Tron Legacy
4 stars out of 10
Genre: Sci-fi
MPAA Rating: PG
Run time: 127 min.
Writer: Adam Horowitz, Eddy Kitsis
Director: Joseph Kosinski
Year: 2010
There are probably people who look back fondly on the original Tron. Even those people are likely to be disappointed in this sequel that attempts to update the visuals with mixed results, and fails utterly to tell a coherent or involving story.
Let’s deal with the story first, and as briefly as its depth deserves. The 80′s Tron was hardly a masterpiece in this department. It was conceptually interesting but otherwise generic, mostly lacking in character. The best that can be said of this new version is that it is consistent with that. The story is bland and predictable, seen a thousand times with other visuals. And also thematically confused, uncertain what story it’s attempting to tell. Worst of all, it’s completely un-engaging. You could get up and walk out at any point without hesitation, and not feel like you’ve missed anything.
While there are some impressive technical achievements here, it’s difficult to praise the movie unconditionally even on a visual level. It is a very well designed film, but the updated visual effects work in a strange way against it. For example, the vehicles in the original film were built out of crude, flatly rendered computer graphics that if nothing else gave them the impression that they were constructed out of light and energy, as things in an electronic world should be. In this new film, these objects appear to have solid mass, and the luminous energy is used only as trim. This makes them, ironically, less convincing as inhabitants of an electronic realm. Characters, similarly, are less surreal than in the original and just look like real-world people in leather jumpsuits with neon fringes. Even the world itself, which was flat and flickery and crudely colorized in the original, is actually rendered less believable by the updated realism.
The worst offender in the effects department is the de-aging of Jeff Bridges for the character of Clu. This was no doubt intended to be a revolutionary effect on a “Benjamin Button”level, but it’s utterly unconvincing. Standing still he looks halfway real, but as soon as he opens his mouth he looks like a ventriloquist’s dummy.
Action scenes abound (apart from a dull mid-section), but first-time director Kosinski doesn’t seem terribly skilled at them. Despite their lustrous visuals and some spectacular moments, they are not as kinetic as they need to be. They’re like storyboard panels. They move almost languidly, without a real sense of movement or excitement, a problem that is compounded by Kosinski’s insistence on using a Matrix-y slow motion effect on every big moment. That effect was already getting old ten years ago.
Perhaps the best way to enjoy this film is by looking at stills of it. They’re pretty, if not entirely effective at portraying the world they’re attempting to. And you can speed up the pace of the mid section and skip all the meaningless dialog.
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