Tron:Legacy - A Review.

A Review of Tron Legacy by a man who was sad enough to watch the original aswell :(

Story (or Lowdown as it is known in the hood)

One mans quest to get it on with a virtual woman.

The story is set about thirty years after the original Tron, Sam Flynn (Garret Hedland) discovers a message being transmitted from his fathers old arcade. Naturally he is surprised due to noone being at the arcade since his father Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges, the protagonist of the original movie Tron and also one of my favorite actors, seriously watch in horror as I give Jeff Bridges the literary equivalent of a blowjob in this "review") vanished many years ago. Whilst searching the arcade Sam accidentally gets "beamed" into a digital world known as "The Grid", as you do. He does some action scenes because there hasn't been any for ten minutes and bumps into his father, unaged from the day he left. NO WAIT! its not his dad, this character is a program called CLU (Jeff Bridges again) who looks like his father due to being designed by him. CLU has been corrupted and has dismantled Kevin Flynns utopian image of The Grid in his thirst for perfection. Its up to Sam, assisted by Kevin and another program called Quorra (Olivia Wilde, So this is why she dissapeared from "House"?), to save the day and return to the real world.

Sequel?


The disgusting yet loving things I would do to this man.


Sequels or remakes should be approached with caution in the most part, usually as there is no need for them to exist. Luckily Tron is a film with great potential for a sequel, the original film wrapped up all its plot points which usually disqualifies the point for a sequel, with there being nearly three decades since the original enough time has passed for a new story to logically unfold. The Original Tron was a great idea with good characters to work with, however the films story was flawed and could be hard to follow at times and the effects despite being good at the time, were made with moderate budget and compared with modern SFX looks rather silly. Tron's effects were applauded at the time, not so much due to their quality, but in the way they were utlised (E.G Lightbike smashy funtimes). With a huge budget behind the film and modern SFX technology availible the action scenes in Tron: Legacy really are stunning and they must be pretty awesome because I wasnt that impressed by the visual technology behind Avatar.

Acting, Direction, Script and All that jazz

He does go a bit Jedi-ish in the second half, but I will overlook it

 The film follows a recent trend by casting a relatively unknown lead actor around a cast of established stars, see Sam Worthington in Avatar for an example, and usually I am not a fan of this because they tend to lack the ability to hold the film together as the centrepiece. Garret Hedlund does not fall into this category, sure hes the typical physically fit, modelesque faced guy, but he can act very well (Note: the film does have a scene which requires him to needlessly take his shirt off, but what do I expect of mainstream cinema). He gives Sam a strong psychological character struggling to reel against the pace of the discoveries of his fathers dissaperance and their current reunification. Jeff Bridges (You can probably hear my breathing become much slower and vibrant) is good as always, however despite my prelude of love in the opening paragraph, he is not as great as he could be. The thing is with Jeff Bridges being Jeff Bridges (Look at how intelligent I am) I expect him to be awesome in pretty much everything, which he still usually is. Casting Jeff Bridges in two roles is a way of getting the most for your money I guess and I cant complain as he gets more screentime :) I think the writing has let him down in areas which has prevented him from being as unbelievably awesome as usual. Olivia Wilde plays the love interest and she has a slightly more original character than most, going into the film I was expecting her to be playing a tough chick female warrior who treats everything the lead characters says as an excuse for a patronising remark to flow from her lips. However this isn't the case which is nice to see as mainsteam action films feel the need to do this all the time now, See Avatar again. By the by I dont hate Avatar, just in case you were getting that impression, I just think it was distinctly average but this is one mans opinion and perhaps I will explain my reasons for this in a future blog :)  anyway back to Tron. The film flows nicely for the first hour, not becoming dull and is well paced. However towards the end the stories legs start to run down, however a brilliantly enigmatic Michael Sheen keeps the ball rolling for a while. Sadly the films big finale action sequence falls flat, and I already had guessed what would happen at end (being a modern day Poirot, without the Belgian bit ofcourse). The films dialogue isnt going to go down in history as a masterpiece but has a few small moments that make it stand out from run of the mill big budget action films, I liked the whole "Removing yourself from the equation" bollocks because i am a bit sad like that. If you have no idea what the previous sentence means then watch the film, you will get it. Also I wouldnt usually mention it but the soundtrack is very good, being by Daft Punk and everything it suits the films techno vibe perfectly.

Overall Summary

She should drop the super powerful disc thing and pick up
a Vacuum cleaner, am I right boys!

Tron:Legacy is an entertaining action film, well acted, competantly directed and has a unique visual style that makes the film a joy to watch at times. Jeff Bridges is still good in it, despite my misgivings, and the best actor by far. However in the scenes where he looks young or when he plays CLU his face looks really fucking weird, due to being digitally messed with to knock 20 years off. However I will let it slide, with it being Jeff. I reccomend the film as a "popcorn flick", it doesnt require to much attention to know whats going on and it has enough interesting action set pieces to keep the film from getting boring, till like the last half hour.

My arbitrary scores :)  (My criteria changes depending on the type of film I review)

Acting - 8

Visuals - 10

Story - 7

Soundtrack - 10 (Seriously, I loved it)
Overall - 8

Thanks for reading :) Feel free to leave comments, or else I will feel like im talking to myself on the internet. The online equivalent of a schizophrenic.