Category: Films

So, the latest TRON film has hit the world.

So many people have expressed their opinions, so our comments will be brief (no spoilers).

We saw it yesterday, IMAX and 3D. Monday is a cheap day so there was £8 off, otherwise it would have been expensive. Us and five others.

The good things: it looks great, all that red and black. The sound is good and the 3D worked well without any gimmicks, possibly the best we have seen. There are a couple of nostalgic nods, especially to the first film. And it’s less than two hours, just.

The bad things, well, some of them: lack of plot, terrible tuneless music, poor acting, no chemistry between the leads, unrelenting destruction, just bikes driving through Vancouver blowing up buildings, boring, a sequel hinted already. The female baddie, well, no, baddie’s hench person, provides the not quite sexy enough glamour. But it’s Disney.

We went because we have great affection for the first film, and enjoyed the second. The only link between this and the earlier films is a brief and token appearance by Jeff Bridges, who is there for no obvious reason other than to get the fans to go.

Is it the worst film of the year so far? No, even from the few we have seen, it isn’t, but it’s not good.

If you are a TRON fan, see it in IMAX and 3D and just let it wash over you. If not, forget it.

If TRON was a traditional animated/live action feature with some computer elements, by 2010, cgi had advanced so far that someone decided to re-make TRON as properly cgi. Well, not quite, but essentially.

The first film had been a box office failure, but was a cult film.

Thus TRON: Legacy.

Jeff Bridges is back, and Bruce Boxleitner. Cindy Morgan is not in it, nor David Warner.

The story involves Flynn’s son, who owns the ENCOM company, dealing with the usual dodgy ENCOM stuff. He also has evidence his father, who disappeared years ago, may still be alive.

He finds himself transferred into the computer world, where he takes part in a number of games including light cycles.

He attempts to find his father, and relieve the world from the oppressive regime run by… well, no spoilers.

In 1982, a film came out that received a lot of attention. TRON.

I remember at the time: it’s a computer generated full-length movie, a new dawn in film making, the end of film making as we know it…

None of which is true.

If you haven’t seen it, and it doesn’t get shown on tv but does get cinema revivals, here’s a no spoiler plot outline.

It’s the perfect capitalist film. Flynn (Jeff Bridges) has a bohemian lifestyle. He lives over a games arcade he owns, but once upon a time worked for the ENCOM corporation where he wrote the hit games like Space Paranoids. Boss Dillinger (David Warner) has plagiarised the games and taken Flynn’s potential earnings.

Flynn wants to find proof he wrote the game, to get his just desserts, live in a fancy apartment, dress in sharp suits and ride helicopters.

With his friends Alan (Bruce Boxleitner) and Lora (Cindy Morgan) he gets into the computer centre but gets transferred into the computer world where he faces a number of computer games, including light cycles, trying to free the programs from the tyranny of a bleak and regimented world run by the Master Control Program.

The programs in computer world are represented by people.