TRON: LEGACY

TRON: LEGACY

rated PG

ART--->****
HEART->**
MIND-->**1/2
FUN--->**1/2

Back in 1982, a young video game designer named Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) worked for ENCOM, a tech company on the cutting edge. Flynn digitally entered ENCOM’s computer world, and with the help of a program named TRON battled to free hidden information from the tyrannical Master Control Program.

Years later, Flynn is now the head of ENCOM, and he tells his young son Sam about his adventures on "The Grid.” As Flynn leaves, an excited Sam imagines joining his father on his next journey. But that was more than 20 years ago. And no one has seen Kevin Flynn since. That is, until a message for Sam (Garrett Hedlund) arrives from the most unlikely of places. The Grid.

28 years have passed since the original TRON, when an unlikely mix of computer programmers, artists, and filmmakers assembled to create a science fiction classic. Countless artists have traced their creative spark from two key films, STAR WARS and TRON. What started out as simple wire-frame computer animation gave birth to a bold new world of visual effects and ultimately led to the first completely computer generated film, TOY STORY. The rest is history.

First off, I must tell you, the new TRON is beautiful to behold. It is crisp, sterile and clean, with visuals that are stunning in their simplicity. If Steve Jobs could design your dreams... well you get the idea. All this eye candy is augmented by a tech-trance soundtrack from the electronic musicians Daft Punk, giving the computer world a trippy vibe. Add the trendy novelty of 3D and you’ve got yourself one groovy cinematic experience.

But what about the story?

Despite all its precision and perfection, the message of TRON: LEGACY tends to get muddled. In the original, the concept of the User and the Program mirrored the idea of the Creator’s relationship with Man. Unfortunately, this time around there are too many unfinished ideas.

Flynn created CLU, a digital version of himself, to engineer perfection in The Grid. CLU took this to the extreme and now wields tyrannical power over this electronic landscape. Meanwhile Flynn has gotten all Zen since we last saw him, preferring not to fight. So… is Flynn God and CLU the Devil? Is CLU an evil twin? The dark side of Flynn? There’s no way to tell.

The only image strong enough to evoke a response is when CLU addresses his massive army from a digital podium. This is what it would look like if Hitler was streaming live from TheThirdReich.com. There are also threads of meditation, trance states, and even some sort of spontanteous digital evolution involving Quorra (Olivia Wilde) laced into the narrative. It’s all very confusing, especially when you have so much time to ponder The Ultimate Significance Of It All.

That’s the other main problem. Pacing. The film is intentionally slow and methodical, almost subliminally telling you to just lie back and trip out. Then there are blasts of action, beautifully conceived, that make you want for more. The result is an uneven experience, making you wish you could fast-forward to the end. The filmmakers could easily have trimmed 20 minutes or so from the film and you would never notice.

My only other minor quibble is the computer effects used to create a young Flynn and CLU don't quite work. Jeff Bridges is now in his sixties, so the filmmakers used digital effects to present us with a version of him that’s thirty years younger. Sort of. They still haven’t gotten it just right, but it gets less distracting as the movie wears on. You can tell yourself it's just a glitch in The Grid if that helps.

All that being said, there are some nice touches:

Bruce Boxleitner returns to his original role, along with Jeff Bridges.

A corporate rival is related to the bad guy from the first film.

Flynn’s arcade is intact, and you still need a quarter to play.

Some great ‘80s songs rock out.

A location only mentioned in the original film gets its due.

The action scenes are visually stunning, especially the Light Cycle chase.

TRON: LEGACY is a patchy but enjoyable follow-up to a pioneering cult classic that helped transform filmmaking as we know it. Definitely Style over Substance but there are enough fun nods to the past as well as compelling visions of the future to keep your eyes glued to the screen. Drawbacks aside, it’s a groovy trip that can’t quite be replicated at home (see it in IMAX 3D). I just wish they trimmed the length for the modern attention span.

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