Susan Granger’s review of “Tron: Legacy” (Walt Disney Studios)
This $170-million, state-of-the-art, 3-D extravaganza is the highly anticipated sequel to the first “Tron,” which was a box-office disappointment when it was released in 1982. But its sci-fi storyline about a hacker pulled inside a computer and forced to play space-age gladiator games deeply influenced several generations of nerds who made it a cult classic.
Rebellious, 27 year-old Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund) is obsessed by the mysterious disappearance of his father, Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), visionary founder of Encon, creator of Tron and legendary software developer. When Sam investigates a strange beeper signal sent from his father’s now-defunct video arcade, he’s zapped and enveloped by the exotic, digital grid in which his long-lost father has been trapped for 20 years. With the help of a warrior program Quorra (Olivia Wilde), father and son embark on a perilous quest in the cyber-universe which Kevin created, pursued by Clu, Kevin’s avatar/doppelganger, a power-hungry villain determined to leave the grid and enter the human world..
Written by Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz, based on characters created by Steven Linsberger and Bonnie MacBird, and helmed by 36 year-old first-time feature-film director Joseph Kosinski, who graduated in architecture from Columbia University and whose design-oriented background is in TV commercials, it’s a far cry from the original, which was banned from Oscar consideration because its innovative visual effects were computer-generated and, back then, that was considered cheating. Disney now utilizes the 3-D camera system that James Cameron developed for “Avatar,” with Sam bursting from 2-D into 3-D at the 24-minute mark, when he breaks into the cyber-grid, heralded by the Daft Punk electronic score. Clu is CGI, placing 61 year-old Bridges’ head via facial-performance-capture on a 35 year-old’s body. Expect a VFX Oscar-nomination. But the ultimate weakness is the Freudian-influenced, heavy-handed storytelling which, lacking emotional involvement, grows tedious.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Tron: Legacy” is a technically spectacular 7, visually and aurally – best viewed in IMAX 3-D – with “Tron: Uprising” already in production as an animated series on the Disney Channel.
