Ignore the "critics" - Tron LEGACY was AWESOME!

[Hamlet]

I liked Avatar's plot better when I saw it the first time in Dances with Wolves.

 

 

It was just as Oscar worthy as Avatar

Ding ding ding! Give that man a cee-gar! That's a good comparison. I will say Avatar is more original in conception (despite the recycled military hardware from previous Cameron flicks) than Tron, but that is what you should expect for a sequel.

[Timmay]

Saw it today in 3-D with the kids and thought it was a pretty good flick.

[JazzMan]

Besides the special effects I found it underwhelming. I could have lived without seeing the movie.

[nearmint]

I could have lived without seeing the movie.

 

Are there movies that you couldn't live without seeing?

[Logan510]

Besides the special effects I found it underwhelming. I could have lived without seeing the movie.

 

 

I have to agree...bells and whistles aside, I need at least a little meat with my potatoes and this one nearly put me to sleep several times. I really, really wanted to like this movie

[JazzMan]

I could have lived without seeing the movie.

 

Are there movies that you couldn't live without seeing?

 

[Doohickamabob]

I saw "Tron Legacy" a few days ago and was pissed off at the people who made it.

 

Keep in mind that I walked in really, really wanting to like it. I loved the first one, for what it was. Loved the graphics then, and was impressed with the new graphics. The opening scenes were cool and the motorcycle scene was a nice way to foreshadow the light-cycle scenes later. Also really dug the music by Daft Punk, though I wish they'd integrated at least a few of the melodies from the original movie's electronic score by Wendy (Walter) Carlos.

 

The movie starts to stink when it tries to tell a complex story. It basically just falls apart. The character motivations are all under-developed, and what is developed is spoken rather than shown. It's the whole "show me don't tell me" problem -- the screenwriters tried to cram a bunch of stuff into the movie via talking, talking, talking.

SPOILER ALERTS....

 

I swear, the movie had me for the first 30 minutes. First there's the "real world" stuff which gets things started. Then he goes into the Grid and there's a disc fight, followed by a light-cycle battle. Awesome start (though some of the action was edited so quickly I couldn't quite figure out what happened, like at the end of the disc fight).

 

Then the main character gets saved by a cyber-babe with a mod-ish haircut and the kind of beautiful cat-like eyes that belong in a GGA comic-book cover. He goes and visits Jeff Bridges out in the nether-zone, where the room is all white and echoey like at the end of "2001: A Space Odyssey." Jeff Bridges talks about some sort of paradigm-shifting organic electro-magic that's "like jazz, man." But the movie NEVER SHOWS WHY THIS GROOVY ELECTRO-MAGIC IS SO WONDERFUL. It just tells us that it is.

 

Then there's this guy named Clu who should be named Clu-less and is a CGI version of Jeff Bridges from 1982. He's a warmongering, perfectionist, totalitarian program who is too rigid about following his program. Maybe the elder Jeff Bridges should have programmed a "back door" in Clu and put a virtual cattle prod up it.

 

There's also the original "Tron" character, whose face you never see, and who has turned bad. But eventually he turns good, and then dies. Or something. You never get much idea what really happened there -- the Tron character is just in there so they can call the movie Tron. Seriously, that's the only reason.

 

The whole deal with the David Bowie guy in the virtual bar/club completely lost me. I still don't know why there's a dance club in the Grid. Actually the whole movie lost me -- who is cheering at the arena? Are they just programs that go to a show and watch fighting? What for? The first movie was silly but at least it was internally consistent or had enough of a premise where you could suspend disbelief and enjoy it for what it was. "Tron Legacy" has a story that comes across as if the screenwriters gave up and hoped the graphics would save them.

 

The graphics are great. I think the makers of "Tron Legacy" should have made the movie a series of cool graphics, fight scenes, sexy women in neon clothing, and Jeff Bridges talking like the Grid Dude while ominous techno music blares and the movie usher hands out pot brownies with the 3-D glasses as people enter the theater.

 

Just remember: The movie cost $170,000,000 and yet they could have paid a college student $7,000 to come up with a better -script.

 

But if you enjoyed it, more power to you!

 

[He11blazer]

I saw "Tron Legacy" a few days ago and was pissed off at the people who made it.

 

Keep in mind that I walked in really, really wanting to like it. I loved the first one, for what it was. Loved the graphics then, and was impressed with the new graphics. The opening scenes were cool and the motorcycle scene was a nice way to foreshadow the light-cycle scenes later. Also really dug the music by Daft Punk, though I wish they'd integrated at least a few of the melodies from the original movie's electronic score by Wendy (Walter) Carlos.

 

The movie starts to stink when it tries to tell a complex story. It basically just falls apart. The character motivations are all under-developed, and what is developed is spoken rather than shown. It's the whole "show me don't tell me" problem -- the screenwriters tried to cram a bunch of stuff into the movie via talking, talking, talking.

SPOILER ALERTS....

 

I swear, the movie had me for the first 30 minutes. First there's the "real world" stuff which gets things started. Then he goes into the Grid and there's a disc fight, followed by a light-cycle battle. Awesome start (though some of the action was edited so quickly I couldn't quite figure out what happened, like at the end of the disc fight).

 

Then the main character gets saved by a cyber-babe with a mod-ish haircut and the kind of beautiful cat-like eyes that belong in a GGA comic-book cover. He goes and visits Jeff Bridges out in the nether-zone, where the room is all white and echoey like at the end of "2001: A Space Odyssey." Jeff Bridges talks about some sort of paradigm-shifting organic electro-magic that's "like jazz, man." But the movie NEVER SHOWS WHY THIS GROOVY ELECTRO-MAGIC IS SO WONDERFUL. It just tells us that it is.

