Tron: Legacy - review

The gaming grid really tied the room together.

            Imagine that you bake a cake.  It’s not a hit with the crowd but it develops a nice fan base amongst your friends.  Now imagine that cake recipe was given to a bunch of people to wipe their ass with before handing it back to you so that you can attempt to bake a new cake 28 years after the first time you baked it.  That is “Tron: Legacy”. 

           

            To the movie’s credit it is visually stunning.  There is a lot to like on that front.  The sets are cool the costumes are out of this world and the women look amazing.  But as we all know a movie cannot rely on this alone. The script was awful.  The plot infantile, predictable and the acting is sub par.

            Some of you may think that is all harsh.  But I think they took the original movie, which was a very creative screenplay and turned it into a living video game because folks have a 80s nostalgic interest in certain movies.   I know the technology has changed and so they want to update it altogether but did they need to take away the charm too.

Hi! I'm the hero! Wait! Why is everyone laughing at me?

            Okay, I may need to explain the charm of “Tron” to me. In “Tron” there are two worlds: the real world and the computer world.  Actors would play parts of characters in the real world and then counterparts in the computer world would be.  So Jeff Bridges played Flynn and Clu, Bruce Boxleitner played Alan and Tron, and David Warner played Dillinger, Sark and the Master Control Program.  In Legacy it’s limited to Clu and Tron as the only characters with the dual actors. That is weak considering Cillian Murphy is in here playing Dillinger’s grandson and that is a great opportunity to utilize that.

            Instead you get these insane villains that are so transparently evil they may as well have a Fu Manchu.  There is Zuse ( I checked that is how they spelled it) who poses like a twat while he betrays the good guys and then expects the evil team to be ok with the fact they got away.  Then there is a Judge Doom look-a-like at Clu’s side that is basically there to kiss his ass the whole movie. 

No this isn't David Bowie. But good guess.

Another thing that still bugs me is they haven’t perfected the CGI to make an actor really look younger.  So Jeff Bridges doesn’t look right at all.  It’ looks distorted and off.  Like how Patrick Stewart looked at the beginning of “X-Men 3”.  If they can’t do it right they should try another route.

            It’s really not worth the price of admission.  I’d see it as a rental for sure.  It is a neat movie.  But good lord it’s a badly written flick.  It’s as if they didn’t think too hard about it at all and so they took the most generic dialogue and cookie cutter script off the heap and turned into a story about Tron.  Sad really.  It could have been a fun ride too.