
Clu and his plan just may not have been defined or explored enough, as has already been said. I'm sure some people were doing the mental calculations regarding bizarre scenario of Clu Versus The Real World, and wondering how that carrier of his would fair versus the United States air force
(Fun fan fodder fact: media outside the movie indicates that the number of programs in the Grid is around 16 million. If Clu used the Games to get rid of the few unsuitable for Black Guard rectification, he might have eventually amassed an army still well over ten million fanatical followers. Hmm.)
I like the taking-over-Internet angle. Sark/Dillinger Jr. could become the new MCP.
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Well, I'd argue that a disruption/hostile takeover of the whole bloomin' Internet would have pretty huge effects on the real world.
And they wouldn't need to stop there, either, but I think it'd have made a better place to start.
Awesome movie, I am child of the arcade generation so the scene at Flynns that is very retro brought back memories of a bygone era. The Music of this movie is amazing, Daft Punk did a perfect score, so perfect I am buying the CD, I haven't bought a CD for 3 years, just to give you an idea of just how good it really is. For Sci-fi fans this is a must see.
The critics got this one so wrong it isn't even worth talking about, they are called critics for a reason, don't listen to them.
This forum is a better guide for movies because most that post here have similar tastes in movies.
And you know I wouldn't mind seeing Bruce B. in a Star Trek movie in the future in some role
The critics got this one so wrong it isn't even worth talking about, they are called critics for a reason, don't listen to them.
This forum is a better guide for movies because most that post here have similar tastes in movies.
And you know I wouldn't mind seeing Bruce B. in a Star Trek movie in the future in some role
Well, I'd argue that a disruption/hostile takeover of the whole bloomin' Internet would have pretty huge effects on the real world.
And they wouldn't need to stop there, either, but I think it'd have made a better place to start.
You have a point, tho I suppose for my tastes, it's a bit too "Skynet" and "killer rogue AI" cliche.
OK Tron Legacy is my first movie in 3D...and I must say I was rather impressed. I didnt realize they'd made such strides with the 3D process, so I never bothered to watch them before. I'm going to be taking the family to see it this weekend and it'll be their first exposre to 3D as well.
As for the movie, they just got the technology and look so PERFECT...its not at all what I would have expected say..10 yrs ago. There's a solidness and realness to the computer world that really elevates it well beyond the original. You may think that's to be expected, but they really had every opportunity to get the "look" wrong. I don't think I can really give my opinion on the movie impartially...I'm just too sold on the concept not to like it or the story...10 out of 10.
RAMA
As for the movie, they just got the technology and look so PERFECT...its not at all what I would have expected say..10 yrs ago. There's a solidness and realness to the computer world that really elevates it well beyond the original. You may think that's to be expected, but they really had every opportunity to get the "look" wrong. I don't think I can really give my opinion on the movie impartially...I'm just too sold on the concept not to like it or the story...10 out of 10.
RAMA
Well for me it starts with the fact that Clu and his army taking over the real world is just too scientifically preposterious an idea to even consider (even in a movie about a bunch of lightcycle-driving programs in a computer).
Their only real option for taking revenge on the Users, it seems to me, is corrupting their precious Internet and controlling the world through that.
A critic's job isn't to identify that which sci-fi/fantasy audiences will embrace... it's to judge the movie on its merits.
And "evil human-created machines taking over the world" isn't?!Well, I'd argue that a disruption/hostile takeover of the whole bloomin' Internet would have pretty huge effects on the real world.
And they wouldn't need to stop there, either, but I think it'd have made a better place to start.
You have a point, tho I suppose for my tastes, it's a bit too "Skynet" and "killer rogue AI" cliche.