Tron: Legacy

I don’t remember falling in love with the original Tron back in the day. It had some cool ideas like travelling back & forth between the real world and a digital world, and the idea that the digital world could be just as real as this one. At the time there was a crazy amount of buzz about the look of the film and the use CG for the light-cycles. However, if you go back and watch it you’ll find that your memories of the “cutting-edge” effects are much better than the real thing.

Tron: Legacy sports some badass visuals, no doubt about it, and is the kind of flick that’s perfect for 3D. I had pretty much dismissed 3D after my horrible experience watching Avatar. I love the Alamo Drafthouse but the setup they had for Avatar sucked. I’m sure part of that had to do with the type of 3D  glasses they had. They made my eyes feel like they were working twice as hard as they should be. The image was dim and blurry. The eye strain left me with a crazy headache by the end of the movie and no love whatsoever for 3D. Fuck that shit, Pabst Blue Ribbon! I’m glad I decided to give 3D another shot for Tron: Legacy as the 3D IMAX setup greatly embiggened the previously mentioned badass visuals. I’m not an expert on the tech but I’m guessing these were passive glasses instead of active shutter. The image looked great and no nasty headache so ….A+. The 3D was used mainly for depth and they kept it subtle, I didn’t feel like people were throwing stuff at me every couple of minutes. There’s so much going on visually that I really need to re-watch it just to look around at the environment.  I love the updated look of the new film; it references the original while reflecting much of the darkness that The Dude & Company encounter. The coolest moments for me were the nostalgia moments in the film’s intro.  PK Ripper!

There’s no need to dive into the story behind Tron: Legacy, you’ve seen it before and in greater depth in the Matrix. Real vs. Digital, Chaos vs. Order, the futile search for perfection.  Done.   Most of the cast  does what it’s supposed to do. Flynn’s son Sam plays the reluctant hero rather well but doesn’t do anything unexpected. After a ton of bitching he takes up his father’s cause and marches out to fight the bad guys. There are a ton of pretty ladies in tight leather if you’re into that sort of thing.

If I have one large gripe (ka ching) about the characters it has to do with Michael Sheen’s Castor/Zuse. If the Merovingian from the Matrix decided to have a baby with Chris Tucker’s character from The 5^th Element, this would be the over acted, jazz-handsy result.  Nuff said.

Bottom line is you don’t get attached to any of the characters once you finally meet The Dude.  Bridges is in full-on Lebowski mode for the Flynn character and it works for his newfound Zen master/Obi Wan role. It doesn’t ruin the flick but you definitely find yourself tempted to chime in with your favorite line during the frequent mid-sentence pauses.  “Obviously you’re not a golfer.” The digital Bridges, Clu, mostly works. Mostly. The CG modeling is spot on & looks like a young bridges but it tends to fall apart a little during dialogue scenes. Animating lip movements in a convincing way is hard enough, trying to match movements to a specific actor had to have been a complete bitch of a job.
 

The sound setup in the IMAX theater was about as good as it gets. Good thing because the score was DOPE. Don’t believe me? Here:

I never really got into Daft Punk that much. No particular reason I just never paid that much attention to them. I’m correcting that shit right now. There has never been a soundtrack more appropriate to this kind of film ever. It’s got that retro Nord Lead kind of sound to it but the music is very much from right now.

So there you go. Visuals = BAD ASS. Story = Ok. Sound = Fucking Awseome.