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Tron Legacy Stuff...

Friday, 01 January 2010 04:00

By Chris Hawes

When TRON (released in theaters in 1982, and as an 8 year old my dad took me to see it) came out on VHS, I think I saw it 5 or 10 times. I thought the movie was so cool.

I saw that a sequel, TRON: Legacy, was coming out and I was pumped to go see it. I was so pumped I went to amazon.com to get a DVD copy of the original, only to find out it was out-of-print, it came out on DVD in 2002, and the price for new copy was about 185 bucks. I went to eBay and they were starting around 25 bucks and going up from there. I decided not to buy a copy of the orginal. Anyway, I was pumped to go see the sequel, Tron Legacy, and so was my dad, so after Christmas the two of us went to go see it.

First of all, I did not see the 3D version, I saw the 2D version. I would have like to have seen the 3D version, but timing would not allow. I thought the special effects were very good, as they should have been. There is no way that you make a movie like this and have bad, or adequate, special effects. The special effects serve the purpose of this movie.

I will not go into the background of the original. If you did not see the orginal, you probably would not see the sequel. If you do go to the sequel and have not seen the original, then someone else should explain the orginal to you. The basics of the TRON: Legacy are as follows, Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) disappears one night in 1989 leaving his son to fend for himself. His son, Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund), grows up to have a controlling interest in ENCOM, the company his father was CEO of when he disappeared. Sam Flynn is independently wealthy, reckless, and intelligent. Of course. The movie opens with him playing an elborate joke on ENCOM, and leading the police on chase through the streets. He plays the joke on ENCOM because he feels they have fallen far from what his father's orginal vison. After the chase and release from jail, Sam returns to his "hideway" and is met by Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner). Alan is loyal to Sam and still loyal to the long missing Kevin, so loyal he carries an 80s pager around with him expecting to get a page from Kevin Flynn. Alan is there to tell Sam he has received a page from his father's old office, in an arcade, and encourages Sam to check it out, which he, of course, does. This then leads to Sam to gettin pulled into the computer where he is then forced to be part of the "games". I won't get to much more into the details of the movie except to say that when in the games he is saved by Quorra (Olivia Wilde), an ally of his father, and she takes him to his father. Once reunited with his father it becomes a race against the clock to get out of the computer via the portal that Sam created when he entered.

At times the movie is bit predictable and a little hacky. Kevin Flynn has been stuck in the computer since the 80s and he practice a "Zen" like qualities, which has Bridges seemingly channeling some of his inner "Lebowski" in this movie. I thought the movie itself was a little flat, I am not sure what I was expecting, but I came away feeling a little deflated. Maybe it was the dialogue, maybe it was the acting, I can't quite put my finger on it. Maybe I expected more because I thought it was so great when I was young. On a scale of 1 to 5 I would give it about a 3. I will buy the DVD for my collection, as long as it comes in a boxset with the original movie.