 

I did find it a little annoying that Flynn failed to offer any reasoning to why the spontaneous appearance of digital life was a 'good thing'. (Good for who? Why?) What I did like was that having lived the equivalent of over 1000 years he had taken to meditation, and had attained a level of enlightenment that perhaps made it impossible for the rest of us mere humans to relate.

 

Then there's this guy named Clu who should be named Clu-less and is a CGI version of Jeff Bridges from 1982. He's a warmongering, perfectionist, totalitarian program who is too rigid about following his program. Maybe the elder Jeff Bridges should have programmed a "back door" in Clu and put a virtual cattle prod up it.

 

I think the 'rules' of the Tron reality are that from the outside world it would have been as simple as that. Flynn would've just deleted Clu and written a new one. But while in the Grid, Flynn wasn't an all powerful user 'god', he had to obey the same rules the programs did (although he certainly knew better how to manipulate those rules than the average program did).

 

There's also the original "Tron" character, whose face you never see, and who has turned bad. But eventually he turns good, and then dies. Or something. You never get much idea what really happened there -- the Tron character is just in there so they can call the movie Tron. Seriously, that's the only reason.

 

Well, to be fair Tron was almost as important a character as Flynn and was left as chief architect of a brave new world at the end of the first movie, so something had to be done with him. I agree that his last minute conversion was irritatingly convenient and random.

 

The whole deal with the David Bowie guy in the virtual bar/club completely lost me. I still don't know why there's a dance club in the Grid. Actually the whole movie lost me -- who is cheering at the arena? Are they just programs that go to a show and watch fighting? What for? The first movie was silly but at least it was internally consistent or had enough of a premise where you could suspend disbelief and enjoy it for what it was. "Tron Legacy" has a story that comes across as if the screenwriters gave up and hoped the graphics would save them.

 

Now now, we all know the whole Tron premise is absurd. I knew it when I watched the first one in the cinema at the age of 14. At the time I had to struggle with how utterly ridiculous the concept was, just so that I could enjoy the cool ride. You can't ask a Tron movie for plausible explanations of its world. It's nonsense, and I disagree that the original Tron had greater internal logic. It had much less. At least Legacy is set in a new Grid engineered by Flynn as a digital frontier home for humanity. As such it makes far, far more sense than the society seen in the original, existing for no apparent reason on some old DEC mainframe

 

The graphics are great. I think the makers of "Tron Legacy" should have made the movie a series of cool graphics, fight scenes, sexy women in neon clothing, and Jeff Bridges talking like the Grid Dude while ominous techno music blares and the movie usher hands out pot brownies with the 3-D glasses as people enter the theater.

 

Oh yeah, I definitely agree! What I enjoyed were the opening battle, the nightclub, Quorra, Zuse, Gem and Flynn in the role of techno Gandalf The rest just filled time between the cool bits.

 

Just remember: The movie cost $170,000,000 and yet they could have paid a college student $7,000 to come up with a better -script.

 

With you here too. It constantly amazes me the number of movies with 9 figure budgets that couldn't get a remotely decent -script. It's not like there's a shortage of good writers in need of a few bucks. Legacy's -script, while weak, wasn't one of the worst.

 

But if you enjoyed it, more power to you!

 

I enjoyed it lots, but on a cynical day I could easily have made pretty much the same post as you. Just felt like defending it a little

[Doohickamabob]

Cool response. Appreciate the thoughtful comments.

[easyt63]

Late on this one. Just saw it last night and really really liked it. A lot. I think I may be in love with Olivia Wilde now though.

[FFB]

Just got back from seeing Tron in noMax Flat-D and I have to say without all the bells and whistles it's well worth the money. Is it Oscar worthy? Obviously *coughNocough* Although the plot was a bit bare in places, it was certainly good enough to hang the rest of the movie on. I didn't notice glaring magical plot devices, there were fun homages to the original movie, and some seriously cool visual and sound effects.

 

Who else really dug the 80's arcade sound and bumping the Eurythmics?

 

I was entertained, which is a lot more than can be said if I were to be dragged into a viewing of Twilight. Thank heavens my wife isn't into that.

 

Dang, I was going to write a review of Tron Legacy, but you nailed it. We watched it over Christmas vacation at my wife's parents' house in Illinois and I liked it. I saw some things that I think I could have done better if they'd asked me (what fan of the original doesn't? ), but I was entertained. For a rare night out with my wife while we've got the world's most willing babysitters, it was definitely worth going to see.

 

My wife never saw the original, so she didn't like it as much as I did. But she liked it well enough to say that it was worth the ten bucks for her ticket.

 

I think that watching the original or being familiar with it is important to the enjoyment of the movie, because the story assumes you've seen it recently. it really does not give you a full refresher on what the first one was about, and without it, a some parts of the movie wouldn't make very much sense.

 

For the fellow Tron geeks who are still reading, my one real complaint is that they named the movie after Tron and yet he barely was a persona in this one. Plus, the way the movie dealt with Tron's redemption was so predictable and trite and made the movie feel like Tron didn't really matter to the story. It was a significant detail that did not ruin a pretty good movie, but kept it from being X-Men 2 or Dark Knight great.

[Doohickamabob]

Late on this one. Just saw it last night and really really liked it. A lot. I think I may be in love with Olivia Wilde now though.

 

Olivia Wilde vs. Scarlett Johannson vs. Eva Green ... You can make out with one of them but the other two will be lowered into a pit of lava. What do you do? You have 5 seconds to decide...... GO!